Todd Deal, Ph.D., serves as Senior Faculty and Director of the Higher Education practice in the Societal Advancement group at the Center for Creative Leadership. In this role, his focus is on partnering with institutions across the broad landscape of higher education to provide leadership education and leader development. Todd and his team work across the higher education spectrum. They co-design leadership programs for college students to facilitate leadership development initiatives for faculty, staff, and executives at the college, university, and system levels.
Todd served as Associate Dean, earned tenure, and was promoted to full professor. He also authored a chemistry textbook - now in its 4th edition. Todd was the founding director of the leadership, community engagement, and service-learning program at Georgia Southern University where he taught leadership courses for 10+ years. He earned a graduate certificate in leadership from Northeastern University, completed the Art & Practice of Leadership Development with Ron Heifetz & Marty Linsky at Harvard University, and twice served as faculty for ILA's Leadership Education Academy (LEA).
Todd is the founder of TDLearning, Inc. He is a sought-after speaker and leadership development professional, having partnered with various corporate, non-profit, and higher education institutions to provide innovative, strengths-based development experiences for professionals and students. His professional affiliations include the American Chemical Society, the International Leadership Association, the Association of Leadership Educators, and the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs.
Todd and his wife (of 27 yrs) Karen live in Hilton Head Island, SC (NOT retired, far from it!) and are the parents of two brilliant, beautiful, talented young adult daughters.
Quotes From This Episode
Connecting With Todd
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Todd Deal, Ph.D., serves as Senior Faculty and Director of the Higher Education practice in the Societal Advancement group at the Center for Creative Leadership. In this role, his focus is on partnering with institutions across the broad landscape of higher education to provide leadership education and leader development. Todd and his team work across the higher education spectrum. They co-design leadership programs for college students to facilitate leadership development initiatives for faculty, staff, and executives at the college, university, and system levels.
Todd served as Associate Dean, earned tenure, and was promoted to full professor. He also authored a chemistry textbook - now in its 4th edition. Todd was the founding director of the leadership, community engagement, and service-learning program at Georgia Southern University where he taught leadership courses for 10+ years. He earned a graduate certificate in leadership from Northeastern University, completed the Art & Practice of Leadership Development with Ron Heifetz & Marty Linsky at Harvard University, and twice served as faculty for ILA's Leadership Education Academy (LEA).
Todd is the founder of TDLearning, Inc. He is a sought-after speaker and leadership development professional, having partnered with various corporate, non-profit, and higher education institutions to provide innovative, strengths-based development experiences for professionals and students. His professional affiliations include the American Chemical Society, the International Leadership Association, the Association of Leadership Educators, and the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs.
Todd and his wife (of 27 yrs) Karen live in Hilton Head Island, SC (NOT retired, far from it!) and are the parents of two brilliant, beautiful, talented young adult daughters.
Quotes From This Episode
Connecting With Todd
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay everyone, welcome to the Phronesis podcast, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for checking in today I have Todd Deal. Todd Deal is an educator, teaching and learning our passions for him. Todd earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Ohio State University, the Ohio State University and launched into his professional career as a chemistry professor. Some 28 years later, he retired from university life to accept his current role as senior faculty and director of the higher ed practice at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). In between those landmarks he served as associate dean are in tenure and was promoted to full professor authored a chemistry textbook. Now in its fourth edition, was the founding director of the leadership community engagement and service-learning program at Georgia Southern University, where he taught leadership courses for 10 plus years here undergraduate certificate and leadership from Northeastern University completed the art and practice of leadership development with Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, at Harvard University, and twice served as faculty for IE LA's leadership Education Academy. Todd and his wife of 27 years, Karen, live in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and are the parents of two brilliant, beautiful, talented young adult daughters. Todd, you know, the art and practice of leadership development. I said this to Ron Heifetz when I had him on, that was one of the most powerful learning experiences I've ever had. So I met with that whole week. And then that centerpiece with Bob Kegan coming in and doing Immunity to Change. Wow, right? Such a powerful learning experience
Todd Deal 1:38
I talk about that as being a shaping learning experience for me. People ask me, I remember right. When I came back from Harvard, and I was at Georgia Southern at the time, they said, how was it? I said I have never been so completely deconstructed and reconstructed in such a short time. It was draining emotionally, physically, the whole piece of going through it was just fantastic. I use every single piece of the experience rules we did the content we learned, I still use it in my practice.
