Episode 80. Leadership (ft. Kathy Quick)

Minnesota takes pride in civic participation, but there’s a leadership deficit in our state. Leadership, as well as volunteering and charity, is crucial for addressing community needs and opportunities. 

How do we confront generational changes of social affiliations and people leaving rural areas? In this episode, we focus on the challenge of collaborative leadership with Dr. Kathy Quick.

“Leadership is about adaptation. It matters that everybody be a good communicator. It matters that everybody have some degree of empathy…not be so overtaken by their own ego and title that they forget about the followers. And it helps if they do have a mission.”

Dr. Kathy Quick is the Gross Family Chair for Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She is also an Academic Co-Director of the Center for Integrative Leadership, a university-wide center dedicated to building leadership capacity across the business, government, and nonprofit sectors to work together to advance the public good. 

Transcript

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Can a leader be made? Mm-hmm. Yes. I think so. I mean, going back to the argument of whether leaders are born or made, I'm certainly more in the camp of leaders are made. I actually think that leadership is something that any individual is capable of. And I, I don't mean that, um, every kid in the class gets a prize for being the best. Right? But I do think that actually anyone is capable of, uh, being coached, being led, being encouraged, um, to play to their strengths, to find their strengths, to develop some courage. Um, I do think some people have some natural advantages. It certainly, uh. You know, there are gender roles and things like that that lead people to be seen as leaders in different kinds of domains, but I think it's mostly a matter of, um, of training and, and experimentation and growth. Our guest today is the Gross Family Chair for public and nonprofit leadership at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She's also one of two academic co-directors of the Center for Integrative Leadership, a university-wide center dedicated to building leadership capacity across the business, government, and nonprofit sectors to work together to advance the public good. She also works as a state specialist in leadership and civic engagement for University of Minnesota Extension. Welcome, Dr. Kathy Quick. Thank you. So you were originally hail from rural Pennsylvania. I worked professionally for 14 years before returning to grad school. Transitioned to professor and scholar. Spent most of your twenties in Indonesia. We have so much to talk about. You worked as an environmental advocate, an urban planning consultant, then served as a community development manager for two cities in California. Currently live with your family and two cats in St. Paul. What are the cat's names? Oliver and Marigold. Are they pals most of the time? Most. Okay. Yes, that's what I thought. You also enjoy time with friends walking in either cities or in nature, reading, cooking, knitting, meeting, all kinds of people. Bachelor's degree in biology, a master's degree in city planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in Urban Planning and public policy from the University of California Irvine. How many years was that in school? A lot. A lot. I had to take a break and work for a while. Okay. Which I loved actually. Um, I think having the professional background, uh, is very much an advantage, um, in the kind of teaching that I do. Bringing those two worlds together, I. Will you share a little bit more about the Center for Integrative Leadership? I hear the acronym said frequently m Yelp, is that correct? Correct. Tell us more. Okay. Um, the Center for Integrative Leadership was founded in 2006, and it is still the only, uh, university-based center in the United States, maybe in the world. I'm not sure. That really trains people in the skills of business, government, and nonprofit leaders working together on community issues. Um, so we work, uh, both with graduate students across the university, uh, but also community members across the state. On really trying to, uh, find opportunities, seize opportunities in communities, um, and address problems together across those sectors. So you recently spoke at one of our area conferences, which was held in St. Paul and discussed civic leadership development for thriving communities. There's a leadership deficit in our communities. Collaboration is a challenge. Well, maybe we could start with a leadership deficit. It came as a surprise to me and, uh, this is from colleagues at the University of Minnesota extension, the community development department. It's about one in 21 adults in the state of Minnesota that would need to serve in a leadership role in order for us to fulfill just our formal government and formal nonprofit board leadership positions. Wow, okay. That does not include the head of the PTA football coach, boy scouts leader, church deacon, that person on Main Street that everybody goes to for business advice. The farmer that everybody goes to for farming advice, you know, in, in some rural areas of the state, that's one in nine. So Wow. That is a major problem. Um, a major challenge I think for younger generations. Um, and I don't know about you, but in the small town that I wasn't even a small town, the rural area where I grew up. That wasn't one in nine, it was like one in every 50 or 60 who was doing five jobs. Um, and so I'm very devoted to helping to build, build support for all of those leaders out there that are doing the best they can for their communities. What do you chalk that up to a leadership deficit? Is it, is it apathy? Is it are, are people just assuming in today's world that, well, somebody else either knows more about that or is maybe better suited for that, or I'm just not gonna worry about it because it's very alarming? It is alarming. I think part of it really is just that we