photo by Lara Herscovitch
One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our personal values. We each identify our top five values, writing one each on five index cards. Then we have to drop one, and another… until we are left holding the card with our number one, top value. What is your current One right now and why?
When I worked that exercise – and I’ve done it a number of times now – what I’ve landed on each time is integrity.
For me, integrity is the work of reconciling tensions. When faced with choices where there’s a cognitive dissonance, when two values are competing, how do you work through that? Acknowledging the tensions that exist, what’s the synthesis – rather than just allowing the dissonance to persist. That is work of integration of values with what we see in the world.
Can you say more about how you see integrity as an arbiter of tensions?
Being who you say you be. Trying to act in a way that’s consistent with your self-image or what you want to claim is your self-image. It’s walking the talk. There’s learning that goes along with it; if you see something clearly, not acting as if you don’t see it. It is not about getting it right the first time – one inevitably stumbles the mumble before gaining the awareness and skill to walk the talk.
I remember one particular learning moment in CLP. I had re-told a story that involved a Black person who had used the N-word, and in telling my story, I quoted that person. A Black member of the cohort came up afterwards and said, “When I hear that word, it feels like an electric shock going through my body.”
I partly took in what she said, and was defensively explaining what the circumstance was, trying to shift it a little bit by quoting the person. She said, “Do you realize you just used that word again?”
That finally made it click for me. I could finally see and feel the effect the word can have. I can’t un-see that effect and I’ve not spoken the word since. I am grateful to her – it was a courageous thing for her to do – and she did it with grace and force.
I hear you naming integrity as something existing within yourself, and also in the truth of the world around you.
Right. And realizing that my grasp of the truth of the world around me is only partial. An attitude of integrity is a commitment to expanding the piece of the truth that I’m aware of.
A lot of it is in how you show up for other people. It’s in interactions with others – being who you say you are, and growing and adjusting who and how you are.
What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?
One is connected to what we were just talking about – what are the patterns of behavior I have that don’t serve my intentions, or that will lead to dynamics getting stuck. I’ve been working with a coach on that, in the context of both personal matters and in groups I work with.
It’s challenging and illuminating work. So it’s a big leadership question – what’s my practice? How do I show up? How do I influence others or fall into patterns that don’t produce productive influence?
I aspire to Marshall Ganz’s definition of leadership: take responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. So, the leadership question for me is: “What patterns of my own behavior get in the way for others?”
And ourselves.
Right, and ourselves. I don’t have a particular pattern to lift up here – we all have lots and lots of them. But that’s one big set of leadership questions that I wrestle with. Because the patterns have become so habitual, it does take a lot of psychic energy to work on them. Working on patterns isn’t like saying, “I’ll pay the bills this evening,” a mechanical activity you know how to do. It’s one that really involves much more probing.
The other big leadership question is: “What’s my role at the moment?” It’s a different time than when we were starting the programs, offering something unusual or different in response to what I thought I heard folks asking for – a combination of what they actually said and what I was able to hear.
Those programs have developed and grown way beyond what I would or could have expected in the beginning. And because of the intent of the programs – to respond to the yearning of the community – it is appropriate for me to be stepping back and others to be stepping forward.
Within Jean’s and my illnesses, I needed to step back from being in front of the room in CLP and let others move it forward, which they were fully competent to do. I was forced to let go of what could have become micromanaging and a key-person dependency. So my role shifted out of necessity, but I think to the benefit of the purpose and vision.
I’m working on discerning the specifics of what’s next. Some will be related to seeing that a story gets told about what’s happened. In my academic background, if you do the research, you’ve got to publish it. It’s a way of making the contribution permanent in the sciences, as much as possible.
With CLP and CEIO, how to tell that story – and who tells it – is a fascinating question in itself. It can’t be just my voice, because that would contradict the purpose of the programs. One big, collective leadership challenge is supporting our community in developing its own voice and vision – what we want to become.
