"I’m very proud and satisfied that I’ve walked the path of that middle ground. Which is both being a practitioner as well as a scholar."
Dennis C. Roberts is an independent consultant, speaker, and author. He last served as Assistant Vice President of Education for Qatar Foundation (QF). During his seven years with QF, he worked with Qatari and expatriate colleagues to create the student development and support services for its branch universities at Education City in Doha, Qatar. Before working abroad, he was Associate Vice President of Student Affairs at Miami University. He is past president of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). He has been a member and presenter at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the International Leadership Association. He has authored six books and over 50 book chapters and other articles on student affairs, student learning, and leadership.
Learn More About Denny's Work
Quotes from This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Your Host, Scott Allen
"I’m very proud and satisfied that I’ve walked the path of that middle ground. Which is both being a practitioner as well as a scholar."
Dennis C. Roberts is an independent consultant, speaker, and author. He last served as Assistant Vice President of Education for Qatar Foundation (QF). During his seven years with QF, he worked with Qatari and expatriate colleagues to create the student development and support services for its branch universities at Education City in Doha, Qatar. Before working abroad, he was Associate Vice President of Student Affairs at Miami University. He is past president of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). He has been a member and presenter at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the International Leadership Association. He has authored six books and over 50 book chapters and other articles on student affairs, student learning, and leadership.
Learn More About Denny's Work
Quotes from This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Your Host, Scott Allen
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen 0:01
Denny, I'm gonna go old school on you right now, everybody we've got Denny Roberts and Dr. Denny Roberts, Denny when I think of you, I think of like stationary bikes. And I think of Ron Heifetz. We both lived in Oxford, Ohio, both of us. And I would go work out. And Denny would always be reading an academic article on the bicycle. Or he'd be reading the latest Ron Heifetz book or the latest, the latest Burns, I think it was Transforming Leadership. I came across you once, and I'd be on the Stairmaster and you'd be on the bike. And every day we'd kind of say hello, and we'd, we would talk a little bit about leadership. And it's so good to have you here. I'm so excited for you to be with me today just for our listeners really quickly. And then he'll introduce himself, Denny's many things. He has been the Associate Vice President of Student Affairs at Miami University. He has served as a board member of the International leadership Association. He was the AVP of Education for the Qatar Foundation. So he has global Student Affairs experience. And most recently, he's been helping with this task force put together by the ILA, really looking at standards and principles for programs. And he'll tell us a little bit more about that. Denny, what blanks Do I need to fill in there? You're a grandfather?
Denny Roberts 1:25
Yeah,
Scott Allen 1:26
you're in Chicago land. Unfortunately, he's wearing a Chicago Cubs t-shirts, which hurts as a Cleveland Indians fan. That hurt a couple of years back!
Denny Roberts 1:33
It is so funny that you would start us with our first encounters at the Recreation Center at Miami University because Scott, I still do that I still sit on the stationary bike. The thing that's so awesome is I don't have to carry books anymore because I have a Kindle. So everything's on Kindle now. So it but it makes swiping the pages much easier. I can highlight more, more easily. I mean, it just works a whole lot better. So thank god technology has moved us forward a bit. I'm still doing the same stupid stuff. I really am. totally amazing. But the Miami days were amazing. And you were so unique because you were one of the few people that I knew just sort of casually. But you would just dive right in, there was never a shallow conversation with Scott. It was always let's go to the essence of this. That was always kind of fun. And I love those kinds of conversations. So thank you for those old days. And for the current. It's great.
Scott Allen 2:41
Well, so tell us a little bit about some of what I missed. I mean, a good portion, especially after Miami University, a good portion of your career was spent abroad. And I think that was pretty at least as I read your blog, as you were over there. That was a pretty transformational experience for you. Is that? Is that accurate?