have so many institutions that need attention. Um, you know, de Tocqueville came to the United States and said that the United States was marked as a society of Associations. It's kind of an American thing to have lots of nonprofits, lots of community organizations, um, lots of membership organizations. I mean, there's just, we kind of seem to grow them in the United States, so that's part of it. All of them take tending and we can't take for granted that they will be tended. But I think there is also a challenge of people leaving rural areas, their generational changes, and a change in how people are oriented to leadership. That, um, more and more people want to join organizations that are affiliated with a habit, with a hobby, with a particular interest they have, instead of the more place-based institutions like a Masonic Lodge or a Rotary, or a Kiwanis Club, or a Lion, or some of those service-based organizations. And so there's maybe a little bit less opportunity for people to learn and grow into their leadership. We've talked a lot about that in the Masonic context or in the fraternal organization. When was it? In the seventies when more groups, interest groups were start specializing in those civic groups that had to do with a specific cause or mission, whether it was eating disorders or uh, meals for needy people. Things really branched out into those areas of special specialty, which was great, but yet that left some of those just regular service-based organizations seeing fewer members. I think that is true. If you look back to bowling alone and books like that, that really discussed this, it does seem to have really, um, I. Kind of reached a significant tipping point, um, around the nineties. I don't know. And I try not to talk about what I don't know, but I think that does sound right, that it was around the seventies that people started to join more environmental clubs. Yeah. The hiking club. The biking group. Um, as opposed to those more place-based, um, more general community, civic fabric kind of organizations. I love that you mentioned bowling alone. We hosted a screening of the, of Robert Putnam's Join or Die documentary. Mm-hmm. In that, the Heritage Center in November of 2024. Mm-hmm. Had a full house. What a tremendous body of work he's put together. Are you a fan of his, do you reference. I, you know, as a scholar, there are a lot of scholars to follow. Yeah, I'm sure. Um, here's this one random guy, and I'm like, did you, do you like him? Yeah. Um, yes, I do. I, I find, um, that work, uh, it certainly very compelling. It draws attention to a really important issue and I think there, you know, he has accomplished what a lot of scholars aim for, which is to reach a broader audience. There's so much to unpack with all of this for us in the Minnesota Freemasons. And maybe this is a case for several other volunteer groups. Part of our purpose is to elevate our lodge officers into leadership positions. How do we prepare them for that proactively instead of reactively? Mm hmm. What do you mean by reactively? our organization is structured in that hierarchical lineup. So one of our challenges is that once a member reaches a certain office in the lodge, he simply assumes by virtue of his title or jewel of office that he is in fact a, a bonafide leader. And by the time that gentleman is overseeing the lodge, well we, we just pulled him in. There isn't always a reference point to gauge what level of skill they may or may not have. Mm-hmm. To be in fact said, leader. Yeah, that's a good question. So, you know, one of the things that I admire, and I hope that I understand properly, because I've never been part, I, I've never been a member of a lodge, I don't qualify. But my understanding is that there is a great deal of attention to ethics. Ethics in a thoughtful way, thinking through dilemmas of a leadership, not just saying, um, this is the way, this is not the way. Right. But really more of a process of discernment. And I firmly believe that in order for leaders to con to become successful, they do need colleagues. Trusted mentors, loved ones who do help them to discern what are their leadership strengths and how do they play to that. Now, there are also leadership needs that everyone needs to have. It. It matters that everybody be a good communicator. It matters that everybody have some degree of empathy. It matters that people, um, not be so overtaken by their own ego and title that they forget about the followers, right. And the mission, um, it helps if they do have a mission. It's not great if they only have a mission and are not great at operations. Right? You, you need a balance of skills. Mm-hmm. But it's also really important for somebody to even conceive of themselves as a leader if people help them to see what those strengths are. But then you don't just arrive at a position of leadership in Excel. You need to have that continuing cabinet or circle or, you know, friend group, whatever that may be, that that helps you to continue, um, to grow. Safe to say that's a lifelong pursuit. It is. And I mean, that's not, I understand what you're saying about, uh, you know, having a line that people come up through and that you're recognized and then, you know, it's inevitable that you're proceeding along that line. But that happens in nonprofit and government organizations as well where, or in businesses where you've had a long established CEO that because they're the CEO, they're expected to lead, and yet they also need refreshment. They need renewal and ongoing learning. that's so true. We look at the CEO and just assume, well, that person's got to be the oracle. Right. Their answer, their direction, their quote unquote, leadership, we just assume is going to be solid and, and take it to the bank. Right. I mean, there's certainly accomplishment that's taken them to that place, but if they're gonna continue to be successful, leadership really is about adaptation as well very often. And, you know, resilience in the face