Is your excitement about telling the story of CLP and CEIO about making sense of what’s happened over time?
I think it is, and it’s also the sense of engagement with other people. During Jean’s illness and then the isolation of the pandemic, I spent a lot of time alone. Values or leadership don’t exist in a vacuum – they exist all in relationships. So I’m missing the dynamics of relationships, conversations like this, and how they’re generative. From a personal point of view, it’s the resonance and clarity that I find continually stimulating. Can’t do that by myself.
What inspires you, gives you hope these days?
I think earlier in my work, particularly when I was a bench scientist–
Excuse me for interrupting – bench?
Meaning, you work in a laboratory at the lab bench; it means you’re actively involved in experimentation and analysis or as a scientist observing the field.
What was energizing and inspiring then, was figuring out puzzles. I’d say, ‘Oh! I can see a way of making sense of this.’ Today, if I can see something and make sense of it, that may be interesting, like sussing out the theme to a crossword puzzle. But what’s truly energizing is conversation that is really leading to some insight or some different ways of seeing how to move forward. What is inspiring now is a collective process, getting to what helps us move forward.
Is that excitement about collective movement also the origin of CLP and CEIO?
There was the desire, yes. What I heard in the initial interviews that led to CLP, though I hadn’t put it in this language before, was a desire on many folks’ part to be a contributor to larger, collective agency.
And that’s now 20 years ago?
20 years ago, yes. I didn’t think of it then as collective agency, just that people said they wanted to be part of something larger than themselves. Taking it a step further now, I would say it is a sense of collective agency and also how many people want that collective to be more inclusive than it has been in the past.
I’m curious, given your involvement also with national nonprofit work, in this answer are you thinking New Haven, greater New Haven, Connecticut, or the U.S.?
That’s a good question, and the answer is yes.
In New Haven, I get to see people, and get a firsthand sense of what’s happening from the interaction. When I was on one research project, I went and dug holes in the ground in 44 states to collect samples. So when we got to looking at the data, I could remember and see where each of them had come from, which often helped illuminate patterns and clear up puzzles.
I think it’s the same now, collecting disparate pieces of data, or different stories. For me, it’s a continuing place of learning.
One thing that’s exciting to me about New Haven is how people run into each other. The attitudes and awareness aren’t limited to what goes on in the CLP cohort or in the program, but carries over to who we run into in the community.
Much of that leadership learning is inevitably going to be local, in the sense that it’s based on interpersonal interaction. And frequently in CLP, much of it is based on interactions that are improbable, in the sense that it’s with people who you hadn’t thought of as being in your network.
Again, for me that’s a carryover from my previous career where there was no telling what direction a measurement finding or discussion might take you. I’ll spare you the five minutes of geek-talk digression on the specifics of that. [laughing]
No need to spare me, I’ll at least nod politely if I’m not following the science. [laughing]
My first publication was on the interaction of fungi and tree roots. I discovered that what was previously thought to be a very rare mineral — known in only three locations in North America — was actually ubiquitous and present as microscopic crystals on the outsides of almost all fungi that were connected with tree roots. And the presence of that mineral was evidence that the fungi were producing a particular acid. That acid, in turn, was interacting with soil minerals to make nutrients more available to the trees.
The findings were not at all what I was looking for, but they ended up leading to some significant unexpected insights. So there is that sense of curiosity that I find is baked into me by temperament, and is rewarded by science.
It’s a compelling combination of perspectives; scientist-researcher applying those perspectives into community co-creation leadership.
In science I did see, many times, how ideas from one field could be carried into another – with paradigm-shifting results. In fact, the question about fungi’s interdependent relationship with trees is the same thing that Leah Penniman was describing during her 2023 Visionary Leadership Award from the International Festival of Arts and Ideas — her interest in what mycorrhrizal fungi did with the sugar from Mother Pine Tree.
I hear a powerful through line around co-creation, sharing agency and generating more agency collectively. I’m curious about the chickens and the eggs – or the fungi and the trees, the interconnectedness and sharing of nutrients and creating more nutrients because of the relationships. I know you weren’t thinking of CLP when you were a bench scientist, but – no pun intended – it sounds like the roots were there. Did that process include any individual role models?
Yes. Karl Turkian was the professor who ran the lab I was fortunate enough to work in for nearly 20 years. He had a deep curiosity and a tolerance for mistakes.
If an experiment didn’t turn out the way you expected, it wasn’t necessarily a failure, but an opportunity to examine how Mother Nature’s expectations were different than yours. One Karl anecdote: We’d gotten a new piece of lab equipment, and I discovered it could detect an isotope we didn’t expect. I excitedly told Karl. His response: “Great! So what?” I didn’t have an answer in the moment, but Karl’s question was a challenge and pursuing it led to a number of different things — including tracing the source of pollutants and validating meteorological computer models.
Like the discoveries about the fungi, paying attention to seemingly small, unexpected things led to asking new questions that in turn led to significant new insights.
CLP became consciously evolving as a space for learning and discovery too — where any learning or growth ‘mistakes’ did not harm folks outside the cohort, and within the cohort could be addressed, repaired, and learned from. It was an opportunity for discovery amongst participants who had common reasons for being together.
I had seen how powerful that approach was in scientific research, and how rare it was in the nonprofit sector. And what I heard in the initial interviews with folks in greater New Haven, was that they were hungry for it. Maybe I picked up on it because it was part of my background and experience.
And you were yearning for it too, maybe.
Yes, that’s right, I was yearning for it too.
I don’t know anybody who isn’t.
Right. Many years ago, I was home alone watching Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s TV series Cosmos. One of the episodes was titled “The Clean Room.” The focus was on Clair Patterson (also known as “Pat”), who, as a graduate student, was assigned to measure lead in meteorites.
Pat was a very meticulous, picky person, he would keep checking his blanks — running an analysis without an actual sample to determine how much lead in a measurement comes from contamination. Turned out there was lead contamination everywhere and he had to build a separate laboratory, a “Clean Room.”
It took him two years before he could understand where the contamination came from and get his lab clean enough to study lead from the meteorites.
He ultimately found that lead contamination was coming from gasoline, which at the time had lead added to it. Once he saw how pervasive that pollution was, plus knowing the toxicity of lead, he couldn’t un-see it or let go of it. He was not political, but his agitation about the consequences of his discoveries led him to testify to Congress. His testimony, and the rigor of the science behind it, was instrumental in changing the law to prohibit lead in gasoline.
In an oral history interview, he said, ‘I’m not some brilliant scientist, I’m just a little kid who sees what he sees and can’t shut up about it.’
At the end of the Cosmos animation, they showed a photograph of Pat in his lab. I teared up; the photo was from a time when I had known him. Although pugnacious and dogged in pursuing what he saw, he was also very humble. In our research collective, he never spoke about testifying before Congress or the impact that he’d had.
I had been this close to someone – a professor and a bench scientist – who had that much impact on society, and I didn’t know it. This was an after-his-death discovery; I had just seen him as a humble, persnickety and insightful scientist.
He had that impact just because he was determined to follow up on what he saw as his piece of truth. He did it simply because he couldn’t not do it, even if it was a challenge to orthodoxy.
I find it both humbling and inspiring to be reminded that we often cannot tell where pursuing our piece of truth may lead us.
Amen. It’s really interesting to hear how some of the dots connect in your life experience. I’ve also wondered about the relationship between CLP and your connection with the Quaker faith. Did you grow up in religion?
My first experience with organized religion was when I went to a boarding school where attendance at chapel was mandatory eight times a week. It was a very big difference from never having gone to any religious services with my parents.
That’s a big culture change.
It was, particularly for a 14 year-old.
One of the first sermons I heard was on the Parable of the Sower. Today, my reading of it would focus on planting a vision in fertile soil and nurturing community to grow together. But as a teenager, the message I got from it was that we students were at risk of being disappointments if we didn’t conform to expectations — I felt the unspoken link between conformity and belonging.
Seemingly accidentally, a couple years ago I happened upon some internet links about boarding schools in the U.S, and learned that there were two waves of church-founded boarding schools. The first wave, in the early part of the 1800s, were founded to help individuals serve their community, either as clergy or in secular roles.
It turned out that the second wave, in the second half of the 1800s, shared those intentions, and also had a concern for preserving the social status of their students. These “elites” worried about how they would retain their status and relative privilege in a time of social change and new generational wealth.
One fellow went so far as to publish a list known as “The 400” — names of “the” 400 New Yorkers whose parties theoretically one would want to be invited to.
I read through the list of names, and recognized more than a dozen from my school. I realized I had been in the belly of the beast, so to speak — an institution set up in part to preserve the status and secure social position, without ever saying explicitly that’s what it was. As a teenager I experienced these messages as being coded rather than explicit.
Another shorthand for “The 400” was “polite society.” Discovering this on the internet helped explain an old memory: One day in my first couple of months at the school I was sitting at my assigned table at the far end from the teacher at the head. The teacher asked if anyone would like some more dessert. I eagerly passed my plate down, and was quickly scolded by him: “Graustein?? In ordinary polite society you come last.”
Though the consequences of coming last were not specified, the message seemed both bizarre and significant. I was both the privileged and the coming-last. It was a memorable moment (leading me to also get some satisfying dorm cred by being able to do an imitation of that grumpy and unkind teacher).
Layers of awareness of the community and societal significance of those early scenes are still unfolding for me. I carry blinders, but also some of the sensibilities of how exclusion works and feels and an awareness of how deeply rooted in history patterns of privilege are.
Thank you for sharing and illuminating that. When did your journey connect with the Quakers?
I dated a Quaker in college; her family was the first one I’d run into that talked about their religion as something that was part of daily life and awareness, in a low-key way. It was not something they felt they needed to conform to, but a community that accepted them, invited reflection, and provided supportive guides rather than saying ‘you need to get this right.’
I found that the Quaker form of worship focused on paying attention to what is moving and alive for oneself in the moment, not from an assertion of one’s will or ego, but quite the opposite — sort of a CLP-equivalent of noticing what I’m feeling and being actively curious about what others are feeling. Holding that and seeing what emerges — it was what I needed at that point in my spiritual growth.
I saw within Friends practices an assumption that each person has some small piece of the truth — and the effect of the group was to help clarify that rather than dictate it. I found that really appealing, and that’s also in a way what informed some of the work in CLP about paying attention to what people bring to the group.
My curiosity found a good home amongst Friends, because I was curious about other people’s spiritual experiences. And I’m still curious about that question: “What is alive for you right now?”
That actually leads to the next question, and how transformational change is hard. Stepping in, stepping up, over time, can be draining – physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychically, spiritually. How do you recharge, restore, take care of yourself, rekindle your fire?
That’s a difficult question. The isolation of the pandemic has really been a challenge, and my and Jean’s health issues before that.
I don’t have a good discipline for it. I find myself not reaching out as much; the telephone’s been quieter. I’ve got lots of friends, but I rarely pick up the phone to reach out. I often feel like I need to be in an upbeat or positive place, and the times that I really need to pick up the phone are when I’m not.
I suspect that’s common.
I do too.
I’ve always been more of a serious person, and enjoyed thoughtful conversations — sometimes to the detriment of having fun, just goofing off. I find that people I’ve known for a long time in some ways are easiest to hang with, because they knew me before my current role. I feel a sense of respect from the community, for which I am grateful, and I also feel the limitation, the box around it.
I also have irreverent, playful and wise-ass sides, and I’m aware of the need to be judicious about where and when — even though it still sometimes gets the better of me. [laughing]
Is humor one of the ways you recharge?
Yes, I think it is. But in the pandemic, I tended to turn more towards numbing out rather than engaging. That’s something I want to work on.
What do you aspire to bring back in?
Other people. When I would walk around in Westville, particularly in the first year of the pandemic, I’d often run into CLP alums, and there would be a sort of lighting up, a sense of being really glad to see each other, a mutual affirmation.
I think the CLP experience was seen as particularly valuable in the pandemic, recognizing what level of honesty, candor, and trust will it take to prevail in the face of this threat. I know I had that sense of trust from the significance of my CLP experience. I found it really powerful; it’s not the sort of thing I could manufacture. A conversation about “What’s alive for you right now?” felt both urgent and accessible.
Shortly after Jean got her ALS diagnosis, I was in shock. I was out for a walk to clear my head and ran into a CLP alum. We had a big CLP hug and ‘how-are-you-doing?’ She asked, “How is Jean?” I said, “I’m sorry to have to say this, but she’s dying.”
Seeing the shock in her reaction made me realize it was not a gracious way to convey the news. But she leaned in instead of pulling back, and said “we’ll put her on our prayer list right away. I am here for you.” I apologized for my lack of gracefulness, and she said “don’t apologize, you spoke your truth, that’s what you taught us to do.” The gift of that reflection brought tears to my eyes.
I realized as I went on with the walk that I needed to change what I say. From then on, I would say – and think – “we are living with ALS.” The change made a huge difference to both Jean and me in how we chose to use the time that remained.
I appreciate that, and it brings my thoughts to what you said about integrity – showing up fully with respect for those around you.
Yes. My role offers lots of constraints, but also some huge opportunities. That conversation — I can’t imagine it happening for me without the CLP-generated connection and trust. It was such a powerful lesson.
I deeply value the CLP connections and trust-building that enables or inspires any one of us to shed the armor we might habitually exist in.
Yes – and it’s also important to acknowledge the gift of being told the truth and its impact. I ran into the alum a year later; she said “I should go walking with you someday.” I said, “You have been for the last year, whether you knew it or not.”
After another encounter with her a few months later, I realized that I hadn’t spoken my truth that first day; I had spoken my fear. It’s still a really powerful, emotional story for me. It’s sort of about self-care, and it’s about trusting enough to do something that’s not more socially constrained, and take a risk, then find reward in an honest response.
So, at the moment what I’m really thinking about is reestablishing that self-care of connection, and paying more attention to that. My biggest vice at the moment is not turning the light out early enough. [laughing] I’m fortunate that that’s my biggest conscious struggle with a vice. But I find that turning out the light too late really gets in the way of self-care.
I’ve noticed that myself too.
I had another conversation last week with a colleague where they expressed a time when they had shown some vulnerability and what that led to, the reward from it. I found that conversation uplifting and recharging. So I work to model and act in accordance with the space I’ve been part of creating for others.
I miss direct CLP and CEIO involvement. In both of those – more so in CLP because that’s where I spent more time – the leaders would conduct a session, then the leaders and fellows would get together to debrief the session and figure out what to do next. But we were also working the same program amongst the six of us, as the cohort was working in the room. That was one of the most stimulating pieces of continued learning.
For you individually, or for the program?
For both. I think a number of things were at play, in terms of what had been really energizing. I felt my own sense of yearning for that, to be part of a larger collective agency. They say if you want to learn something, just try and teach it.
We were quite open about our lack of expertise at the beginning of CLP, and that this new program was an experiment. We invited the initial participants in, not to something we set ourselves apart from as experts, but as having some skills and insights and taking responsibility for the experience of the group.
So where we look for feedback, and what sense we make of it, was embedded early on in the process. It got refined and amplified as the process went along and different leaders brought different skills. In the beginning of CLP, it was an unusual step for me to presume to lead it. It was a really consequential decision in my life, a huge learning and connective experience for me.
Introduce us to someone you are/were close with personally (e.g., family, teacher, friend, mentor), who shaped (or shapes) you and how you view leadership and possibility for a better community/world?
My boss in the lab – Karl Turekian.
Karl was close friends with Pat Patterson. After Karl’s death, his son Vaughan wrote a tribute to him. Vaughan said when he was nine or ten, Karl went to visit Pat at his lab at Caltech. Karl and Pat got into a shouting match, which disturbed Vaughan. After Pat walked away, he asked his dad, “Why do you spend time with someone you don’t like very much?” And Karl said, “Oh, he’s one of my dearest friends, this is just our way of getting to the truth.”
Karl was one of my two major advisors for my dissertation. I acknowledged him in the dissertation for introducing me to the “techniques of creative belligerence.” My main advisor was appalled that I would say something like that. Karl’s reaction was, “as long as that’s the adjective, I don’t care what the noun is.” Basically, ‘as long as it’s creative, I’m good with it.’
I’m not a belligerent person – I tend to avoid conflict – so this was an alien world to me. But Karl also was benevolent in his belligerent theater. It was about the science, not the person. It created a space that was safe for making outrageous guesses, or following up on maybe well-grounded, but still speculative work. With a strong emphasis on ‘let’s be rigorous about how we test it.’
At one point, another “failed” idea led to a whole new line of inquiry with results that were significant for evaluating sites to isolate nuclear waste. So, “complete failure” led to something for a national problem. It wasn’t a sudden “Aha!” experience – there was a long, messy, geeky middle – but sticking with it paid off.
Those seeds again – curiosity and a safe environment for experimenting. When you point those lessons and those personality traits to community leadership, it makes sense how you got to CLP from there.
Right. It gets back to a sense of how speaking one’s truth and proposing wild ideas are fine, but be rigorous in examining and learning from them, and letting them lead you to the next learning. Curiosity and paying attention need to accompany each other; it gets back to that core value of integrity.
What do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
- Reading – I just started reading Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. I haven’t dog-eared so many pages in a long time. Another piece that’s been formative is the work on public narrative as a leadership practice by Marshall Ganz. We identify our calling or ‘story of self,’ search for the parts of the story that are common to others (the ‘story of us’), then discern what urgent choice we need to confront: the ‘story of now.’
- Listening – Krista Tippet’s On Being has been really influential; her guests have been stunning (including Daniel Kahneman on the same book themes that he won the Nobel Prize for).
- Eating – I tend to eat simple preparation of nutritious comfort food. Arethusa Farms chocolate ice cream. 505 brand green chiles. Amy’s refried black beans. Cato Corner Farm cheeses. The produce aisle at Edge of the Woods.
- Watching – Stars. And planets. It calms me just to gaze up at the night sky.
- Laughing – I recommend it.
- Wildcard – your choice – I was on a backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon, on an unmaintained trail – maybe one party going by a day. We ran into another party headed in the other direction, half a dozen in each party. We stopped, moved one person down the line and talked a little bit. The conversation was – What was the campsite like… Where was the water… What wildlife have you seen? It reminded me of CLP: we’re sharing information about the journey ahead, imagining the possibilities. I recommend looking at each other like fellow travelers, trying to imagine others as travelers where each has important information about the destinations ahead.
Which reminds me of my own vision for what we’re doing, coaxed out of me back in 2010:
In New Haven, curiosity and hope replace fear and mistrust.
The city works inclusively to imagine its future and acts effectively and compassionately to bring that future into being.
Citizens take responsibility for alleviating suffering.
Citizens accept responsibility for improving their own lives and those of people around them.
Everyone is a part of networks of human connections that make things happen.
The networks are decentralized and have many interconnections.
People believe these networks have the power to connect them with everyone else in the city.
Both individually and through networks, people have the power to move themselves to where they want to go.
When people gather to make decisions at the city, organizational or neighborhood level, those affected are included.
Everyone sees random acts of kindness and outbreaks of joy.
Everyone both hears and tells stories of change.
Learn more about Bill at CLP, CEIO, the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, and Public Allies