Malaika Carpenter - Leadership

On the first episode of our second season, we speak live in front of a studio audience to writer, artist, speaker, and content strategist Malaika Carpenter about leadership and all the different ways we can define it. We also get into Indigenous values, who gets to be defined as a leader, and...you know...slavery.

Recommended content from this episode:

Movies/TV
Homicide: Life on the Street

Our intro and outro music is "Humbug" by Crowander

Transcript

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(Transcript courtesy Louise Boydon)

David Dylan Thomas

Welcome, everybody, to ‘Lately, I've been thinking about…’ I'm your host, David Dylan Thomas. We are doing the first episode of season two live here at Venture Cafe. Thank you all for coming out. We are coming to you from the unseated territory of the Lenni-Lenape right here in Philadelphia and my very special guest to start off this season is Malaika Carpenter. Malaika, tell us what you are all about.

Malaika Carpenter

Thank you so much for having me and happy second season of this! I'm Malaika and I am a writer, an artist, a speaker, and a content strategist. I help people communicate their value with impact. I do it in a few ways as a content strategist. I do it by helping companies and organizations build digital teams and digital operations that help them get their online content out the door in the most efficient and effective and impactful way possible. Then on a more creative, artistic level, it's creative writing, but it's also bringing people together to do writing workshops to explore their own creativity and their own self-expression. 

Every once in a while, here and there, I haven't done it in a long time, but bringing people together for storytelling, a comedic storytelling event that's very much focused on identity, one's identity. The times where you end up being the only one in the room and the power that comes from that and the education that can come from that too. So that's a little bit about me. 

David Dylan Thomas

That was Tokens R Us, right?

Malaika Carpenter

Yes, Tokens R Us. I haven't had it in a minute and you know, right when I wanted to bring it back because I love doing it live. And here's the reason why I love doing it live because pretty much the premise of the show is I bring folks who are comedians who are from different ethnic backgrounds, like comedians who are people of color from different ethnicities, we all come together it's like a talk show style thing, and I'll give them different prompts to just get them going, with the story.

What’s so cool is that the audience ends up being so diverse. So, you have people from all different backgrounds, all different gender identities, all different religions, all sitting together, and they don't know that, but they're laughing at some of the same things. When you have like a little break or pause in the show or the show ends, all of these people who would never normally talk to each other are talking to each other in that space. So, I love doing it live and with the pandemic and everything else going on in the world, and I know there's a lot of comedians who have transitioned really, really well in an online space. I've seen some really cool online comedy shows, it's just like, ugh, I miss doing that in person for that very reason. But I'm thinking about ways that I could bring it back.

David Dylan Thomas

Keep me posted. 

Malaika Carpenter

I will.

David Dylan Thomas

I've only ever been to it online. I want to go in person. So, let me ask the million-dollar question, Malaika, what have you been thinking about lately?

Malaika Carpenter

I've been thinking a lot about leadership actually. What it really is, how we learn about it, how it shows up in our world, and how many of us don't think that we're leaders. How many of us strive to be leaders in ways that is really centered around popularity, but not necessarily impact. And so, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. 

I think part of it is because I'm at this place in my career where I'm transitioning to more of a role of mentoring and leadership and cultivating the next civic tech leaders that are in federal government through a new position that I'm starting later this month with the US Digital Core. So, I've been thinking a lot about what makes one a leader and how do we embody that in our lives? Like if I were to ask the people in this room, would you consider yourself a leader? 

David Dylan Thomas

Four people here, one person has said yes.

Malaika Carpenter

One person said yes, and it took them a little bit of a minute to say yes, right! But a lot of times we don't think that because of how we've been taught hat leaders are and oftentimes our ideas of what leadership is very based on like Greek philosophy, Roman philosophy, Eurocentric thought, right? And many of those ideas were like, leaders are predestined, they're born with certain types of traits. So, if you don't look a certain way or you're not from a certain class, you'll never be a leader. There are entire empires that are saying you were born in servitude and this is what you'll always be. We've continued to carry these ideas and they've taken on different labels and different names, but this idea that there are certain groups that are supreme or have supremacy or have superiority over others makes us feel like we are not capable of being leaders.

I've been just thinking a lot about that and challenging those ideas because the reality is, is that all of us – and this is my belief – is all of us have unique talents and gifts that we were born with to serve the world, and the more that we discover them, develop them, and use them to that end, we become leaders.

I'll show you why that's the case. So, if you think about basketball, who would you say is a leader in basketball?

David Dylan Thomas

LeBron James.

Malaika Carpenter

Okay. And why would you say that?

David Dylan Thomas

Because I know nothing about basketball but I still know who LeBron James is!

Malaika Carpenter

But if you look at someone like LeBron James and how he's developed that game and has taken that talent that he's had on the court and got it to a certain level and continue to grind and do that, he becomes a leader because all of us are really paying for to go see him perform that gift, to see him perform that talent and he leads in that, right?

Someone else might say Michael Jordan. Someone else may say Kobe. When you sit and study those leaders in that particular area or arena, you hear how much they have a love for the sport, a passion for the sport, a dedication to get better in it, a dedication to maximize their potential in it.

Same thing with tennis. If we talk about a leader in tennis, like who would you say?

David Dylan Thomas

Oh, Serena!

Malaika Carpenter

Like hands down, right?! These are people who are dominating in an area of gifting that they have, and we call them leaders. So, my question to those who are listening, to everyone in the room is like, what's your area of gifting? What are those unique talents that you have? How have you've been developing them? How are you using them? What are you known for? What do people come to you for? Because for whatever that is, you're a leader in that. 

No one thinks that. Not even me. Like I'm coming into the knowledge of that, because if you would ask me that question maybe even two years ago, I would not raise my hand to say I'm the leader because to me, we look at leaders as you have to be a CEO, you’ve got to be a president, worse – a dictator! You have to dominate or manage or supervise or direct people and yet, when I asked you who's a leader in basketball or a leader in tennis, they don't manage people. They don't direct people.

David Dylan Thomas

A lot of them are managed well!

Malaika Carpenter

Right, exactly! They're leading in their area of gifting. Management and supervising is not leading. 

David Dylan Thomas

So help me with that because that is something when people have called me a leader, I've been uncomfortable for the same reason. It's like, well who am I leading? Who am I giving orders to? And because that's my framework for leadership. So, talk about the difference between a manager and a leader?

Malaika Carpenter

Yeah. When I think about a, a leader, I'll describe it from my desire to not want to be a manager or a director. I know in my career as a content strategist the focus on your skills is getting really clear on, okay, what is our objectives of what we're communicating? Who is our audience that we're trying to reach? What are all the different ways we can organize information to do that in a variety of different ways structurally, editorially, all of those things. My interest is in getting good at that. I'm really interested in that and part of me doing that means that I have to teach others, guide others, and steward others to that end, to get them to understand why that's important, why they should invest in it, and all of that.

So as a leader, your leadership involves people, but it's still really focused around that gift, that value that you are providing for whatever need that they have. In a lot of cases because we assume that leaders are synonymous with a manager or director, so many in my mind I'm like, ‘Oh, I don't want to lead. I'm not a leader.’ And yet on certain projects where there were complex content strategy problems, people would be like, ‘Hey, do you want lead this one? Do you want to handle this one?’ Or, I would find myself naturally sort of taking those roles because I would see certain things that weren't happening and I was taking initiative to do that and in so many ways, people are like, ‘I might be titled the project lead, but you are leading in this particular area.’

So it just happens. You have, like I said, those innate skills or abilities that are meeting someone's need and they value it. And so, in their mind you have to lead this because you know the most about it or you're providing the most value. So that's where I really see leadership. 

Management and directing is really about those individuals, I feel like that's an aspect that is much more around. We have resources essentially, that we're trying to manage, whether those resources are people, whether those resources are dollars, budget, materials, things to an end. And a lot of times they're not always setting the vision, but they need to be managing all of those resources to achieve that vision. And so, if they're a good one, they would be coaching and kind of guiding whoever they're managing to be leaders in their area of gifting so that you can be successful. 

But a lot of times management ends up being like, ‘Did you clock in? Are you coming in on time?’ You know what I mean? It becomes a lot of that because that comes with people management and so that's a part of it, but I think strong directors and strong managers, in my opinion, they understand that you are a leader in what you do, and it's part of my job to really coach that out of you, to coach you to that potential, to develop your gift and to use your gift. Because the reality is when you do, no one has to tell you. No one has to tell Michael Jordan, Kobe, or LeBron to come to the gym. They are inspired to wake up at four or five in the morning and be at the gym. 

David Dylan Thomas

It’s more like my job becomes making sure that LeBron has what he needs versus telling LeBron what to do.

Malaika Carpenter

Exactly, because I trust that from what you're demonstrating I can trust that you are going to perform. So, I don't need to micromanage your performance because I know that you're capable. Right. It's really like, so what you're saying is like managing that person's capacity and making sure that they're not overdoing it to themselves. That's really what it is and kind of being that outside coach for them more so than trying to dominate over them.