of challenges, adapting to new opportunities, resource constraints, disruptions, you didn't imagine interpersonal conflicts. You know, very few people have a full skillset for any contingency and it really takes a learning mentality in order to be able to continue to grow. there's a big difference between John Doe being a lodge member with a new title and actually preparing someone on that trajectory to be an effective, a growing, uh, self-aware leader. Yeah. Not just'cause I'm in charge. Right. I I got a off topic a little bit though. So let's just talk about the, the deficit though at the community level. Can, can I ask you a question though? Yeah. Where does humility come into, um, into ethics or culture or, um, personal growth that's encouraged within the lodge? Humility is a very important aspect of an effective leader that's going to inspire. Mm-hmm. I think the discussion that, that occurs at the lodge level frequently is, is it about being the leader in control or is it distributed competence? As I've heard it said once. Yeah. Right. Right, and everyone's different. We rotate through once a year. Leadership changes every year, and usually, as I'm sure you've seen many times, someone's just settling in, getting into that groove and then the year's over, it's time to switch again. Right. And even though there's, it's funny, there's a little bit of a consistency, but there's also a lot of differences and that makes it tricky too. Yeah. I could see that there would be advantages of that, that you have renewal. You don't simply get into a groove, but then there is something good about consistency too, so you can kind of settle in, anticipate work within an environment that's a little bit more stable, but you have your culture to do that. The reason I asked about humility is because I think that is a very big part of ongoing learning and growth, and that that is really a core part of being successful as a leader, regardless of what comes at you. But also humility is part of making connection with the other people for whom your leadership is high stakes. You know, your leadership is never only about your own success. If you're successful as a leader, it's because you are there with a sense of service to the broader community, and humility helps to make that connection. How much does effective communication impact leadership abilities? Is that baked into humility, self-awareness? I think it's a little separate. I think empathy and humility help with effective communication, because those are all about seeing your common humanity, but they're communication skills that you can work on. I'm too wordy. I constantly have colleagues that are helping me to looking for the right metaphor. Trying to tell it in a story. empathy does play a role in like, who is this other person and how am I gonna connect with them? And then I often think about those communication skills as, it's a little bit like going into a department store.'cause you know, you need a pair of pants. It's like you can reach for the pair of pants that's the pair of pants that you wear every time. Or you could say, you know, maybe I'll try something red today just for the heck of it. And you put it on and you're like, oh, that works right. I you, you can't just, if you wanna be a good communicator, you can't just constantly be in the same groove. You have to experiment And sometimes it doesn't work very well It must be more of a challenge in a volunteer organization to talk about the importance of committing and devoting time to evolving as a leader. when you're volunteering, it's hierarchical. You get to the, the senior leadership, the principal officers of a lodge. How do we counter that? Well, I, what do I need that for? Yeah. I think that is part of where the leadership deficit problem comes up. Part of it is that people are doing their best as volunteers. And if you work on a city council, for example, or as a county commissioners, you probably get some kind of training from the League of Minnesota cities or some other entity on what the parameters and expectations of your role are. You know, even some of the legalities of it. But when you're working as a volunteer, which also takes really good organizing skills, you may not get any training whatsoever. And then suddenly somebody retires, they move out of town. There's an illness. You have to step up into that role without, without really having a structure that you've been trained in. And you may get training through your professional role, through a professional association, through your employer. If you're working in a volunteer capacity, you may not have had that. And then your leadership challenge is also different because you're relying on people's goodwill and inherent motivation as opposed to, while I'm leading this unit of my nonprofit organization and I can to some degree compel people to do what needs to be done in order for us to get where we need to go because they're employees, right? It is a different challenge in a few ways, um, for volunteer organizations. How do we address that? But I think that civic institutions are a part of that. Um, you know, civic, good civic education in our school systems is part of it, but mentoring and modeling and really valuing leadership, um, and, you know, preferably within organizations. Having a culture that does encourage leadership, that discerns leadership potential, that encourages it and that allows some grace and risk when people make mistakes. Um, but, but it's difficult. And one of the challenges that you run into, particularly in volunteer associations is maybe somebody started something'cause it was a passion project and they compelled other people with their vision and other people got on board, but it still is their baby and they're not very open to changing or they suddenly have had enough or they need to leave and then they haven't really fostered a broader network of people who can step into that. Um, or sometimes in volunteer organizations, people don't, people