Scott Allen 2:12
It's so wonderful. It's such a great way of thinking about leadership. And I just again, whether it's the work of Bob Kegan, or the work of Ron Heifetz, Barbara Kellerman, kind of that, that crew at Yeah, at Harvard that have really been working at some of this for years, I just, I'm so appreciative of it. I'm going to start with chemistry, and oh, boy chemistry with leadership for me connect chemistry with leadership for me, I want to get into that mind a little bit. Because I think it's awesome that transition, can you make connections between chemistry and leadership?
Todd Deal 2:46
Oh, you absolutely can. And I do many, many times in the classroom, you know, when my undergraduate students are now the adults that I work with, I'll mention that I'm a chemist, and I always get the "oh, I hated chemistry in high school," and then during sessions, I'll pull out, you know, how difficult something might be or how easy it is. And I say, you know, the activation energy to get from here to there. And then, you know, kind of that's a chemistry concept. Yes. Bring it in with them. So, yeah, that was, it was an interesting journey. Because, you know, at the time, I was teaching chemistry and working on our textbook, when the Vice President tapped me on the shoulder and said, We would really love to start a leadership program. And about 10 years before I had served as associate dean and really got into, interestingly, the CCL, literature, doing a lot of reading at the time, my dean was a fan. So read a lot about leadership was doing faculty leadership development at the time, just on professional development. We called it of course, at the time, that was just so interesting to me, I guess. And so when she tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, would you be interested in doing this for me to develop it for students to attract high ability students who need something more outside of the classroom? Absolutely. Telling her though, you know, as you mentioned, in my bio teaching is my passion, I'm not going to step in and become an administrator, I must continue to teach for my professional fulfillment, it's who I am. And so we developed four-credit courses that we taught out of Student Affairs, which is kind of a different model for most of us. And we developed a co-curricular program. So all of that to say curriculum design played into it, which was really a passion for me. But as I progressed along, I asked the same question, how does a chemist become teaching leadership? How do you do this? Yeah, interestingly enough, Ron and Marty helped make the connection for me in one way, and then several colleagues and I have talked about it over the years. So, what Ron and Marty talk about in their book, observation, interpretation, experimentation, for leadership, you know, get in on the balcony, make the observation, interpret the behavior, get back on the dance floor, and do the experiment. Not that we're experimenting on people, but you're practicing leadership. Yeah, what do I need to do? And when we learned that, I thought, that's the scientific method that's kind of boiled down nicely. But that's the scientific method is what you're doing. So it was just fascinating to me. And somebody then made a comment to me, this was well, I don't know, five, seven years ago, I said, you know, it's really strange that a scientist steps into a social science field. And it is it's a different sort of research that we do when you're a scientist first, and I'm not a social science researcher. And they said, So you went from making observations of molecules to making observations of people? Hmm, I said, Yeah. And the molecules behave so much better than the people. They're regular that you can predict what's going to happen. The people you never know.
Scott Allen 6:14
Just add humans and boom!
Todd Deal 6:16
Yes, it blows up.
Scott Allen 6:20
Well, I love it. I absolutely love it. Talk a little bit about your practice at CCL. And what I'd love to kind of move our conversation into is, you know, just some contemporary thoughts that are on your mind right now is what I love about CCL. And we talked a little bit about this before we got on air today, people like Elon van Veloster, Cindy McCauley, those individuals had such a strong impact on my growth and development on how I think about whether it was the handbook of leadership development, the practice of developing leaders. So I've always very, very much respected, not only CCLs rigor on the academic side, but then also CCLs practice, the organization has been in those two spaces for decades, trying to hone this craft. Talk a little bit about your role and what you've been thinking about.
Todd Deal 7:16
Yeah, absolutely. You know, you mentioned Cindy, and, of course, having read her work for years before coming to CCL walking in the building. One day, I see this woman walking down the hall, and I was with a colleague, and I said, Who is that? Well, that's Cindy McCauley and I was you know, the star-struck kind of fanboy - "Oh, that's Cindy, THE Cindy McCauley!" and she's the kindest, most gentle individual in the world. But got it went over the moon for me when right before Cindy retired, she was doing an update on our direction, alignment commitment model, yes, from the center. And she shows up at my office door one day and said, I would really like you, to interview you and for you to contribute to my next research piece that I'm doing. And I'm like, seriously, Cindy wants me? Certainly not. Certainly not. So I did. I got to contribute to that last piece.
