Dr. David Day - Own Your Development

About Dr. David Day

Dr. David Day is a Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College and Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute. Day is a prolific scholar, a great conversationalist, and has served on the faculty at Pennsylvania State University, Singapore Management University, and the University of Western Australia. His goal - Make a Difference.

Quotes from This Episode

• "You want to invest in your development because everybody needs to be a leader, even when they are not the leader."
• "How do you view yourself? What is your identity? What's your self-efficacy? What is your level of self-awareness? These are proximal outcomes of a developmental process that we can measure and will give us some idea of whether long-term change is likely to be happening."
• "So the whole notion of a leader identity is really important because it drives resource allocation. Our identity is basically what we think is important. And we invest our most valuable resource, our time, in what we think is most important."
• "This whole distinction that there's a leader and there's a follower is a misnomer. People are both."
• "Leader development is really about developing an individual to be more effective in leadership roles and processes, whereas leadership development is really developing collective capacity for leadership. We don't know a lot about the latter and we know virtually nothing about how the leader development piece informs the leadership development piece."

Recent Articles by Dr. David Day

• Kragt, D., & Day, D. V. (2020). Predicting Leadership Competency Development and Promotion Among High-Potential Executives: The Role of Leader Identity. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1816.
• Miscenko, D., Guenter, H., & Day, D. V. (2017). Am I a leader? Examining leader identity development over time. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(5), 605-620.
• Lord, R. G., Day, D. V., Zaccaro, S. J., Avolio, B. J., & Eagly, A. H. (2017). Leadership in applied psychology: Three waves of theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 434.

Dr. David Day Articles/Books Mentioned in This Episode

• Day, D. V. (2000). Leadership development: A review in context. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), 581-613.
• An Integrative Approach to Leader Development by David V. Day, Michelle M. Harrison, & Stanley M. Halpin
• Liu, Z., Riggio, R. E., Day, D. V., Zheng, C., Dai, S., & Bian, Y. (2019). Leader development begins at home: Overparenting harms adolescent leader emergence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(10), 1226-1242.
• Day, D., & Liu, Z. (2018). What is wrong with leadership development and what might be done with it. In What’s Wrong With Leadership?: Improving Leadership Research and Practice.
• Day, D. V., & Dragoni, L. (2015). Leadership development: An outcome-oriented review based on time and levels of analyses. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 2(1), 133-156.

Other Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Article: How we should measure "change" - Or should we? by Chronbach and Furby
• TV Series: The Bridge
• Book: The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the

Transcript

Scott Allen : 0:01

Today we have we have David Day on the program and I'm very, very excited in in 2001, Dave I'm pretty sure it was 2001, you had written an article called Leadership Development: A Review in context. And right as this comes out, I am in my doctoral program and my my passion has always been leader development, leadership development and so reading that just opened my eyes and I'm really excited for this conversation today because, well for a few different reasons. I just I'm excited to explore with you. I'm also excited to learn from you, and I know that our listeners will be as well, although we should say Ron Riggio pretty much took all of your content in his podcast correct?

David Day : 0:50

Yeah, correct. Thanks God. I appreciate appreciate being here. Like I said, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel because Riggio, who's my colleague here at Claremont McKenna College, as always, office two doors down for me. I listen to his podcasts and I'm like, "hey, that's my stuff he's using there." So no promises in terms of what I what I can offer, but I'll try.

Scott Allen : 1:11

Well, I want to ask you about this. So we have something in common, we have Ohio in common Ohio, at least for a period of time in your life. You did your PhD in I/O Psych at the University of Akron, correct?

Unknown Speaker : 1:23

That's correct. I grew up I pretty much grew up in the west side of Cleveland. So I grew up in Fairview Park. And I went to Akron, for mainly for reasons that that's where I was able to get in. And, and to me, I needed to stay closer. I needed to stay close to family in Cleveland. So yeah, that's why I ended up in Akron. And it was it was a great experience. And I, I worked with Bob Lord there and he's still, you know, he's still active, and he's still publishing, and he's working on on grants and publications, and he's chairing, he's chaired over 40 some doctors committees, and he just said in the east is an amazing influence. And so I was very privileged to have spent five years under his tutelage at Akron.

Scott Allen : 2:08

What brought you to leadership or leader development?