get into big territorial fights that kind of take the organization down. So it's, it's can be complicated. Who's in your Leadership Hall of fame? Hmm. I should have a ready answer to that, but I'm not sure that I do. Um, in many ways, the leaders who are in my leadership hall of fame are people that you would never have heard of. They are, um, extraordinary teachers that I had in high school. They are, um, my parents, um, my sister, my husband, um, people in my faith community. Um. People I've served with on different kinds of volunteer organizations, um, when I lived in California are here. So, you know, we're the, the head of school of my daughter's school. Um, in many ways, I think I'm more moved by everyday leadership and people really leaning from a strong center of integrity and an ethical foundation and kind of openness and a generosity of willingness to serve maybe in roles where they're not gonna get a lot of recognition. Um, those are the everyday people that I'm really inspired by in some ways. But, you know, I'm in a school of public policy, so there are also, um, public leaders who really inspire me through their courage, through their example, through their integrity. Um, um, you know, from a variety of political persuasions, I read a lot of Simon Sinek's work. I liked his quote, I'll paraphrase about leadership is about seeing those around us rise. Mm. Mm-hmm. Man, that's powerful. It is. When we perceive, if I'm the leader, I better have all the answers, do all the work, tell everybody what they need to do. We, we almost fall into a military mindset. But it really is about empowering those around us. It is. And it is also about learning to work with what it is that we have. Right. Um, instead of kind of running into the tidal wave of a really overwhelming, compelling issue that may be very compelling, but we don't have the resources. Unless we're working with one another, um, that's not gonna be very successful. And followership is crucial for leadership. I mean, you can lead yourself. That kind of ethical integrity is important, and setting a direction and being self-aware is something that in some ways you really can only do for yourself. But leadership, the way we conventionally understand it, is about helping a collective to accomplish something. And that means that you're, that you're really regarding understanding and uplifting the talents of other people as well, how tough it can be to share the credit or give the credit away when things go well and successfully. In rockier times, things aren't going as easily. The leader owns it. Well, I mean, in the leadership position, you do have to take responsibility when things are going poorly or you do have to be the one to step, step up and provide some backup. Um, when somebody who maybe has a little bit less experience or maybe a little bit less opportunity to get things wrong, uh, you know, needs a little bit of backup. But I mean, how often have you heard a leader whom you admire say it doesn't matter who gets the credit, so long as we get this done? And I mean, I've certainly heard that very often from people who are accomplishing pretty extraordinary things. So that seems like an important consideration. Should we attribute it to a world of short attention spans We forget frequently. We may have leaders who are strong and talented and good at what they do, but collectively we forget how much work it takes to maintain that momentum. We have to be mentoring that relationship business of not just assuming that the person next to me laterally, or that I'm overseeing, that I'm helping along in an officer position at a lodge, may not be absorbing everything that I assume he is. Yeah. Is that, is that just the digital world we're in? We're so used to, we just fast, fast and assume that everyone around us is absorbing it all. I, I, I think you're onto something there. I think it is also true that leadership is always effortful and that often people underestimate that and I. They don't have a view into the sleepless nights or the consultation that people had with others before making up their mind or all of the data and analy analysis that went into a decision, or all the contextualization and the debating back and forth when their view of it is, oh, okay, this is where we landed. This was the choice. This was the public statement that was made. This is what my boss told me. Um, I think we underestimate what's involved in that and uh, and I think we really underestimate what's involved in mentoring. You know, they're an awful lot of people out there. Then when you ask them, have you ever had a good, you know, who was your best boss? There are a significant number of people who may be able to say, I never have had a good boss, actually. Um, you know, mentoring takes a lot of attention and, uh, mentors need mentors as well on how to do it well. Yes. Mm-hmm. We talk about mentoring. In the Masonic world is being relationship building. Mm-hmm. And it lasts, should last a lifetime. Mm-hmm. it's more than simply, well, we talk about the mentor mentee. I think about impactful mentors were some of whom I didn't realize what was happening at the time. It was almost that unintentional mentor or that relationship, the friendship that blossomed outta that. Mm-hmm. How often do people say, I want this person to be my mentor? Is it, is it, can that happen naturally? Can we decide that? I've had people occasionally come to me and say, will you be my mentor? And I think, oh, I didn't know that was a thing that people asked. Right? I mean, no pressure Sometimes, sometimes it's flattering and sometimes it really makes sense. Um, and I've had peers come and say, Hey, you know, we're at a stage in our careers where both of us could be need mentors. It's a little hard to find sometimes. You wanna be each other's mentors, and that has turned out to be a really beautiful thing because you're making a commitment to really attend to the other person's needs, questions, doubts, strengths, limitations, and