Scott Allen 8:17
That's awesome. Was that that Oh, Q article? I know she did an L q article in recent times very recently.
Todd Deal 8:23
Yep. That's the one I think she was together. Yeah. Yep. So that was one of those kinds of career moments that you're like, wow. But you hit the nail on the head of the theoretical basis, the research background of leadership, and the practice kind of what we do at CCL. And stepping into this practice, leading the higher ed practice at the center has been that in spades for me, wow. Because you study, you're a faculty member, I'm a faculty member, we both spent our career there. And when I step into this space with adults in higher ed to do development, first of all, if you don't have the credentials, if you don't understand higher ed, then you have no credibility. And second of all, they're gonna tear the research to pieces. They want to know all the background all the theory, and how does this applies? How am I going to use this every single day? Yeah, learning to do that dynamically in the classroom has been so developmental for me. Because you could show up and you know, when we went to zoom, what, two years ago now, I can sit here and talk to you for four hours on Zoom. And the end of program evaluations is going to be terrible. Oh, that was awful. It was just a lecture. When you figure out how to engage people, get them active, and start to do things in the classroom. And a lot of these are learning journeys where we're going with a group over a period of a year or something. Yeah. Building in experiential practice for them to do between sessions and learning to do that effectively. Part of that is one of the hallmark pieces of research that CCL did the lessons of experience. Yes, I know you've heard of that. And oh, yeah, people talk a lot about the 70/20/10 principle. Cindy and I talked about when neither of us is huge fans of those numbers.
Scott Allen 10:24
The numbers are not exactly 70-20-10 every time?
Todd Deal 10:29
Not at all, not at all
Scott Allen 10:31
You're blowing my mind here!
Todd Deal 10:35
There's so much more of that research. And when you read all of the pieces that happened, and quite frankly, the critiques that came afterward, it's fascinating, absolutely fascinating, but that leadership development happens in the practice. Yep. We can give you that background give you the knowledge to work from, but then what is it? Erickson who talks about deliberate practice?
Scott Allen 11:01
Oh, yeah. love his work peak? Yep.
Todd Deal 11:03
Yeah, keeping that mindset of okay, here's what I learned. Now, how does this play out in my world really not? Well? Or what pieces can I take? And how do I use that? So fascinating. And so trying to design experiences for learners that help them step into what it is they do every day? You know, we're working with right now a group of Dean's How do I think about when I was an associate dean? What did I need to know? And now how do I take CCL research and apply it to what they need to know to help them grow as leaders? It is so much fun so much?
Scott Allen 11:44
Well, exactly. Because you take a group of Dean's or Associate Dean's, and it's similar to the situation you were in. Right. I'm potentially a former supply chain, Professor now leading the organization. And it's completely different work. And how we prepare those individuals to be successful when engaging in the activity of leading others, especially in that context of higher ed. That's it's an interesting context. It's a unique context of a lot of lone wolves running around and getting everyone on the same page and focused in the same direction. It's challenging, right, it very challenging. So helping them approach the work with some more intentionality. And yes, I love the work of (K. Anders) Ericcson, I think it had just an incredible amount of impact on how I think about what we try and do the whole notion of deliberate practice. Like everything else, it's a lens. I don't know that it's a silver bullet. But it definitely works that really, really helped me formulate how I kind of think about this, because I couldn't agree with you more, you're not going to get very far sitting in a room talking about it. The right part of it. But it's not the whole experience.
Todd Deal 13:06
For sure. I'm sure. You mentioned, you know, let's own the fact that we're faculty. Yeah. And in the practice that I'm a part of now. That's the most difficult group to work with. And I've seen articles about this in higher ed Inside Higher Ed, as well as the Chronicle. The faculty are resistant to leadership education or to leadership development. Oftentimes, I mean, it's how we're trained, right, this individual expert mindset, and I'll figure it out as I go, I'm a learner. And faculty very tend to be I don't want to, you know, paint everybody and be a stereotype. But faculty tend to be the most resistant. It's the deans, the department chairs who really get into the space and recognize they don't know what they don't know. They're like, Oh, wait, come on. Let's talk about this. Help me, how do I? How do I deal with the problems? So
Scott Allen 13:58
They're in a practice field at this point?
Todd Deal 14:01
Yes, it is very real. One of my professors when I was an undergrad who was still there, when I came back to the institution, and I mentioned to him, hey, look, this is what's happening. I'm about to start this leadership program. He looked at me said, You can't teach leadership. You just put somebody in the role and let them figure it out as they go. Yep. And that was like, Oh, boy. That's the school of experience. It's a great experience. But with no, that 10% of the 7020 10 no foundation, no background knowledge, and trouble. You're floundering.
Scott Allen 14:35
Well again, just take that to any other domain. Take that to any other domain or let's say cooking. Yeah, you can, I can have a lot of experiences. But if I have no knowledge, it's gonna take me longer. I'm going to build bad habits. I mean, there's just a lot of I'm going to kill the culture, grilled cheese, whatever it is, exactly. There's gonna be a lot of learning on the fly and even then I might not get as far as I could, as quick as I could, well, and in this higher ed practice, and as you're working with some of these associate Dean's or Dean's, what are you seeing? What are some, some ripe issues kind of on their plate right now that really are resonating with them, I imagine just the last few years of COVID that has introduced so much complexity to the system into the work? What do you see as
Todd Deal 15:23
Yeah, even with you know, we've done quite a bit of, I might call it organizational leadership type work. It's we're not a consulting firm, you know, CCL, very much is leadership, education, leadership development. But over the past year and a half, we've got lots of calls from president's cabinets to come and work with a president's cabinet or a Chancellor's cabinet. And the things they're dealing with are the things that we are seeing in higher ed, faculty, staff, administrators who are like, look, I worked from home for a year, I did great. Why do I have to come back? Yeah. Why do I have to be co-located with this? And the provost is saying, I'm gonna have to issue a mandate. And I'm like, Oh, we might want to think about that together, and how we lead people into this space. So that literal question has popped up time and time and time again, remote work versus co-located. The idea of a university is a residential space. Oh, it's just been? And there's, of course, no single answer. No ends on the institution. Yeah. I think as I mentioned earlier, the human beings, you put them in a situation they don't act the same as the chemicals do.
Scott Allen 16:42
There are reactions, there are definitely. Well, I think I always were, I don't know where I think it's Kansas Leadership Center. Yes, my friend at O'Malley at KLC. I don't know if you've ever explored that organization. But they're doing some really cool things. And, they were very closely aligned with the work of Heifetz. And Lenski. And you know, they call it intervening skillfully. And they call it to act experimentally. And I think similar, if we go back to chemistry, you have to intervene skillfully, you can't put this with this...it's going to blow up. Right. I think that's another metaphor, at least that I think about is I think about the work of intervening skillfully with people. And with systems and culture, as you said, just now, you could set a mandate. But that might blow up. Other options of experiments we could run.
Todd Deal 17:40
Absolutely. One of the fun stories that I tell, when I came, I'd probably been at the center, maybe a year, and whenever so one of our what we call our open enrollment programs so that anybody can sign up come to the center. And a lot of those, of course, is corporate kinds of folks and sort of the Keystone program that the centers run for golf many, many, many years, is typically leading leaders, leading managers will have not necessarily CEOs, but mid-managers kinds of things. But whenever a program is running, and there is an academic in their higher ed person, they call me down to meet that higher ed person just to you know, have a conversation. Yep. So I walked up into the break area. And I knew I had been introduced to it was a dean, and was having the Dean was having a conversation. And I just kind of walked up to listen in a minute and say hello and was talking to a corporate type. At the part of the conversation I walked in, they were obviously talking about a faculty issue or having an in the corporate person looked at the dean and said, Why in the world, don't you just tell them what they must do? And I sort of laughed out loud. And the Dean looked at me and he said, he knows why I don't exactly what will not happen.
Scott Allen 18:56
Yeah, it's a fascinating context. Well, what else are you seeing in your work with just even this higher ed space, either things that you're experimenting with or you're working on? Or just observations about the higher ed landscape and leadership right now.
Todd Deal 19:13
The thing that bubbled up for us pretty prominently, as the panda we'd been doing some work in the area for years, but it really just took off two areas. Let me talk about resilience. Okay, and talking to people about resilience. Okay, so we have a couple of faculty who are very much into the research on resilience, and resilience, once again, brain chemistry and all that's involved there is fascinating, but how applicable is it? How do I do this and so developing that practice, and if put together and used in multiple higher ed institutions around the country, using the research that our faculty have done about developing resilience, Shawn Achor at Harvard said the following "resilience is about how you recharge, not how you endure." Wow. It's a fascinating thought. Because when we think of resilience, we get to grit, which is absolutely a part of it. Endurance, just getting it, getting through it, head down working through it. And what he's pointing to in our research has shown it's less about the grit and getting through it, that's a component. But it's taking that recharge time, what is it that you're doing to fill your bucket back up? So that you show up at your as your very, very best person leader? In the space? Yeah. The mental, the social, the spiritual, all the different pieces of who you are? And how do you intentionally build in time to recharge, that message has been one of those kinds of light bulbs for a lot of people. Because I think, you know, it's our work ethic, we're headed down going as hard as we can, trying to make it through this pandemic, when really what we need to do sometimes is step back, pause, take a vacation, take a day off, go on a bike ride, that's my thing. And recharge ourselves.
Scott Allen 21:18
It's amazing. And I don't know why this is Todd. But when I'm on the treadmill, and I'm just kind of running along, I'm watching some music video on the net, like the 80s, MTV Music video, or some kind of concert from YouTube or something. And I'm running along. And it's I, I've had to put a piece of paper next to the treadmill with a pen. Because sometimes I will get off that treadmill. And I will have six ideas just on different parts of my life that I've written down, I can't always read them. I'm like, Yeah, ideas three and four years, this is terrible writing, Scott. But I mean, even in the space of going on a walk with my wife, or doing a workout or stepping back, taking a day or two. But to your point, designing in kind of those inactive strategies to actually build up our ability to navigate the stressors coming at us. It's a fascinating topic. And there are times in my life where I've just kind of ground myself into empty. And, and I've not done that. And that's when my wife will say, hey, you know what, this is not working for you, you got to shift this, right. So I love that.
Todd Deal 22:31
If you're an Instagram fan, I love the I follow this called Liz and Molly, and they have these great little cartoon graphics. You know, the kind of what I thought would make me successful in the pie graph is 99% hard work and 1% sleep. And what really makes me successful is you know, 35-40% hard work rest, intentional development, etc, etc. I love love, love their little graphics. It's fascinating. Awesome.
Scott Allen 23:02
Okay, so resilience is one. Yep. And then you'd mentioned a second.
Todd Deal 23:06
Yeah, the other for us that came up. And again, we'd been working on this for years, is as a global institution, because you know, CCL works around the world, thinking about how we deliver leadership development around the world and the different time zones and do that without everybody having to travel and what that looks like. So digital, yeah, in the digital piece and learning to design. Some of us in higher ed, higher ed in general have an advantage there. We've been trying to get this right for years. Yeah. So it was really fun being a part of that project and stepping in, bringing in my higher ed background, and saying, look, here are the things we've done with students to help that be. And I brought experientially that we've done online, and we are as CCL learning as we go. But we jumped into that space very quickly, designing leadership development for the digital space. Now, Scott, let me pause and say, frankly, I hope we're not always in the digital space. Yeah, yeah. Because the magic is that face-to-face, right, the human interaction and the touch that we have there. But when we can do it in the digital space, I can work thinking of a group we're working with right now a membership organization that they're located all over across the United States. Yeah, institutions all over. And there, we're meeting with them on a Friday afternoon at one o'clock, and everybody can be there. Whereas, you know, if you're at a less well funded, shall I say, institution, you can't travel. And so that opportunity is no longer available to you. Yeah. So in that way, I love the digital idea. It's hard being on zoom all the time. Sure. So a mixture of that, to me is better, but it's been fascinating to be a part of trying to figure out the digital part and design appropriate experiences for digital learning, isn't it?
Scott Allen 25:03
I've actually really been in an odd way. Of course, this could be misconstrued. So I don't, I don't intend it to be. But I have found the last two years very intriguing. From an educational standpoint, can we figure out this online space? How to really make learning online powerful, impactful? What do we do? How do we design because I believe in large part, similar to when we're live, but it's a design challenge, that if we're designing the learning experiences in a certain way, I think there's a number of advantages yesterday, Todd, right now I'm doing the subject-object interview training for it, you know, the work of Robert Keegan, this is the interview technique they use to determine someone's mental complexity. Oh, I'm doing this training from 6 am to 9 am, every Wednesday, and I think it's six weeks, all of us are from all over the world. We're zooming in. And Deb Helsing has just created a wonderful, you think, oh, three hours, this is going to be forever? No, she's designed this in a way that really, really is been. It moves by quickly. It's impactful. I've really enjoyed connecting with these people from all over the world. And now do I want that to be every learning experience I have for the rest of my life? No. But to your point, sometimes, I think it's perfectly appropriate or it's appropriate as a part of some larger program. Yeah. Right. So I think what it's done for me, at least the last couple of years, it's helped me better understand the space. But then it's also kind of armed me with new tools, where I could say, Hey, we're not going to be in the classroom. Next week, we're going to be online, we're going to zoom in this person from Teslin, they're going to talk, you'll forget you are online very quickly, talking about what we're going to discuss, and it's going to be a good experience. And kind of blending, right blending in podcasts are blending in different elements to create a new experience a new learning experience, and I'm seeing some organizations rush back to everything how it used to be. And I think that too, can be a little limiting. Yes, there are new options. And how do we capitalize on those new options? Right?
Todd Deal 27:29
Yeah, it's a new way to think about it. And you said it's got the forgot I was online. That's one of the greatest comments I've gotten from a participant in the program. I forgot I was online. I'm like, that's what we're after the
Scott Allen 27:42
The new, the new benchmark, right? That's how you know you're winning, right?
Todd Deal 27:48
But the time flies by just like, when you're sitting in a lecture with a great professor, and it's like, Oh, it's over already. I want to keep going. Yes. So that sort of experience that you're trying to learn to replicate that piece? For sure.
Scott Allen 28:02
Well, and even in your work, you know, I think, to the point you made when we started the conversation, we have these learning experiences. And then can we use those as a foundation for people then to practice in their own organizations? Is there some action learning? Are there some projects that are where I can be a little more intentional in how I'm intervening? Am I intervening skillfully in my, I might deliberate in how I'm approaching the work or the activity of leadership. Again, it's another example of how we can get creative to create these powerful experiences.
Todd Deal 28:39
And to do so in a way that contributes to what someone is doing and is not a side project. Totally. Our undergraduates fuss at us all the time, right about group projects. So when you're in a cohort, and you give them a group project that's not related to what they're doing. They're busy people. We're all busy people, so they don't have time to fully engage. But if that project is something they're already working on, for their institution, their department in their own research, and talking about leading students, it's so much more powerful
Scott Allen 29:13
if it aligns with the flow of where they've headed anyways, yes, I could not agree more. And I think that's fundamentally that's where a lot of the lessons from experience work shifted my thinking on that, right, because I think, again, there's a time and a place for us to go offline and go to Harvard for eight days or whatever that was and have a learning experience. Yes. And there's a time for developing in place with the flow of the organization that can be just as powerful in a different way. Right?
Todd Deal 29:47
Agreed. Absolutely. Agreed. Yeah.
Scott Allen 29:49
Well, Todd, as we kind of begin to wind down our conversation. What have you been listening to what have you been reading what have you what's caught your eye in the last couple of months? They could have nothing to do with leadership. Maybe it's just some new advancements in chemistry!
Todd Deal 30:08
Well, one of the things that Scott I love about for nieces is that you have your daughter at the front and your daughter at the back doing the intro and the outro. Because like, well, I have two daughters as well. And one of our favorite activities is always been reading things together. Right? We have this kind of history of I have a picture of when they were little, little girls of us sitting on the couch and me reading a book, one hanging on my shoulder, one laying on my lap, reading a book together. And I'd love to say that we continued that practice perfectly over the years, we haven't, but we do quite a bit and still read things together. So my older daughter, and I just been a couple of years back, did a study together of CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. And so for Christmas this year, I gave her a boxed set of CS Lewis kind of readings that now we're talking about and reading those timeless readings, you know, they're faith-based, of course, thinking about that together. And then my younger daughter, our younger daughter is a first-year med student. Okay. And the first year of medical school is memorization fast, right. And I had heard of several years ago, Joshua Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein, I don't know it. If you've never read moon. It's fascinating. Okay, okay. He pulls Erickson's work in there, I remember Erickson being and talking about deliberate practice and how we develop our minds. This is so focused on how we should do leadership development. So she and I were reading that one together, and she's actually using it. The practice that she learned is called the Memory Palace. And some of the readers will be familiar with memory palace in med school. And she said that it is like accelerated I can remember things. I've done so much better on tests. And it's just fun to read with them and have those conversations. Yeah, I guess it's the old "professor dad" coming out. And it is
Scott Allen 32:07
it is, and it's so much fun to my daughter, what, Emily, who does the outro, which this was a march 2020, kind of COVID project, we were all in the house looking at each other. And I said you want to make an intro and an outro.
Todd Deal 32:24
I love it. I love it.
Scott Allen 32:27
We just kind of went for it. And I've just kept it. But you know, yesterday, my daughter came home from school she had started, she loves comedy. I mean, it's so fun to watch your children. And at least my wife and I have really kind of viewed a large part of our job is to just exposing them to a number of different things and see what sticks see where their passion where their natural energy is. And Emily just loves comedy, anything having to do with comedy. She will wake up on Sunday morning because we usually are up late enough but she will start putting on Saturday Night Live and look at the sense of humor and hurt. She's just really blossoming. But she had this idea. She goes to Chagrin Falls Intermediate Schools. So she started a comedy troupe called Much to My Chagrin. They had their first meeting yesterday. And I said to her this morning at breakfast, I said, Look, you know you you are a leader, you are a leader you had you had a vision of what you wanted to create. And it was in your mind. And you told some people about it. And you got 10 classmates, boys and girls to a room after school yesterday. And it was funny because both of my daughters were in this. And she said yeah, My mouth hurts because we were laughing so hard. And I said that's leadership. Right? So exploring with your daughters like that and reading with them like that. CS Lewis, it makes me I mean, one of my daughters, which was was just in Prince Caspian. Oh, yeah. And so you know that that whole Chronicles of Narnia series, which is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So Oh, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. A lot of fun. So Moonwalking with Einstein, yeah. Okay,
Todd Deal 34:16
Fascinating read. It's not new. It was a New York Times bestseller. I want to say 2012-2013. Okay, a really good read.
Scott Allen 34:23
Very good. Is there anything else you are streaming or listening to?
Todd Deal 34:26
spend a lot of time listening to a podcast you may have heard of, Phronesis. Love the conversation that you had with Heifetz, that was fantastic. Dave Rosch, I always like to listen to Dave Rosch and what he's thinking about and how. So that and you know, looking at leadership design, how different people are doing leadership and figuring out ways to make this applicable for people as they're practicing leadership. Yes, how to do that on a daily basis instead of this theory that you then got to figure out
Scott Allen 35:00
Yeah, well, we share that passion, we share that passion to share so much. How do we help better prepare to be successful in a number of these gnarly roles that they find themselves in? And if we can be a small part of preparing them to intervene skillfully more often? Yes, no, I'm in.
Todd Deal 35:26
We can figure out the chemistry of leadership.
Scott Allen 35:31
Speaking of Dave Rosch I sent him sometimes think he I think he thinks I'm a little cuckoo. But I sent him this, I'll put it in the show notes. I spit sent him a video. And it's oh my gosh, his name is gonna escape me. I gotta think of it...Sean Carroll at Cal Tech. And Sean Carroll has a theory called the Many Worlds Hypothesis. And essentially, you get into some really, really funky physics and mathematics. But I sent him this video, which basically kind of comes down to the whole universe is one wave function. And he said leadership is a wave. Just a wave. I think he's getting these videos from me going What is this guy doing?
Todd Deal 36:19
We can solve that way equation. Yes. Now we've got it.
Scott Allen 36:25
Well, sir, so good to speak with you. Thank you so much for stopping by today.
Todd Deal 36:29
Scott, thank you for the opportunity. This has been a joy. I appreciate it.
Scott Allen 36:32
Yes. And thanks for the good work that you do at CCL so appreciative for the decades of work that CCL has brought to the table, and you're continuing on with that legacy. I love it.
Todd Deal 36:44
Yep. Thank you much. It's been a joy.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai