Interview with Dr. Nathan Higdon, PhD., part 1

Welcome to (un)leaderly, the podcast that looks at the world through an atypical leadership perspective. In this episode, host Barbara Iverson talks with her friend Nathan Higdon, who is a professor of marketing, among other things. They talk about their own young years and markers of leadership often pegged to children and young adults. This is a fun, informal conversation about their lives and the ways that they have seen leadership play out.

Barbara tells stories from her life and looks at the world through an atypical leadership perspective. This podcast is the perfect listen for someone who feels like they don't quite fit to the typical leadership profile. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. Before we officially get started, I want to say something, and that is this was my first go at an interview. We did it over Zoom. It didn't record separate tracks. And so what we have is kind of what we have. Learning experience number one. So I in this soundtrack often am just a little bit too loud. And I'm telling you now so that you can turn your volume down as necessary and know that from the start, I realized this happened. There wasn't much that I could do to correct it. It's not always the case. So I think we can live with it and it's a learning experience. With that said, here comes the episode. Hello and welcome to Unleaderly, the podcast that looks at the world through an atypical leadership perspective. I am your host, Barbara Iverson, and today I am joined for our very first interview by my friend Nathan Higdon. He and I, I'm gonna let him introduce himself because he's got a lot of stuff going on, and if I tried to remember it all, I know I wouldn't. But he and I have a mutual friend, Aaron, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we met actually in person. We met a long time ago and we became instant besties. So in starting the podcast, although, I mean, to be honest, I have followed him mostly on Facebook through all of his adventures since then. And starting this podcast, Aaron was after me. You need to talk to Nathan, you need to talk to Nathan, and then now I'm talking to Nathan and I'm so happy. So, Nathan, welcome. And would you give us, please, an introduction to who you are and why this podcast might possibly be interesting for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah, hey, if you're listening, I am Nathan Nickdon. I uh am a marketing and management professor at Merivale College in East Tennessee. I have a PhD in business administration from Oklahoma State. I went back and did that in my what was it, early 40s. So I do that. I'm vice chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, and I also do uh work with a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. And I do social impact and thought leadership along with government affairs consulting work. So we'll work, say, with a uh big company, and so we help them to do good work in the community. You know, I teach uh principles of marketing and intro management. It kind of made sense that a lot of what you are doing and unleaderly is uh what I deal with my students every day is them not understanding the difference between management and leadership.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

And what would you say is the crux of the difference between management and leadership?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Anyone can be a manager. I'm like, here's the cliffs notes. Anyone can be a manager, but few people, even those who think they are, are leaders. You know, a manager is something you get hired into, but a leadership uh being a leader, excuse me, is something that is slightly innate. I think you can learn to be a leader for sure, but it's far more helpful if it's just a natural tendency for folks.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Yeah. So that kind of born to be a leader or or something you're born into. I would agree with you that definitely a manager is a job, it's a job title, and it's you don't have to be a natural or even developed leader to have that job. There's actually tons of people who are managers who are nothing like leaders. You can be a leader on a team and not be the manager. You can be a leader on a team and also be the manager. Learning how to lead is uh it's kind of a different animal than learning management skills.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

It really is. You know, I mean, I'm certain we both worked in teams where the person who was the manager wasn't the leader. And uh I think it's one of those interesting things, you know, growing up Southern, like uh, you know, being too assertive or stepping out there was a little, oh, you know, I should be a little more demur or whatever. And then coming to the realization that I am, in fact, a leader, I oftentimes, regardless of either having a title of management or some kind of thing in there, I always end up floating up and leading. I'm like, all right, and it's probably a function of being a Capricorn too. I'm like, all right, efficiency, you do this, you do that, you do this, here's what I'm doing. Let's just get this thing done and come on.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah. I would also call that like a person of influence on a team, right? Like it's and I think that's how leadership, when you're not the manager or the named leader on a team, will also often show up as either directing or being that person of influence that is making things happen.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Do you know what every time I I tell myself when I walk into situation, like almost every time I'm like, you're just gonna sit back against the wall and just let it happen. And then you know, I'll be waiting for people himming and hawing to you know step forward or do something, and then it's finally I'm like, okay, we've wasted 15 minutes of everyone trying to defer. So here we go again. And I'm like, literally every time, and I'm like, oh Nathan, why do you do this? And I'm like, oh, you do this because we've got to get done.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