really pay attention and try to support them in that and not just say, you're doing great. Right. But be more specific. Yeah. You know, in order to be impactful in a community, I think you have to learn some skills of collaboration as well. And that, I would say is a little bit different from connecting a leader with a community whom they serve and are leading. There's a certain amount of training out there in the general world, and I think that's probably part of the Masonic Lodge culture as well in that kind of ethical, personal development and, and growth and a growth mindset. But to be really impactful in a community, not just in an organization or a brotherhood, but really in a broader community, in a city or a town, um, or in a, a community of identity, you really need to learn how to collaborate with others as well. And that's not a skill that we necessarily teach all that. Well, do you mean collaborate internally or with other groups? Within our, often with other groups, yes. Right. Um, I mean, there's been a lot of scholarship from sociology to say that. Um, professions, for example, that are really strict around their buying boundaries. You're either in or you're out, will often think that they're doing something to protect the integrity of who they are and to strengthen themselves. But those organizations or associations that have really strict boundaries about you're in or you're out actually end up being very brittle and brittle. Organizations fail. They break. And so yeah, that external looking externally making those bridges, you know, it's important that you have bonds within, but it's also very important that you have bro bridges out and you know, leadership development isn't always oriented to that bridge building. And there's that opportunity to insert ourselves in a collaborative sense with another organization within our communities. I. that we don't feel like we have to do it all by ourselves. Well, if you could do it all by yourselves, it probably wouldn't actually be a problem or really an untapped opportunity to begin with. I mean, you might be competing with someone else if it's fairly straightforward, but most of the time, you know, the, kind of the kinds of public issues that concern me, um, we don't have enough childcare in our community. We have an affordable housing problem. We have a workforce development problem. We are having a retention issue with keeping young people in our community. We're concerned about public safety. The quality of our schools is a concern for us. They may be great quality, but we can't pay for it. All of those things, if it were just within the hands of, you know, one leader, one organization, one sector, one discipline to address, they wouldn't be challenging. So if you're gonna address those kinds of things, which I mean, that is the real quality of life question, if you wanna think about how elders are cared for in your community. You're not really gonna be able to address that unless you are able to work collaboratively across multiple organizations. And yet we get into the rumination trap where we know we can't do it by ourselves, and we know we should collaborate with someone else, another group, another set of people, and yet we just talk it to death. Sometimes we keep looking for that. Well, wait a minute, let's keep talking about it. And until we come up with the perfect recipe or the exact model of how we'll execute this, we better not do anything. That it, it's hard and I think it's so hard. I think that is also, um, partly generational. I see it among, um, my younger students. I teach students that are from 27 to 65. I notice it particularly among the younger ones that they want to know that they've got it figured out before they launch. Really? I'm fascinated by that, of that younger perspective. I think so, yeah. A little bit more paralysis of, um, and I'm not making fun of them. No, no. But it's, but like a little bit of the analysis paralysis. Mm-hmm. I've gotta get all of the facts in order and not misstep and, um, you know, that, that really what you're describing is we've gotta ruminate, we gotta get it all sorted out before we launch. I mean, of course people want to be informed in their actions. That's basically a good thing. But there has to be a little bit of willingness to experiment and take some risks as well. And that's actually a really core part of what we teach at the Center for Integrative Leadership is about. Developing well-informed pilot projects with the expectation that you're going to iterate and sometimes you're gonna find a great model and then you're gonna scale up and continue doing more of it. Sometimes you're gonna have to pivot'cause you learned enough from it, but it's not quite the thing. And so you learn and sometimes you are going to fail and lay it down and um, and that's okay. It is okay. And we do quite a lot to help people accept that. And the interesting thing is that when we talk with nonprofit, um, government or business leaders about. Why don't you start small instead of starting big? There's a lot of resistance to that sometimes at the outset. You clearly know us well. Well, because like there's the big thing, right? There's the big thing we wanna do the big the big thing. Yes. Home. Home run. Nothing. Well, and then if you've invested in the big thing emotionally or materially, yes. If you've invested in the big thing and it's not going very well, it's kind of harder to admit that it's not going very well. So you keep on going and then you're just, you know, compounding the problem. So we do a lot to coach people and I'm, I'm laughing because I need to take this lesson in myself sometimes. Well, we all do, but to just like start small. Yeah, start small. Starting small is a start. Slow sustainable progress. Yeah. It's a re recurring theme on this podcast. And within our organization, some of the events. Fundraisers, a community engagement that lodges do successfully have been a decade or more of a little bit