Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Men’s Leadership Development with Dr. Nicole Ferry

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 298

Share episode

Send us a text

Nicole Ferry is a tenure-track assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School. Drawing on her background in cultural studies and critical theory, her research examines the ideological and gendered discourses of leadership and leadership development across diverse contexts. 

She has published in Journal of Business Ethics, Leadership, Management Learning, Gender, Work and Organization, and Academy of Management Learning & Education. Her current work explores the competitive and cultural dynamics of the leadership industries, as well as contemporary approaches to gender-based leadership development.

Quotes From This Episode

  • “If men don’t connect personal identity work to gender and power, we won’t achieve equity.”
  • “It’s a privilege not to have to think about how your gender shapes your leadership.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.


♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.



Scott Allen:

Okay, everybody really really excited for this conversation, as always. Thank you for checking in wherever you are in the world. I have today Dr. Nicole Ferry, and she is a tenure track assistant professor at the Copenhagen Business School. She has published in the world's best journals and her current work explores the competitive and cultural dynamics of the leadership industries, as well as contemporary approaches to gender-based leadership development, and so there's some things, just even what I've just said. Of course, more of her bio is in the show notes, so please check that out, but I'm so excited, nicole, I know you're just coming off of Academy of Management, so that was just held in Copenhagen. I hope that was absolutely incredible, and I think where we're going to take the conversation today is just a very open-ended question of what's on your mind. But before we do that, what do listeners need to know about you? What are a couple of fun facts that you know will introduce you a little bit to folks who are listening right now?

Nicole Ferry:

Thank you for having me on the show. And, yes, the Academy was just here and it was incredible to have that big of a conference in your own backyard where you didn't have to pre-plan your outfits and you could just, you know, go with what the weather was actually like. So that was super nice, and it was actually nice also to have it in one spot, versus like jumping from building to building, which sometimes the academy has. So, yes, so things to know about me.

Nicole Ferry:

I think one of the things that is important to know is that I actually I work at a business school. Obviously I work at Copenhagen business school, but I do not have a business school background. My background is actually in critical theory and cultural studies. So I've spent a lot of time looking at race, class, gender, sex, sexuality, ageability and how all of those things sort of play out in terms of education, in terms of institutions and the like, and so I take that lens, that critical lens, and I sort of apply it to leadership and leadership development and different dynamics therein, and so I think that that really shapes the kind of scholarship that I do and also the kind of ways that I think about leadership, which maybe are often more from a critical lens.

Scott Allen:

I mean, I just always love our conversations and I think that's where I want to start, like, what are you thinking about now? I know you've had some recent publications that were pretty awesome, some nice hits, and so we could go in that direction, but there could just be other things that are just kind of on your mind right now that have caught your attention, that you're pondering. I mean, I think that's where I'd love to begin the conversation.

Nicole Ferry:

Yeah. So I think both what I'm thinking about and my current publications are in line, and so I've been just thinking a lot about men actually, so yeah, so maybe you can relate. So I've been thinking a lot about what are men's roles in leadership and also how we can think more critically about men's roles in gender equity and equality within organizations, and so I just recently published a piece in AMLE, the Academy of Management, learning and Education, on a proposal to create men's leadership development, which I know sounds funny, doesn't exactly roll up the tongue in the same way that we've so often heard women's leadership development, but it's sort of a piece to provoke but also to hopefully inspire maybe some more practical elements within organizations when it comes to how we address gender equity.

Scott Allen:

So talk more about that. So men's leadership development I've literally never had a conversation about this, so super excited. How are you thinking about that?

Nicole Ferry:

a conversation about this, so super excited. How are you thinking about that? Yeah, so, really, maybe I'll just go back for a second, because I this started as just sort of a thought experiment and, like I said, sort of a provocation, because we have for a long time and for very good reason, had a focus on women's leadership development, like, as a you know, women have been historically marginalized from leadership positions. There's also been the idea that men are sort of the prototypical leaders think manager, think male for for Shine's work. And so I think originally I was just sort of saying, okay, well, when you have women's leadership development and then you don't have men's leadership development, then when you just have leadership, it kind of codes it as for men or masculine, and so it's in the same way that you can think about.

