S5 E15 - Leadership Lessons From The Schoolyard with Mike McDonald

The Inspire Podcast

In this episode, Bart welcomes Mike McDonald, Founder of the charity Recess Guardians and CEO of Activ8, a new play-based educational company helping kids and adults move and learn. Mike shares his experiences creating a school-based leadership charity that empowers youth to lead and teach younger kids, He explains why kids embrace leadership opportunities, different styles of leadership, how to use play to create engagement, and how what he learned inspired him to launch Activ8. A great conversation about kids but perfect for the young-at-heart leader. Learn more about Recess Guardians here: www.recessguardians.org And Activ8 here: www.unboxactiv8.com 00:00 Show intro 01:00 Introducing Mike 01:20 Bart's disclosure 02:49 Recess Guardians 05:36 Are kids losing the ability to play? 06:34 Foundation of Recess Guardians 07:39 How does Recess Guardians actually work in the field? 09:20 How many kids impacted? 09:53 Problems in schools 10:24 Kids are bad sports 11:30 Sedentary behaviour on the playground 12:13 Common benefits of recess guardians 13:32 Mistakes aren't bad - they help you grow 15:29 Activ8 - where did the idea come from? 18:55 Why go from charity to for-profit? 20:47 What is the Activ8 experience like? 22:16 Difference between reaching adults vs kids? 22:53 Partnership with D2L 24:06 Building leadership skills in adults?? 24:35 Different leadership styles 25:05 Spokesperson 25:22 Demonstrator 25:49 The Organizer 26:17 The Role Model 27:15 Transferring these styles to adults 27:22 Don't silo people into one style 28:58 Experiment with different styles of leadership 31:30 Recess time at the office? 33:15 Bart's takeaways 34:52 Where to find out more? 35:16 Thank yous 35:30 Outro