David Day : 2:11

Yeah, that that article was actually published in 2000, even though it's kind of confusing copyright data, but it's a 2000 paper in the Leadership Quarterly, and it came about through my first sabbatical, I was at Penn State, in their psychology program and my first sabbatical, I did a year at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina. So you know, this locals call it "Greens Boring." So it was like, one year but it felt like too, so you know, stretched out that sabbatical time. I went to went to CCL because of, you know, just the reputation around doing good science but also ideas into action kind of thing, and I thought it would be an opportunity to learn some new things, and the biggest thing I learned and it was a huge influence on my career, is that people, organizations don't really care about what theory of leadership is right, they care about they care about developing their employees to be better leaders, regardless of what that underlying theory is. And here's a CCL, who was doing all of this in terms of their open enrollment programs, their custom programs, it was really my first exposure to I guess what could be called the leader development industrial complex.

Scott Allen : 3:31

Yeah, Yeah. So can I add Barbara Kellerman on a couple weeks ago, and we talked about the leadership industry, quite extensively? Well, and I think of I think of Cynthia McCauley and, and Ellen VanVelsor, their book, The handbook of leadership development, that was also a large influence in some of my work. And so you, you're at CCL and it's somewhat transformative in your in your path? Hmm.

David Day : 3:54

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I got to work with people like Cindy McCauley, Ellen VanVelsor, Bill Draft, Chuck Paulus, but also David Campbell, who is a who's a just a real, you know, a legend in the field of leadership and leadership development, all of the assessment work that he's done. And the fact that he had been with CCL for so long, and he was really responsible for starting there, Colorado Springs campus where I had the privilege of spending a summer there. Following my year in Greensboro. I got I got time off for good behavior. They let me go to Colorado Springs.

Scott Allen : 4:30

I want to explore a number of different topics with you. I recently read, Ron Riggio had edited the book, What's Wrong With Leadership? And so I read your chapter in that text and found it really interesting because it's a it's an interesting juxtaposition from that 2000 article. What do you think we've learned what have you learned in the last 20 years? I mean, it's almost like a 20 year kind of canvasing. What are some insights some of the major insights you've had? In all of this exploration you've done I don't, I don't know of someone who's written as much on this topic from an academic perspective. That's what I'd love to take the conversation three or four things that maybe just really stand out for you. And then maybe towards the end, we get to some questions that you're really still struggling with.

Unknown Speaker : 5:18

Sure. I'd be happy to, to engage around those. I mean, one of the one of the things that I think has changed so much in that 20 years, is the interest among other academics and scientists in studying leader development or leadership development, from a rigorous standpoint. I mean, one of the things that was most distressing to me when I wrote that paper in 2000, it seemed like the entire academic field had given up on studying development, maybe it was too hard. Maybe it was too, you know, two squishy terms together, leadership and development. But it was a field dominated by practitioners and the practitioners, there was no barrier to entry, a lot of the assessments were not really done well, but they were making squillions from that, and it kind of kind of ticked me off. And so I wanted, I wanted to say, well, "let's take a look to see, let's see if we can actually study this stuff." And that led me into into, you know, certain pathways to doing longitudinal research. But I think that was a big advance that came around the time started around the time of when that paper was published, which is, we could now model change much more rigorously and effectively. There was a there was a paper, by Chronbach and Furby back in the 70s. I think it was in Psych Bulletin, and I think the title was something like, How Can We Measure Change or Should We? And the point was that with all of these, you know, auto correlated errors with you know, all of the problems with estimating change, can we really do it, well. And they're they were very skeptical about it at that time. It's been huge advances methodologically, corresponding with huge increases in computing power that now allow us to do really well, well done rigorous evaluations of change data. And if you're talking about development inherently, you're talking about change.

Scott Allen : 7:26

Yes. Yeah. What else? What else comes to mind over the last couple of decades that has really stood out to you as something that you've either learned? or? Yeah, just observations?

David Day : 7:41

Well, one of the things is that leadership does not depend on a position. Right? And and so everyone "can and is a leader." I mean, there's this whole distinction that there's a leader and there's a follower is a misnomer. People are both. I mean, some some people by virtue of position do more leading than they do following, but we all do both. And we all need to work on ourselves to be better leaders so that we can contribute when when called on. So, really, we need to own our development. And one way to start owning our development is to start thinking of yourself as a leader. So the whole notion of a leader identity is really important, because it drives resource allocation. You know, our our identity is basically what we think is important. And we invest our most valuable resource our time in what we think is most important. So if you don't think of yourself as a leader, if you, for whatever reason, have obstacles to doing that, you're not going to be putting in the practice time. You need to be a more effective leader on your own, simply because you're allocating resources elsewhere.

