By Matt Robinson
Contributing Writer
REGION – In case you haven’t noticed, life is hard. It can be especially hard for people who are older and who may not have the resources that they once did. From dealing with health issues to financial issues to family matters, the longer we live, the more challenges seem to add up.
Fortunately, there are people like Debra Woog on the case. Woog has worked with students and staff at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (where she garnered her own MBA after studying psychology at Wellesley College). She has trained as a mediator and ombudsman and studied with Brené Brown, a researcher of human connection.
Desire to help others
Behind all of her efforts has been a deep desire to help others. “I have a memory from high school of one of my friends disappearing and nobody knew where she was and I realized she was missing,” Woog recalled. “And I remember telling one of the teachers.”
This urge to act for the sake of another ended up saving this young friend’s life and encouraged Woog to continue to strive to support. This striving, in turn, led her to create an entirely new field – crisis navigation partnership.
“I must be a pioneer in this,” reasoned Woog, who registered the trademark for the term Crisis Navigation Partner and has led her firm Connect2 Corporation (https://connecttwo.com) since 1999, “because it is a profession that I made up!”
When asked what prompted her to start not just a new company but an entirely new field, Woog cited an inner direction that she had often encouraged others to seek.
Inner calling
“I followed the process that I’ve used with hundreds of clients over the years to focus in on the values I most want to express in the world,” she explained.
She credits this desire to connect to her inner calling with starting Connect2.
“I just wasn’t getting out of bed every day really excited to work, the way I used to be in the past,” she recalled. “What was really driving me was helping people make changes…in their life and their work. And I realized I want to focus on those going forward.”
At first, Woog recalled, many friends and colleagues suggested that, as so many people refused to see themselves as being in crisis, there would not be much market for a self-proclaimed crisis navigation partner. “I said, I think there are people who get me and what I’m about,” she smiled. “I was right!”
Woog was most proven correct when she put some of her organizational change work behind and focused more on working with individuals in crisis in the fall of 2019. “We all know what happened in the spring of 2020,” she said.
Soon, she was getting calls and emails from people whose lives had been turned upside down by the pandemic.
“I worked with a lot of individuals and organizations to help them learn to lead their way through at that time,” she explained. “And it’s just continued since then.”
When asked about the roots of her personal and professional passions, Woog noted that she has long been interested in psychology, entrepreneurship, and leadership. “And I’ve always been interested in using my practical skills and my ability to relate to people emotionally to help other people feel more effective,” she added.
Though most of her career had involved working with business leaders, Woog was able to look back before that to the efforts she had made on behalf of family and friends to realize a unique set of skills and desires that could allow her to serve and support people with the daily challenges they faced in business and in life.
Life’s inevitable challenges
“Leaders can be leaders of teams or organizations or community groups or families,” she observed. “It doesn’t really matter what they’re leading. But if they are going through one of life’s inevitable big challenges – whether that’s an illness or a divorce or a dispute – they can turn to Connect2 and we will support them with practical tools and emotional support.”
Though she has dealt with a wide range of issues with a wide range of personal and professional partners, Woog observes that one of the fastest-growing sectors of support seekers consists of those who are asking for help with managing care for someone they love who is involved in mental health or other medical treatment.
“They are not the person who is in treatment,” Woog noted, “but the person with the role of managing that person’s care, while at the same time trying to work and lead a family and take care of themselves.”
She realizes that dealing with a diagnosis can be terribly challenging. But Woog suggests that it is often these “point people” who have to care for others while caring for themselves that can have the most challenges to face.
“I’m really most passionate about working with those point people,” she said.
Though mental health issues continue to grow and impact more people, Woog observes that traditional sources of care are not keeping pace. This may be why she recently expanded her company by personally training more navigation partners.
“It’s really hard for people to find the providers and the places that can help them,” she said. “And also it’s really hard for people to learn where to seek help and also where to set boundaries for themselves as the point people.”
As a result, she noted, these people end up needing more care than the people they have been charged with caring for.
“They need help trying to manage their way through it and take care of themselves,” Woog maintained, “because what we don’t need is point people needing to go into treatment facilities over the experience of trying to manage the care for their loved ones who were in the treatment facilities at the same time!”
Ability to relate
While she admitted that everyone has bad days, Woog is confident that, just as she predicted, there are enough people who are truly facing challenges they cannot surmount alone that partners like herself and her colleagues are necessary and often vital. She also points out that the fact that she and her colleagues have dealt with many of the same issues with which their clients come to them helps them connect and support as well.
“We have been through these things before personally and professionally,” she advised. “And if we can help you save time and save yourself pain by sharing the vetted resources that we have and the strategies that we have and the tools that we have so you can lead your way through to the best possible outcome faster and more effectively, then I encourage you to do that.”
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