Tony Middlebrooks, Ph.D. teaches at the intersection of leadership, innovation, creativity, and design as Associate Professor and Director of the Siegfried Leadership Initiative for Horn Entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware. Dr. Middlebrooks has created and taught more than 35 different courses for all collegiate levels, and numerous experiential abroad programs. He received the University of Delaware Excellence in Teaching and Excellence and is the lead author of the textbook Discovering Leadership: Designing Your Success.
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Tony Middlebrooks, Ph.D. teaches at the intersection of leadership, innovation, creativity, and design as Associate Professor and Director of the Siegfried Leadership Initiative for Horn Entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware. Dr. Middlebrooks has created and taught more than 35 different courses for all collegiate levels, and numerous experiential abroad programs. He received the University of Delaware Excellence in Teaching and Excellence and is the lead author of the textbook Discovering Leadership: Designing Your Success.
Learn More About Tony's Work
Quotes From This Episode
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
If You Enjoyed This Episode, Check Out...
Hello, everybody, I hope you're having a great day. And today, I have a longtime friend of mine actually, he's been a mentor. I attended a conference, it must have been probably around 2000. And he was doing a session about how to survive your dissertation. And I thought, "wow, this guy is pretty darn cool. I need to learn from him!" And we've become friends. We've become friends probably over the last couple of decades, Tony, and I'm excited to introduce all of you to Tony Middlebrooks, some of you listening know Tony, and his work as for some of you his work may be new. Tony has an incredible perspective when it comes to this topic of leadership. I think when I think of Tony, I think of an interdisciplinary eye. That's kind of how I think of him. And so we're really going to explore a couple different avenues. Today, we're going to explore the intersection of leadership and entrepreneurship, and we're going to explore the intersection of leadership and design. So, Tony, introduce yourself and let people know who you are. And then maybe we'll jump into our chat.
Tony Middlebrooks :Hello, Scott, thank you so much for having me today. And thank you everyone for listening. Wow, it has been a couple decades that we've known each other and really does fly.
Scott Allen :Yes!
Tony Middlebrooks :And interestingly, leadership has changed and not changed in that time. And that has been both refreshing and frustrating. And over the years, I'm glad that there are lots of people like you who continue to explore new perspectives and new ideas with leadership. And I really appreciate you putting these podcasts together. They've been a pleasure for me to listen to, and I'm sure for many of our leadership educators out there to draw from and add into their courses. A little bit about me. I am a Milwaukee native Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so I'm a fellow Midwesterner of Scott's, and I have a have a PhD in educational psychology, which is a little different for the leadership field, but it is actually a pretty good fit. Because of course leadership is connecting with other people's minds. And while I was getting my PhD grad school, the best nine years of my life, I was directing a nonprofit for, we had youth programs, for kids. And we developed many new ones. And we had a great emphasis on total quality management. That was the big TQM movement at the time. And so we had a very supportive executive director who pushed us into learning more and trying to advance our leadership. So I got very interested in the idea of how do you maximize the success of the individuals that are working with you and for you. At the time I had 17 managers reporting to me, who in who in turn had 200 some employees reporting to them, who had 3000 or so families that we were working with. So it it got to be pretty big. And it was a very diverse group of folks. So I got interested in that and my first professor job was in a doctoral program, and if, here's, here's my first great lesson and vulnerability, when you are a newly minted PhD and you are expected to teach people who have already become successful leaders, and who are pivoting in their careers, first thing they look at, is what do you think you can teach me? And that's where I learned one of my most important lessons and one that I bring to all my classrooms, which is the phrase, "I don't know better. I no different." I love that phrase. Yeah, I start every class with that, and I tell the students look, you know, I know better than you about some things, but you know better than me about some things. And frankly, what that is, is we know different and so let's learn together and it it kind of immediately levels the playing field. Now that said, as I started teaching in the doctoral program, and I threw a few statistics, just a few statistical formulas on the chalkboard that quickly quieted everyone. That was the end that. Nothing scares the heck out of leadership students then statistical formulas, right?