Scott Allen : 9:01

Yeah, well and kind of a close cousin to that I'm imagining would be some of the writing you've done around self efficacy. Right? Would you talk a little bit about that?

David Day : 9:10

Well, it's it's self-views. I mean, there's a paper that I published with Lisa Dragoni, in the annual review of, of organizational psychology and organizational behavior, on this notion of a of a multi level and time based perspective on leader, leader development and leadership development. And people people focus on looking at things like KSA-knowledge, skills and abilities-that can change is a function of either development or training, but we added this notion of self-views, you know, how do you how do you view yourself, what is your identity? what's your self efficacy? What is your self level of self awareness? These are proximal outcomes of a developmental process that we can measure and will give us some idea of whether long term change is likely to be happening.

Scott Allen : 10:04

And when you say likely to be happening, what other...say more about that?

Unknown Speaker : 10:08

Well, you're in a context, right?

Scott Allen : 10:10

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker : 10:10

So this this comes directly from CCL the notion of assessment, challenge, and support. So, you know, we know we can we can do assessments to give people an idea of where they are now, we can challenge them by by putting them into stretch assignments or encouraging them to take on activities that kind of push them out of their comfort zone, move them towards the pain, but if they don't have the support, from others around them, or the context in general, that that third leg of that three pillars stool is gonna gonna fall over. So you so you need that notion of support somehow. And, nobody's going to just come and provide it for you. You've got to help develop it yourself. Which has been part of owning your development.

Scott Allen : 11:01

I love that notion of even...I've said this in a couple other podcasts now, but even as a parent, it could be considered a leadership role. It could be it could be an activity as well. I mean, my wife and I are kind of leading our team of, there's five of us. But if I don't if I don't construct that role as having influence over my children, or actively working to help them see the good and even our current situation, it's a missed opportunity, I think.

David Day : 11:34

Absolutely. And, you know, it's, it starts young.

Scott Allen : 11:38

Yeah.

David Day : 11:38

You know, there it's, that's another thing that I've I've urged is taking more of a life lifespan perspective on leader development, along with Ron Riggio, and Zhengguang Liu, who is a visiting scholar here from Beijing. We published a paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology that looked at the development of youth as leaders and things that would impede that, that development over time developing yourself as a leader could traverse the entire lifespan. And and starting early is not a bad thing. And I think you see this now more with programs in high schools and maybe even in primary schools where they're talking about, you know, leadership and, and developing responsible leadership skills. And I think that's a great thing to do is to start early, and to really invest in that over the course of a lifespan.

Scott Allen : 12:38

Yes, and even helping people understand that I don't have to have a position or a title. if you have a fourth grader, a fifth grader who understands that, that it doesn't have to be the person with the title. That's even...that's transformative.

David Day : 12:52

It is and there's research studies that show that that's a big obstacle to people thinking of themselves as a leader, and practicing their leadership is that they think it only comes about if you have a position that somehow anoints you as a legitimate leader. So that is it. That's a mindset issue that you need to get over and that and that's one that I even see in college students. And I've seen it also in MBA students, and even an executive students who think that, you know, unless they have the right position, they're not the leader. They're not a leader. And that's another important piece of this is that you want to invest in your development, because everybody needs to be a leader, even when they are not the leader.

Scott Allen : 13:37

Hmm, that's a great, that's a great, that might be the title of this podcast. I don't know. Well, we'll see if it kind of pass through the filter. But that was good. That was really good. Well, like you had mentioned you had mentioned, practice. One of my one of my favorite scholars, and I know that this is that this literature can be a little bit contested. With the expertise literature, you know, K. Anders Ericsson just passed away, and his work on expertise and deliberate practice. I don't know if you've had a chance to read one of his most recent works. It was Ericsson & Pool I believe they wrote the book, Peak.

Unknown Speaker : 14:14

I have not, but I'm well, I'm very familiar with his work. And in my 2009 book, co authored book, that's a big piece of it, this whole notion of developing expertise as a leader. And the way you do that is through practice. Now, I know this whole notion of 10 years, 10,000 hours has been challenged recently. But that you know, that's a that's a heuristic. It's not a scientific fact, for everybody. I think some people some people have certain innate gifts that allow them to reach expertise status much more quickly. And others it's gonna take a lot more time than that even to approach expertise status. But yeah, I mean, that work is really, really powerful. And I think it's something that as a, you know, as a foundation for this notion of practicing your leadership.

Scott Allen : 15:05

Yeah. What I love about his work is that it at least for me, we could boil it down to four simple ingredients, it would be time. So world-class cellist, 15-20 years, if you also have repetition, real time coaching and feedback, and then working on skills outside of your current ability level. World class pilot, you know, it's gonna be a certain number of years repetition, real time coaching and feedback, working on skills outside of your current ability level. And for me, that really helped put into focus at time some of what we're doing, some of what we're doing is putting people in a room and talking about leadership for maybe even two days, and then expecting that to your notion of time, right? That's it's the fact that we've talked about leadership, now anoints people as leaders and it's one dimension of that work, it's like literally like putting someone in a cockpit and teaching them about cockpits for 10 hours. But they're not a pilot. They're not a pilot yet. And so, I think what I love about this topic and what's so frustrating about this topic is, and I'd love to hear your feedback if you agree with this or disagree. But we almost have to be dangerous in so many different literature's David, I mean, whether it's the evaluation literature, statistics and quantitative analysis, whether it's adult development theory, adult learning theory, psychology, there's so many different domains. And and at least in some of your work, you've talked about, look that the lack of theoretical grounding of some of what we're doing is, it's a struggle we have. Do you agree? What do you think?

David Day : 16:55

Oh, absolutely. I think this whole notion of, you know, development, and leadership development is eclectic, and it cuts across multiple fields. The 2009 book on an Integrative Approach to Leader Development that I co-authored has a coda of connecting adult development identity and expertise. And and that's just really the surface of it. But I think we we get into functional blinders, which is, you know, if you're going to think about leadership development, you come at it as a leadership scholar, you tend to focus on what's the leadership part of it. And you think if you figure out the leadership part of it, then then the development stuff is easy. And then, you know, if you're a developmental psychologists, you're like, well, you know, the developmental changes and the things that motivate that development of a really interesting things, and then we'll just add leadership on top of that, and it's really not either/or it's and/both when it comes to thinking about leadership development in a very eclectic kind of way.

Scott Allen : 17:56

Yeah. Yeah. Because whether it's knowing that I mean, it's It's just theory curriculum design instructional strategies. I mean, it's so but then I also wonder at times, I oftentimes will do this kind of in my head, David them as I'm thinking about the work we do, I often will look at different domains and so medical education or, or military, the military's kind of approach to leader development to your comment around time. And it's a different context, right? They have someone for four years if it's ROTC, or if it's a one of the academies, they have people for a number of years. But there's, there's time and there's multiple kind of ways of thinking about the development, whether that's the personal growth dimension, whether that's the skills development, the cognitive component, they do a really nice job of integrating all of that, or at least probably a better job than, than others. And I look at it as if we want if we wanted to create a pilot or a world-class chef or a surgeon. When you look at how we develop leaders oftentimes what we actually put into practice. It's it's, it's dead on arrival.

David Day : 19:14

Yeah. Well, I mean, the army has a saying, you know, how long does it take to develop a general officer? How does it take to create a generalist? 25 years.

Scott Allen : 19:22

Yeah.

David Day : 19:22

And that's the advantage that an organization like the army and the other branches of the military have, if someone makes a career out of service, then you have that person in that organization for 20, potentially 20 or more years. Because the army looks like the most ruthless consulting companies is "up or out."

Scott Allen : 19:44

Yeah

David Day : 19:45

It's it's really the the cream of the crop that makes it the general officer status. And and it is a it's a multi decade process. So the point is, it takes longer to develop a general officer than it does anything. In the army, whether it's a material, whether it's a process or anything, so you know, and you might be able to accelerate some of that, but not all of it, it still takes an incredible amount of time, which is why this identity piece is also pivotal because it's the thing that motivates practice over a long period of time. And, and this is hard. This is hard work. You know, I know Riggio stone stole my quote about the gym, but I want to I want he didn't he didn't get all of it, right? Because he gave the short version. Yeah. The longer version is people tend to think around, think about leadership development as a pass to an amusement park, a ticket, a ticket to Disneyland, where they're going to go on a bunch of really cool rides, and they're going to have, you know, an amazing experience, and they're gonna come out somehow, you know, having a good time and have changed, but it's not a ticket to Disneyland. It's a membership in a gym. And you have to go, and you have to work hard, and you have to sweat. And you have to go towards the pain, if you're going to see any changes in you, as a person physically or mentally, but too often people get caught up in thinking, "Well, you know, I get to go to the Center for Creative Leadership, and Gosh, Won't that be fun?" You know, it gets me out of the office for a week. And you know, I don't have to deal with all of this other nonsense that I that I have to deal with. And, you know, they're going to feed me well. And we're going to have a few drinks and we'll have we'll maybe play some games and, you know, I'll get some information about myself and, you know, this is going to be fun. Well, there might be a little bit of fun, but it's also if it's serious, if you're taking it seriously. It's going to be hard work over a long period of time,

Scott Allen : 21:54

If you would say a little bit more about that identity and how that's a fuel for personal growth, would it be somewhat similar? So for instance, if I said is it somewhat of a similar concept if I were to say, you know, I just have a passion for becoming a great craftsman in whatever way I wanted to become a craftsman. If I have that in my head I'm much more than likely to seek out the YouTube video, the podcast, the show, the resources to help me truly master that. Is that...would that be similar?

David Day : 22:29

It is. I mean, if you go back to the to the music analogy and and Ericcson's work around around practice and deliberate practice. I mean, I don't know about you, but I had to take piano lessons when I was a kid. You know, I didn't...I took lessons because mom made me take lessons. And as soon as I could quit, I quit. Because it wasn't who I was. I didn't think of myself as a piano player. As a pianist. I thought myself more as a, as an athlete, you know, I wanted to be out playing, playing the sport, I didn't want to be in a room practicing the piano. But now if I had the identity, or at least a part of my identity was devoted to being a musician, I would have spent more time with it. And do I regret not spending more time with it now? I do. Yeah, cuz I look at a piano and like, there was a time when I could play that thing. And now it's just not happening. And, you know, you live, you know, you learned a little bit too late. Yeah, but but it goes to the point that you you only have so much time. And if you'd rather be devoting your time to something else, then you're not going to be putting in the hard yards to develop yourself beyond some minimal kind of competency. Yeah. And, and so when it comes to leadership, it's the same way. You know, if you're not if you don't think of yourself, at least part of your identity and, and identities tend to be multifaceted. So you know, we're not saying That's the ONLY way you think of yourself. You just got to find room for it in that multifaceted space to think, yeah, I'm a dad, I'm a partner. I am this kind of worker and I'm a I'm a leader as well, that's that's going to give you some impetus to look for ways to practice that leadership to develop that leadership on your own.

Scott Allen : 24:22

Yep. With some level of intentionality behind that, right? For sure. Because people have a practice field, right? I mean, organizational life is a beautiful practice field, eight hours, at least a day. And I don't know that many have that mindset that they're actually walking into a place where they could be practicing whatever it is, they want to be practicing getting better at.

David Day : 24:45

And I think a mindset issue there as most people think about leadership as just performing, you know that you that you're just going to call it forth when it's needed, and you're going to perform that leadership and a critical situation, or crisis situation, or an adaptive challenge situation. But if but the people who are who are more likely to be effective when that happens, are the ones who have invested in developing themselves to be better prepared when that does happen.

Scott Allen : 25:13

Yep. Yep. So transitioning a little bit, what are you thinking about now? What what's kind of on the front burner for you that you're pondering or writing about or, or thinking about doing some research on?

David Day : 25:29

Well, one of the things that that goes back to the 2000 paper that you opened the podcast with, was this notion of a leader versus leadership development. You know, these are two, the leader development is really about developing an individual to be more effective in leadership roles and processes, whereas the leadership development is really developing collective capacity for leadership. We don't know a lot about the latter, that latter piece, and we know virtually nothing about how the leader development piece informs the leadership development piece. So it's really it's looking at it more holistically. And and spending more time. I mean, we've been fortunate over the last 20 years to now have papers in some of the leading journals around leader development, you know, doing really rigorous research that is yielding important insights. But how do you develop a group of people to develop a capacity for leadership to be effective, when called on in terms of adaptive challenges?

Scott Allen : 26:36

Yeah, because again, if we have that mindset that well, it's just her she's in charge. And she's the one that's gone to all of the training. So we were just gonna sit back and wait, the system is limited, right.

David Day : 26:51

Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right, is that if you focus just on developing and people call it the pipeline of leaders, by the way, whoever wants to be in a pipeline I don't think anybody wants to be a pipeline. But the notion of if you just develop enough leaders at an organization level, you're going to be prepared for the, you know, the next wave of adaptive challenges. And that's, that's, I think, is is, is limited and limiting. Because, because a lot of what happens in terms of, you know, successfully addressing adaptive challenges, deals with not what the, what someone has in terms of his or her human capital. It's the social capital in that space of the connections between people that allow that allow them to do things that no one of them could do.

Scott Allen : 27:48

I like how you just said that because it's very easy if I don't have a relationship with my with my formal leader, the person in formal leadership position It's very easy for me to psychologically and physically check out. You know, in normal organizational life, I might walk in, do my thing, make the donuts and then go home. But I'm not necessarily engaged and working above and beyond when needed. And and I like that, if I'm representing what you just said accurately, it would increase the strength of the whole if those connections existed.

David Day : 28:27

Absolutely, I think that's, I mean, that's the social capital perspective in organizations and and i think enlightened organizations now understand the foundational role that human capital brings, but they also understand that really, what what's the glue that holds them together is their social capital. So I remember back in nine 9/11, there was a there is a consulting company called Cantor Fitzgerald and they lost 90% of their they're human capital when those towers came down, the CEO of that company who had been in Europe and traveling and and didn't die, was interviewed weeks, a few weeks later and was asked, you know, what, how are you going to rebuild? And his answer was, well, yes, we are going to rebuild, it will be relatively easy to just hire more people. But it's going to take us probably a decade, or more to reconfigure those social relationships that people had not just within the company but with their clients and with their vendors, and and that he said is something that is you just cannot bring in by hiring a person or persons.

Scott Allen : 29:49

Yeah. Yeah. Anything else? Anything else standing out for you right now?

David Day : 29:56

Oh, probably, but I can't think of what they are. You've You've run my brain out so far Scott. So I think that's it.

Scott Allen : 30:05

Well, I like how you're thinking about that I, I had a guest on her name is Sharna Fabiano, she had done some work with Ira Chaleff and she's very interested in...she uses she uses a tango analogy and she's a she's a dancer. And it was a really fun conversation because she talked about how at least in that relatively simple system, two people the roles are very clear. And and there's norms that exists that are clear. And she's looking at how do we work on both sides? How do we help followers be more successful in that role? And how do we help create some norms so there's an awareness of what that role is, and vice versa. It was a really fun conversation because she's thinking about it in a very, very interesting way. But in the...this is probably the 17th podcast I've done. And a theme that has weaved throughout is this this larger focus on unfollowers, others, Steve Kempster called them stakeholders, right? Sometimes it's collaborators. It's, we can put whatever name we want on it. But I really appreciate that you're kind of moving in that direction and overturning that rock and looking under it and exploring.

David Day : 31:26

Well, I think the the leader/follower thing is, is pivotal, obviously. And it's also this notion of trying to get beyond having the static view on who's a leader and who's a follower. It's really much more of a dynamic process. I mean, that's, that's the basis of leadership. It's not a position. It's a process, right? Isn't that what we teach all of our students and so, this notion of a process means that you know, who is the leader and who is the so called follower, stakeholder, member, whatever you want to call them, that's constantly changing, depending on depending on the context of the issue, the skills that people bring bring into a particular challenge. So I think this notion of moving beyond leaders and followers to the process of leading and following is much more powerful. Yeah and then as Barbara Kellerman and you know, this started with Fiedler, right where he started looking more at the context, but, boy, that's a whole wide open space. Yeah. Well, it Yeah. I mean, contextual approaches to leadership are coming back. But, you know, Fiedler or all of these contingency approaches were challenged because you're trying to take something so complex of an environment, a situation, and then kind of parse it into little pieces. It just collapsed on its own weight. I think, I think the people now who are studying contextual leadership or context and leadership are taking a more holistic approach to that notion.

Scott Allen : 32:59

Yeah. Yep. Well Dave, I really really appreciate your time we usually close out this podcast with just a couple questions about about you.

David Day : 33:09

I heard about this lightning round thing.

Scott Allen : 33:13

So what are you what are you watching? What have you been streaming? And it could could be anything has anything been on the radar lately that stood out?

David Day : 33:22

Oh, yeah, I'm really into this Scandinavian detective police series called The Bridge. Yeah, Scandinavian Noir. Okay There's actually a book I got turned on to this by Wendy Lesser. Wendy's, a professor of English at Berkeley. And she just published a book called Scandinavian Noir and so so she's she's like this huge fan of all of these detective and police dramas both written and video that take place in Scandinavia. So the bridge is the bridge that links Malmo, Sweden. With Copenhagen, Denmark, and this, this series starts when a body is found exactly in the middle of this bridge that is both in Sweden and in Denmark. And so you bring together this, this pair this tandem, this team of a detective from Sweden, and a detective from Denmark, who go forward to try to solve this problem to solve this, this case. And so it's there. I think there are three seasons of it now. And if you can put up with the subtitles, or you speak Danish or Swedish, you're good to go. And it's a it's a fascinating series because the woman detective from Sweden has a bit of an Asperger's syndrome. But but the inside joke on this is this is how the Danes think about all the Swedes as if they're a bit autistic. You know, they're very rule-oriented very regimented, where the Danes are more free wheeling, and wild and, and the the, the guy who plays the detective from Copenhagen kind of models that stereotype as well. But it's a it's a it's a really cool series and so I've been kind of overwhelmed with that. So check it out.

Scott Allen : 35:19

Okay, the bridge and what is it? I'm streaming on Netflix, right?

David Day : 35:24

I got on amazon prime. I had to pay for it though. Okay, so, but, you know, you buy a series for 25 bucks or something. And it's well worth the investment.

Scott Allen : 35:34

Anything else that you've been reading, or

David Day : 35:37

I just finished a book that was really very eye opening, a book that was recommended to me and I can't remember who recommended it now. But it was about the Haitian slave rebellion back in the 1700s. And it's, it's called the The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James, and it's a it's a classic book. I mean, it's been, I mean, this is not a new book. It's been out for decades. But it really took a look. And it was it turned out to be topical, given all the Black Lives Matter and all of the protests that are going on around, really the the first third world revolution that was led by a black general and a black army. Up against the French, the British, the Spanish, basically "us against the world" kind of thing. And, you know, it ends up like a lot of these kinds of things does that, that Toussaint ends up in prison by the French and dies in one of their jails. But he led an amazing revolution that kept slavery out of Haiti since the late 1700s.

Scott Allen : 36:58

Wow. Wow, I've never heard of it.

David Day : 37:01

I had not either until someone recommended it to me and it was, you know, it was one of these that there were a lot of really interesting leadership lessons in there both positive and negative. And one of one of the downfalls of Toussaint who's that Who's this uneducated, but brilliant General of the San Domingo Army is that he failed to keep the population informed of what he was doing. And they, they lost trust in him. They thought he was selling them out back into slavery, when in fact, he was just playing the French against the British, but he didn't keep his followers informed about what his intentions were. And they they started to mistrust him, and that that was the start of his downfall, and, and what led to him being captured by the French and taken back to France and jailed. Where he died.

Scott Allen : 38:01

Wow. So since you're reading some you're watching some heavy television because it you know the subtitles. That's another layer of commitment.

David Day : 38:10

That's true. It is.

Scott Allen : 38:12

And, and that sounds fascinating. I've never even...I just haven't heard that. I'll have to check that out for sure.

David Day : 38:20

Yeah. Well, it's it's a good read and it I mean, especially if you're interested in things around leadership. Yeah. I mean, this is somebody who developed himself into being a leader of his, his race, to break out of slavery, didn't have an education, he himself was a former slave, and just how someone like that can emerge from a context and a situation where all the odds are stacked against you. It's a remarkable story.

Scott Allen : 38:51

Yeah. Oh, that sounds like it. Well, Dave, this has been awesome. I really, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast and more important, obviously, thank you so much for the work that you do, helping us better understand the process of developing leaders, developing followers, and and we need it, we need it, we can do better. I I'm very convinced of the fact that we can do better. But having people like you investigate that, and in rigorous way. Thank you. It's awesome.

David Day : 39:29

Well, that's That's very kind of you to say. And I appreciate all the work that especially the young scholars are doing, who have taken taken leader development and leadership development as something important to study. So I you know, if there's anything I'm most proud of, is the fact that, you know, people have picked up that mantle and said, Let's make a science of leader development. Let's just depend on on what some people tell us we should be doing without evidence. Let's go out and generate that evidence and take a critical look on what are the things that help people develop and what are the biggest obstacles to that?

Scott Allen : 40:05

Yep. Yep. It's good work. It's good work. It's meaningful work. Well, thank you, sir. Have a wonderful day. Thanks Scott.

David Day : 40:12

I hope this has been helpful.