Denny Roberts 3:02
Really profound. I mean, it was a turning point for me. And, you know, I've carried a lot of common themes throughout my life, you know, and even, you know, going back to high school and undergraduate days and so forth. I had this kind of fascination, with what leadership was, and very clearly in high school, I was not one of the cool kids. Because I was a geek, I was a musician. So like, all the athletes were the cool guys, right? And the cool girls were, you know, part of the language, but they were the cheerleaders and all that kind of stuff, too. And I was never in those groups. But I always kind of looked at them. And I thought, Wow, that's really interesting. How do they get to do that sort of thing? And then when I went to Colorado State for my undergraduate degree in music, I got involved with founding a fraternity. And then eventually, I got involved in student para-professional roles. So like, orientation, student leader, residence hall, student leader, that kind of thing. And for whatever reason, at the university level, I was able to just be me. And I didn't have to be a cool kid anymore.
Scott Allen 4:12
I found that as well, I found that as well.
Denny Roberts 4:14
I could be me, you know, and so I was really freed. And that's when my fascination with leadership really, really started to dig in. And it was just a very empowering moment to realize that literally, you know, I could understand leadership, I was capable of leadership, and began to see myself that way. And I know I carry male privilege in terms of I was, it was easier for me than it would be for many cultural groups or for women to engage in leadership, but I still felt marginalized at the beginning, and then gained greater and greater efficacy as I had my various experiences. So it was a very powerful period that really shaped my view of what was possible in terms of leadership.
Scott Allen 5:07
You know, it was a similar story for me, I was not a musician, I wish I would have been my only musician days, I played the baritone. And that was not the sexiest instrument by any stretch of the imagination, right? You know. So even in the band, I'm like, down five or six rungs, I'm sorry if you played the baritone. But, you know, it was for me. The setting for me, as you know, was Greek life. Were really, it was the first time I'd ever taken on any type of leadership role and had had never identified as someone who could lead. And so it was a very transformational time. And then my time in Oxford, reading, and I just set up a podcast with Jim Kouzes. And I'm so excited Denny because I can't wait to have a conversation with him. You may remember one of my first bosses, Bob Cottrell took us through The Leadership Challenge. And that's where for me it really the light bulbs went off that this is an area that people study, this is an area that people explore. So finding you at Miami University, and even some of the lunches that we would have, and we would talk about this because as I was starting my Ph.D. program, we would talk, and it was just really, really meaningful to have someone as engaged in the topic as you. And again, I remember it like yesterday, like Heifetz's book had just come out in a year, you're reading it. You said, "you should read this!"
Denny Roberts 6:42
and see what's central on this. And I think it's really central not only to the identity that probably you and I share, but it is also I think, characteristic of people who are more inclined to really engage in leadership. And that's curiosity. I mean, it's a, it's small, it's not a big word. It's not complicated, but it's simply being curious about your surroundings, and about other people and about other cultures. And that's what is just a huge Spark, in terms of allowing us, I think, to want to do something bigger and better. And you asked about my international experience. I mean, I didn't even have a passport until 2005. Well, and in 2005, unique, a unique opportunity that mine he had was this Luxembourg campus. And I went over as, quote, a visiting scholar. So I taught. And then I also wrote the book that came out in 2007, the Deeper Learning in Leadership during that period of time, but what I did, and it was the most efficient writing exercise of my entire life experience. I had a goal every week. I took all my materials with me to Luxembourg. My goal was to complete a chapter a week. And wow, if I could complete a chapter a week, then I got I had a Eurail pass, I could go anywhere in Europe. I wanted to go guess how many deadlines I missed?
Scott Allen 8:20
Zero! Cuz you went to see Bruges!
Denny Roberts 8:27
I wanted to see everything. So I would literally work my butt off from Sunday night, Thursday night. And then I jump on a train on Friday morning. And I go somewhere in Europe, you know, and I, I went to Berlin, to Vienna to Paris and, you know, and to Bruges. And I mean, it went to all of these just crazy places, completely going outside of my comfort zone, every time. Because most of the time, I was one of the few single language speakers in most environments I was in, you know, so most people were speaking French and German and various languages around me while I only had English, so I had to kind of stumble through that. But, man, it gave me trust in humanity. It gave me an incredible experience of just curiosity and expanding beyond myself. And that's what ultimately led me to want to go to Qatar. You know, when I was offered the opportunity to go over there, I jumped out at it even though it was an incredibly difficult period of time, in my family and I had to leave my wife and Oxford, Ohio, you know, you stayed back. And those were not easy times from a personal point of view. But the man from a developmental point of view and really expanding my world perspective. It was incredible really contribute a lot. Yep.
