Systems Don't Change Lives, People Do: Erik Marks on Mentorship

Apr 23

5 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Erik Marks is a lawyer, a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa, and the author of Rescuing Ethan and Gabe, The Power of One Stable Committed Relationship. He has worked most of his career inside children's rights and child protection systems, and he still believes in them. But the more he worked inside them, the more he saw a gap between how they work on paper and how they work in practice. The gap was the humans. The children who came out the other side better off almost always had one person who stayed. His napkin is hard to forget. Systems don't change lives, people do. Slowly, imperfectly, and at great personal cost. For any leader, it is a reminder that the work that changes people happens one relationship at a time, and that it costs the person doing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oxpK5mi16M

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 359 with Erik Marks.

Why good systems still leave people behind

Erik is careful here. He thinks the systems he works in, in Canada, are better than the alternatives he saw while doing international work. No system is perfect, though, and the people left behind are rarely random. In child protection, he notes that the Indigenous community represents about 7 percent of the Canadian population and over 50 percent of youth in care, in family homes or group care. He sees similar patterns in other countries.

The problem, as Erik describes it, sat in the application. Smart people drafted the frameworks. Something was missing when they met real lives. When he looked at the children who did come through well, the difference was a person who engaged with the individual, not just the system. And more than that, a person who stayed through the good times and the bad.

His academic research pointed the same way. Studies of children growing up in poverty, war, or with parents facing addiction and mental health issues kept finding one common thread among those who did well. They had one stable and committed relationship in their life.

How Erik came to mentor Ethan and Gabe

The book is inspired by true events. Erik says about 80 percent of it reflects real life, and he wrote under a pen name to protect the real people in it.

The first relationship began at a summer camp in Nova Scotia, where Erik was assistant director. A boy from out west, around 12 or 13, kept landing in his office for challenging authority. They met almost daily and ended up connecting. At the end of the summer, the boy got off the departure bus, hugged him, and whispered that he would see him again. They stayed in touch for years, with his family's knowledge.

Decades later, as a lawyer for a child protection agency, Erik was asked to chaperone a camp for Indigenous youth in care, because the agency needed male chaperones. He was paired with an 11 year old boy. At the goodbye, in pouring rain, the boy ran across the parking lot and asked whether he would ever see Erik again, and whether he was one of those adults who say they will try and then don't. Erik became his formal mentor. That young man is now 19, and they are in daily contact.

Erik insists he didn't choose them. They chose each other.

What staying costs, and why most people leave

The second half of the napkin is the part people skip. Slowly, imperfectly, and at great personal cost.

Erik is open that mentoring took a toll on his mental and physical health. At one point the older youth was struggling with mental health and addiction, and Erik had to create some distance from his own home while still trying to help. Gabe lived with Erik's family for a period. There were real wins. His sleep and eating improved because he felt safe. There were also challenges with school, health and getting along with Erik's own children. Erik points to research suggesting that families who take in a child in care most often stop because of issues with their own biological children, not the child they took in.

In his submission to the show, Erik wrote that this wisdom came through "regret, moral injury, professional boundaries crossed and upheld, and the slow realization that impact is rarely visible when it matters most."

There were times people he loved told him to stop. He kept going because so many adults in these kids' lives had said they were there for them until it got uncomfortable. He did not want to be one more. And he also says we judge people who help imperfectly far too quickly.

What this means for leaders and their teams

I see this as a leadership story, and maybe the only one that matters. Leadership is one-on-one. It shows up in the weekly one-on-one, where you show that you care, more than in any monthly report.

Erik agrees the pattern holds with a team. You will have to give some of yourself up. Progress will be slow and it won't be smooth. You will have to be vulnerable and admit mistakes to your own people. But leaders who stay through the good times and the bad, he says, often come out very strong.

He also offers a way to notice who needs you. The people who don't ask for help are often the ones to pay attention to. Look for the person who is invisible, not the loudest or most talkative one. The person who can advocate for themselves probably already knows where to go.

And the supporter needs support. Erik leaned on his family, colleagues and friends who were therapists. A leader with no support system and no coaching around them is carrying more than they should.

How to practice staying this week

A few ways to put the napkin to work:

Look around your team and find the person who is invisible. Start a conversation with them.
Hold one weekly one-on-one this week that is about the person, not the report.
Expect it to be slow and imperfect. Do not treat slow progress as proof you are doing it wrong.
Name the cost you are carrying, and decide who supports you while you carry it.
If this is not your season to be the mentor, find someone who is, and support the supporter.

Then sit with the question I left listeners with. Who is the one person in your world who might benefit from you staying just a little bit longer?