contributed photo
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?
I would have to say it’s integrity.
The one thing that makes me yell at the tv “news” and at the world, is hypocrisy. I have a deeply-held belief that you should say what you mean and mean what you say, and that your actions follow from that.
Of course, we change our minds; we have the right to change our minds and see things differently in various contexts, as we learn more or experience more. But integrity is a big one for me.
Does that feel recent, or has it been true for you for a long time?
I think earlier on — and it may have actually been the one I chose when I was in CLP — it might have been something more like truth. Over the years, I’ve become more and more aware that there are multiple truths especially when we are talking about social truths — and that these change, with our context, with our experience, with whatever our current perspectives are on things.
So it’s shifted a little for me — definitely from earlier on in life, where it might have been more about truth to really more of a focus on lived experience. That’s what’s led me to it being more about integrity.
I’m curious whether that journey is related to your PhD work, traveling from the idea of one objective truth into the personal responsibility that I hear in integrity?
When I was in my PhD program, I focused on interpretive research. I’ve always pushed the boundaries of that notion of objectivity; that’s never been really a core concept in the work that I do.
When I do my research, I look for trustworthiness. That has more to do with integrity, with being transparent about how you’ve come to anything you call truth, so that others can examine your path to interpretation and then they can be engaged in deciding if that works for them.
Some people still call that more “alternative research.” Although it’s credentialed and rigorous; it is actually more rigorous than when people use a notion of “objectivity” to hide their own presence.
I’m not familiar with interpretive research; can you say more about it?
When I think of interpretive research, it’s about acknowledging one’s perspectives and role, power and privilege and what statements you’re making. You may still collect data, you’re still observing, you’re going through a scientific process of inquiry, and you are also responsible for doing what I call — and what many in qualitative research call — ‘bracketing.’
You are required to self-reflect and note what’s coming up for you. How is what you are noticing relating to your past? How is what you’re seeing being interpreted or filtered through your own lived experience?
Because that bias happens all the time, of course, but you are noticing and acknowledging it?
Right. If you’re personally interested, a good description of what this looks like in practice is in a report I co-authored a number of years ago with CEIO. Many people collaborated, and I really appreciated Niyonu Spann creating a space for me to be very intentional and honest about the shared inquiry process.
What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?
It’s probably been the same one for decades, it morphs and changes as time goes on. It has to do with the connection between leadership and knowledge construction.
It’s been my life’s work, for over 20 years now. But even more so today, there’s so much positioning and promotion of notions of leadership that involve forcing people or convincing people.
For me, what’s missing is the notion of leadership as building shared knowledge. How we, with others, together, come to shared ways of understanding the world around us. And not forcing others to come to understand how we want them to show up or how we want them or the world to conform to our wishes.
For me, the work is really around leadership as bringing people together in shared meaning-making so that we understand deeply how we are each experiencing the world, the frames we are bringing to our interpretations and lived experience.
I’m curious how you see the connection between building shared knowledge and inspiring each other to the possibilities of positive change?
It’s interesting, because even saying that, it’s still our notion of positive change, our desires. And that’s absolutely human. We’re always operating from our wish for the world. And at the same time, there’s just a tension for me any time we’re entering in that way, and seeing that as the role of leaders or leadership.
Now that you are asking that, I remember, a number of years ago, I was thinking of it as “educational” leadership. And then I realized no, that was also a message of ‘I know and you don’t know’ or ‘this is the better way because I say so.’
I aspire. I can’t say that I am in any way perfect in this, but I try to remind myself and hold myself accountable to pushing at that notion.
Do you think of building shared knowledge as related to agency? For example, when a group collectively decides what it wants, does that evolution necessarily offer confidence to move in those directions?
I think when you say agency, I often qualify agency as ‘creative agency.’ Because that to me gets to the collective notion of any social change is happening because we are changing together.
Maybe that connects to the thinking of inspiring: encouraging the belief that we actually can manifest what we together imagine. Unfortunately, creative agency — for a very long time and particularly today — has become a class of people. There are people with enough money, and enough authority, and enough power, to be recognized as being able to create, and even to lead.
Has your relationship to the question of leadership and knowledge construction changed in this time that some refer to as a “post-truth era?”
I think just like shifting from the notion of educational leadership, I am continually exploring a less hierarchical notion of leadership. Back in the day, I was thinking and writing very much about social activism. When I wrote about leadership, I talked about ‘participatory democratic leadership.’ And even that’s become problematic for me — all of the things that are attached to consensus and the word democracy these days.
When I really look at it more from a knowledge construction and social construction of community, it’s much more about community for me, than it ever was in the past.
Can you say more about that?
I think the agency — the notion that we’re coming to shared meaning together — that is a form of community. Foregrounding the need, the right, the beauty in communities coming together around shared meaning. People might talk about that as culture; but it is a little bit different, because it is recognizing the frameworks through which we are understanding the world.
Knowledge for a long time — and even now — was really seen as something outside of oneself, outside of community, to be imposed or determined by someone else. And it’s not, it’s part of who we are and what we do in the world.
I’m having two big reactions. One is feeling inspired, and the other is a sadness about how much intentional disinformation is being wielded as “knowledge” or “truth,” only to reinforce political power and control. Not a new strategy, for sure, but alarming in its prevalence right now.
Yeah. There is sadness for me because I am seeing it on both sides of the aisle and even beyond politics per se. In the extremes on either side, I think we’re seeing this kind of rigidness – and such a violent reaction to each other – dogmatic doctrine.
I see it in the extremes, whatever the ‘little-p’ political is, or the ideology. I think when it gets to an extreme where you can no longer accept or acknowledge that there is another way to be in the world, it’s troubling to me, it’s very discouraging.
If there’s one thing that makes me afraid in the world — and there’s lots of things — that’s one of them. And social media, of course, reinforces it – people being able to fill themselves with just one framing of the world and never being called to examine their own rigidity.
In that case, do you see the difference as using an illusion of shared knowledge construction to manipulate people, versus healthy, actual co-creation?
Right. When we convince people that they do not have agency, that the only way that they have agency, or a sense of power in their own lives, is to connect to one particular framing or, even scarier, to one individual’s framing, it’s dangerous.
What inspires you, gives you hope these days?
I do most of my paid work in the nonprofit sector and philanthropy — working with people in foundations, nonprofit intermediaries, nonprofit organizations. Over the last year, I’ve been really surprised and inspired by the depth of the structural work being done. Deep discussions on institutionalized sexism, racism, and really trying to get at the root of these issues.
Recently, I saw a document talking about the archetype of the lone, male hero. I was a bit surprised to see people in a public way start talking about archetypes, getting that deep into what these institutional patterns and internalized belief systems are. That’s giving me hope.
Would you like to say more about where you’re seeing it?
I see it in my work nationally with philanthropy and philanthropy-serving organizations. It’s been harder to find it and create that type of awareness in Connecticut, but we’re doing it. Starting to find small pockets of people trying to do this deep change work.
It’s hard to fund it and to make the institutional and organizational changes needed to do it. But the awareness is increasing.
In the research world, I’m currently serving as chair of URBAN Connecticut; It’s the regional node of the national Urban Research Based Action Network — a network of community-engaged researchers.
We are unique in Connecticut in that we are intentionally bringing together folks from philanthropy, community consulting, and academia, to have conversations about the intersection of equity and methodology — both broadly defined. It is the first time that I know of that that conversation is happening. And over the next year, we’re going to be having more public conversations about that intersection.
This work of 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?
There are times I’ll go to the beach, or talk to friends, or get a massage. But there is one consistent thing that always helps me, and it’s Broadway musicals.
My mom grew up as a working-class kid in Brooklyn, in the days when the norm was playing stickball in street with watchers on the apartment stoop. She always talked about Broadway tickets being something like 25 cents.
I only had my mom in this plane for 17 years. But the one thing I remember that was part of our lives was Broadway musical soundtracks. Back then it was 8-tracks. They were always uplifting, even when they were about difficult topics.
For me, sometimes it’s the classics — Hello, Dolly! — or the more contemporary Hamilton; my husband and I just went to see Come From Away. Other people said, “really, you’re going to see a musical about 9/11?” I expected that there would be tears somewhere in there, and yet — there was a way of sharing a story about humanity in the face of tragedy and anger and sorrow.
Of course, I have to acknowledge the shadow side — I also see Broadway entertainment as a way of pacifying the masses. But it’s something that connects me to my mom, and it connects me to the “you can do it” message.
I so appreciate the way the arts can awaken a heart and help us feel possibility.
Yeah. And for me, it ties back to that notion of knowledge construction. Because, again, the institutionalized idea of what scientific inquiry is, is traditionally represented in a very specific way. And it doesn’t have to be, it shouldn’t be.
There are so many ways of representing meaning, that knowing-ness that’s inside of us. So for me, artistic expression and creative ways of making meaning are all part of it, because it’s not just the representation, it’s how we come to know through those processes.
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 Aunt Rosalie is very present for me in the moment because she just passed last week.
She is my father’s sister. All of my father’s siblings remained in Italy; my dad was the only one who came and stayed in this country.
I got to meet her and be with her a few times in family trips, and when I was in my 20s, studying at an art school in Florence. After four months at the school, I stayed with my aunts and uncles and cousins in southern Italy for two months.
Aunt Rosalie spoke only Italian. I wasn’t even conversational in my ancestral language — just enough to get directions and go to the grocery store.
There were some challenging things that happened when I was there. At the time, it was only a few years after I lost my mom. I was pretty disenchanted with the world. Probably depressed.
My Aunt Rosalie got me out of bed every morning, when I just wanted to hide. I didn’t want to come back to the U.S. and face my life at the time. Every morning, she pulled me out of bed, and we did mundane things. I followed her around her house while she was cleaning. We sat and watched tv a little bit. I helped her cook.
After two months, I had to come home, had to get back to college. I didn’t realize until I was just about to leave, she sat me down and said, “Ora sei pronto.”
I realized that what she had been doing, during all those household chores, was teaching me Italian as she had taught her children. From the little words.
She said in Italian, “Now you’re ready. You know enough that I can tell you my story.”
We sat for I don’t know how long, and she talked to me about how she grew up, her experience growing up as a woman and not having educational opportunities. She talked about family, about having her children.
I hold that memory — there’s so much about being able to share in our own language, our lives, our hopes, our fears, our experiences. And also that it was so important to her — for two months, I didn’t know she was doing that. But she was very intentional, she was going to teach me enough words that she could sit down and share her story.
I thought I could talk about her without crying… she is gone now. And I never learned enough language to tell her my story.
I’m sorry for your loss. And I don’t want to over step, but I imagine she felt your story in some ways, and also that you let her be in your story.
Yeah. That’s interesting. I did choose to be there. A lot of people on my Italian-American side of the family distanced themselves from their heritage, and from family. So yeah, I think just that I showed up and chose to be there at that point in my life. I had not thought of it that way, thank you.
I’m trying very hard at this point to give myself the space to grieve and reflect. In the past I’ve shortchanged myself by getting onto the next busy thing.
Thank you for asking that question, and being open and present.
You’re welcome; thank you for sharing. We’re moving into the last section, what you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
- Reading – Remember Your Essence, by Paul Williams. This is my go-to book when I need to ground. It’s very easy, almost poetry, not like a novel. It reminds me of things that I just forget on a daily basis.
- Listening – Liza Minelli’s song “Yes” – it’s about saying yes to the opportunities in the world; it’s one of my favorites.
- Eating – For me right now the focus is whole, nutrient-rich foods, foods that give life, and thinking about how I’m going to feel after I eat the food. Will it energize me, or am I eating it as something to bring myself down or become numb? I just started thinking about it in that way, and stopping trying to ‘cut out this, cut out that.’ How am I going to feel after I eat it.
- Watching – Historic series; I’m married to a historian, so it’s not surprising. I’m currently watching The Gilded Age. I enjoy things that are set in a historic context, as a way of examining where we are now. It’s really interesting to see the current interpretations and what the writers are trying to bring through, even though it’s set many years ago.
- Laughing – I’ve taken on watching some of the older variety shows – The Carol Burnett Show, This Is Tom Jones, The Sonny & Cher Show. Going back to those helps me disconnect when I need to from some of the stuff that’s happening today, and also renews my silliness. Laughing, music, interviews – that combination of things we just don’t see much anymore.
- Wildcard – your choice – Cats. I always grew up wanting a cat, and didn’t really have the opportunity, because my mom was afraid of them for some reason. About 11 years ago, I married into a pet-loving family. Our three cats predate me, and they welcomed me into the family. It’s a life-changer. For all the furballs and issues with them, there is nothing that calms me, makes me laugh, makes me feel more connected to love and compassion, than my kitties.
Learn more about Angela at her website
Get in touch with Angela directly: akf@kd2change.com