Scott Allen 9:56
Well, I want to go I want to go to gosh, I'm gonna get the year wrong, Denny, but you wrote a book, or you were a lead author on? Was it 1981 or 82? where you started to 81? Okay, and I have a copy of it, it's on campus. But that was one of the first publications I came across that really started to try and define some of our terminologies that I came across. And, you know, there's been all these arguments back and forth about defining leadership and how we define that. And you can go to Joseph Rost, and you can go to any number of other scholars who have explored that conversation. And one thing I think we both have a passion for is maybe not precision. But can we get to a general place of understanding what we're actually trying to do? What are we trying to develop? And what does that mean? And so you and I have had that that was the first time so I'd love to go there, how that conversation came along, then you and I wrote an article in 2011. And I'd love to get some of your contemporary thinking of the topic, because I think having, again, I'm not interested in having it buttoned up and that I am correct. And this is what's right to quote-unquote. But I think we have to do a better job of having some baseline understandings of what we're trying to accomplish in certain situations.
Denny Roberts 11:30
Exactly. Well, that whole exercise that resulted in the 1981 book, Student Leadership Programs in Higher Education. It came about as a result of, first of all, my being I had gone to the University of Maryland as an assistant director of orientation showed up on July 1, 1973, and my boss quit. So you said I'm acting director, right. And a guy by the Bud Thomas hired me to do director permanently then after that, but then within a couple of years, he and another guy whose name was Drew Bagwell, who is huge and fraternity work, decided that we needed to do something at Maryland, more specifically related to leadership. And so they had seen me cultivate leadership in the orientation programs, I thought that I would be a good prospect for this. So they invited me to do it. And I said, Sure, I'll do it. And I went to the American College Personnel Association meeting that spring of 1976. And there was this meeting of activities and Greek life people altogether, and there was just a general question that was put out to the audience. They a lot of people had been talking about doing stuff in relation to leadership learning. But nobody had models. Nobody had anything that they have shared language that they could actually use to deepen the work. So they asked everybody out there that would be willing to share a task force that would basically dig into these ideas. So I was stupid enough and curious enough that I raised my hand. And so I ended up being the taskforce chair. And what happened was that there was just a really awesome group of people that I worked with, in terms of doing a snail mail survey of campuses across the country in terms of what they were doing and leadership. And then we built that those hard copy files if you can believe it. And then we sorted through it and came up with a variety of kind of conclusions, that was exactly like what you're saying. They weren't the end all be all. But they were the conversation starters to help to get leadership educators, at least kind of on the same wavelength so that we could at least figure out whether we were talking about the same thing or not. Yes. And so that book, you know, I edited it and offered a couple of chapters within it. And, you know, it was published by American College Personnel Association, so it didn't get a lot of wide distribution in the academic world, even though it's ironic. I don't know if you remember where Barbara Kellerman and Professionalizing Leadership meant to do I name, you know, I'm reading along and I'm going like, you know, I'm getting really mad, right, because she's talking about training, education and development and me going, Hey, hey, those are our ideas. And then, and then finally, she says, oh, and there was this guy Denny Roberts he wrote that he did some work something on this, right. And so it was just incredible that she even knew that it exists or she didn't know the year. And, you know, I know she's never read the book. I love her to death and she's a good good friend. And just a really wonderful person. But she'd not read the book, you know,
Scott Allen 15:05
it's a hard book to find I had to work, it is definitely
Denny Roberts 15:09
