Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott Allen

Dr. Barbara Crosby - An Integrative Approach

March 22, 2021 Scott J. Allen Season 1 Episode 54
Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott Allen
Dr. Barbara Crosby - An Integrative Approach
Show Notes Transcript

Barbara C. Crosby, Ph.D. is associate professor emerita at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs and former academic co-director of the Center for Integrative Leadership at the University of Minnesota. In 2017 she received the Leslie A. Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award from the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration (NASPAA). She is a fellow of the Leadership Trust in the UK, and during 2002-03, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.  She is the author of Teaching Leadership: An Integrative Approach (2016), Leadership for Global Citizenship (1999), and co-author with John M. Bryson of Leadership for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World  (2d. ed. 2005).  She served many years on the editorial board of Leadership Quarterly.  She and John M. Bryson were joint winners of the 2019 Keith G. Provan Award for Outstanding Contributions to Empirical Theory from the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management.

Quotes from This Episode 

  • "I think about these concentric circles. And so if we think about just a dyad relationship, that’s one center of the circle. Then we move out to the group, then to organizational, to the community, to country, and to the world."
  • "Context involves identifying ecological, economic, political, sociological, technological trends and developments that might open opportunities for leadership."
  • "Most of us need to be engaged followers most of the time. I think having a sense of what it takes to be an engaged follower is a helpful part of leadership, too."

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Note: Voice to text transcriptions are about 90% accurate. 

Scott Allen  0:02  
Everybody today I have Barbara Crosby, Dr. Barbara Crosby. She's an associate professor emeritus at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs. And she's the former academic co-director of the Center for integrative leadership at the University of Minnesota. Now, I have not spoken with a fellow golden gopher for some time. So I am so excited today. Barbara, you have served on the editorial board of the leading journal -  leadership quarterly, you've published extensively. And I'm really looking forward to exploring with you this whole area of public leadership because I don't know that it's something I've ever really had any in-depth conversation on. Now, I know that I don't know if you grew up in the south, but you attended undergrad in Nashville. So I was just saying to you before we started, I imagine the switch to the Twin Cities was a cold one.

Barb Crosby  1:01  
Yes. Well, I count my years here in winters. My move to the upper Midwest was in the early to mid-70s. And I came up here to go to grad school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I had grown up. I'm a native of Charleston, South Carolina. I grew up in Georgia. went to college in Tennessee. I worked in Maryland for a while and then migrated. And at that stage of my life, I really didn't believe that people lived west of Chicago. So

Scott Allen  1:43  
I have either

Barb Crosby  1:45  
That's right. So anyway, I had a really good experience at the University of Wisconsin. And when my husband was finishing up his Ph.D., we accepted the offer to come to the Twin Cities, we had certainly visited Minneapolis, St. Paul, and they are despite being frozen in place right now. Wonderful cities. Oh, Minnesota is a great state. You said you grew up here.

Scott Allen  2:16  
I did. I did. I grew up in a diner. Just about 40 minutes away from campus. And so I graduated high school in '91. And then immediately moved on to the "U" had a wonderful four years. Great experience there and absolutely loved it. Oh, I'm glad to hear that. That's home. But there wasn't leadership. I mean, the infrastructure, especially everywhere, but at you right now, whether it's the leadership minor, and the Student Affairs to kind of the robust programming out of Student Affairs, it didn't exist. Well, you're that I knew of

Barb Crosby  2:52  
What years were you there?

Scott Allen  2:54  
91 to 95

Barb Crosby  2:55  
Yeah. Well, we had the beginnings. Certainly at that stage. I got involved back in the mid-80s. Around 86 or so. Humphrey School of Public Affairs was founded in 77. That's we came right at that time. And the first Dean Harlan Cleveland thought, if we're going to have a school that's interested in preparing people for careers in public service, leadership ought to get some attention. And so I got involved in helping design, the leadership and public policy seminar at that point, which ran for nine months, we had just some great people who enrolled in that. Not necessarily for credit, some a few people took it for credit. We had another seminar running called dub ethics and social policy, I think it was and there was a big overlap between the two. So our start of leadership, specifically leadership work at the Humphrey School was really for mid-career people who were interested in improving their public service. And Harlan used to say our role was to take busy people and slow them down and participate in our reflective Leadership Program.

Scott Allen  4:18  
Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. So and at this time, I mean, what (James MacGregor) Burns is just about to publish leadership? Right. It hasn't yet been published towards just 

Barb Crosby  4:31  
Well, 78.

Scott Allen  4:32  
Yeah. 78. Yeah. And then Bass is beginning to kind of operationalize some of the transformational leadership theory. Yeah. So at the time, you're still kind of looking at Ohio State Michigan, some of the Fred Fiedler, and some of that literature, correct. 

Barb Crosby  4:47  
That was prominent, I suppose the other kind of strain because we are in public affairs, you know, we would be looking towards people who did presidential leadership. Certainly, we pulled some of the CEO, you know, a lot of its popular kind of stuff in the sense that it's based mainly on storytelling. But it was exciting actually to try to put together a program around leadership at that stage because Burns was just formulating his ideas. And they really appealed to us because he was one of the few who had, you know, a look at the public side of leadership, and also saw it as something different from power-wielding. So, you know, a lot of the leadership literature then and now still says, mainly what leadership is, is influence or, or, you know, the use of power one way or another. And I was fascinated by questions about what is power but did not see it as equivalent to leadership. Anyway, we invited burns to come. Ron Heifetz kind of got in the game in that era. Barbara Kellerman, you know, it was early days, and it was really terrific fun, to try to figure out, you know, what, we're kind of competing theories of leadership, beyond influence. And also to kind of get our own frameworks developed. So Leadership for the Common Good, which is what john Bryson and I have written about, came out of that work. Bob Terry, who was the director of the reflective Leadership Program, at that point, wrote a book called authentic leadership, which is a phrase, you know, that's become incredibly popular in our field. But at the time, nobody else really was thinking about what authenticity might mean, in connection with leadership. So that was kind of the beginning of our work. And then we looked around the campus. I mean, as you know, the University of these big research universities are just full of people doing fascinating work. And there were other people that were doing some leadership, either overtly or, or, implicitly, you know, and so, we gathered people from the School of Agriculture, who were doing stuff related to the food supply, and things like that we work with people from the Extension Service because they were doing community leadership. And, you know, over the years, family practice, Family Medicine at the School of Medicine that nursing school, public health has is now one of the big partners and the Center for Integrative Leadership. We worked with people who helped develop faculty leadership and central administration. So we kept kind of convening these circles of like-minded people and trying to help people keep from reinventing the wheel every time they figured they needed a leadership development program. So again, you know, that's why led eventually to the Center for integrative leadership. In part, we also had a strong relationship with the Carlson School of Management. And the good, one of the founders really was interested in building stronger ties across business government, the nonprofit community, and we said, we can help with that. And so we got the Center for Integrative Leadership underway.

Scott Allen  8:43  
Well, Barb, what's interesting, as you were, as you were speaking, I was thinking about my undergrad, I was in college of Human Ecology at the time, only social science. So when people say, oh, gosh, you come out of like, family, family stuff, you know, and it was kind of this space between sociology and pure psych and this small system. And, and, you know, my family had I, my, my parents had been through a divorce. And I was very interested in Well, how does a, you know, a healthy family, quote, unquote, exist? Yeah, even as we explored family systems theory, I mean, there are direct applications to teams, small groups, right. I mean, so it's so much fun. It's so fun.

Barb Crosby  9:24  
Yes.

Scott Allen  9:25  
Well, can you share? Are there some nuances that people should know about when it comes to this topic of public leadership? I mean, obviously, the context and the setting, but what other nuances or streams would you want people to be aware of?

Barb Crosby  9:44  
Well, there's certainly a lot of, however, I would start with one point, which is, in my opinion, public leadership is redundancy because I think depending on how you define Public leadership is relational, I think you would agree. And there's always then more than one person involved, there is a small public if you will. However, none of us get involved in leadership work in a complete vacuum. And I think about, you know, these concentric circles. And so if we think about just a dyad relationship, okay, that's one center of the circle, if you will, then we move out to the group, then to organizational to the community, to the country to the world. But anyway, that's that I'm more in the tradition of Dewey say, who says "publics are convened around shared concerns or chaired problems." And so, you know, if you and I have a problem that we're working on, we're our little public. Although I think it is helpful to realize the different requirements at these different levels, I think one of the shortcomings of the traditional team and organizational leadership, literature, and research is, has been to ignore what's outside the boundaries of the team or the organization. So in that sense, I'm talking about the public in this more generic way, not equivalent to the government. And a lot of my work, and especially the Center for Integrative Leadership has been to say, you know, business has public aspects to it. Government, if you want to use this word private has some private aspects to it. In other words, protection of personal data and that kind of thing. And we want that, you know, nonprofits have a public aspect or a public responsibility. So. So that's the first point that I might make around this. The other kind of, along with what I've already said, would be that the framework leadership for the common good that john and I developed, has that same kind of progression. You mentioned the context, we say there are two starting places, leadership, and context, and personal leadership. You know, we're using adjectives because it denotes different levels. And so the context of we're leading in context involves really identifying ecological, economic, political, sociological, technological trends and developments that might open opportunities for leadership. But if you ignore the things that are, let's say, existing, if you ignore history, you know, with all of our issues around racial reconciliation, right now, a lot of that's wrapped up in ignoring history. Yeah. And so, you know, you can't start to lead around racial justice unless you do some, some attention to context, I think. Yeah. So. So leadership in context, you know, where what is influencing the present from the past? What does that mean about what's possible for the future? And then personal leadership? You know, what have I, what do I care about? assessing what I bring in the way of assets and blind spots and so forth? That might help me in my leadership work and in my followership work, because, again, another point I would always make is that, you know, nobody leads all the time. Most of us need to be engaged followers most of the time. Yeah. And so I think, you know, having a sense of what it takes to be a good engaged follower, is a helpful part of leadership, too. So. So, leadership and context, personal leadership, understanding oneself, and then understanding others, I think you've done a good bit on emotional intelligence. So you know, that's a key element of leadership skill at that level. And then be after that, thinking about leadership in groups and teams, how do you build effective teams from there moving on to nurturing effective and humane organizations? From there moving to visionary leadership, which I place at that higher, more community level, where you're thinking about what kind of compelling vision might we need to work toward, that's beyond our little team or our organization or whatever. Then political leadership which relates to actually getting policy decisions made and implemented, yeah. And then what we call ethical leadership, which would surprise some because it's not about personal ethics. It's about fostering these institutions that help, sanction, conduct, enforce and reinforce norms, and so on. And then finally, this work of policy entrepreneurship, where you're employing these different aspects of leadership over the course of a policy change cycle. And so I might back up to say that what got us started on this work years ago, was an interest in public issues. Yeah, it's particularly tough once. And now, of course, we name things like I mentioned, racial justice, climate change, pandemic, you know, global issues around sustainability and poverty, and so forth. Or, you know, smaller versions of this here. I've done a good bit of work on homelessness. And you know, you can take different segments -  you can say, veteran homelessness, you can say youth, homelessness, you can say, you know, take different communities like we have a large Native American community here, as you know, so. So at any rate, that's the, in the framework in brief. And, and there is a sense with that, that you're starting with what you might call public problems, and trying to help people think about, how do you take your part of it? How do you widen the circle enough to have an impact and achieve some beneficial outcomes?

Scott Allen  16:42  
So Barb, what's a case study that comes to mind for you? where, you know, fixed is a challenging word?

Barb Crosby  16:52  
Yeah. Yeah, it certainly is...

Scott Allen  16:54  
Maybe some of the needle has been moved. Yeah. That that might exemplify what you just suggested? There's a lot of good, despite everything that's happening, right. Whether it's COVID-19. You know, some of the statistics, if you believe Steven Pinker, some of the statistics around the world, there are several things that are improving, right, that hadn't improved.

Barb Crosby  17:17  
Yeah. Yeah, well, you can pick a whole lot of them. One I've used, often that can, you know, can appeal across the world is the effort to combat polio. And it is a great example because you can kind of come into it at different places, in terms of leadership, I have often focused on the work of Rotary International. Yeah. And there are particular players in the history of rotary, who, I don't know if you know much about rotary, but it's a professional, you know, it used to be a man's professional group. And so you would have a lot of doctors and lawyers and others, who, you know, we're at a certain level of education and accomplishment, I guess. And they were international, to begin with. And there are chapters all around the world. And so that offered once some physicians got activated to try to say, look, this is a global problem, we know we have a solution. And often with problems, you don't have the solution, but in this case, they had a vaccine, but they didn't have the rest of the solution for countries that were impoverished. So they began to work with their chapters in India and other parts of the world to say, what do we need to make this work where you are. And, and the great thing there was that, you know, their counterparts in other countries were also well educated, but they knew their context. And so the upshot of this was that rotary was able to draw on those chapters around the world. But also, those chapters were then able to recruit people who could give the vaccine people who could carry vaccine, people who figured out how to deal with them I think it had to be refrigerated. But at any rate the technical sides of how to deal with an environment where you can't take for granted the kinds of sanitation or refrigeration that you have in the USA. And then they

Scott Allen  19:36  
And not to mention this is over decades to correct?

Barb Crosby  19:39  
yes. 

Scott Allen  19:40  
So multiple formal positional leaders in the organization,

Barb Crosby  19:46  
right, and, you know, going through processes in the organization about how, you know, what did they emphasize, what were they going to use their resources for, et cetera. They then somewhere along The line began to cooperate with WHO. So that tapped them into a lot of other resources. And then there, there's, you know, the gates folks pitched in on worldwide vaccination. So you could have told this as a leadership story, starting with the Gates Foundation, you could tell it as a leadership story, starting with WHO, you could tell it as I do, starting with rotary, because I think it's a fascinating and kind of accessible story of nonprofit leaders who, you know, individuals made a huge difference. And organization made a huge difference. And, and the ability to adapt to different contexts. Yeah.

Scott Allen  20:46  
I'd never thought of that. I mean, I've heard of it. Right? I've heard of Rotary, I've probably even been to a meeting or two, there's some, but I didn't want to go every week at 7 am or whatever.

Barb Crosby  20:55  
I know!

Scott Allen  20:57  
Yes. It felt a little rigid, right?

Barb Crosby  20:59  
Yes.

Scott Allen  21:01  
But it's it is it's, it's a really, really interesting case study, because of everything you just said,

Barb Crosby  21:08  
Well, I have a very contemporary one to offer too. And, and, and that is the recent example. We had 1000s of poll workers, election judges, public officials, who had done the work to make our, our presidential congressional election, safe, secure in the midst of a pandemic. And you know, that didn't just happen overnight. These people there have been leadership and committed followership going on all around the country. And actually, at Humphrey, we have a program that's around helping election administrators prepare and do a good job. And, you know, we can talk about the need to maybe do better. But the leadership and committed followership of those individuals. It's a stunning current example, I think, I'd like to hold them up as he rose. 

Scott Allen  22:08  
Yes. Well, and there was intense scrutiny everywhere. Yes. And generally speaking everywhere, it didn't hold up, that it was determined whether that was Georgia or Arizona, that, you know, these were fair elections that occurred.

Barb Crosby  22:28  
Right. And what's interesting to me is, always when I do my case study research, you know, there's so much more to stories. You know, that goes back, as you said earlier, years, often, of preparation and learning. And so, you know, a lot of people had learned from some big-time failures two years ago, earlier, where machines didn't work or whatever. And so, you know, we've, we've gotten a lot better as a country about being sure that if we're going to use new technology, we have some way of backing it up or checking it or whatever. Yeah.

Scott Allen  23:07  
So, Barbara, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go super contemporary on us. And the last example was super contempt. We're going to continue on. Okay, so as you look at COVID-19, and everything that's kind of swirling on around us. And you have President Biden, yeah. Who is working to influence the public to, get the vaccination socially distance, wear masks? Of course, we're not going to have I think, you know, Brad Jackson. Yeah, maybe because of ILA. Yes. a fascinating conversation with him a couple of episodes back. And he said, "You know, it was wonderful to be in New Zealand, and to kind of watch and well, not all 5 million, of course, you had your 10%. That we're not...But generally speaking, we were kind of all rowing in one direction with the vision Yes, of what to do. So as you think let's let's kind of place you into the White House. Apparently, there's a lot of fires that are happening in the Oval Office right now, according to the reports have been reading, you know, just not fires, figuratively. He's got a fire going. So you sit down, and you're talking with President Biden, what do you say to him? How does he influence because that's good, that has very real ramifications for how long we're in this correct? 

Barb Crosby  24:23  
Well, I would, first of all, say thank you for taking this pandemic seriously. You know, in our field now, people pay a lot of attention to collective leadership. And I've been a part of that. It doesn't mean though, that that the actions and messages from somebody with a great deal of responsibility and power don't count, and it counts a great deal. And I fully believe that not to negate the efforts of people who organize campaigns and so forth, but I believe Joe Biden is President, because he took the pandemic seriously, as he spoke to us, the meaning that is conveyed to us about what is this? Is it something serious? Is it something we can do something about? You know, that's the...most effective visionaries. And you know, Joe Biden doesn't have a reputation that's super high on charisma in envision, let's say; however, he does some of the important things of visionary leadership, which is to say, "here's where we're at. Here's why we're at this point. And here's something we can do to get to a better future. And what is that better future?" Like? Well, I think we're struggling a little bit to figure out, is that a better future some kind of idealized version of what we used to be? Or is it something that's, that's a bit different? We're really struggling about that, I think in the country. But I would say, to Joe Biden, you don't have to settle that for us. Your message for us still needs to be you get it. Death of, you know, 500,000 people is something to mourn. Yeah. And it's something to make, you know, some benefit from In other words,, we will commit ourselves to doing having a better public health infrastructure. And I think, again, I would support continuing the efforts to make sure people have health care, New Zealand benefited from having a very different kind of health care system than we have. And we've, we fight here over different ideas about rights and responsibilities and so forth. You know, we've got to work some with the system we have. But I think I would say, Mr. President, you absolutely need to keep on the path of being sure people have health care coverage. And being sure that the people who've been least advantaged in our system get covered. And I've been encouraged by the the effort with vaccination to be sure that some portion of that is allocated. You know, right now, I'm watching all my foot friends out there running around trying to get their vaccines, well, not everybody can do it, you know, and

Scott Allen  27:37  
a computer in their home and the WiFi connection...

Barb Crosby  27:43  
Right. So I would say, keep it up, and, and give us hope, but also keep the realism going. You know, we've got to have that. And then the other thing that I think, you know, everybody who does any leadership work would say, is delegate wisely, you know, choose those people who are going to be in charge of working on the campaign to get vaccines out and reliable and distributed well, and listen to them, learn from the mistakes, there will be mistakes. own up to those and he's good at that, you know, I think he's pretty good at owning up. So, but, um, you know, fine, do the cheerleading as well, you know, keep on going to those vaccinations, places and having your photo ops, because we need to see you, and we need to hear from you and this difficult time.

Scott Allen  28:48  
Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be so fascinating to watch it all, kind of unfold between before our eyes, whether that's any number of different topics that are kind of the system right now. Whether to your point, some of the racial justice, I think, you know, middle class, jobs, automation, digitization, how that's gonna play out. I mean, I think there's just a there's a wonderful opportunity to reinvent ourselves. To your point, what normal when you phrase that beautifully when we were talking before what - the new abnormal?

Barb Crosby  29:28  
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Scott Allen  29:31  
And I call the episodes that are new abnormal. Yeah, go ahead. Listeners heard that! So that's why I'm calling it that. Yeah. But it's gonna be really interesting to watch it play out.

Barb Crosby  29:44  
Yeah. Well, and each one of us has our, our part or parts to play and, you know, we keep trying to make sense of what's going on individually. What should we do, how should we behave? It is a time that really demands acting on our sense of responsibility to other people. And, you know, we've seen some great examples we've seen others who've, I don't know, cracked under the strain or, you know, sometimes, again, you know, this role of people who have positions of responsibility of helping us see that if we are caring for each other, we can get out of this in a better in better shape. I mean, I don't know that there's much you can do for people who just say, Well, you know, there's some higher power, who makes it all happen. Yeah, there's not much you can do about that. But most of us, I think, listen to influential people who can say to us, whether it's our family members, or somebody in positions of power, or, you know, a basketball star, saying, look, this is time-limited, for sure. It's not as quick as we'd like it. But if we care for each other, we'll all be better off as a result here. And, and just keep that going in celebrate the people who are doing this, you know, our newspapers here are full of the food shelf folks, and the people who've, you know, figured out a way to visit people who are isolated. You know, there's a lot of creativity going on, as you were saying, from Yeah, there was a drive by Mardi Gras now, right. I'm not sure that has a great future. But

Scott Allen  31:39  
My girls, the other night, had a virtual sleepover. So, Barbra, it was hilarious. They basically had laptops and iPads out. And so they were hanging out together with their friends until about 11:30. And, you know, of course, they fell asleep. And there's all this technology all around them. woke up at 8:00 and got back on with their friends. But yeah, the creativity is really, really interesting. And so you had sent me an email. And in that email, there was an article, Journal of Lutheran Ethics. Now, of course, growing up in Minnesota, you know, the Lutheran Scandinavian kind of influence, there's just a little bit more of kind of a collective mindset, at least historically.  Have you seen that through this experience? Have you seen that people are, are thinking, at least some of my experience has been that it's tough for some folks to think past their own nose? And they don't kind of get yet that wearing a mask, for instance, it protects others -And we should protect others. Yeah. Have you been impressed? If you've been kind of benign? If you've been disappointed? What have you seen? 

Barb Crosby  32:59  
Well, I think you're right. First of all, I should just say that I don't often publish in Lutheran publications. You know, I'm originally a Southern Baptist and backslidden. But, but definitely have a well, I should just say, the title of that article was about job and leadership, right. And so I early in the pandemic, turn to the Hebrew Bible, the chapter on of job, the story of Job because I thought it was very applicable. And it was more applicable than I even suspected, because the job, as you may remember, is greatly afflicted. But it's because there is a deal with Satan. And between Satan and God and Satan says, excuse me a minute, y'all will have

Scott Allen  33:57  
no problem we can pass. Okay.

Barb Crosby  34:11  
We have two of us on zoom calls, and I thought, I thought my husband was catching the other catching. Anyway.

Scott Allen  34:20  
So I'll say good, you're good. We'll edit that out.

Barb Crosby  34:23  
All right. I'll start over about this. So I turned to the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible, because I thought it would be quite applicable in the time of the pandemic. And as you may remember, Jobe is greatly afflicted, but he's been a very successful businessman, landowner farmer. And his, you know, today, people would be interviewing him to give them lessons my top 10 lessons as a leader in the Land of Oz and butts Suddenly he loses it all. And the reason is that Satan has, in a way tempted God in a kind of a wager, to say, Well, you know, this man honors you, but what if he didn't have all this? What if he lost everything? Would he still honor God's so and be an upright man? So anyway, Satan goes to work, and really devastates the business. And then after that, God allows him to go ahead and, you know, afflict his family. And Joe has just left there with nothing suffering in the ashes. But anyway, he rises up, and he says, I'm gonna get God to explain himself because I don't get it. I've been a great person here. And everybody respects me. And, and I demand God to tell me what, what caused this. And so anyway, this goes on and his friend shows up, and they initially are kind of sympathetic men, they say, you must have done something wrong. So, but Joe persists? Well, anyway, God finally speaks to him, and says, basically, you know, you're not so important, after all. And maybe you should have paid attention to the great wonders of the world. And anyway, it can kind of give you that feeling of, you know, no matter how well off you are, maybe you ought to pay more attention to your stakeholders, which is a key leadership attribute. But, and I work on that a little bit and also to the natural world, because the message from God is that we human beings are kind of small potatoes, that the forces of the world are magnificent, and we ignore them at our peril. So at any rate, that's what that was all about. I thought there were some great leadership lessons for us in the type of pandemic.

Scott Allen  37:09  
Oh, for sure, for sure. And have you been impressed with Minnesotans in their response, whatever has been kind of across the board, or what do you think?

Barb Crosby  37:18  
I think Minnesotans I think you're right, there is some cultural influence of the Scandinavian heritage here. But there are many other Heritage's here. So you could say, you know, we have Native American communities that were here before any of these other European strains that came. And they have newer, like, the

Scott Allen  37:38  
Somali and the Hmong?

Barb Crosby  37:39  
Yes. so incredibly multicultural. And to some extent, that's becoming true of rural Minnesota as well. You know, it's just too easy to say that all the, you know, the kind of liberal communal types are here in the Twin Cities, and everybody else is often the smaller communities. And that's not true. You know, now we have communities around Minnesota, that in some parts, some reasons, because of the jobs that are available, now have a rather substantial, Hispanic or our Somali. We've had a lot of people from Tibet who've come You know, it's across the board. So, yes, we have these communal traditions, I would say, certainly, in the Twin Cities, you know, we've got a governor who's had influence of saying, look, folks, we just need to do this. It's temporary. We, if we can, you know, go out there and chop down trees in the forest, we can wear masks. I've been thinking we need these t-shirts that say it's masculine, too. So, anyway, I think that the cultural heritage is here, count. I think there is a Scandinavian influence that you don't see so much in a lot of the rest of the country. That's about kind of hardiness and collective responsibility and so on. So yeah. It varies, though, across the state, you know, you can go some places where you know, people have bought the message that it's kind of weak to, to show up with mask conveys that you're too wimpy against COVID masculine.

Scott Allen  39:36  
Right. Now we have competing titles for this episode of "mask-uline" or the new abnormal. I'm so thankful for your time today we'll wind down and I always ask guests at the end, what they're reading or streaming or listening to or just consuming could have to do with leadership. Yep. But it doesn't have to,

Barb Crosby  40:02  
Ah, well, I always can see some leadership, connection, and just about anything that I look at. And I think like many people, I've been trying to deepen my understanding of the relevance of some of the leaders and thinkers from previous years for now. So a book that I and others in my circle read recently is called Begin Again by Eddie Glaude. And what he is doing is investigating what James Baldwin has to say for us now, I think the disappointing thing about reading James Baldwin these days is that so much of it is still so relevant. So, the Glaude  book has been something I thought was really valuable for now. There is another book that well, two books that I read this fall that I thought, I really recommend the Soul of America by Jon Meacham, who helps us think, you know, we're in we've had some tumultuous times lately. But the history of the US is full of conflict, moments where you wonder if the republic's going to hold it, you know, a real reminder that it's up to all of us. You know, that's why I kind of link citizenship and leadership so strongly, you know, we can get involved in a particular policy issue, but how important it is to also be a part of sustaining our democratic institutions. So Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times, really, really good focusing on four different presidents. And, you know, who've got their flaws, every I think, you know, one of our efforts in leadership, automate, remind everybody that every everybody in a position of authority and power has flaws as well as strengths. And as citizens, we got to hold them accountable.

Scott Allen  42:10  
I would kind of translate that to humans.

Barb Crosby  42:12  
Yeah. Right. So anyway, PBS news hour that those are, and another book that I thought about, it's called My Grandmother's Hands, it's kind of an unusual book, it's by a therapist, named Resmaa Menakem and he, he reminds us that our, our difficulties relating across racial boundaries, to some extent, or about how our bodies behave, what our emotions are, and that, you know if we are to become better at this experiment of being a multicultural country, we need to also recognize how deeply embedded some of these kinds of resistances are or fears and insecurities and all of this and so anyway, those are some I love

Scott Allen  43:19  
Barb, I'm so happy that we had this time together. And I and I'm so thankful for you giving your time. And for the work that you have done, I will make sure to highlight a number, of the publications that you've written in the show notes. And I'm gonna I'm really gonna kind of let you sit on pins and needles as to what this is gonna be called this conversation.

Barb Crosby  43:43  
Well, I've enjoyed it very much and really appreciate your doing the podcast.

Scott Allen  43:49  
Well, thank you so much, and have a wonderful day. You too. Bye-bye.

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