of growth each year. But yeah, we want a home run. Yeah, we just wanna be an allstar. And if something is tried, I see this frequently, a lodge will try something and if it's mildly successful, well that was okay. That was good. But then the will or the willpower to keep going and to say, let's build on that. Let's do that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This much better. Next time, next year, six months. That is a tough sell. Yeah. It's not very exciting. And yet simply to survive and persist, that is an accomplishment. Yes. That's not something to take lightly. And in fact. If you're not tending to your organization in your efforts, you're not gonna survive and persist. And so those, the, those small increments, um, I don't wanna be an apologist for being incremental instead of thinking big, but I, I think if you wanna think big, you do have to work incrementally also, you can't just have one or the other. So how have you addressed some of these things? You're really dealing with how we're wired as humans. Mm-hmm. We know what we need to do, but the path to get there may seem either it takes too much endurance. Or passion or the ability to think in that long-term perspective and to be okay with slow sustainable 1% a day progress. I am about to start a strength training program and I'm wondering like if I will have the proper mindset to know that slow progress is, is the point. Um, because I, I mean, I'm just acknowledging personally that I understand the challenge of accepting and really embracing the fact that like slow steady progress is a good thing. But I think I have the advantage as an educator that I work with students. I also work with community members, and as an educator it is my job to support growth and growth is positive. And so it is my role and people look to me in that role to. Affirm, encourage, um, hopefully not just pat on the head, right? Right. But to support that growth and people are coming with a desire to grow their skills, and so that helps. But when I work with community members and alumni of various programs, um, whom I, you know, often stay in touch with for years, it is continuing to have that conversation about, um, you wanna maintain momentum so you don't feel like you're just treading water and you have to deal with disappointments, and you have to deal with really, really tough things that are going on in the world or in your organization or in your family, whatever it may be. How do you, and have a sense of some momentum that is motivating instead of feeling like nothing is going anywhere. Mm-hmm. Right. And I think that's where you can use that leadership circle too sometimes to help you understand that there have been times, like in early peak COVID. I was working with current students who were mid-career professionals in government and nonprofit organizations who were on the front line of trying to keep social service systems going amidst an unprecedented crisis for our generation. And sometimes in those situations it felt like the world is overwhelming and you're trying to figure out what to do about this crisis that is upon us. And actually the work that you've always been doing is important. It actually speaks to this crisis. Keep doing what you're doing. You don't have to have the solution to everything. It's all about progress. Yeah. In that case, progress is hold yourself together, have the stamina, find your friends. Do your best to take care of yourself and keep going. He talked about strength training. I. Similar say like learning a foreign language. Mm-hmm. we all wanna be bilingual now, you know, I don't wanna know, I don't want to conjugate verbs. I just, I just want to be able to converse with my family member. Is there a certain amount of value in reviewing maybe in arrears the progress that has been made when it feels discouraging looking forward? Is it healthy to look back and say, well look, look at all the progress I have made that we have made that are, or that are that my lodge made? Oh, definitely. In community outreach or in fundraising for something. Absolutely. And I think of this sometimes as a sort of 50 50 proposition that. We often learn leadership by working on a project, by working on a particular objective. And it's hard to learn leadership kind of in a vacuum without having some practical thing that we're working on. It's also hard to accomplish the practical thing without having leadership. Sometimes the practical thing doesn't go well, but there's still leadership growth sometimes. You didn't really grow as a leader though. You did accomplish the thing. Right. And so I think sometimes that looking in arrears is, helps us to see those lessons learned. And um, I'm just gonna give a short example if I can. Yeah. The very first time that I taught, I come from a long line of teachers. Everybody in my family who's had the benefit of a college education has been an educator of one kind or another. Sometimes the school nurse, sometimes the HR professional for the elementary school, but most of them classroom teachers. I was the last one to figure out that that's what I wanted to do. So I went and I taught a class, um, first semester and I came back and I saw my advisor and I shared with her the feedback forms that I got.'cause I wanted to learn to be a better teacher. And she said, well, it's clear that your students know that you care about the learning. I was like, well, yeah. I mean, tell me something I didn't know. And she was like, no, you shouldn't take that for granted actually. How many teachers have you had that you didn't learn very much from, or you didn't progress or you felt discouraged? If you go back and look at it, how many of those teachers didn't really demonstrate to you that they did care about your learning? Maybe they didn't actually care. Maybe they didn't communicate it well. Maybe they didn't connect it with you. Well, I have held onto that now for 17 years of teaching that she told me that after my very first semester, and I would never have noticed that about myself if she hadn't pointed it out. And it ends up being a really crucial kind of north star of how it is that I teach. So we all need that kind of help. Somebody to help you see the thing that is so much a part of you or how you do things that you don't even see it. It's powerful. pivotal for you, even for retain held onto that all this time. It makes perfect sense. She was a very gifted mentor and was able to see something that I needed to be explicit about. That's huge. That's a great story. Well, and one of the things I've learned about that also was an adaptation of how to help people step off a path that they're on. So, fairly early on, then I learned, you know, maybe a third of the way into a semester, not more than a third, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way through the semester when I'm concerned about a student, I will say. I'm concerned about your progress, your attendance, whatever it may be. Um, I can help you if you wish to be helped. And very often that opens a door for a student to be like, oh, I do maybe need some help. Maybe she can help me. But every once in a while there's also that student's like, yeah, I don't wanna be helped. And they step off, you know, the track. And that is actually a good thing for them to realize, like, this is not, I'm not this, this is not the right time. This is not the right thing. Um, but so I've learned that communicating that can be helpful. I don't know if there's a bigger leadership message there. Well, everybody's good at something and we all have areas of opportunity. Right. And you know, to go back to that collaborative leadership team too, you actually need complimentary teams. And so you need to learn the skill also of working in a team. Well, as a leader, because it's fine. I, I don't know you very well, so let's just say you're not a visual person. Okay. And I'm more of a visual person and you're more of a verbal person. Uh, it's actually gonna be to our advantage. If we know that about one another and we can appreciate that in each other, then we are gonna deliver a better, we're, we're gonna deliver better in terms of, um, connecting with a broader group of people and, and helping to lead them and helping to communicate better. So, it's okay. You don't have to be good at, you don't have to hit every mark, but the self-awareness and the humility and the ability to connect with the other people who are part of your team is the skill. What are your thoughts on the importance of community associations as a public policy scholar? Um, I am increasingly concerned about, I. Political polarization and division. Um, I'm also just concerned about loneliness and people's isolation. And I think to some degree, as a society, we are losing the skill of being able to bridge and connect across different generations, different political views, different religions, different life experiences, whatever it may be. And so associations, and this is one of the very positive impressions that I have of the Masonic Lodge actually, that you do really encourage people to connect at a human level, to support one another's development, to support one another, to make thoughtful choices. And I mean thoughtful, like in the broadest sense of the word, right? Um. I mean, you espouse education and truth and learning and um, you know, thinking through things, but also thoughtfulness around kind of ethical leadership and leading with integrity and connecting. I think associations that help people to continue to be their better selves and to be connected with others who are different from themselves are a rare thing that we really, um, we need that more than ever. And, um, people may take that for granted if they're in that kind of an association or they have the opportunity of being in that culture. But our culture more broadly needs more of that. We often look at the fact that while involvement in civic groups may be down compared to the glory days of 60, 70 years ago, what we stand for is Freemasons. You alluded to personal growth. Building community, authentic friendship, brotherhood, not being a buzzword or just that little platitude, but really having a heart to heart connection with another friend and in an organization that has always been, I, I really feel like part of why we're still in business today. We are apolitical non, and yet the world outside just doesn't want to acknowledge, well, if you and I don't think exactly the same, we can't be friends and we want to get back to that. We want to get back to a place where, yeah, maybe, maybe the four people at the table all have opposing views on whatever it is. That does not mean that we should not be friends, colleagues spend time together and try to try to understand one another. Without just that, that write off. It's so fast in this world. It feels I absolutely agree with that. and it's very important to combine that with, to be able to get along with someone with whom you disagree should not mean that you're actually leaving your cares and your values and your passions at the door. Like what, what I feel we really need, and this is part of leadership, it's also part of community life, it's, and associations and working on those public opportunities and problems, is we need people who do know who they are and who are always open to learning and who can see one another's common humanity. And so it's not really about, oh, we don't talk politics at Thanksgiving'cause we don't want conflict. That, that may be fine for Thanksgiving is probably a good thing for Thanksgiving, but you actually want associations where people are gonna have quite. Deeply held differences and yet also still truly respect and love one another. What's the first step? Listening and, and I think also just a basic stance of basic respect and, um, a foundational assumption of the other person's humanity, and dignity and upholding that with respect, but then really having the skill of listening. Yeah. Listening. It's all