the last time I looked on. on eBay, it was like going for $150. It was probably worth $12. I don't know what it was. But so that book really did start to try to create some language and some aspiration, because for the most part, what people were doing was really kind of a hodgepodge approach, you know, and it's a combination of retreats and speakers and those kinds of things. And there really was not much to it. So we came up with the Training, Education and Development idea as being a way to think about kind of the depth of what you might do. Yep. And I won't try to even define the particular words, because that isn't what's important. Now, what's important is to have a way to talk about what are we trying to accomplish here? And particularly when you look at the development aspect of it, what we now know from research, is that true leadership learning is this lifelong journey that combines knowledge, experience, experience, experimentation, risk-taking identity development, it's a whole constellation of things. Yep. that is required in order for true leadership development to occur. And Barbara's book, you know, Professionalizing Leadership talks about the military as being one example that has that long-term commitment. Yep. And unfortunately, in higher education, and, you know, this is where my Deeper Learning Leadership book is important. In Deeper Learning and Leadership, I not only talk about training, education, development, but I talk about this holistic journey of leadership learning, and I also critique higher education. And I critique it from the standpoint that I think higher education has become very bureaucratized and it's siloed. As a result of that, you know, and it's not only siloed across administrative units but it's siloed. In terms of disciplines, it's siloed. In so so many ways, that really makes all sorts of kinds of learning difficulties, but particularly where it's related to leadership learning. One of the other things that we know from the multi-institution study of leadership is that it isn't a leadership course, or being a leadership major that makes the difference. It's a whole succession of related ideas that affect the student experience. And that's really what I think. I mean, that's where we fall short in higher education. I mean, time and time again, when I talk to my colleagues across the country, when I consult, I find that what they're battling is either disciplinary silos or administrative silos that keep campuses from actually achieving what they want to accomplish. It's a fascinating problem, and I don't, I don't know that we have it nailed yet. What I am happy about is that the process that you mentioned earlier, which is the task force, and ILA, by standards, which it's also interesting that we ended up not using the word standard. Because we just couldn't go there. The group was not ready to go to a standard, but what we did agree to was principles. And so going back to our language, Scott in 2011, we talk about Principled Universalism. That's a term we'll use. We just have a high fluting word or phrase for let's get a basic agreement about what we're trying to do. And then let's have a conversation about And really the ILA paper as it starts to come out, and I pray that people will understand that as a principle universalistic approach rather than nitpicking and trying to define all the details that sometimes get us tripped up, and I don't want to ignore the fact that details are important. I understand that. But as a person who in my entire life, in terms of work and writing, and consulting has always been about being a translator and integrator, that's who I've always been. Yep. And I just think that it's that we have to work harder to integrate well What we're doing, and to translate what we're doing, and especially when you're talking about an international kind of a context, I mean, the differences around the world in different cultures are vast. And you can't dictate internationally a model that is going to be in opposition to a specific culture, you just can't do that. So the whole process has been amazing.
Scott Allen 20:28
I literally just had a flashback to a meal that we had in Oxford. And it was as I was beginning, my Ph. D. program. And it's really fascinating because this is one of those examples of like, a seed that you probably this is what 1998, 1999, 2000, maybe at probably 2000-2001. Maybe it was 2002! I keep going up! But it was interesting because I think you made a similar statement to that I was talking about all of the different theories and everyone feeling like they're right. And you said something to the effect of, look, what's important is that there's a general agreement and that this is pragmatic, and it's translated so that it's useful for people to actually integrate into their practice. And you can get lost in these arguments, of semantics. But, and so it was really cool to hear Denny, because, at the time, I think when you get into some of your academic work, you feel like, well, I don't know, I don't know how to explain this and put it into words right now. But the theory part of it is highly valued. And being a translator piece is not necessarily as valued, it's not as accessible. In some ways, there aren't journals that you can have a position at a research one and be published in a highly pragmatic journal, you know, it's the whole system that pushes you in a certain direction, which I think at times, because, you know, I've said this, a lot of times to colleagues, if we gave the average CEO right now, the Academy of Management Journal, the latest issue, they would look at that and say, What world is this? So I always felt a little bit lost, because I love the theory. I love it. But I also wonder, how do we make sure that this actually translates and is useful for people to access and inform their day-to-day? Because it's hard work-leading.