No, but I do the same. And you talk about growing up southern. I grew up northern, but a woman, and so some of those expectations for me that you talked about being demire, being, you know, calm and gentle and quiet were also there for me as a girl growing up. But I wonder why it is that we even feel like we have to push ourselves to the background because I do the same thing. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna let everybody else have a turn. I want to make sure that other voices are heard. I don't want to just jump to the front. I'm not a Capricorn, I'm a Gemini, so everybody's my friend. I also have this need to control and get things to happen too, because I can't stand just watching people moving around a room completely aimless and not doing anything. Why do we have this feeling that we should step back?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Oh God. You know, I I'm sure my therapist would say that my uh imposter syndrome from my younger days, and I just can't let go of it. And you know, and I always, especially if it's in a group where I know other people's credentials or abilities, you know, it's that assumption that, well, you know, they're equally degreed or they're more this or that. And I'm thinking, I'm the worst for this in terms of I can make big decisions, and then I will get like uh decision fatigue. And when it comes to what to eat for dinner, I'm like, I can't figure it out, so I make popcorn.

unknown 7:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

I don't know. I think decision fatigue. Yeah. No, I think that's a super accurate way to put it, that there are also times when I try to step back because I'm I'm tired actually of being the person who's always stepping to the front. And I want to believe that if if I don't, that someone else will step forward. I want to believe that someone else just needs the opportunity to have a space where they can. But I don't know. I get it. It doesn't always work like that. I get it. You know, people still wait for you to say something, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah, they do. And that's you know, that's actually something that's an interesting segue until I what I do with teaching is uh, you know, I try to push my students through like, you know, curated opportunities in the classroom to make sure that I always tell them, I said, I know it's such a a loaded phrase, but I said, you know, this classroom is a safe space. Yeah, you know, and sometimes we get eye rolls, and I'll tell them, well, I said, uh this is a safe space because the worst you could do in here is fail an assignment, maybe fail the class, which you can retake. In your job, when you fail, you could destroy your career, uh, you could uh ruin a company, uh, you could drastically impact your life. Not that your decisions here couldn't do that either. And so I was saying that's the safeness of this space, is it's a learning environment. So I'm actually encouraging you to make bad decisions so that we can fix them, so you learn how to make better ones. That's the point of experience, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

And so and trying to teach them this difference between management and leadership, and how sometimes a person can wear both of those hats, but I mean, how often do you see that?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Less often than I feel like I should. Yeah. Let's let's say that. Yeah. I mean, when I got into teaching interpersonal skills at a university here, people were often asking me how I got into that because interpersonal skills is not necessarily something taught in many spaces. The answer I always gave was I had a series of really bad bosses, and I wanted to take as much as I possibly could from those experiences so that they would never feel wasted. And that took me through this sort of thinking about what is happening here and why are they doing what they're doing? How does this feel for me as a person on their team? What do I wish they were doing differently? And how would I actually want that to look? And that got me into interpersonal skills, teamwork, feedback, mindsets, communication, any of those things that all that it sounds like you tackle in your classroom as well, even though it's not called interpersonal skills. Like it's the interpersonal dynamic, I think, that often shows a leader versus a manager.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

You said something that made me think, I will like get my reviews from students, like, you know, you're you're a really good teacher. Like, how did you or professor or whatever, you know, and they're like, how did you learn to do this? And I said, Well, I had a lot of horrible professors along the way. So I came to this from the lens of knowing what not to do. Yes. And I think that's how to a degree, not not fully, but I think that's a bit how I learned to lead, as I saw so many people who thought they were leaders or wanted to be leaders or aspirational leaders at best. And um I'm like, well, that's not how to lead people. Um, you know, coercive leadership, yes, it's a thing that's defined, but I doesn't make it good. It doesn't make it good. And you know, I'm not with coercive leaders, I tend to be um maliciously compliant.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

There's an image in my head, yes, maliciously compliant.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah, so yeah, yeah, no. I I think that we can learn from bad leadership too. Like I you know, I taught this leadership class, it was a summer school class two years ago. It the class was titled From the White House to Your House: The Impacts of Leadership. And so we we looked kind of at a uh an American political lens of leadership, and we started with Richard Nixon and we looked at like Watergate and the um gosh, I can't even remember the name of the movie now, I just went blank, but that had Robert Redford in it.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

All the presidents' men.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

All the president's men. Thank you. I don't know why I went blank. We started there and then worked our way into uh something a bit more recent, the Laboratories of Autocracy, wrapped there, and everyone thought it was going to be a super political class, and then we walk they walked away from it with this realization that uh American politics is full of people who are just itching to let their 12-year-old self be a leader, but most of them never develop this d develop the ability to become a leader.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, well, because often, I mean, I talked about it, I think, in one of the first episodes of the podcast, that leaders in especially probably not only, but especially in the American imagination, are white, male, tall, maybe loud, or at least have a loud, authoritative voice. Everybody's always surprised to find out that Abraham Lincoln had this really high-pitched, soft, non-authoritative sounding voice, but that's because we didn't live in an age of radio and things then where people were thinking about that kind of thing. But there's this idea. And I think if you there's a many men in particular who could be identified as leaders from a young age, specifically for some of those characteristics. And when you get told you're a leader, you believe you're a leader, whether or not you know what to do with those skills or that tendency, let's call it. But that would make that makes a lot of sense to me then to connect that to if you're told in those, say, nine to twelve years old ages that you're a leader, then some of that further development gets stunted because you've already decided that's what you are, regardless of how you've developed.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Oh, and the unearned self-confidence of mediocre white men in the U.S.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Yes. I wish I had just a tiny bit of that.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Unearned confidence of mediocre straight white men, let me be clear.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yes, categorize that because you are not a straight white man.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

I am not. You know, actually, earlier when we were mentioning some of those self-doubts and things, that's where it comes from, as growing up uh, you know, a uh gay dude in the south, and East Tennessee specifically, as always having to kind of watch out, you know, watch what I'm saying. It was all about uh code switching and image crafting. And I mean, to the point I was actually I have this conversation fairly regularly. Here I am in my late 40s, and I've finally gotten comfortable enough to let go of this accent that I had manufactured in my like early teens. Well, I probably began to manufacture it about third grade or so, but you know, it was to like really tamp down my southern accent. Um to really modulate my voice, all these things because you know it's like you know, I didn't want my voice too high. It was all of these social cues, no one had said this stuff. I just realized that this is the things kind of that needed to happen if I wanted to blend in in the 80s and 90s. I was about to say, I'm like, oh god, I gave away my age, but I'm like, wait, I literally just said how old I was, so it's okay. Wow, what was it like growing up in the 1900s?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yes, the late 1900s.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

So yeah, all of that was to say is I over time I I've begun to let go of you know, really holding on to that that voice that I'd crafted. And so sometimes my southern accent will just really come out, y'all. And uh you'll sound like Dolly. Oh, I know I mean, kind of close. That's how my family sounds. I mean, you know, that's where we're from. And uh so if but if I've had a couple of drinks, it for sure comes out. People be like, oh my gosh, you've been hanging out with your family. I'm like, no, I've had two drinks. This is Nathan.

unknown 15:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Like, how did you give yourself permission to stop using that voice, stop using that manufactured way of speaking?

SPEAKER_01 16:05

You know, it was frankly, a lot of it was through uh political organizing work that I do. Uh post-2016 election, as I was doing more and more community organizing, and that's something I've kind of always done, but it you know, I kind of turned that up to 12.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Gee, why?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

You know, I don't know. Can't remember. Uh I think there was something that happened.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

I think about 2016, let's think back. That's already 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah, I don't recall. I kind of moved myself out of the professional bubble a little bit. You know, when you're doing that organizing work, a lot of it is like being on the doorsteps, like really rural doorsteps and chatting with folks. And uh I would kind of just like code switch back to my natural accent with people, and I'd sometimes be out with folks and they're like, What are you doing? I'm like, Oh yeah, when we're at the door, I wanted to make sure they were comfortable and listen to me. So, you know, I just talk like, you know, and they're like, Yeah, who is that? And I'm like, Oh, all right. So when I was a little kid, this is how and they're like, Oh, I said so what everyone's grown accustomed to and what has become my natural default is my professional voice. But I was like, Yeah. So when we were out in, you know, rural East Tennessee, I would just kind of I'd flip back into my natural voice. And yeah, so as I've done more and more political things and going into more and more rural areas, I realized that those things that will help people to take you more seriously, those components of leadership, because it's mostly in leadership roles that I was going out to talk to folks, and especially now as vice chair of the state party, yeah, I mostly spend my time in rural Tennessee. And so I just let it come and go in the conversation. Like sometimes it will be most of it. And if I notice people are kind of look, you know, I'm like, oh yeah, and here's the thing I do, and I'm just I'm learning to get more comfortable with it again, y'all. So and I was like, and sometimes if I'm trying to fight between the two, like if I'm actually thinking about it, I was like, then I start to sound like I'm British. So I was like, it's when the two mix, so I was like, just when you hear that, you know that I am very much aware and I'm trying to let go of one or the other. And they're like, that's insane. And I'm like, hey, I was like, if we had a better society, I wouldn't have had to have manufactured this as a queer kid in East Tennessee growing up in the 80s and 90s. I was like, it's just what happened, and I hope kids don't have to do that now, and this is why we're doing the five. That's a lot. And I'm like, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

But I mean, that's totally amazing because as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking you have learned how through community organizing to actually turn something that as a child you thought was a deficit, you've turned it into a superpower and used it to open doors to being able to talk to people, realizing that they need to be able to identify with you and how you talk is a huge part of that for them to say, okay, this is someone who's like me. This isn't someone from out of state, this isn't a stranger to my situation. This is someone who actually may know something about it because they sound like me. And I will say too, I think you also challenge the mistaken, preconceived ideas of, let's say, northern academics, that people with an accent like that are stupid and that an accent has anything at all to do with your intellect or your curiosity or your intelligence. I mean, I I think that it's doing a lot of different things all at once. And I'm actually super happy to hear that you've embraced that part of yourself again.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

When when I first started teaching, I guess six years ago, becoming a professor was a side hustle. And then now it's become my my like, I guess my main my main hustle.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Uh your main hustle. Wow. What was your main hustle before you uh got your PhD?

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Marketing, uh, marketing consulting work. Then when I got it, and I kind of knew after I'd gotten my master's, I was like, oh, you know, the PhD's gotta come. I'm like, I really want to, I really want to get in the classroom because my undergraduate degree was in Spanish and French, and I taught high school, and I'm like, oh, I loved teaching, but I did not love teaching rural East Tennessee high school kids Spanish. My lamo, come out. And I'm like, no, I can't do this forever. I'm like so fun. Rice, yes. You know, I'm like, nope, can't do this. Going back in and teaching really made me realize when I got back into the classrooms here in East Tennessee. I was like, that's when I really learned how I'm like, I I need to meet these people, I need to meet these students where they are. And so making a point to let them know is kind of like, you know, the way you talk is fine. Um, you know, the way you're presenting yourself is fine. There are some rough edges we got to clean up for the professional world here, y'all. But it's but it's fine if you've got this deep southern accent, don't you be ashamed of that. And you know, I fought that for a long time, and it's okay. You know, we'll all say, well, you know, you don't want to have the accent because you want to be taken seriously. But I said, you know, the way you say things, the way you share your thoughts, regardless of your accent, people will know you're smart. It may take them a minute to understand to understand how you're saying it, you know, if your accent's really, really deep. But um I said, people will know you know what you're talking about. I said you just gotta give them a little time. And if they really are shooting you down, those aren't your people. You know, walk away from that situation if you can, if it or when you can, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

So and that's for sure. All that comes back into leadership as well. Because I think I think one of well not one of, I think the core component of leadership is communication. And communication is a two-way street. Well, it's not communication if it's only s understood one direction. You know, being a linguist from undergrad and always paying attention to the way of speaking, I think I was always focused on the communication component. So as leadership opportunities came, it was kind of a natural fit of understanding how to communicate with people, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, that's really making me think. And I wonder if I wonder if that's how people get sort of marked as leaders or not when they're kids. You know, I think for part of it, we talked about tall, white, straight men. For girls, I wonder if I wonder if the communication piece, I just wonder how those how those work together in kids. I'm just coming back to the conversation we had earlier.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

When you were just talking about that though, Barbara, it really is. Think because I was thinking back to uh grade school. I can't think of any of the people who were really quiet who or at least in leadership roles that I'm aware, you know. Yeah, and the guys are always encouraged to be commanding, you know. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

And if a girl was commanding, she was called bossy, and that was bad.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

That's bad. I was trying to think of how do how did the girls present themselves as leader. I I mean, God, I hate to say this part out loud, but frankly, I don't know that any of them were considered leaders in that time and space, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

I don't think many were. And that's why I think for myself, because I was told I was a leader a lot as a kid, I think it might have really imprinted on me because I don't remember anybody saying that to any of the other girls. I don't remember that it was a conversation that was ever given to a group of girls or that a group of girls was told you are leaders. It was, and it's not to say that I was the only leader in my in my class. I'm sure I wasn't, but I was the one. Again, I go back to this tall thing, which I don't know that that has anything to do with anything, but it but I am tall and I'm also extremely outspoken, and I have a very loud voice and have my whole life. I'm I'm regularly asked to keep my voice down, even in even in Zoom calls. I was teaching one time, and I come in like just talking in, I don't know, probably the voice I would use in a classroom, and I could see immediately somebody like changing the volume on their computer, and they were like, could you could you take it down a second? I was like, oh gosh, yes, okay. I I I'm so interested now in how we identify leadership qualities from children because I know that it's happening. I know that there are kids who are told they're leaders from young ages, and this is uh now really an interesting idea of what are because it's usually teachers then, right? Like it's teachers. I don't remember my family members talking to me like that. It was people outside of the home were telling me that I was a leader.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, it's I wouldn't go so far as to say that teachers are the gatekeepers of it, but they are definitely, I think, the first identifiers of it. Yeah and plant those seeds. When you were talking, Barb, tell me what you think on this. Like we were talking about, I'm sure there's some research stream on this, but one of the things people who are beginning to identify leaders early on, I think what they look for are how people take up space within their ability to do so around their various intersection of identities. And what I mean by that is like a voice takes up space, right? Uh height takes up space, yeah. All these different characteristics. And I think we probably look to see how much space someone's taking up. Or which could also be their presence too, like sure. So that it's not just their physical body, but it's also like how big their personality is, how gregarious they are, maybe they're I've got a big laugh, you know, people with big laughs take up space. And uh so some of those kind of things I'm wondering, and I I wonder this because as you were talking as well, I thought, well, how do even though I'm teaching adults for all intents and purposes, how do I identify these people in class as well? Yeah, and it's folks who take up more space. You know, the people who always answer the questions, or the people who have the big voices or the big ideas, or the or just take up a big bunch of space, all this. And I was like, you know, I think that might be the thing is uh just making yourself known because the uh shrinking violets tend to not um be leaders because they're not asserting themselves into the space. Anyway, and that was something I was thinking about while you were while you were talking about that, and I was like, oh, okay, what that's that's surely a thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

I it surely must be. But or I'm saying that's a do another PhD and let this be your research. I mean, definitely I was I am a person who takes up space. I am not a small person, I've never been small in any way. So yes, physically I take up space. And I was also always the kid to raise my hand first because my brain works fast. And it doesn't mean that I'm smarter than the average person. I don't know, maybe I am, but I'm faster than many people. My dad used to talk with me about my intellect that way. He would say, You're you're quick, so you get there faster than other people do. And that's one of the reasons why you raise your hand, you want to say something, because you've been able to process it quicker than most of the room. I mean, that was actually really that was such a huge thing for me when my dad told me that because I'd never, nobody had ever talked about my intellect in that sort of way. I actually do better with more leaders who think a little bit more slowly because those of us who are fast thinkers are also fast talkers. I've developed over time the ability to think about what I say more carefully, but I definitely as a child would say the first thing that came to my mind and you know, ask the question. And that was not always that was not always what anybody wanted to hear. And it got me into plenty of trouble. Yeah, that's so interesting. Because of course, haven't we conditioned, like you talked about the the kids that sort of hold back or the ones that aren't so fast to speak? And I'm thinking then, are they is it because they're not the fastest thinkers? Like they need a little bit more time, but they're gonna get there and they're actually deep thinkers. Is it because there's too many quick thinkers in the room who are taking up some of that space? And then it's time to move on before the slower thinkers get there. Like I'm thinking about this in terms too of like a of like a meeting, you know, where you've got the quick thinkers who are talking about ideas and getting places quick, and then the meeting's over before the slower thinkers have a chance to actually say what they've gotten to, and it's actually really significant.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Often when I'm in these group settings, like if I'm in a brainstorming where the point is all of us throwing spaghetti at the wall, then I'll flip my think fast switch, if you will. And but generally speaking, I'm a slow thinker, like because I'm I'm a strategic thinker, which is inherently slow. I mean, you can do it quickly, like when you just have to lean into your feedback loops of past experience. You know, when you're having like you're in a crazy situation, you have to make you're like, well, I've been here, let's fill in all the gaps with what I know, and so we can make fast decisions. But generally, like in groups, when I've kind of just like deep listen and this, I'm not going to give a lot of feedback at the time, and I'm often thinking about it, and I'll go into the like these little rabbit trails of thinking. So I often am not speaking up much in meetings because I'm deep in thought and processing everything as you go. So I usually come back to after meetings, and that sometimes can stink, like you mentioned in class, because if I'm really in my head thinking about stuff, I don't have the questions as we're going. And yeah, that kind of that was tougher, you know, when I was in college in the 90s because email was just beginning to be a thing. You know, so it's like if I wanted to follow up on a question, you know, I had to drag myself across campus to go to the professor's office hours. Office hours, you know, to follow up on stuff where now like I have students email me right after class, and I usually will get a preponderance of emails, and I get that, or they'll swing by. I always have the policy, you know, if my office door is open, I'm somewhere on campus. And so, you know, I'll come in and there'll be people waiting for me to get back, or they'll drop in. I'm like, oh, I was thinking about what you said. So yeah, I'm a slower thinker. I generally, if I can be, or when I'm in the position to do so, because I like to really think things to within an inch of their life.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Well, I think we need that. And actually, I'm really encouraged that someone who has leadership qualities is also a slow thinker, and that that isn't the quick thinking is not necessarily a signal for leadership. You can be a slower thinker. I'm gonna stop the interview there, and you'll have to come back for part two next week to hear as Nathan and I continue to talk about leadership from our atypical perspectives. Big thanks as always to Lilia Keys for our intro and outro music.