Nicole Ferry:

I do some work with the restaurant industry and there's awards for best chef and best woman chef.

Nicole Ferry:

Right, there's not an award for, like, best man chef or things like that, because we sort of code and expectations into our language and things like that, and Bert Spector has also written about this, as many feminist scholars, about sort of the ways that our language masks the normative expectations or privilege and power. And so I thought, okay, well, maybe if we have women's leadership development, then we should also have men's leadership development to like rectify that. And so it just sort of started as a playful thing, but then it really turned into thinking like, okay, well, what if we took that seriously? And what if we really thought like, well, what would it take to do a men's leadership development program with the aim of gender equity? And so that is what I started to develop with this article and, of course, the AMLE reviewers really pushed me to do that more in depth and theoretically that I maybe started with. And so I sort of developed three different elements which, if you want, we can talk.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, please, let's do it.

Nicole Ferry:

Yeah, so these are not kind of the end all be all elements, but I was just thinking about, you know, there's always the phrase that you, you know, add women and stir. And that's been a critique of leadership programs where you've just thrown women in and then they've sort of become trained and assimilated to take up like masculine performances of leadership. And so there's been a critique and I was thinking, okay, well, we have women's leadership development, so we have one form of what I call gender-based leadership development, so that's like leadership targeted or aimed towards a particular gender and you use gender as a means to sort of develop leader-ness. And I thought, okay, well, we have that, but you can't just add men and stir to women's leadership development, because men are socialized differently, they navigate organizations differently and have different privileges and power in organizations. And so I thought, okay, well, you have to expand the women's leadership blueprint and you also have to expand just the general leadership development blueprint, okay, to account for, like, the social positions of men.

Nicole Ferry:

And so the first one was, okay, reflexive identity development.

Nicole Ferry:

And so we know, in leadership development there's a lot of identity work, so cultivating the self, a lot of kind of inward focus, and that sometimes happens through like personality assessments or different kind of reflective exercises and such, and I thought, okay, well, that's great, but if you do that for men and you don't connect personal identity to broader issues of gender and power, then that's not necessarily going to create gender equity, because you could have.

Nicole Ferry:

Then, let's say, tom, and Tom realizes that he's like really good at this and this and that he succeeded maybe because of these things. But that doesn't necessarily account for the fact that, like gender and masculinity and those things, when they're mapped into the body, are read differently than if somebody else were to do that. And so, for example, it's kind of that it breaks down that idea of meritocracy or the idea that we've all just achieved where we are just because of how hard we worked, and so critical feminist scholars and race scholars and all the critical theory folks will tell you that there's more to it than that. So if you're just doing identity development that's isolated from these larger socialization practices and larger privilege and systemic systems, then that could do a disservice to leadership development systems. Then that could do a disservice to leadership development. And so I'm saying, if men are going to do identity development, that's great, but always in connection to understanding how gender works in organizations, how their gender works. That's the first one.

Scott Allen:

I'm assuming but I don't want to so just so we're on the same page that these would be leader development programs, really with just males as participants, that this would be led by a male and then it's male participants who are in a space and even exploring that concept, just in a space where they're dialoguing. Is that accurate? Am I thinking about that correctly?

Nicole Ferry:

Yes and no, and it's a nice transition to the second element. Actually, I mean, yeah, I think, again, this is a kind of a conceptual exercise that I want to put in practice, but I think and we can talk about this a little later I think there are limitations, of course, to actually like implementing these kinds of things. But, yeah, in the same way that you know you've had women having shared spaces, there's also evidence that men, when they're amongst other men, that can be a very influential process, and so, yeah, I think that it's important that maybe, if these were to be implemented, that it would be people who identify as men in this group working together. But, having said that, the second element that I have is called intersectional relationality, and that's the idea that leadership should be built or should be conceptualized as a practice of relationship building, which I know many of your guests have talked about that in various ways, and there's great work on distributed and collaborative and relational leadership and all these things, and so it's the idea that we want to do that kind of relationality work, but through also accounting for intersectionality, which means that, like when you and I come to build a relationship, it's not like we necessarily meet on an equal level playing field where you're going to have no biases of me or you, right, and we just get to navigate as two equal parties. Actually, of course, just like in the first thing, our identities matter and they show up in various ways, and so you have to think about building relationships while always also staying attuned to the fact that race, class, gender and systems of patriarchy and racism and things like that will shape how we get to relate and show up and things like that.

Nicole Ferry:

And so one of the things about that is that if leadership is in a practice of relationship building, then that means that we need to build, of course, between genders so men in the group, but also across genders to women, and of course, in this sense, I'm doing a very binary, like men and women gender thing, but there are multiple genders and things like that they can. You know that men can build relationships with, and that could include also not just having male or men as facilitators, but also having maybe women as facilitators as well, and thinking about what that might look like. So, yes, I do think it's important to have men working with men, but I think that there also needs to be an effort to hear from other voices, because feminist work is very big on the fact that like narratives and storytelling is a big part of how you can like change narratives or change the story and all that kind of stuff. So that is the second one, intersectional.

Scott Allen:

Cool and three.

Nicole Ferry:

Three is organizational accountability.

Nicole Ferry:

So this is shifting the idea that leadership development happens in these sort of like one-off programmatic models which we know both in women's leadership development and in just general leadership development.

Nicole Ferry:

That can be ineffective in actually changing the way organizations work. It's not like you go to one workshop and you're just a changed human and all of a sudden then you get to become a leader. And I know, like Kellerman, for example, has talked about that, that you know the development industry, the leadership industries, work in that way. But my point here would be that if you actually want to advance gender equity, that we should expand beyond just these kind of like programmatic standalone models and make certain practices or features of leadership development part of men's roles in the organization itself. So, for example, tracking metrics that we know shape gender inequity in organizations, like family leave or the pay gap or bonuses or things like that. If we actually track, doing that kind of work is actually doing the work of leadership development, that you do that outside of the program. But the expectation is that it would happen in kind of your daily routine, your daily work.

Scott Allen:

Okay, so my head's in like four places right now. Let's see if I can unpack some of this. I love the notion of having a space. One insight that I've had of doing five years of this podcast is that I have found myself in conversations that really challenged me, challenged my own thinking. I didn't even know they were a concept. I didn't have awareness. I didn't even know they were a concept. I didn't have awareness.

Scott Allen:

Again, I am a white male, heterosexual from North America, and that's just my lived history, that's my worldview, that's what I've experienced, and so something I've loved about this podcast is that I have had conversations with people who've opened my eyes to a number of different perspectives and realities, different perspectives and realities, and so having a place where some of those conversations can happen, I think is super important, and even to build awareness, because so many things I'm not aware of I mean, really the only thing I am like really firmly embedded in and as an opinion, is that I am not aware of the whole. That's my hard kind of reality is that there's a lot that I'm not seeing and experiencing and living, and so having a space to be exposed to some of that especially for white men, at least in the context of the United States, I think could open a lot of eyes, because I think a lot of people are blind to some of those realities. How we create that space, I think is incredibly important, because we've all sat in sessions and conversations, maybe where it's around DEI, for instance, where people are because they're afraid that they're going to be offensive or that they're going to trip on something or that they're going to say something that is going to be experienced and not the way they intended. So at least what I've observed in some of those situations is people stay quiet, they don't bring their full selves and they stay safe. So creating that space where some of that conversation can happen it seems fundamental.

Scott Allen:

Would you agree with that? What do you think?

Nicole Ferry:

can happen. It seems fundamental. Would you agree with that? What do you think? Yeah, so I think recognizing privilege is like a fundamental part of this, because privilege is invisible to those who have it. That's how it operates and works at a fundamental level, and so I really think that that's one of the things to break through with. Men's leadership. Development is, like you know, women are very aware that they're women leaders, but men just get to be leaders and not think right.

Nicole Ferry:

And so, just briefly, I do this fantastic activity with my students where and I think it could be implemented for example, in organizations where I have three people who identify as women come up and three people identify as men come up and the women are the interviewers, men are the interviewees and they ask them a series of questions that I've already created for them, and all of these questions basically flip the narrative of what's typically or has been historically asked to women in positions or in interview positions, and so, for example, they'll ask things like are you comfortable working on a female-dominated team?

Nicole Ferry:

And, oh, that's a nice shirt. Do you think it might distract others in the office, or they might not take you as seriously? Or what does it mean for you to be a male leader or a man leader, you know? And then they launch these questions at them. You know, and you watch men realize that they've never actually had to address these kinds of questions and so often what they say back is oh, I don't know. And the thing is, is it's not to like make them seem like they're inadequate interviewees, but sort of to point out the fact that, like pretty much every woman could tell you in that classroom quickly how their genders affected their leadership style, but for men to actually think how their gender has affected their leadership style like takes a minute sometimes, you know or we end with them.

Nicole Ferry:

We ask them in how will you raise up the next generation of men as leaders?

Nicole Ferry:

You, know, because women are always asked like what are you going to do to raise up the you know? And so it's like supposed to be like provocative and funny, but with the intent to sort of like stir, because it is a privilege, I would argue, to not have to have thought about these things right, to just get to lead, and so connecting that to the second half of what you said in terms of creating a safe space, I mean, there are many ways to do it and I think that this article that I just published sort of falls short in the real practicalities of implementing. But I do think, of course, using techniques like humor and like embodied activities I feel like are really important for these kind of things, because often if you don't feel it, you don't necessarily get it, and so having these kind of aha moments I think are really important. But I think, in addition to that, the organization itself also has to create the importance of this kind of work. I mean, if you just mandate men and say, go and do this leadership training to become Jekyll or Equity, you know that could create really initial defensiveness and all these kinds of things. That I don't think creates a supportive environment.

Nicole Ferry:

All the research for like men's allyship and men's activism for gender equity shows the same thing that like people themselves have to get on board.

Nicole Ferry:

But I will just add that I do think there is a current moment that's happening in terms of this attention that we're starting to put on men and masculinity in public discourse, not just in like leadership discourse, but you have people on both the right and the left talking about, like, the crisis of men and masculinity.

Nicole Ferry:

You know the male loneliness epidemic that men are leading and things like deaths of despair and different things like that, and so you have a heightened attention on men and of course, then you have the manosphere and certain the Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson's coming up.

Nicole Ferry:

So I think right now is an important moment to start not to start because people have been doing this for a long time, but to give attention to men in leadership development, to sort of acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of men, I think, that are saying, well, we don't know how to be men anymore, which is problematic and we can discuss that in a sense but to sort of tap into an interest in understanding, performing manhood and masculinity and to shape that in a way that supports rather than detracts from gender equity. I think that it's a good time to start doing that, because certainly the alt-right or the more manosphere groups are certainly offering a playbook for how to be a man and I would say that it is not one that necessarily supports at all gender equity and so we could take the interest in learning what it means to be a man and harness that and use that in a way that's for good.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I mean, what I love about your work and what I love about what you're exploring is, I think, how do you help build awareness, but in a way that it can be heard and a way that where it's not going to cause individuals to puff up and to become resentful or to lash out, or to just really create an environment where people can understand. And it's I don't know, I don't even know how to verbalize what I'm thinking right now, nicole understand, and it's I don't know. I don't even know how to verbalize what I'm thinking right now, nicole. And that's what's so interesting, because I want to learn, I want to understand and better kind of navigate some of the conversations, especially when you get into. Now we're going to have, you know, men and women.

Scott Allen:

People identify as men, women having conversations and trying to understand. So even the scaffolding of okay, how do we have these conversations? How are we gonna enter the space? How do we stay open? How do we work to empathize? How do we work to really truly listen so that we can hear what the other person's experiences are and what they're saying? So I'm just kind of fascinated by how we create that space so that, again, people don't puff up. People don't get back and get defensive. People stay open. People don't feel judged if they ask a question. That might be a little bit off base or Because, again, the only thing I can kind of relate it to is in some of the conversations I've been in around DEI and I literally just watch the room and I watch the men, especially the white men, begin to shrink, disengage and they don't even know how to contribute so it stalls. Does that make sense when I say that?

Nicole Ferry:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I've been teaching DEI related courses for almost 10 years now, or over 10 years now, and there's a very particular way that you have to do it and I've taught at predominantly white institutions, predominantly institutions of higher class levels and things like that, and so I'm talking to sort of the privileged groups often, if we're thinking about certain identity categories, and there's a certain way that you have to do it to sort of you know and I don't think that I've necessarily figured that out, but I do think humor is important. I think creating spaces where people can say the wrong thing and not be sort of immediately cast out is important. So not necessarily safe spaces, but safe spaces of accountability, right when you can. You know you can voice what you want, but necessarily also will need to know if what you're saying is something that might marginalize somebody else. I think you know, as I said, sort of embodied activities help with that. I also think that the way you frame certain things, so I think if you come in and you individualize a problem, that's never helpful. So you can't, I can't walk into a room and point to the men and be like you're sexist and you're sexist, because that would really that would sort of shut the conversation down, but it's sort of to.

Nicole Ferry:

Oftentimes what I do is I try to make sure that they understand that these things are like systemic issues that they often participate in and can enable or can or cannot, can work against, and I think that maybe helps sometimes for I'm thinking more of students and stuff but help them to kind of see that there's, there's some wiggle room here.

Nicole Ferry:

I mean, often too, you know, when you talk about gender as a social construction, which I think, for example, in the men's leadership developments, would be something that's really important. So, moving away from that essentialist notion that you know you are this way because of your particular like genitalia or your hormone levels or whatever, it might be right that men are born this way. They are this way to a socially constructed understanding. So you come to understand that you know you have social institutions and family and religion and government that shape what we understand, what it means to be a man. And once you understand, I think, that gender is socially constructed in this way and then performed, you then get a little bit of wiggle room to sort of say, okay, well, I could perform differently or I can enact. You know that kind of leadership style in a different way, that it's not like predestined or predetermined, and I think that that's really important for people to feel that they still have agency in these kinds of discussions and it's not like predetermined.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and I think again, maybe my mind is stuck here too much, but how it's set up, I think it is an art form. I really do. I think it's an art form because you need people to stay in a place of maintaining an openness and you're not going to win with everyone, of course, but to your point, we're not shutting things down right away because I think the topic is so incredibly important and, again, it wasn't until I started doing some leader development programs that were with the YWCA in the United States, or a bank that I work with has a business interest group of women, so I did some programming with them and I would go and have sessions and they would say things to me. Like you know, it takes me 15 minutes to choose what I'm going to wear every morning because I want to look stylish but I don't want to look provocative and me like literally a second to decide what I want. Or you know everyone else in the C-suite. They have stay-at-home partners.

Scott Allen:

I don't, I can't drop everything and go to China tomorrow. That's not how I work. So my eyes were opened to so many differences that I was completely blind to, had no sense of. And there's so much value in that, because then I think you can better understand, right? That's what so much of this is about. It's just even an understanding and eyes being open to some of the lived experiences. My wife will come home and say you know, this person said this to me in a meeting today and I was totally taken aback and I'm like that's a thing I never even would have imagined. That's something you could experience, but it's happening and I'm blind to it. I don't see it.

Nicole Ferry:

Yeah Well, and I think you know, if you move beyond, just like the men who might participate in this imaginary leadership development program, you know, and you just move to thinking about the idea of men's leadership development, it speaks a little bit to what you're talking about in terms of responsibility and sort of like the mental load and the tax that's put on women to do so often.

Nicole Ferry:

You know, even though women's leadership development is maybe a well-meaning initiative, it still means that women are then going to do these trainings and do this sort of maybe extra work on top of their other work, while men get to stay in the office and do the things right in front of the boss and get that done right.

Nicole Ferry:

And it also, you know, when it's constantly women that are having to sort of you know, quote fix themselves to be more leaderly, men are then sort of let off the hook for all of that responsibility to do any of that kind of personal work on their own leadership development style as it relates to their gender. And it also just like removes of the responsibility that they have to also participate in gender equity initiatives, like you know. So women's leadership development, if it's framed as a gender equity initiative in organizations. That is great and that is important. But it's not just women's responsibility. So just to create a men's leadership development program would sort of highlight and showcase like that men bear that same responsibility to make change and there's plenty of research and history that shows that we also need men to be involved in these kinds of initiatives. But it shouldn't just be that responsibility for women.

Scott Allen:

Yep, anything else that you want listeners to know, because we're going to begin to wind down our time, of course I'll put links in the show notes to the article and to other resources that we'll talk about, but anything else that you want to underscore as you think about this, do you know of any real quick question of any men's leadership development programs? Obviously there's men's groups that has existed for decades but do you know of any that are framed specifically in this way?

Nicole Ferry:

initiatives that focus on healthy masculinities and do some of the kind of work we were talking about earlier. Those are nonprofits often kind of things like that. And then you go to the other side, which are gender reinforcing programs, and those are often those pay-to-play commercial workshops to awaken your inner warrior out in the desert with the fire and the meat and things like that, and so those are available. And then in terms of what's offered inside organizations, I mean there is nowhere near the number of men's leadership development programs you know, initiated in organizations as there is for women, like it's almost virtually non-existent. But there are certain consultancies and certain programs that target organizations to sort of help men. So there's this program the acronym is MAIL and that's, I think, run in Australia. Perhaps there's also the Better man Movement which will come and hold workshops for men and things like that. So there's opportunities where organizations can send their aspiring men leaders to go to these kinds of men leaders, to go to these kinds of healthy masculinities consultancy workshops, but really nothing as instituted and as commonplace as women's leadership development. In terms of your question about anything else, I'll say that, after having said all of this, I think I would like to live in a world where we actually don't have any of this.

Nicole Ferry:

So I think that sort of gender based leadership development, be it for men or women, can walk a dangerous line in several ways. I mean one if we have men's leadership and women's leadership development, of course you've excluded a number of other gender identities and things like that, so it creates a binary that actually doesn't exist, and I think in addition to that it also sort of misrepresents what gender is and how it functions, because gender isn't this like stable category. Of course intersectionality is hugely important here, but then you know, in addition to that, it's not something you can like grab onto and use to train. It doesn't work like that, and when you have that women should lead like this or women leaders are like this, you can so quickly fall into this sort of essentializing narrative, and so I try best in this article to make the men's leadership development program that I proposed to get away from that, to just sort of think more about power, privilege and difference in a systemic way versus an individual way.

Nicole Ferry:

But I still think that when you have these kinds of programs, they're sort of based on things which the foundations could really crumble, and so I think I'd like to live in a world where, when you do general leadership development, you're doing these things anyways. So general leadership development would mean that you're, of course, always talking about your leader identity in relation to all the other social identity markers that you have. Or, when you do leadership, you know relationship building, you're consistently aware of the way that you show up in space and how you affect others and how they're affected by you. I think these are fundamental things to any kind of leadership development initiative, but for now, this was just sort of to get the conversation going, so we focused on men's leadership.

Scott Allen:

I'm oftentimes. Just about to release an episode with Barbara Kellerman where we talk about scaffolding, so you could start with theoretically, how are you as a listener and in any leader development program are we talking about listening and is that kind of like fundamental? If you don't listen, if you're not skilled in listening, how do you build relationships, how do you build trust? I mean it's kind of foundational and so I think in the leadership development space we have done a horrible job. I mean, sometimes we're walking into conversations about systems thinking in an introductory leadership course and that's like flying a Boeing 737 out of the gates.

Scott Allen:

You aren't starting with the Cessna or even just like these are the instruments on the airplane. You're going really big, really fast. And so you know we were getting into this really kind of fun conversation about, well, what would some of those foundational elements be? Maybe it's reflection as a habit of mind could be another foundational element. But I love how you're thinking because of some of these pieces were woven in and woven throughout. Then it eliminates the need for, you know, men, women, it's just we are all aware of and having conversations and I think it's baked into it from the very, very beginning and I think that's wonderful.

Nicole Ferry:

That's why I have a problem when sometimes people say like, oh, we're doing a social justice leadership, and I understand why they say that. But if you have to put that before leadership then you're insinuating, that's not a piece of it. And I would say that you cannot fundamentally be a leader or practice leadership if you don't understand how power, privilege and difference shapes how you do that right. And so I admire, like the kind of initiatives that want to do like DEI leadership and inclusive leadership, but all of those kind of modifiers in the front, just like women's leadership development sort of re-inscribes leadership as something other than that, and I actually don't think that it is so. So yeah, I completely agree.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, well, and I think, as we get better as an industry and as a field of research, I think a major element of all of this is how do we scaffold the work? It's been done in piloting. It's been done in surgery If you want to become a cardiac surgeon we've scaffolded the learning in an appropriate way Architects, appropriate way Attorneys but in leader development, I don't know that. We have done that work and, as a result, we're starting all over the place and it might not even be that there's one solid way. But again, I might use the Suzuki method Wonderful, that's one way of scaffolding the learning. Of course there's others, but I don't know that anyone has really come up with a real clear understanding of where do we need to begin, what are those core topics that are fundamental and foundational, and we start from there and then we move up, and that's just a fascinating. We'll have that conversation next time.

Nicole Ferry:

Yes, for sure.

Scott Allen:

There's topics that are so important, like this one, that have to be embedded, and if they're not from the beginning, I don't know. I mean, we can start with transformational leadership and Norhaus' textbook. We can start there. Is that the right place to start the conversation? Lmx no.

Nicole Ferry:

But I mean it's a fundamental matter also of practice too. I mean, to your early conversations about how you hold space for these kinds of things. I tell my students often, like it's just a matter of practicing talking about these things, that you then become better at it. So if you're talking about privilege or power or things like that, I mean one. It's a language unto itself and the language is constantly evolving, so you need to get used to saying these kinds of terms and phrases. But in addition to that, it's all a matter of just like consistently doing it. So in, you know, if you start at the basic level and you understand the basics, then you can start, as you say, like scaffolding and going deeper into like what gender inequity means, or going deeper into gender bias and how it affects you. And once you have a comfortability at least acknowledging and addressing these things, then you can go quite far.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and if I don't have even some of those basics, like it could be intimidating for me to have this conversation with you, because a couple times in the conversation I've even in real time, been worried about how to phrase something because it might not be the contemporary or correct way to phrase it Right. Yeah, of course that's happening all the time in so many different spaces, and so even yes, having some of those baselines and getting clear on some of that is critical because otherwise it stifles me. I stay quiet because I don't want to again offend or hurt or step in something I didn't know I was about to step in and so I stay quiet and then I don't bring my full self or I don't feel like I can, and it's again. It kind of comes back to that creating space conversation, but it also comes back to that what are some of those foundationals that we need to do? And because for you, after 10 years of teaching this, you're pretty comfortable with it I would be super uncomfortable with it Right.

Nicole Ferry:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott Allen:

And so you're my guide.

Nicole Ferry:

No, but you talk.

Nicole Ferry:

I mean I've listened to episodes.

Nicole Ferry:

I mean you talk a lot about like humility, you know, and I think that if you just approach these issues with humility and general kindness and eagerness to learn, like I think, for the most part, like people are receptive to that, I think. And also, you know, I don't want you to be nervous because I mean, think about my own positionality in this right, like I'm not, I don't identify as a man, I identify as a woman and you know, and I'm telling here, telling a man, like what I think he needs to do. So I think you know, like there needs to be like a humility on both sides here where, like I need to be really careful, like I don't have the lived experience of men, I know the other side of it and I know the relationships that that operate there, you know quite often. And so this is, of course, just my interpretation and I think I hope, I hope I approach it also with humility and sort of an eagerness to also learn, because I think exploring it further could prove beneficial for gender equity in organizations.

Scott Allen:

Exactly, yeah, that. Humility, kindness, like you said, curiosity, openness and just that, working to be empathetic, to try and understand the perspective of the other Again, some of those foundationals that at least set the table for the conversation to happen. Nicole, I always end these conversations by asking what you've been listening to streaming, reading what's caught your attention in recent times. So it could have something to do with what we've just discussed. It could have nothing to do with what we've just discussed, but what's caught your eye that listeners might be interested in.

Nicole Ferry:

Two recommendations related to our topic and then one that's just a general one, but I, of course, would recommend Adolescence, because I was late to watch that, so I know most people have already watched that. But that Netflix miniseries, sort of on boyhood I guess I would say it's also filmed in a one shot, which I'm a big sucker for, because I find that really interesting and how they logistically pull that off. So I'd recommend it, not only for the way that it's done, but also just for the discussion that it has around growing up as a boy currently, and so I would recommend that and also this movie called Men, which actually came out in 2022. It's an Alex Garland film and it's kind of debated in the feminist community whether or not it's helpful or not, but I think beyond that, it sort of speaks to this kind of feeling if I'm generalizing amongst women, this feeling of existing in patriarchy. And the title is Men and it's a horror movie about men, and I'll just leave it at that, not to spoil it, but just about what would a horror movie look like if the villain was men?

Nicole Ferry:

And the last one. I'll just say that I just love this film and I just rewatched it last week called Coherence. It came out in 2013. It wasn't like it was a super big blockbuster, but it's just about a group of friends that have dinner during the night of a comet and sort of how the decisions you make in life take you to different avenues and paths, and I think it's worth a watch, if you like. Kind of a mind bending life choices movie.

Scott Allen:

Oh, I love it. I love it when I think of like life choices. I think of what was the Gwyneth Paltrow song Sliding.

Nicole Ferry:

Doors. Yeah, it's quite. It's quite similar to that kind of a concept.

Scott Allen:

And then you can get into like mini worlds conversations where there's all these branches of our lives, depending on what choice? Oh, so cool yeah.

Nicole Ferry:

I love stuff like that, so check out coherence.

Scott Allen:

My mind that I'm just going to bring to the table real quick, is have just fallen in love with the television show the Bear. I don't know if you've, but that is just. It's whether it's a Jamie Lee Curtis and some of her acting or whether it's just. You can look at that through the lens of organization development and you can look at it through the lens of personal growth and development of the characters. I mean, it's just so for listeners Coherence and Men, adolescence and the Bear.

Nicole Ferry:

And the Bear? Yeah, and they do quite a bit of episodes in Copenhagen in the Bear. I don't know if you've seen, yeah.

Scott Allen:

And when I was there for the International Studying Leadership Conference a couple of years ago, I mean, we went to our first Michelin star restaurants, my wife and I. So we went to Host, and we went to a couple of years ago, I mean we went to our first Michelin star restaurants, my wife and I. So we went to host and we went to a couple of others and it was just, oh my gosh, I can't wait to get back, nicole. Thank you so much, I appreciate you.

Nicole Ferry:

Yeah, thanks very much for the invitation to come on and it's been really nice to talk to you.

Scott Allen:

So thankful for the opportunity to check in with Nicole, challenging us to think a little differently about how we do the work that we do, and you know I always love conversations like we just had. They challenge my own thinking, they challenge me to step into the perspectives of others, and I think that is just a great way to be as a leader. We have to have that ability, that perspective-taking capacity, to work, to understand the lived experience of others, so that we can make better sense ourselves, because for each one of us, we suffer from about 180 cognitive biases and my perception and understanding of the world is limited, extremely limited, and so I always appreciate those types of conversations and the work that Nicole is doing, as always everyone. Thank you so much for checking in. I appreciate you. Take care, bye-bye.