Scott Allen :So you started talking about leadership by just going into factor analysis.
Tony Middlebrooks :That's right. But that was like Cardinal Stritch University and honestly, it's a wonderful program. It was three year doctoral program called Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service and focused on leadership, okay, second year on learning and learning theory, which was what I graduated with, in educational psychology. And the third year was on service and social justice, which was really fascinating and we took a lot of deep dives into those topics. And you know, a lot of the themes that are coming out now, we looked at 15 years ago, 20 years ago, but then I moved on to Delaware and decided to try my hand at the undergraduate venture. And that's where I have been ever since. And, about five years ago, I moved from the leadership major and minor that we have there over to Horn Entrepreneurship. It's the entrepreneurship major and minor that we have there. And the reason I was invited to join that group was they really recognize the importance of two things that I really highlight leadership being one, of course, and then creativity, which is the other. That's where I'm at presently.
Scott Allen :Well, so talk about this intersection between entrepreneurship and leadership. I see a very natural fit. Probably even it might be two years ago, there's a there's a foundation in my community, and they focus on entrepreneurship. And we met with the director and tried to help make that connection that that leadership and entrepreneurship are very, very close cousins, if not interrelated, and, and, and this executive director was having none of it. It was a totally different topic than what their focus was. So I'd love I'd love to get a couple of thoughts from you about how you see those two topics complement one another?
Tony Middlebrooks :One of the things that I have been long fascinated with, as someone who studies creativity, this notion of metaphorical thinking and how ideas from one world map onto another in ways that allow you to see those worlds in uniquely different ways to see other perspectives and, and to see the spaces where innovation can really happen. And as I thought about our growing entrepreneurship program at Delaware, you know, it seemed to me that those students were trying to go through processes that included developing themselves developing new mindsets, and then actually doing something to make a positive difference. And, you know, in some cases, it was starting a new business, but in other cases, it was really trying to do something innovative within an order organization, or to do something innovative to help a community or to help a wide variety of organizations. And so, as I thought about, you know, my kind of stock definition of leadership, which is "the process of influencing others toward a common vision of". I obnoxiously make my students memorize that on day one. And by obnoxiously I mean, obnoxiously. You know, yeah, yeah, the idea here is how, you know, the minute you, as an entrepreneur, have to work with someone, not even hire someone, but work with someone. And that's really something most of these ventures emphasize. They talk about how you should find partners who have the strengths and the abilities and the resources that you don't. And so you create these strategic partnerships and you have to work with people and ultimately, you have to facilitate a process of influencing them toward that common vision, right?
Scott Allen :Yeah, yeah. Well, and how are you? How are you defining entrepreneurship? How are you thinking about that? When you're when you're juxtaposing the two?
Tony Middlebrooks :You know, we, we've had a couple of interesting definitions over my time with heart. One of them is "process of pursuing opportunity, through the conception, validation and launch of new ideas into the marketplace." And that was the business oriented one. Okay. But as we we continue to expand the possibilities for entrepreneurship, we kind of made the definition a bit more general. And now we use this notion of "pursuing the creation, delivery, and capture a value from new ideas." So pursuing the creation, delivery and capture of value from new ideas. And so when you as you know, Scott, I'm a big fan of creating definitions where every word has some meaning, right? With this definition of entrepreneurship, you know, you've got a whole bunch of different skill sets, mindsets and activities built into the notion of creating value. Right and and creating new ideas, and then delivering them. Right? To whom, how, what is the user's perspective, and then somehow maximizing that value. And so that's really where leadership comes into play. One of the little models that I've played with over the years was trying to try to understand the relationship between entrepreneurship, creativity, design and leadership. And creativity really is where it starts right trying to generate ideas. And then design is taking those ideas and turning them into some form of innovation, some some form of value. Entrepreneurship is then putting those bits of value into practice. Then leadership is maximizing that value. Right? So let's say you and I, we create something like, say a textbook. Well, okay, good for us, right there it sits. The challenge then for the leader and leadership is how do you maximize that value? How do you take what you've created? And really maximize it and and for the leader, whether it's in an entrepreneurial venture, or in an established venture that's really about the people. How do you maximize the value of the people?
Scott Allen :Well, and I guess I just had an insight because we wrote a textbook together. But I guess maybe I didn't realize you were taking me through this process.
Tony Middlebrooks :You didn't know you were being led.
Scott Allen :I had no clue! So. So as I think about some of the work we did, there was the the creativity about what this will look like and what we could build and how would it be different and why would someone value this over, all of the other books about that? leadership and design and really thinking intentionally about how this would be laid out and formatted and, and live, and then putting that out in the world and then influencing others to, to engage. And we've spent time this summer even working on resources that would potentially influence others to engage. So Tony, I'm learning here I didn't I had no clue but I love the the conceptualization of this creativity, design, entrepreneurship, and then leadership because I agree with you. That is exactly what we were trying to communicate to the executive director, I might have an idea, but I need to influence others towards a common vision, either that are working with me or that want to invest.
Tony Middlebrooks :Right, exactly. And here's what I love. When I introduce this to undergrads, particularly undergrads in different fields. I essentially say look, your field of practice, that's the cupcake. That is the bulk of what you're learning and what is going to be of completely empty calorie, non nutritional value for you. However, if you want this to taste better, you have to add leadership, creativity, entrepreneurship, and design. So that is the frosting for the cupcake that is your field of practice. I told you I was cursed with metaphors.
Scott Allen :Let's go a little bit into and I didn't mention this in the in the intro, but the conversation is kind of taking me here. So let's talk a little bit about creativity and what are some concepts from creativity that you that you link intentionally to leadership? And what are some concepts from design that you intentionally link to leadership? How do you think about those, Tony?
Tony Middlebrooks :So you know, as you know, Scott, the the nature of this textbook, the nature of my work for the last 10 years has really focused on the overlay between design, and leadership, and too often I have worked with organizations, I've talked to students who default to their learned patterns of leadership, the leadership that they observed in their parents, the leadership that they've seen in their coaches or their teachers. And what I really would like to see, what I'd like to help students be able to do is to purposefully design their leadership - purposefully, and mindfully. Yeah. So what kind of leader Do you want to be? How do you want to lead and I think we all want that as leadership educators, this is nothing new. But what's interesting to me is that the field of design adds a whole new set of tools for leadership educators to apply to try to reach these ends, right? So as you think about all the things around you, you know, everything was designed - your glasses, your haircut, your clothes, the shelves, you know your house. And if it wasn't designed, well then it was just sort of randomly stumbled on right from this design world. What I've been really pushing with students is purposeful, mindful, and then the last pieces, the right fit. And this really goes to the notion of design as a user centered design and something that has good affordance that being the physical properties that allow something to do some things and not other things. And of course, my favorite example of that is the push door that has a pull handle on it and you end up smashing your head into it. Right? Bad affordance so you and your strengths and your abilities and your your style and your approach and your beliefs and your values get dropped into a situation or a leadership situation where you are not a good fit, you're gonna smash your head into things, right? So part of finding that best fit as a designer of your leadership, is really understanding yourself. And that's kind of where we went with the textbook. It's where we went with this latest tool, trying to identify those things about yourself that help you find that best fit.
Scott Allen :Say more, tell me more about the intersection of creativity and leadership or design and leadership, another component of design and leadership.
Tony Middlebrooks :You know, what are the other pieces that where we overlap with design is to talk about besides designing you as a leader, what are the design principles and design processes, and really ways of thinking, that designers use that can really enhance...so this is your toolbox? So we've all heard of design thinking. A lot of folks use design thinking as a process, but in reality, it's a set of mindsets. And if you can adopt those mindsets habitually. So things like user centeredness, I can't tell you how often I'll go into meetings in higher education, and we'll be talking about this. And the other thing, and it will come this idea that we're going to implement with the students and, and then I raised my hand and say, "Did anyone ask the students about this?" And, you know, silence...tumbleweeds? So, you know, that user centered approach?
Scott Allen :Yep. Yep
Tony Middlebrooks :Really facilitates you as a leader in trying to make decisions solve problems, do a lot of practical things that leaders have to do. Likewise, divergent thinking, right, generating many ideas from a single problem. So, you know, we sit at a meeting, we have a problem, we start to generate ideas, two or three ideas come out. And then the very first one people satisfice and they say, "Oh, that's the idea. We're taking that one." Well, okay, well, what if the great idea or the innovative idea was idea number, you know, 85 or 237? 3? So yeah, so those mindsets are super important and design thinking, you know, there's a series of them that kind of spans the process of problem solving great tools to add to your leadership toolbox.
Scott Allen :Tony, let's explore this notion of mindsets a little bit more. What are some others do others come to mind for you? User centeredness. I love that. I love that. And especially if I'm designing my interaction with others, right? Because obviously, we want to design how we want to run our own shop in intentionality behind that's critical. I imagine we could take the same way of thinking and designing relationships, designing our teams, designing our change initiative, designing our influence attempt. For me, a key word in all of this is there's a mindset of intentionality, and not just to yourself point down the problem solving, I see it happen all the time. And the first viable option, the processing shuts down, and we're just going down that road, it might be idea 85. So what other mindsets come to mind for you?
Tony Middlebrooks :I do outline six of them in all the things that we've done with design thinking, too in the understand phase of your problem solving to and kind of the idea generating imagine phase two and kind of the implementation or iteration phase. And so another mindset that I think is fantastic is explorative. Right? So this is the mindset that assumes that purposeful ambiguity and curiosity. So how often do we come to the table as leaders or members of an organization, and we think we know how things function we think we know how things are, you know, we've got this "lean mean pattern machine making brain" that already comes to the table with a preconceived notion, as well. You know, what would be the harm, especially if there's no critical deadline, what would be the harm and saying, Okay, well, let's pretend that everything we know is not right. And let's take a look at some other models and some other approaches and some other perspectives. And this is one of the great values of moving outside of your field outside of the silos that we we talk about, we say that we break them, but we really don't. I mean, we really tend to gravitate towards the things that we know because they're comfortable. So to purposefully do that is hugely advantageous. Another mindset, which is one that I tend to use that really becomes quite annoying for people is it's the iterative mindset, right? So this notion of, of continuous improvement, you know, everybody wants to be done with a project everybody wants to move to the next thing and celebrate their success - and they should, but that doesn't mean that there isn't further development that can happen. And so you know, when you come to the table, and you're meeting with a group of individuals, and they're like, "okay, we're good, we're done." Great. My usual question is great, what's next? And make it better? How can we make it more interesting? How can we make it more user friendly? And and what's interesting to me across all these mindsets, is these are things that you see all the time in a lot of the leadership talks that we watch the TED Talks and the speeches and theories that we cover, but it kind of frames them in more of a creative problem solving framework. So for example, you know, you've heard that that whole question of "how does it feel to be led by you?" Okay, that's a great question. Right? Well, another way to think about that is, "if you're designing yourself as a leader, what's the user process perspective?" Right? It's the exact same thing. How does it feel to be led by you? And how do you want it to feel? So that's that's kind of the overlap with with leadership and design.
Scott Allen :It's a beautiful question. I mean, it really is. Because I think we all get so wrapped up in whatever the activity is, whatever the problem is, we, I think of it also I've been, I've been planning all of my courses for fall. And to your point on that iterative process. I don't think I've ever repeated a course. I've always experimented with something new, trying to get somewhere quicker, further faster, to try and develop a skill set more quickly. But I've been I've been spending a lot of time really walking through, what is the user experience going to be like to be in this course? Is it to sing song? Is it the same thing every week? Is it too predictable? Is it...are the resources that I'm exposing the students to provocative, interesting and are they going to spark great dialogue? It'd be very easy for me to show the Devil Wears Prada, because that's been used over and over or 12 Angry Men. But it's not it's not probably timely relevant, and and probably something I want to do. And so I love that mindset of that. How does it feel to be led by you? How does it feel to be taught by you?
Tony Middlebrooks :Well, and and that's a great segue into the other toolbox that design brings, and that is these design principles. So the design principles are basically rules that designers use to make their design better. And if you think about, say, visual design, right, and like a photograph or a painting, the design principle of balance, and whether something is balanced or purposefully imbalanced, right, you're trying to create some other kind of effect. You're paying attention to the design principle of balance, and I love the notion of balance for leadership because there are so many things, and many of them paradoxical that you have to balance as a leader. So, you know, going all the way from, you know, do you focus on the task or the relationship, right, going back to some of those fundamental leadership approaches, but one of my favorite and and this is the one that I try to highlight with other leadership educators all the time, is the Von Restorff effect. And the Von Restorff effect basically says that anything that is done that is significantly different from the norm from the ordinary is going to be more highly retained, more highly noticed, and more likely to be engaged. And it's essentially, us a leadership educator, doing just what you did thinking about your course and how students are going to respond to it. And then saying, okay, they're going to expect me to go left, I'm going right, or even better, they're going to expect me to go left and I'm going to disappear. So doing something so significantly different now. It catches their attention. And then of course, you know, it's got to be related to the lesson that you're trying to get across. But that's, that's really powerful. A great example is one of my favorite lessons, I learned this from Nick Barker, who was one of the directors at the East/West Center out in Hawaii. So he had this class that he called, I don't know if he called it the silence lesson. But he essentially would come into class. And he would say, you know, there's, there's a bunch of ways to learn leadership. You can learn it from a book, you can learn it from experiencing it serving as a leader. And then you can learn it this way. And he would sit down and say nothing at all. And actually did this at you know, for anybody who is a teacher. It is so painful. So about three minutes in, I'm feeling I'm just like, in the back of my mind, I'm screaming, "you must talk, say something." But I said nothing. I wouldn't ignore the students. They'd Look at me. I'd make eye contact. I'd smile but it just and said nothing. And at a certain point, some would get up and try to get you to talk. Somebody threatened to leave, one of them actually stood at the door. And he's like, "I'm leaving, leaving." this looked at him and smiled. And he walked out. And then he came back, like one minute later, "I'm really leaving." And what's what's really fascinating is that a certain point, they start to question themselves as a group and say, Okay, "well, what do you think he's getting at here? What do you think he wants us to do? Well, maybe, you know, we're here to leadership class, maybe we should, you know, let's revisit the lessons that we had last time. And let's think about where we want to take this," and the phenomenon of them kind of self realizing that they had to, you know, function, and that leaders could just emerge from the group was just fascinating. What was really funny then is once I broke my silence, next slide on the board, was about 12 stages that the group would go through and they were spot on it would go. Every one of those phases and of course the scenes are like, "what."
Scott Allen :When you were saying it, I was thinking of Banksy, the Banksy. Yeah, piece of work of art where we're basically after the person had purchased it, it kind of shredded, was that was that how it played out?
Tony Middlebrooks :absolutely. And you know what, what I find fascinating about it is 10 years later, I'll have alumni, a run into them at Alumni Weekend or whatever and they'll be like, "remember when you did that silence class, and we had to self organize!" And so of the, you know, 10,000 things that they learned across all their classes. 124 credit, that's the highlight that at Vaughn redstar, perfect, really can hit. So that's the kind of power that some of these design principles have. If you apply these to your leadership, education, much less your leadership.
Scott Allen :Yeah, and you know, it just in highlights for me. As leadership educators. I said this on a previous podcast, but I think I was speaking with David Day. I think it can be challenging and daunting. One of the reason I love this work so much is that I feel like I'm at not even yet at base camp of, I'm still just getting to base camp when it comes to climbing Everest. And there's so many different nooks and crannies of this conversation and bodies of knowledge that we could be well versed in, whether that's history, political science, biology, evaluation, literature, instructional strategies, leadership theory, evaluations, statistics, I mean, there's so many different kind of areas that we should have an awareness of adult development theory, adult learning theory, student Development theory, it just blows me away. And that's why again, I feel like there's so many different, so many different levels to this knowledge. But one thing I love the most is you can look to the what would be seemingly disparate spaces, and it was amazing, I was working with these in an organization in town. And they were all audio engineers. They they would go out on tour with Neil Young, or they would go out on tour with The Who or they would go out and tour with Madonna. And these are the folks who are running the soundboards. And I was trying to come up with a metaphor for them about leadership. And I basically said, look, in every different arena, every different stadium, it's a different context, the levels are going to be different, correct? Yes. So you're going to have to adjust your levels, depending on the context and the setting, and the makeup of the crowd, even potentially, and leadership is no different. It takes intentionality and you have to be thoughtful and design how you're going to create the similar experience. But there's so many nooks and crannies and principles from different seemingly disparate spaces. That beautifully apply.
Tony Middlebrooks :Absolutely. In fact, when I when I talked to my students, the ones who are brand new leadership education. You know, I'll ask them, if you go on to Amazon and you, you know, search for leadership books, or you know, old school, you go to a bookstore, there are just hundreds and hundreds and thousands of books on leadership. And my question to them is, which one is right? Which book is the right book? The answer, I tell them is they're all the right book. And they're all the wrong book. And, your challenge is to figure out that right fit. And I think that, to me, is one of the most important pieces to find that that right fit for you. So even your soundboard engineers, you know, if someone said to them, okay, well, you know, I know you're running the Madonna concert this weekend. Next weekend, you got a bar mitzvah with 100 people. They'd be like, Yeah, I don't have the right equipment for that setting. Yeah, just it's not the right fit, even though a lot of the skills would potentially apply. So I think one of the things you said about the nooks and crannies that's what keeps me so interested in this. I love the idea of trying to enhance the basic thing that leaders are trying to do, which is facilitate the process of influencing others toward that common vision, maximize the value of other individuals and of their organization in the transformational leadership sense. But you're trying to help them see and find tools and other world.
Scott Allen :Yeah
Tony Middlebrooks :So if we go back to that entrepreneur side of things, we talk about this entrepreneurial mindset. And I kind of framed that in terms of the capacity to see differently and across the entrepreneurial adventure, I frame it as the capacity to see more opportunity. So, you know, what do entrepreneurs do? Well, they are able to see where there are trends and holes in the market that they could potentially capitalize on and for leaders, so same thing, right? If they have the ability to spot an individual in your organization who really could do some amazing things, but no one's really tapped that aspect of them yet, that's that's a great advantage. So it see more opportunity, see different, see more answers, which goes back to that divergent thinking, but also things like effectual thinking, right, which is the the capacity to start from the resources that you have, and then formulate your goal versus formulate the goal and then try to hunt down the resources. It's just a different way of flipping it, so that you can see it differently, and potentially take on those challenges in a different way. So I have a question for you, Scott. And this is one that's been vexing me for a few years now. And I'm gonna I'm gonna tap my friend Ralph Gigliotti for a conversation at some point because he's, he's big in the crisis management but you know, I'm seeing a lot of leadership right now that is very power oriented, very top down, very authoritarian, very throw out the rule books. And I'm not going to say it's good leadership in the normative sense, but it certainly has moved individuals into positions of power. And so you're seeing a lot of power and influence happen in ways that as leadership educators, we often find abhorrent, and definitely do not promote. A lot of the toxic behaviors that have been highlighted, you know, over the last decade or so. It is this fundamentally changing how we see leadership or is this some kind of an anomaly or rather another one of these side venues that we need to get our head and hands around?
Scott Allen :I'm gonna try and answer and we'll see where the conversation takes us. This is I've been reflecting a lot about this. So if you go back to Barbara Kellerman's, notion of the leadership system. Leadership's the relationship between the leaders, the followers in the context, you know, Fred Fiedler started talking about that in the early 70s, kind of bringing these other dimensions in. And and Barbara Kellerman calls that the leadership system. There's, I think, some fairly unhealthy components. And I'm talking specifically in the United States right now for all of our global listeners. But there's some there's some unhealthy elements of the system. I think we have urban communities, largely urban communities that have have struggled with systemic racism and other issues for decades. And inequalities. I think our rural communities in the United States at least, many of which have been decimated because of digitization or globalization or flight of people who had potential to help those communities, but they've moved other places. And I think there's a lot of pain and there's a lot of fear. And there's a lot of concern. And there's many places where some of we could go to Maslow, some of those baseline needs. If I if I think about Ohio, for instance, I could think of East Cleveland, which would be a community that's been in trauma for decades. Or I could think of Marietta or some other communities like Lordstown, Ohio, or Warren, Ohio, that that maybe some of the purpose and the hope has exited. I think there's a lot of a lot of fear, and an anger and frustration in the system. And I think we're seeing a lot of unhealthy indicators. And I've had this I mean, this is a longer conversation, but maybe a listener have some solutions who wants to come on and talk about this? But, you know, how, how does how does democracy work when we don't have a middle class, which I think has been a fundamental kind of backbone of our democracy. And as the middle class shrinks? What is it five, 7 million manufacturing jobs lost since 2000? I'm sure are now since since COVID-19. So there's a lot of instability in the context, which then I think promotes instability in what the followers want. And instability in what leaders rise to the top....but there's some just a lot of red flags that are the system isn't working one of my favorite quotes. Every system is perfectly designed for the results that it achieves
Tony Middlebrooks :Garbage in, garbage out.
Scott Allen :So here we are. And what is our system promoting right now? It's a we are kind of elevating the Kardashians or Housewives of New Jersey? Or? I mean, there's just a lot of indicators, some of the toxicity in our media some of the toxicity in our communities? I don't know. That's, that's, I don't in any way, shape, or form suggest that I'm correct. That's kind of how I'm thinking about it. And I'm just really trying to explore some of those...some of those thoughts because I'm wondering the same thing. I really am.
Tony Middlebrooks :Yeah, it's it's definitely worth thinking about from the leadership perspective, particularly as as I work with leaders of schools, educational leaders, leaders in health care, you know, they are subject to some of the leaders in the political systems and leaders in the business world. And, you know, they're they're often competing values that don't necessarily have to be competing, right? They could be collaborative in some ways and have a much more positive result without compromising the other too much. Yeah. And somehow as Americans, we, and as humans, we struggle to see our commonalities and get so focused on the divisive elements that we're stalled. Were just stalled. And what works above that? What what type of leadership works above CNN or Fox News? Well, it was whatever your religious affiliation was that one time, right. That's what preceded all those things and would default to. I think one of the the interesting aspects of this conversation goes to one of the parts of the book that I think is really unique that I try to highlight with students quite often. Which is the actually the chapter you wrote on sustainability and systems. It's so we have this illusion as individuals that our egocentrism is just universal, right? We are an individual who stands alone. And in this country that's just magnified. It's individualism. And you are responsible for your success and your failure completely. Yeah, the reality is there are so many invisible interconnections and systems that allow us to be who we are, and or keep us from being who we can be. Right? So that, those invisible influences and systems because we don't see them, we don't pay attention to them. And then we feel the results as an individual and or we see the results on individuals and then we immediately think, "Oh, well, you know, I'm where I am because I worked hard." Or I'm "where I am because someone else got in my way," when the reality is much more complex than that. That TED talk by Tim Harford on complexity and the god complex, that that is one of my absolute favorite talks. I think there is such an amazing amount of insight there. Number one, that everything is more complex than you think. I love the fact that you just tell anyone, "Okay, I hear what you're saying. But remember, it's always more complex than you think. So let's see if we can dig a little deeper." And that goes to that explorative piece of design thinking. And then the other piece, of course, is the god complex. Right? And the more expert you become, the more you even feel that compulsion to have to act as the expert to have to have the answer when you know, the first part things being too complex really doesn't even allow you to have that level of all-knowingness. So it is a fascinating, it's a fascinating approach to, I think what we're dealing with today
Scott Allen :To bring it back to our conversation around design, or, or creativity, or entrepreneurship, or leadership are the founders of our country designed the framework centuries ago. And just like Henry Ford designed the Ford Motor Company, and you could get a car at any color you wanted as long as it was black. And so I come back to just the thought the thought of, you know, what are some of the design elements that are baked into our way of being that may no longer be relevant?
Tony Middlebrooks :Yeah.
Scott Allen :And and it is that I mean, I've never read these books about kind of the indicators of the downfalls of civilizations. I've always been kind of interested in that notion of well, what are the hallmarks of you know, why did Rome fall? Or why did the Greeks lose their...but I imagine it was in part, holding on to irrelevant design, because of power, and because of, you know, any number of other kind of competing commitments, that then ultimately ended up being the downfall. So, Scott, Scott Galloway, Professor Galloway, I'll put this in the in the notes, I don't know if you've read USS University, know, that blog post? I'll put it in the show notes. But, I do believe as institutions of higher education, sometimes we will be our own worst enemy. We will, we will facilitate our own demise in certain instances in certain instances, because we're holding tight to systems, processes that were that were designed for a different time.
Tony Middlebrooks :Absolutely. And, in fact, I'm going to give a little plug here to the Journal of Leadership Studies. As you know, I've edited their symposium feature now for about 10 years and coming up in volume 15. And numbers one and two, there's a two part series that William Donaldson is guess editing on systems and how, you know, a systems approach to complexity and dealing with these wicked problems could be a potentially interesting approach to leadership as the future unfolds. So definitely worth keeping an eye out for that should be out, probably spring of next year.
Scott Allen :Okay. Yeah, but I think I think the question you asked, it's, again, by no means is what I said fully baked, or do I think that I have a corner on...it's just how I'm thinking about it now. But, it's what what's going on in the context? That is...I think that's an important part of the question....that that's kind of creating space for some of these. Yeah, for some of these people that are bubbling up to the top, well,
Tony Middlebrooks :So you admitted that you don't know and you're not an expert. I'm afraid we're gonna have to stop this call.
Scott Allen :You ready for this to be done, Tony?
Tony Middlebrooks :I guess I have another thought on this. And that is, given this notion of the God Complex. This is good perspective for leadership educators really, I mean, we are helping to develop individuals and individual mindsets and position them somehow to be successful personally, and to be successful in their efforts to work with others and facilitate others and including the organization's. So you know, we're we're not taking on this big system's level view. And I'm not sure how we could do that. That's not a question for you to answer. It's just one for us to wrestle with maybe in the last half of our career.
Scott Allen :Yeah, Kathy Allen is doing some really cool work in that space that episode two of the podcasts was with her. And she's looking at nature and systems theory. And we were we were having a conversation our podcast, our discussion, she was throwing out a number of terms that I just wasn't familiar with. And so that's a whole nother like I was saying earlier, right? I mean, there's so many different ways to help better understand and conceptualize this topic. It's at once so invigorating, and also it can be incredibly frustrating.
Tony Middlebrooks :Okay, so here at minute 50 or so, what's your final hurrah? What do you want to know?
Scott Allen :Lightning round, which is this? What are you listening to or reading or streaming right now it doesn't have to have anything to do with leadership, or it could...
Tony Middlebrooks :We actually started a series on DVD, old school because we actually lost internet, hurricanes came through so I had to dig through the DVDs. We're watching The Crown. It's a BBC series about Victoria. And its stars Jenna Coleman, who if you're a Doctor Who fan, you know, okay, she was on a number of seasons of Doctor Who, as Doctor Who's companion. So super cool and super fun and definitely leadership oriented, but I don't watch it with that in mind. So we've been doing that. And you know, we are we are working really hard to put the Von Restorff effect into into play for this fall because we're online. And everybody's had it and bored. Yeah. And so we're trying to figure out really interesting, creative, unique and memorable experiences that can still be delivered virtually. So that's been a big push in the last few weeks.
Scott Allen :It's a beautiful puzzle right there. Okay, Tony Middlebrooks. It's a it's been so much fun. It's been a pure pleasure speaking with you today and and thanks for the good work that you do. Thank you for the wonderful perspective you bring to our work. And it's just a joy. Thank you, sir.
Tony Middlebrooks :Likewise, Scott, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Take care.