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One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our own personal values. We each identify our top 5 values, writing one each on 5 index cards. Then we have to drop one… and another… until we are forced to choose our number 1, top value. What is your current One right now and why?

Possibility. Because – well, for so many reasons. I used to be challenged by limitations, mostly because I spent a good portion of my life placing limitations on myself. Whether I thought I wasn’t smart enough to do something, or talented enough, or thin enough. I created a tiny, tiny space for myself to live in, and I was pretty sad for a really long time.

At a point, life forced me to make a choice – I could be really sad, live in this box, for a really long time, or I could start to discover what was possible.

If I’m being really honest, in part, I started this discovering in my CLP experience. I began to discover what’s possible – that there were other ways of living, of working, of making relationships, of learning – that were so foreign to me. Ways I did not even know existed. The way that Heidi and Bill talked about discovery and learning for yourself and the kind of leader you wanted to be, and how to use story – those were all foreign things to me. I was very close-minded; I had a deep imagination, but it was just imagination – I didn’t have the exposure or the experience to live out what I was imagining.

So, now, I find myself wondering every day – what is possible. What can I do, what can I say, what can I create, who can I know, where can I go – just because it’s possible. Try something.

What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?

I’m wrestling with leadership expectations and the limitations we put on leadership. I heard in a meeting the other day – the way other languages have multiple words for love, but the English language only has one word for love, so we have to spend our time interpreting what kind of love we are talking about when expressing it. This really hit me. The person at this meeting suggested we do that for leadership as well.

We use “leadership” or “leader” as one word, when it is full of so much meaning. How do we make space for the deeper complexities of leadership? The leader who is visionary, or one who is organized, or who is unafraid to push the boundaries and raise the hard things, or the one who is very caring and brings people together. All of that has leadership potential and possibility for me. How do we leave room for that, and value it all?

Absolutely. It reminds me of Deepa Iyer’s social change map with all the different roles – confronter, healer, inspirer… It was so helpful for me, took the pressure off to feel like I had to be all of those things.

Yes, I remember seeing that! And right – I’m just feeling like we need more space. I went to the movies last weekend to watch Judas and the Black Messiah, and had a fresh revisiting of the 60s, the Black struggle, leadership and the struggle for leadership. The narrative around Black leadership – the Black Panthers, or MLK, or Malcom X – it felt like it always had to be an ‘either/or,’ and not a ‘both/and.’

To your point – how do we find our place? How do we authorize ourselves to be in that place? Who are we waiting for permission from?

I think there are some guidelines – leadership shouldn’t do harm. We tell doctors don’t do harm, right? I think leaders shouldn’t do harm either. So, there are some guidelines around who are we working on behalf of, who are we caring for, and how are we caring for them. But I think to limit it to just one thing or another does people a disservice.

I want to make space – I value space – for a variety of leadership to show up in the places where it is needed most. For me, if that leadership is holding the core value of do no harm, and is articulating care, I will support it. I want the space to be big enough to hold all of that.

When you reflect about creating that space, is it for your own leadership, or for others, or both?

It’s not around my own leadership. Probably because I’ve been working really hard to be in the place now where I own my leadership, acknowledge it, say what I need to, and show up in ways I think are important to show up. I also recognize that is sometimes met with a lot of resistance or with lots of questions of validation and credibility. Which I’m fine with, and I have a hope for others – to make space for them and their leadership. I haven’t been in that conversation enough.

I still get frustrated with the myth of the charismatic leader, as if it’s just one person and not all of us who are needed.

Right – I believe there are moments when, for whatever reason, people will be at the top of the circle, if you will. For a moment. In our own CLP model, we have dyad or triad leadership in a cohort. There’s a delicate balance of leader as guide, or leader as a deepener of learning. Technically there’s no “top” of the circle. But there are people who go first, and who do it in teams or in groups, then make space for others in that circle to step into their leadership.

What inspires you, gives you hope these days?

I appreciate the question and I don’t spend enough time thinking about it.

What I am leaning into is the ability to offer, or make space for other people to offer. For a long time, I always waited to be invited. Which is fine, I think invitations are beautiful, and I love to get invitations. And, I’m moving into a space where I am thinking about having something that I want to offer; it really lights me up. It’s scary. But I’m feeling such a yearning to create an offering. I’m working on a couple things that are in their very nascent, baby stages of what they will be.

Over the last year, I’ve watched so many different offerings emerge. People have found creativity in this time. Because we’re home, and we’ve had to be creative in how we work, how we connect, how we communicate. I’ve watched so many creative offerings emerge, and I’m totally inspired by that. It has sparked something in me.

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?

This one is really easy. I have deep faith. I have a very specific, deep Christian faith. That is my anchor, my foundation. What has been precious to me is such a discovery of what matters to me. I pray and meditate, read and study the Bible, and have a deeper appreciation for what I’m reading and the communication it invites with my spirit-person, the part of me that is spirit. I am learning new things, finding ideas and offering in a way that I had never considered before.

That is what grounds me, informs my choices around how I want to show up for my family, for myself, for my community, for my leadership. And I don’t want to imagine for myself how I would be as a person without that as my foundation.

Was there a specific turning point for you into deeper faith, or was it a slower evolution?