David Dylan Thomas

Is there anyone who's not a leader?

Malaika Carpenter

That's such a good question, and I'm trying to answer it in a way where it's like…

David Dylan Thomas

It's okay if the answer's no. I'm just curious too.

Malaika Carpenter

I don't think the answer is no, but let me answer it in a way in which we talk, because we're talking about qualities of leadership, I'll answer it in that way. I think you know you're not a leader when you need to lord it over people. When your title becomes the most important thing out of everything, when your position is the most important thing coming into the room, where you are commanding and demanding people to respect you.

Like LeBron doesn't need to command or demand anyone's respect. He just shows up with the basketball. Same with Serena, same with your favorite singer. They don't have to command your respect; they just do their gift and they do it. So, I think anyone where the focus is so solely on them and their own personal glory agenda, I think that's when you know you’re not leading. 

David Dylan Thomas

So I'm going to say this so you don't have to, so in that scenario, Trump is not a leader.

Malaika Carpenter

You said it!

David Dylan Thomas

You work for a government, you don't have to say, but I will say that David Thomas thinks Trump is not a leader by that definition! I want go back to what you were saying before because I feel like even I have this pull towards the person who's making a big deal about a leader, that's how leaders behave. I think I am as conditioned as anyone else to sort of have this preconception of what a leader is. So, talk a little bit about how we got there and what those traditional notions are, and then we can kind of talk about what you think it really is.

Malaika Carpenter

I think again, like I was saying earlier, especially in America, much of our values and beliefs in civilization is based on these Greek and Roman and Eurocentric philosophies. And again, if that's the case, if it's saying that if you are not of a certain class and you are not of a certain skin type, or your head is not measured in a certain way, you are not educated, intelligent, smart, superior, or born to lead. It's like much of that has been ingrained and it has turned into systems of oppression, racism, classism, sexism, all of these things. 

I think because of all of that conditioning, we just have an idea of what a particular leader should look like. Even when we think about the fact that in this country we've only in our most recent years, we've had the first black president, that should speak volumes as to who we think should lead. We've just had our first black female vice president and first female vice president, period. So, these paint an idea of who we think is capable or should lead. I think it's many of those systems of oppression and the ideologies and the beliefs and the values of those things that get espoused and get ingrained that we begin to believe this.

Most recently I was watching a movie, I think he was a British and Chickasaw Native American person, I forget their name, but essentially it was talking about the time in the West that was like a little bit post Trail of Tears and things like that. It was still a time where many indigenous people in America were getting brutally attacked, getting their land, their cattle – things that they needed for their livelihood – taken and in some cases getting their entire villages and lands completely conquered and then what they would do is capture some of the people, those that they did not slaughter, and they would train them to be civilised. This was like the Europeans doing this, they're like, oh, we need to train them to be civilized. 

This is a part of colonialism. For me to make you more like me because you are subhuman, you are less than me. So now I need to train you to be more like us because we're civilized. The fact that they're saying, oh, we need to train them to be more civilized already tells you. Or the fact that in those times, they would call them savages. It tells you how I see you and yet before you even arrived there, these people were thriving on that land, had structures and hierarchy of leadership that was a part of their tribe. And they still do to this day. But we don't often use that as the basis of what we would call leadership in our society. I think many of these ideas about who leads really is rooted in these systems of oppression and many of us still carry a lot of that because a lot of that thinking shows up in our education system. It's still there from like high school, even through college really. So, it's just still there. 

David Dylan Thomas

Well, it's interesting too what you bring up about like indigenous land because we're now starting to see climate change and leadership coming from indigenous ways and folks who know the indigenous practices.

There was an article recently about land use with cattle in, I want to say it was Wyoming, but basically that there are these indigenous approaches to non-industrial farming practices that were traditionally meat manufactures – it’s bad for the environment, but the way they do it, it's actually good because it's this old way, and we're seeing like basically indigenous practices didn't lead to climate change. So, we're seeing a lot of people turn back to indigenous ways of doing things in order to fight climate change. So that leadership now, ironically, the proper leadership, if you will, we're sort of recognizing after the fact, oh wait, maybe the way you're doing it was actually better!