about, in Freemasonry, we talk about silence and circumspection. Take it in. Listen until it hurts. That's hard. That's interesting to me. And I'll leave it to you whether you wanna go there or not, but I did not know about the silence and circumspection piece, and maybe that is part of the affinity that I feel in so far as I understand anything about the masons because I, I was raised Quaker and I'm still a practicing Quaker. Oh. And so, silence, reflection, a willingness to take things in and spend some time with them, um, is certainly part of my DNA. all of our core values, we are encouraged to practice. Mm-hmm. I often talk to younger men and their families. They'll say, I want to become a Freemason so you guys can tell me how I should. I think, well, we don't tell you how to do anything. We provide the tools mm-hmm. On how you and each of us individually can commit to becoming that better version of ourself, knowing we'll never be perfect. Mm-hmm. Impossible to get to that status, to that point, but to be self-aware. Mm-hmm. Listen, more than we talk. Mm-hmm. Try to understand one another more and more. The world seems to be craving that, and yet I. Trips on itself to let that manifest itself. Well, and there's an in interesting tension culturally between, um, curiosity and a constant commitment almost sometimes I think an obsessive sort of self-serving desire for constant growth, constant growth, constant growth, which is a little bit of a fast cycle of consumption. I, you know, I, I think there can be some tension between that and a desire that many people have to just be told what to do, right? And it is quite different to be given. Like, here's the maxim for how to behave versus let me ask you a question that helps you interpret your own situation and find your way to how it is that you should behave. Um, people don't always have the patience for that. It's like, on one hand I want to know the path and then the path is laid out, but oh man, that takes a lot of patience and willpower and commitment and It's a journey. Right. That was easy. Yeah, exactly. No, it wasn't, but thanks for that. Check that off my list now. As we start to wind down our time today, what has been something in your work with a Center for integrative leadership that you've seen as transformative mm-hmm. That that really stands out as like a highlight moment for you? Hmm. It's hard to identify one, because sometimes as an educator, the highlights are kind of the gestalt of the whole thing where you can see that like the minds are turning. sometimes it's marked by silence because people are like, whoa, okay. I gotta, I gotta think about that. Um, sometimes there's, there's a lot of, uh, uh, clarity. So I think in many ways it's just when you're in that kind of like peak learning moment where you know that the wheels are turning and that you've kind of shaken things up a little bit, that it can be very helpful. Um, I, I certainly feel like we have a wonderful advisory council for the Center for Integr of leadership of, um, philanthropic nonprofit government business leaders who are really, you know, kind of at the height of their profession. Very well-regarded people who are very generous to give their time as advisors, and they certainly feel like. If ever there were a time to make the case for cross-sector leadership, this is certainly it. Um, we're in, you know, we're in challenging times, and so I don't know that that's a moment that I'm particularly proud of. Um, I think it is just a sense that our mission is more important than ever. In our effort to get to know guests better. Mm-hmm. What are you good at that you don't enjoy doing? Uh. We have this conversation pretty often in our family with my daughter, um, that just'cause you're good at something doesn't mean that you have to love it and sometimes you have to do things that you're good at even. So what am I good at that I don't love doing? Um, well, years ago I could have said dish washing because I lived in graduate student housing. We didn't have a dishwasher and we had a baby and there was quite a bit of, um, dish washing to do and constant had to do it. Um, and I did not enjoy it. Now I actually kind of enjoy my dish washing'cause it's time to let my mind just float and free associate. Um, I could probably be good at cleaning, but I do not enjoy it. what interest do you wish more people shared with you? Hmm. Well, I recently, um, completely enjoyed the pleasure of a conversation with a friendly and interesting stranger. And I'm not always up for talking to strangers. Sometimes I just need some space and some solitude. But I was absolutely delighted. Like, absolutely delighted and full of love for the three other people that I was with my husband and these two women who just sat down across the table from us on Saturday. And we sat there for a full hour and just had a completely delightful conversation. And I do wish that that was a more common thing of just connecting with strangers. We never anticipate how powerful and authentic that is. Mm-hmm. Yeah. This is remarkable. These two very remarkable people, um, that. I mean, you don't care about their life story. I don't really know them. But you know, this woman who had moved when she was 14 years old to become a nanny in a different country like that is a powerful history that I would never have guessed that, and I wouldn't have contemplated what that is like unless we happened to sit across the table from each other. The next time I'm on a flight, I'm gonna resist the temptation to put my AirPods in right away, and maybe we'll see if that conversation happens. See, for me, flights are like the one time I can work without being interrupted. Oh, I would not take well to that. So my taste for this comes and goes. Dr. Kathy quick. Thank you for being our guest today on Minnesota Masonic Histories and Mysteries, the work you're doing at the Center for Integrative Leadership. Tremendous. Thank you very much for having me. It was really a pleasure. I.