That’s a good question. It’s been ebbs and flows, as with any relationship with something or someone. I’ve been making a conscious choice to walk in this journey of faith for over 20 years now, of my own choice and volition, versus something that I grew up with. Over a 20-year relationship with a thing, with a practice, it ebbs and flows. I’m experiencing a refreshing, a newness, a rediscovery. Either something I hadn’t thought about before, or maybe took for granted.

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?

Heidi Brooks. When I met Heidi, it was for my CLP interview. I had never known her before, and she talked fast and used lots of words. While she talked really fast, Bill took his time. Trying to find my pace in that conversation was beyond me, I didn’t know what I was doing, it felt so clumsy.

I went through my CLP cohort year like I was playing catch up for most of it. I couldn’t catch the concepts, I couldn’t speak from the “I” – I felt like I was in a remedial class. Those feelings were evoked in me when I heard Heidi speak, and yet I was so intrigued.

On the last day of the closing retreat – she said she was piloting a new program, Courageous Communities, and people in CLP would be grandfathered in. I thought to myself, I’m not signing up for this, because I didn’t even get this program. Why would I sign up for another program with her? And there was something I was so intrigued by, what was possible.

It was contiguous and I started exploring what was possible for me. In my CLP cohort year, I applied to graduate school. I would have never considered it before then. But these people were talking about major risks in leadership they’re taking. I could apply and nobody would know if I failed, I thought, I’m not telling anybody. And then I went and took the L-SAT, and told everybody in my cohort the next meeting. It was contagious.

So, I remember meeting Heidi outside the Trinity Center and telling her, “I don’t want to sign up, but I feel compelled to, because I feel like I’m not done – I’m just beginning.” She just laughed, chuckled in the way that she does, and said to me, “Kia, you are so ready for this. Your curiosity alone. I see you working, I see what you’re working out. Your curiosity and availability to learn what feels hard to you, means you’re ready for this.” Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. No one in my professional life had spoken possibility into me before. No one had said what they saw in me that I didn’t have the capacity to see in myself.

This was 2010. I have spent the last 11 years in working relationship in one way or another with Heidi where she speaks possibility into me. We don’t talk every day, we don’t even talk every month. But the moments we have had over the years – she tells me what she sees, that I cannot see in myself. It is monumental for me.

I’m not a competitive person, I don’t feel the need to catch up or keep up with people. I actually relish working at my own speed. But she’s somebody that makes me want to dig a little deeper, and push a little harder, and explore a little further. And they’re very gentle pushes. She has this way of assuming that I can do a thing. I’m like, “I can’t do that, who told you I could do that?” And she’ll say, “sure you can, just try it.” It’s so unassuming.

I could talk to you for another hour about many beautiful moments we’ve shared, that she doesn’t know I hold and that I’ve never said to her. Moments that have had me in tears. I’ve taken things she’s said to me to my quiet prayer, meditation time, and thanked God for sending her to me, as a gift that I never could have known to ask for.

I hesitate to name her because she’s such a big presence in the lore of CLP. But what I’ve learned from her over the years – she taught me how to be curious, how to make invitations, how to find learning in spaces where I was feeling insecure or inadequate. “Kia, what can you learn in what you’re feeling right now?” Those have been invaluable. It has shaped my leadership profoundly, and has inspired me to be that, to offer that, model that for anybody else who is interested.

What do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
  • Reading – I’ve begun to read Martin Luther King’s Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community. It’s the last thing he wrote before he died. It opened up, for me, to know him differently than some of the more mainstream things. And his vision, how he was nowhere near finished with what he dreamed the civil rights movement to be. And how prophetic he was – it really pokes at your heart. And I just finished The Vanishing Half – about two African-American women who look physically white. They’re twins, and how they lived very separate lives – one living as a Black woman, and one living as a white woman.
  • Listening – Podcasts and music. I never, ever, ever get tired of India Arie, she never goes out of style, never gets old. Two songs of hers are my go-tos: “I Am Light,” and “Steady Love.” One podcast called Converge for Change: The Business of Social Justice – by my cousin, out of New Orleans. She’s funny, witty, smart, and I’m biased because we’re related. And a Christian-based podcast called Woman Evolve – light, hilarious, talks about current events, real life issues in the funniest ways.
  • Eating – My favorite two things that I’m eating right now are Just Egg, made from mung beans; and spinach, cucumber and feta cheese salad with garlic and olive oil dressing.
  • Watching – A new show that was really hard to watch and powerful at the same time, called Your Honor, on Showtime. It was about a white judge whose son was part of a hit-and-run murder, and the lengths this judge went through to cover up his son’s crime, and all the people who got hurt and blamed as a result. It elevated all the issues of systemic racism and biases and the criminal justice system. It was hard, and real. I highly recommend watching the movie Judas and the Black Messiah. And on Amazon Prime, One Night in Miami.
  • Laughing – I recommend my kid, who is the funniest kid ever. He makes me laugh on a daily basis, the way his 14 year-old mind works. So, I would highly recommend talking to a 14 year-old who is living as a developing teenager in the midst of a pandemic!
  • Wildcard – Re-discover something you used to love. A hobby, a book, an old friend you fell out of contact with. Something you used to love, and lost contact with.

To get in touch with Kia directly: kia@launchconsult.com

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