Denny Roberts 22:46
Absolutely. You know, and, and I know that academics want things to translate in I mean, there's, at least in my, my soul, I've always wanted, you don't write just to be, you know, getting it into print and as an ego gratification sort of thing. You want people to hear it you want it to make a difference. So I know that academics want their insights to be shared. But what is so sad about that is that sometimes as we create these competitive academic environments, where you try to outdo each other, in terms of your scholarship and the reach of your scholarship, sometimes we lose then the potential to be generative scholars and build on each other's work, and actually contribute to advancing in a reasonable progression that takes us to really some profound understandings, and the academic community really does value the independent scholarship and the identification of something that is highly cited in that kind of thing. And, you know, I mean, that my work, you know, I mean, I've, I've been involved in quite a bit of writing. But, you know, my work has not saturated the field of Leadership Studies in nearly the sort of way as a typical faculty member would, you know, what am I one of my other favorite colleagues, this is Susan Komives, and she and I have collaborated on a couple of things, and we probably email each other on a weekly basis. You know, so we're in a lot of contacts, and Susan chose a totally different path. Her path was to really center on the scholarship of the advancement of leadership learning and she's, you know, she's I haven't looked at Google Scholar lately, but I can't imagine that she isn't way up there in terms of citations and I love her work and the thing that probably means so much to me is that she values the contribution that I've made as a translator/integrator. Yep. And even though my saturation of scholarship isn't nearly of the level that she has achieved. I'm very, very proud and satisfied that I've kind of walked the path of that middle ground. Which is both being a practitioner as well as a scholar. I mean, I've tried to kind of be both, but you do kind of get lost in the wilderness in between...
Scott Allen 25:40
I'm not John Maxwell, but I'm also not, you know, Bruce Avolio. Where am I here?
Denny Roberts 25:50
Exactly?
Scott Allen 25:52
Well, I want to land on to final, like threads of conversation if possible. One, what were some reflections on the task force? And what should listeners be kind of interested in knowing a little bit more about and what? It could just be the process that something? That's a couple of thing that stood out for you about the process? And then also, what year did you join the ILA? And how have you seen things - I just had a conversation with sin, cherry, and that's going to be released, probably next week, that that podcast episode. And it was fun to hear her talk about kind of her reflections on the International Leadership Association. So I would do want to get there as well. How have you seen things grow and develop over the last few decades based on where they started? Where you entered, at least because I imagine it was fairly early?
Denny Roberts 26:47
Well, when when I entered I mean, as I said, in terms of the leadership educator world, I entered it in 1976. But that was primarily through student affairs, people. And for the following two decades after that, I kept looking for ways to connect with academics. And so I did it in a variety of ways. John Gardner had a wonderful series of meetings that I participated in. There was an initiative that was headed by Irving Spitzberg. I don't know if you even know that name. Irving Spitzberg, I think I can't remember that was ACE. I think it was ACE. He had the grant to pull basically, scholars together on leadership. And in all of these things, I kept saying people talk, talk to each other. I kept saying it, nobody would listen, nobody would listen. And then all of a sudden, I show up at this kind of bizarre meeting in Los Angeles. And Cyn Cherry was the kind of local arrangements chair, but guess who was the intellectual chair and the convener of the meeting? Barbara Kellerman And Barbara, and her wonderful way, you know, just was very, very provocative in the meeting and just did wonderful stuff in terms of really stimulating a significant conversation. And my blood was boiling the entire time. Because there was very little recognition of the contribution of the co-curricular or the Student Affairs and leadership. So what did I do? I went up directly after leaving, and I said, Barbara, we're out here. We're doing this. And she said, Well, help me How can we fix that? And I said I will. And so that was minus one. ILA. And so the first ILA then occurred the following year, and Barbara asked me to pull together names and addresses for my network of student leadership educators that were primarily in the co-curricular arena. And I did that. And then I contributed that to the first meeting, lots of our friends showed up, which was just wonderful. And, you know, they're still there. And I actually is the first place where there has been at least a home base for both Student Affairs leadership educators as well as leadership scholars. And that has been just wonderfully empowering to me, gratifying to