Malaika Carpenter

Exactly, and it's like you never slowed down to ask, but again, those come from values that those indigenous people have. I love hiking, so I've been doing a lot of hiking over the last couple weeks and most of where I hike is like Leni-Lenape land, up in the Poconos area or parts of New Jersey or Delaware, all of this is Leni-Lenape land. I went to Bushkill Falls, and they call it the Niagara Falls of Pennsylvania. I still kind of resent paying to see this, but regardless, I pay because I want to see these different falls. 

They had this one room that they were like Native American heritage and it was this one room and it had like maybe eight placards that talked about the Leni-Lenape people. It had a mock-up of what a long house would look like. Unfortunately, they had mannequins that definitely looked sprayed, painted brown to be the Leni-Lenape people – they might want to work on that one! and things like that. And so, I was walking around reading the different placards about the Leni-Lenape people and the one thing that struck me was the fact that they did not see them separate from the earth. They were all a part of it.

And so if you believe that, if you believe the earth is as essential and as important of taking care of as your body, then you're going to nurture it. But if you just think it's a place that I'm passing through and I just build buildings on, I throw my trash out on the road because I just live here and I could go to a different city that's better or prettier – or better yet – forget earth, I'm going to Mars because y'all axed it up. Then you're going to have climate change because you see it as separate from you. And so again, those values define the type of leadership you have.

David Dylan Thomas

It’s interesting too because you're talking about connecting. And there's a form of leadership, there's a form of just interacting that is about domination. That's the sort of traditional colonialist. This is here for me. I think it's in the pilot episode of Homicide. It's a TV show from, Andre Braugher – the great Andre Braugher – teaching this rookie cop about how to think like a criminal and how to think like a murderer. He's driving around Baltimore and he’s looking and saying, ‘See that? That's my house. See that? That's my purse. That's my wallet.’ Bayliss is like, ‘Yeah, but what does that have to do with homicide?’ And he's like, ‘If you don't understand that, I don't want you doing this job.’ But that entitlement, that notion of this world is here for me. The land, the people, all of it is here for me. 

You can derive a form of leadership from that, that is dominating. Whoever can dominate, whoever can go into the prison and kick the biggest guy's ass, they're in charge. But there's another form and I kind of want to express what this is because I don't think we see it much, is leadership that derives from connection. What does that look like?

Malaika Carpenter

Yeah, I don't know. The first thing that's coming to my mind is that that has to come from a place of love. At my church – I'm Christian, so in my church my pastor did a leaders gathering and because I've been thinking about this so much and knowing that I'm going into this new role where I'm mentoring younger people, I was like, I'm going to go to this. Now of course it's for ministry leaders, but I'm like, there's a ministry that I'm doing and wanting people to understand that you have inherent talents that are your values, not the pay check you bring home or your ability to pay bills, that is great, but your inherent talents and unique talents that you have, that you use to serve the world, that is your value. That is your power. The more you discover it, develop it, and use it, you will feel a sense of assuredness about yourself and confidence about yourself. So that message is a ministry to me and so while it may not be a church that I'm you administering I wanted to learn from these leaders, essentially. 

After, I think, the first day I was there when I was walking to my car, I ran into some people who were inside and we got into this conversation and the one thing that he had said was you have to have a genuine love for people. You have to love that moment where finally the message connects for them and you see that sparkle in their eyes of their own discovery of what it is they need to do to transform their own life and they're committed to do all of those things. You have to have a genuine love for people. He talked about how shepherds, when they're shepherding, they know their flock so intently, they're in it with their flock to the point where they'll know the smell of the sheep, essentially. That's how deeply they know, or intimately they know the flock that they are shepherding. He was talking about that as like a metaphor. He mentioned that there was a book of like a similar name that he was like, you should look into this, but he's like that's the missing piece.

If that's not there, other things fill it like my agenda, wanting to get ahead, wanting to compete, wanting to be better than an X, Y, and Z person or whatever it may be. And so, we'll miss out on all of that because if you’re in all these other things then you're not thinking about that impact on other people. So, I feel like that connection piece comes from a genuine love. I think love is really just our own will and choice to be nurturing other people's growth and development and have a genuine interest to do that and choosing to do that.

David Dylan Thomas

This is sparking some stuff for me because I recently listened to a podcast about the transatlantic slave trade and I learned a couple of disturbing facts. Toussaint Louverture, who one of the great leaders – basically considered the George Washington of Haiti. He owned slaves and he managed slaves. Some of those slaves, it is argued, he owned simply so to free them. It's a complicated history and then once he was captured by the French, the guy who took over for him basically led a white genocide.  Like the latter days of the Haiti revolution were bloody. Now, it was a counter genocide, for what it's worth, it was a retaliatory genocide because they were being genocided, but like same horrific stuff. And one of the things, and I'd be curious to do some research and tease this out when you see differences between how slavery was overcome in Brazil, in the Caribbean versus how slavery was overcome here, and how sort of black rights have evolved over time in both of those places.

In America, you have the Civil War, of course, but to get to your point back about love and connection, there is a lot of remarkable amount of love in black civil rights leadership, like whether it's Frederick Douglass, or Angela Davis, there is anger, absolutely, but there's also this place of love, which if I contrast with, I'm not going to say legitimate, but certainly understandable hate right towards the end of the Haitian Revolution, that was absolutely an option for us. We could have just said, you know what? Screw this. Every black person in America, get a gun, and if we go down, we go down fighting.

 That was absolutely on the table – kind of still is. But remarkably, and this is still kind of blows mind, there is this black love that keeps coming up and winning sometimes. In the history of black leadership, and I wonder, I don't even necessarily have a question here, it's more like an example. It's like when I'm trying to think of examples of leadership that comes from a place of love. That's one of the first places my mind goes is black people in America who certainly don't have to and certainly are entitled to their hate, and yet are often choosing love.

Malaika Carpenter

Yeah. I think ingrained in that is the desire to transform the attitudes and the beliefs and the values that created the system of oppression itself. It reminds me of the saying where it's like, ‘you can't use the master's tools’ right? Because, at some point you may end up becoming the very thing that you are trying to take down, and so I think those are the principles that King really understood. I also think too, that at the bedrock of many of those movements was the church. The reason for that is, is because particularly in the time of slavery, having church was a time of gathering for all of those slaves on the plantation. It was a time of togetherness. It was a time of nurturing and providing love for the horrific trauma that they experience all throughout the week. So that became very much the bedrock of that. Those values they were learning were Christ based values, kingdom of God values and at the center of all of that, like it says in First John, God is love.

They're coming back to those principles. And so, I think there was a desire to transform attitudes and minds because when you think about the Underground Railroad or abolitionists of that time, it's like the Underground Railroad worked because there were also white abolitionists. It wasn't this painted brush that all white people believed in this system, some didn't, but at the same time, their entire livelihood still depended on it.

America is what it is because of slavery. Our entire economy, everything. Anybody that comes from old money, they probably owned a slave. That's why Ben Affleck was so, so, so surprised!

David Dylan Thomas

And there's a lot of old money in Philadelphia…anyway! Oh, and the second Amendment was created to put down slave revolts….anyway! Those wealth funded militias had a purpose!

It's funny you put it that way because to me, when I think about that, that's always been one of the great paradoxes to me about being black in America because it makes perfect sense that the church would be at the heart of the black civil rights movement for that reason. But at the same time, there's no guarantee that religion is going to get you there because religion was being used to subjugate us. Somehow, we undercut that and said, ‘yeah, but we're going to find out what he really meant and we're going to take that same text and use it to free us and then try to civilize you.

Malaika Carpenter

Exactly! Actually civilize you!

David Dylan Thomas

Because again, there's no reason we couldn't have just said, ‘Well, they're saying that the Bible means that we should be slaves. Maybe it's they should be slaves.’ And again, gravel guns and just go full hate on it.

So how do you, I mean, neither of us historians, but how do you think we escaped that trapper and found this other thing underneath the lie?

Malaika Carpenter

Yeah, because I think what's actually underneath religion is spirituality. True spirit is just buried under a lot of religious misconception, a lot of religious distortion. Even to this day, I remember, I went to Temple University and I just remember on college campuses and even times where I've done happy hours at Center City and you have the people with their signs being like, ‘if you're drinking, you're going to hell.’ And you're just kind of like, ‘Well, you are too!’ You know what I mean? Ain’t nobody perfect either, so I guess we're all going to go! But I just think you're reading it; you're so caught up in the religious tradition that you're actually missing the spirit of the text and the principles of the text that are really speaking to the Kingdom of God and at the center of that is love.

So, this is just my predictions, I just feel like they were able to undercut that because they were accessing spirit, the spirit of the text. Africa is a continent with many, many countries and the makeup of the African Americans that went through the transatlantic slave trade, come from many different countries with different cultural traditions and beliefs, and even their own spiritual traditions or maybe even possibly religious traditions. But I think coming to together, I think there may have just been an understanding of that, getting to the spirituality of it all. That's just my assumption, but again, I'm painting broad strokes and making a lot of assumptions. But I think that sort of getting to the spirit of it, is what happened. That's what I believe.

David Dylan Thomas

I mean it’s interesting to because after a certain point, it's no longer all these different countries, by the time the transatlantic slave trade is banned, they're just breeding more slaves here.

Malaika Carpenter

Right, exactly.

David Dylan Thomas

And these are people for hundreds of years, you have generations where they don't even have, like their traditions being passed down, they don't even have that. The only religion that they grow up with is this version of Christianity.

So, we talked a bit about the traditional notions of leadership and kind of how they came to be. I want to talk a little bit about some alternative forms of leadership, and then we'll have a little time for a Q&A. What are some alternative forms of leadership that aren't coming from kind of European traditions and what traditions are they leaning on? What were some examples of those, do you think?

Malaika Carpenter

You know, I haven't necessarily explored that as much, but I'm more curious to learn because that isn't something that I've explored as much. What I have been exploring more is the type of leadership that comes from discovering and developing and using one's unique abilities and understanding what that is because I feel like for many of us, we can just focus on developing things that are employable skills and we dismiss and discredit these other things where you could actually be leading in them. You know what I mean? 

Even for me, for a very long time, you're just in a position of witnessing other people do it. I know at 13 I knew very clearly that I wanted to be a writer. That is what I wanted to do. I loved reading books. I loved reading my dad's thesaurus when I discovered what that was and the fact that ‘happy’ can have so many different words and ‘sad’ can, and that to me, I loved it. The power of what words could do, how you could influence or change someone's mind based on just a tiny change of how you reframe something. You know all about this, reframing right? And how tremendous that can be for bringing people together and making an impact in your community. So, I knew very early on that's what I wanted to do. I told my mom and she was like, that's great, that's wonderful, but how are you going to make money doing that?

My 13-year-old mind interpreted that and transformed that into the belief of like, oh, I can't be a writer unless I make money, so now how can I do a job where I would be able to write and make money? That sent me down the pathway of marketing and advertising and sales, and then being dissatisfied and feeling like I was only using a very small percentage of my potential and then finding my way to content strategy and getting closer to that and then getting even deeper. 

I feel like now I'm getting to a place of really just doing my own art and doing my own writing and trusting, sharing it, but because I still do that in the cracks and the crevices in the corners of my time and it’s not the center stage of my life, I sometimes hesitate to even say I'm a writer. I'm like, oh, I'm a content strategist, because that's at the center stage of my life, and yet at the same time, I have poems and songs and outlines to scripts that I'm writing and scripts that I've written and shorts that I've written and sketches I've written – and produced in some cases.

And it's like, you are very much a writer. For so long I would say I'm not that, and I would just love to witness other people do it, inspire them to do it, encourage them to do it, and then I wouldn't do it myself. I was just holding myself down because I was like, oh, I'm not making money from that so it doesn't count, it's not employable. It doesn't count. 

I think that idea makes us sort of miss what our true power really is to lead. What I'm proud is, is that like I would still do small things to keep nurturing that. Even though I was a marketing major,  I worked for my university's newspaper because I was like, oh, I can't lose my ability to be really good with words or understand the mechanics and the art of doing that. So I'd always find a way to nurture it and I'm so grateful for that. Now I'm at a point in my life where I'm learning more and more to make that more center stage of my life. I think that's just kind of what happens sometimes, we just end up witnessing and not allowing our gift to be the center and being confident in sharing that and saying, this is where lead and seeing where your talent takes you and all the different ways you can lead.

But in terms of other cultures or other values of leadership that is not Western, I haven't deeply explored that yet, but I am curious.

David Dylan Thomas

I'll tell you what's so tragic about the parenting technique of saying, ‘I'm going to save you by making sure you only get good at stuff that makes money,’ is stuff that makes money as a category has always been made up. Whatever you pay for now at some point was free and someone came up with a bright idea of, oh yeah, I'm going charge you for that. That's literally how every business in the world started from something that was free or free, but difficult, someone said, ‘I'll do that and then I'll make you pay money for it.’

Right, like Bushkill falls! The falls are naturally there. God put it on his good green Earth and because it just happened to be on your property, now you're like, I think back in the day it was like 10 cents, I hate to say that I paid it, but now it was $15 and I'm just like, what?

David Dylan Thomas

I know, I guarantee there was some parents saying to some kid, ‘yeah, I know you're good at finding good plots of land, but how are you going to make money doing that? Now go cobble those shoes!’

So first let us thank Malaika Carpenter.