me. I mean, at least we're having those conversations. And so I actually served as the first chair of the member interest group, that was for a quote, leadership educators for several years. And then and then you know, I mean, My problem in this kind of integrator, and kind of chameleon, and I don't even know what you want to call me, but I get, I get so interested in so many ideas that I get distracted. I always come back to leadership. But I did get distracted after doing the ILA thing for several years. And then I kind of wandered away, and then I wandered back, literally, came back in a later time. So I missed a couple of meetings, but I've been to most of the ILA meetings and have always benefited from being a part of that network. So, you know, and I don't know, frankly, why Cyn, you know, invited me to serve on that task force group, I guess, you know, our history goes way back, she and I knew each other when we were back in Texas days. So this is ancient history, and no reflection on our age or anything, because, Cyn's very young. But, you know, she invited me to be a part of the task group. And, and the group that was assembled, actually, most of the people were not known to me, I knew a few, but most of them were not. And, you know, the process was, you know, a series of meetings we had intended to do face to face, but obviously, the pandemic prohibited that. So we did everything virtually. Okay. And we work pretty hard. We have subgroups that worked on different sections of it. And a particular section that I worked on, which you will not be surprised at this was the conceptual framework. Which is kind of the big, the big picture sorts of things. So the principles document actually has five categories. The first is context. The second is the conceptual framework, the rest of it is, I think, learning and education. And then the last, the fifth dimension is research and assessment. What is the fourth dimension, I can't remember it right off the top of my head, but it has four to five different sections. And we had task groups that worked in each of those five different sections, we put the paper together and then tried to integrate throughout. And, you know, as a document, when that is released to ILA for discussion, it really is intended to be a catalyst. And, you know, I hope that the principles do survive, you know, the review process and the revision process because I think they have a lot of merits. But surely, you know, there's going to be a lot of revision to it and improvement as well. So I think it's an ongoing journey, one that has to be done. And that was one of the really compelling things for us as a task group was that, you know, we've got to do a better job of leadership learning, we've, we've got to document our outcomes, we have to know what we're trying to accomplish. Yes, we have to have a focus on our efforts. I mean, we need those kinds of things. And although standards would have been possible, the standards probably would have fired up more resistance than it would have been worth. So, therefore, identifying principles was the best path. I think, eventually, you know, there may be a day when there will be a standard that will be created. But I think that we will need to advance, you know, our understandings a little bit more deeply before we're ready to go to that level. But at least for now, the principles I think, should be a really, really helpful conversation for ILA and for others.
Scott Allen 33:41
Well, my conversation with Barbara Kellerman, may have been last September, maybe it was last summer sometime. I had not read Professionalizing Leadership. And I thought that was a really, again, provocative, interesting read, that just really makes you think about what we're doing. And I think for me, that's the most important are we intentional about what we're trying to accomplish? Are we measuring our ability to accomplish that? And in other industries, like pilot training or surgeon, there are efforts to do that in a different context. So there are different nuances. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison in any sense. But, you know, how do we "up our game" a little bit from maybe where we've been?
Denny Roberts 34:32
Absolutely. You know, and Barbara has been so effective over the years to try to provoke you to know, and she, she doesn't necessarily seek consensus. I mean, that's that is rarely her purpose. You know, her purpose is most often to bring a new perspective. I mean, I just read not too long ago, the new book on Leaders Who Lust I don't know, I've read that. I haven't it hasn't been released.
Scott Allen 35:01
Okay. She was tonight when I spoke with her she was working on that.
Denny Roberts 35:06
It's very provocative.
Scott Allen 35:11
Well, she was also working on the follow-up to that, which is the enablers, which was, you know, exploring some of Donald Trump's circle is what she was investigating at that point. So
Denny Roberts 35:24
She does good stuff. Really, really good stuff, huh?
Scott Allen 35:27
Well, Denny, as we wind down, maybe share with listeners, some things that you've been reading or listening to, or streaming lately, doesn't have to have anything to do with leadership, but just something that listeners may be interested in? What stood out for you?
Denny Roberts 35:44
Well, as you mentioned, as we started off, I have this crazy blog that I've been doing since 2005. And I don't even know how many entries are on the crazy thing at this point. I mean, there's a lot of them. Some years have been more productive than others. But, you know, I review a lot of different things. I do review new documents in the leadership world. But I also look at issues of spirituality, I look at lots of music. You know, I'm because of my background and music and an undergraduate degree in music. I love reading about composers and how they came to their ideas and how they exhibited leadership and their own sort of way. And for anyone that is not really studied music much. I mean, there are lots of resources out there that are available that are very accessible, it's easy to understand what is being communicated. And musicians are a fantastic example of complicated leadership. You know, they really are because you're dealing with trying to create a voice so that others will understand. You're trying to bring disparate instruments and perspectives together. You're trying to push the envelope without going so far that you turn people off, you know, which is back to a Heifetz idea. You know, from the balcony sort of thing. And so, I do a lot in terms of music on my blog, the Pursuing Leadership by Denny, and, you know, some of the composers that I've read most recently read a biography of Sibelius, which was wonderful. I read a biography of Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Ravel, I mean, these are all composers that I play, you know, on piano, as well as I listened to, but every one of those composers that I just mentioned, push the envelope in very different sorts of ways. And they provided leadership that really exemplified their whole cultural, you know, world. So I do a lot of that area. Some of the podcasts I follow. Actually, my oldest daughter, who you may remember, Devon, works for SAP, which is an international software company out of Germany. And she's a part of something that SAP is doing called SAP Insights. Okay, they've created these great little video programs called Blank Canvas. And they took some research, and kind of put it in action in these blank canvas videos, that explore what they call the passionate and the passionate are people of all ages, that tend to want to make a difference in the world. And their research indicates that the passionates are actually more present in Gen X or the Millennial world. And the important issue there is that what SAP is saying to everybody that relies on their products, is you'd better understand who you're selling your products to. You need to understand that. And you are selling into a market that's full of Passionates and the quicker you understand that the more successful you will be. I love these podcasts.
Scott Allen 39:29
Okay, interesting.
Denny Roberts 39:30
Google it SAP insights and its Blank Canvas. It's very, very interesting. They've also done another one on Ian Bremmer, I don't know if you know of Ian Bremmer, but he is an internationalist. Park Connor, he's another internationalist. So I follow him. And then I love Trevor Noah So that's my eclectic group of kind of things that I listened to in terms of the streaming world, besides, you know all the stuff that I do with music,
Scott Allen 40:03
what was the last concert you went to?
Denny Roberts 40:06
Oh, wow, geez. Because this is sad. I mean, it's been so long since I've been to a concert. It would have been. I mean, it would have been a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert. But I'm embarrassed that I can't remember exactly what it was. I mean, the last season that CSO had was a pretty rockstar period of time. I mean, they did a concert version of Verdi's Aida, which, again is a fascinating study and leadership. They also did gosh what was it? Well,, I can't remember the concert schedule. But they do fabulous work. And, you know, one of the really wonderful minds in terms of the arts and culture world is Riccardo Muti, who is the conductor of the Chicago Symphony. And he's all about connecting. And he connects to different cultures, different people. And he is deeply passionate about, you know, trying to use music to, to bridge and that's one of the things that I value most these days is trying to bridge across culture and age and socio-economic every kind of distance that we have. We need a bridge at all.
Scott Allen 41:25
Trying to bridge maybe the maybe that's what we'll call the episode, Denny Roberts.
Denny Roberts 41:31
Trying to bridge that sounds pretty good to me.
Scott Allen 41:34
I like it. I like it. Okay, sir. So, so fun to catch up with you, say hello, connect. And can you hear where you are and what you're thinking about? Thank you for the work that you have done. Obviously, it had an impact on me. And obviously, I had the honor then of writing with you, and you continue to help push that envelope forward. And I think that's just absolutely incredible. And so, Denny Roberts, Dr. Denny Roberts, Thank you, sir. We appreciate you.
Denny Roberts 42:07
It's an honor to be a part of it. Thank you, Scott.
Scott Allen 42:10
Okay, have a great day. All right.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai