Choosing Leadership

Kara Northcutt: Okay, it's starting to slow down a little bit, so we will go ahead and get started just for the sake of time, of course. It's my pleasure to welcome you to today's Choosing Leadership MBA Masterclass with Professor Linda Ginzel. My name is Kara Northcutt. I'm a Senior Director of Admissions supporting the MBA Master's programs here at Chicago Booth. Excited about today. This group today that we're all in, it's really great combination of prospective students, admitted students, current students, and alumni so I think it'll be a nice blend. And kinda the way this will run, Linda will give a lecture for approximately 60 minutes, and with the time we have left at the end, we will do kind of an open Q&A. So throughout the session, feel free to post questions that you would like me to ask Linda toward the end in the chat or the Q&A. I'll keep an eye on both. so feel free to do that throughout. And that way I can keep an eye on those and we'll specifically pull kind of the questions that are most relevant so you can up vote and things like that. So keep an eye on the Q&A and chat for those sort of things. And now, let's give Linda a quick intro. I'm sure she'll tell you more about herself. But Linda Ginzel has been a clinical professor of managerial psychology here on the Chicago Booth faculty since 1992. She has won many, many accolades, a ton of recognition across her time at Booth. And by popular vote, she received the Phoenix Award from the class of 2020. And in 2022, she was recognized as a faculty member who best demonstrates excellence in teaching at Booth with the Emory Williams Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. So I think that's why many of the current students and alumni are probably joining today because they agree with all of that. And it is my pleasure now to turn it over to Professor Ginzel. Thank you.

Linda Ginzel:  Thank you so much, Kara. It's so lovely, lovely to be here and to see your names and all your locations, and some familiar names as well. Welcome. Well, first of all, here, let's go to this next slide because I'm going to say welcome to my classroom. And that's, woo. Here we go. There we go. So welcome to my classroom. I'm so happy that you're here. I always tell my students, and you're all my students now today, that my job is to help you to be wiser, younger. Now, you're never going to be younger than you are today, but you can be wiser tomorrow, or not. And that's really up to you, right? So a lot of people think, you know, there's this quote by Benjamin Franklin, and people think that he said, "Experience is the best teacher." He actually didn't say that. Well, I mean, I don't know, I wasn't there, but I understand that the actual quote is, "Experience is a dear teacher", dear, expensive. And the reason experience is expensive, is an expensive teacher, is because we don't learn from it. We don't learn just by having an experience. If everyone learned by just living life, everyone who's old would be wise. And we all know that that's not the case, right? And so the idea of extracting value from your experiences and learning from your day-to-day life inside or outside the classroom, the more you're able to capture that value, the wiser you'll be at a younger age. So my hope is that this precious hour that we spend together a little more will help you to move up the curve faster, to not only think more about your future self and what you're trying to accomplish and what your definition of leadership is and how you're going to enact that, but actually to change your behaviors, to actually change the way that you're doing things, not just the way you're thinking. And so that's my hope for you. There is a, we'll come to the University of Chicago model later. Let's just start with this. So welcome. Wanted to say a few words about this image. So mostly, I teach from images. And I hope that you enjoy them. I think that they're easier to capture the gist. Gist is a technical term. It means the core essence. So when we're learning, we really want to try to capture the essence. For example, when this talk, when we're finished with our class today, it would be really useful if you sat down before you ran off to your next thing and wrote down what is still in your mind. Like, what are you thinking? What's interesting? What surprised you? What do you want to remember? Because this is basically collecting the data of your own experience. Now, you may never look at those notes again. And they, you know, they may just disappear. But there might be something interesting that you capture in the few moments after any given experience, like this one, for example. And so my hope is that you will work towards being wiser, younger. A lot of it is actually by becoming your own coach, collecting the date of your experiences, and linking understanding to action. One of the most important things, I think, that I can do to help my students is to help you to think more like a social psychologist. So that's my training. I'm an experimental social psychologist. And here's why I think it's so important.

Linda: Well, first of all, social psychology is the coolest discipline on the planet. And if you don't believe me, you can ask the behavioral economists. Because what is behavioral economics? I mean, really, behavioral economics is social psychology done by economists. A little bit tongue in cheek. But really, I think it's amazing that the economists, the behavioral economists, have recognized the value of social psychology and are putting it into use for their experiments and their understanding of economics and how people behave and make choices, not just about money and about, but also about meaning. And so here we are with this, where we are today is strictly straight in interpersonal. So here's my idea. You come into a job and you start, let's see if you see my cursor right. You're right here. Time zero. And most all of your activity, almost everything that you're doing, a hundred percent of your time, it's what I would call technical. You're getting the work done, all right? You can call this economics and this psychology if you want, but for our purposes, we'll just call this technical and interpersonal. So you stay in your job, you're progressing in your career. And what generally happens if you're on this traditional career slope is that as you move in your career, you do less and less technical and more and more interpersonal. So for example, maybe at this point, about half of your time, your energy, your activity, is getting the work done. And about half of the time, it's getting your work done through others. So this is McGregor's definition of management, management is getting work done through others, all right? So if you stay on this career path, moving up, moving on, doing more and more managing, doing more and more work through others, there comes a point when 100% of your energy, your time, your activity, is in the interpersonal domain. And this is why social psychology is so important. This is why social psychology is, in my opinion, the most important discipline for executives and for people. And my hope is that the time we spend together will help you to think more complexly about the interpersonal part of managing leading. And what I was wanted to say about the technical is that nobody really derails on technical. I mean, people are good at what they're doing. They get better. You can crunch the numbers, you can get, where people generally have trouble moving up in their career, not trouble, challenges or have to change the way that they think and act, it's on the interpersonal side. So people say, oh, Linda, what you teach, that's all the soft stuff. I'm here to tell you, the soft stuff is really hard. It's hard because we don't have, you know, equations that you put in the numbers and you get the answer, and that's what you do. And I mean, you can model behaviors and you can use equations, but the more you get people involved, the more human behaviors involved, the more the numbers don't really hold up as well. So we're here for squarely in the interpersonal part of this technical, interpersonal or economic psychology split. And thinking about your experiences and how you can learn and be wiser, younger. So this is one of my favorite quotes. It's by Saul Alinsky. He was a community organizer in Chicago. And this is from his book, "Rules for Radicals". I think it's an amazing quote. When I first, well, here, let's read it together, okay? You can read it silently to yourself. I'll read it for you. "Most people do not accumulate a body of experience. Most people go through life undergoing a series of happenings which pass through their systems undigested. Happenings become experiences when they are digested, when they are related to general patterns and synthesized." Don't you think that's amazing? I read that and I thought, oh my gosh, this is why not everyone who is old is wise, because we go through life and we have it happening, and it passes through our system undigested. It's only when we stop, maybe we collect the data, maybe we think about connections, we own that data, we get the gist, we get the essence, we figure out what it means, and then we act on it, that the happening becomes an experience. And even then, we might not learn from it. We might not even learn from it, even if we've digested it and processed it. Because we have to think about how do we link our experiences to actions. So this is why learning from experience is so hard. There are several steps involved. But we can help you do that. Really, we have this way of thinking and acting, talking about action skills and insight skills.

Linda: How can you learn the lessons of experience? And really, a lot of it has to do with experimenting with your behavior, trying different things, collecting the data, looking at patterns over time, and linking your ideas to new behaviors. So here's an image. I promised myself I'm going to try only to teach with images. I don't always succeed, but this is my image for the quote I just read to you, right? We have a happening, it passes through. But if we digest it, we come up with lessons learned. We think about what we're going to be doing differently. We have to write things down. Because if you don't write it down, it doesn't exist, right? If you don't write it down, whatever it is, it's a figment of your imagination. If you write something down, it becomes data, it becomes observable. You can collect it, you can share it, you can organize it, you can analyze it, you can hold onto it. So you can't write everything down, obviously. But I want to impress upon you the importance of collecting the data of your experience. And today, we're going to have two opportunities. We're going to collect data through the chat. So I'm going to ask you all to participate in chat twice during our time together today. And we will get started with this ideas about turning happenings into experiences and working toward your future self, all right? So everything we do today is about your future self. People change much more throughout their lifetime than they recognize a priori. There's a great, I'm going to move my clock here because I find myself chatting too much in the beginning and I won't get to the exercises with you, there's a great study, there's actually a TED Talk, I think it's called the Your Future Self, actually. So it's based on research by Dan Gilbert, one of my favorite social psychologists. And what they did was they took thousands of people and they blocked them by age. So there's people in their twenties, people in their thirties, people in their forties, people in their fifties, people in their sixties, seventies. And the results show that, oh, they ask questions like, how much have you changed? What do you like? What are your preferences? Lots of questions. They ask the same questions to all of these groups of people in these decades. And the responses were so, so similar across the years. Everyone, independent of their age, said, I have changed a lot until this point, but I am fully formed now. I am who I'm going to be for the rest of my life, and they said that when they were in their twenties, and they said that in their forties, and they said that if they were in their sixties. So this is cross-sectional. So these are different people at this age. And they call this study the end-of-history illusion. So wherever we are, we think that this is the end of history, right now, but it's not. You have so many opportunities to become, to evolve, to for your future self. So we're here today for that future self. And here are the promises. We promise you two things. One is we're going to help you draft your own definition of leadership with the hope that it will help guide you in your own path, your own discovery, development, when you have to decide when to manage and when to lead. All right? So those are our marching orders. This is one of my favorite quotes. It's Marvin Minsky. He is the father of artificial intelligence. And he said that "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points." So how many people do we have on this call? Let's just see. I think, oh, that's easy, right? We've got about 500 people. So we've got 40,000 IQ points. Can you imagine that? Just by what we're doing today, by helping you to develop a point of view about leadership, when to manage, when to lead, we're going to increase the collective IQ of the people with us today by 40,000 IQ points. That's not bad for an hour's work. So we're going go ahead and get started. As promised, we're going to start with what's your definition of leadership? And I want you to be thinking about this. Now, first, I want to tell you something. Every one of us has a definition of leadership. Let me back up. There is no consensual definition. Like, there's no definition of leadership that if you say, you know, what is leadership? People will give you a definition. Many people have their definitions. And leadership is like such a complicated topic. I mean, there's no consensual definition of what is leadership. There's no body of knowledge. You know, that if you study this and you master it, you are an expert in leadership. Really, there's not, because leadership is not a discipline. It's like, you know, I have a PhD in social psychology, experimental social psychology. So I studied a certain body of knowledge, I passed comprehensive exams, and I am a social psychologist. I'm considered, you know, I have a PhD in social psychology, which, by the way, is the coolest discipline on the planet. I mean, it is, I could just blow your mind with all the cool things that we learn about human behavior through experiments. So it's about causal reasons why people do what they do. It's completely fascinating. And you know, I can tell you that we can actually spend our time here me telling you all these amazing things that people do, and I'll blow you away. That's really easy. The hard part is what do you do with some of this knowledge? How do you change your behaviors? What do you, what essence or gist do you take away from what we're doing? And then what are you going to do with that moving forward? So back to this definition of leadership, what I'm trying to say is that everyone has a definition of leadership. You are acting on whatever your definition of leadership, whether you have articulated it, written it down, whether you're borrowing your definition of leadership from someone else, your definition of leadership is either enabling choices or it's inhibiting choices. The point is you can also change your definition of leadership because it's your definition and there's not a correct answer.

Linda: So the more you develop your point of view, your perspective on how you understand leadership and how you are using your definition to make choices, not just for yourself but for others, the more you'll be able, I believe, to make choices that create a better future. And you need to decide what that means for yourself. But my hope, my idea, is that we're going to start with leadership, okay? So people have already started doing what I've wanted you to do, but hold on just a second. One more, one definition. zero-draft. So wherever you are, wherever you are in your definition of leadership, we're going to make today's definition, we're going to call it a zero-draft. So some of you have been thinking a lot about this, some of you have been in my class, some of you have had this before, right? And you're further up the curve because you've already been thinking about these ideas, but you're not fully formed, you're still growing and changing and evolving so you can get better, you can be wiser, younger as well, we all can. No matter how old we are, as long as we're alive, we have an opportunity to make better choices tomorrow. So today, what is today? April 17th. April 17th, we are all going to have our zero-draft definition of leadership. And zero-draft is a Drucker term, and it means the draft before the first one. And what it does is it basically allows you to throw spaghetti on the wall so you don't have to feel, I don't know, like, you know, it has to be a really good definition to put it into chat. It doesn't have to be something you've thought about a lot. It's a zero-draft. It's just the draft before the first one, all right? So I am going to, here, I just wrote this little thing here. So take out a piece of paper. This is actually from the workbook, Choosing Leadership, but you just need a piece of paper. And I'm going to give you two minutes on my, I'm just laughing. You see my clock? My children tell me that most moms have their children on their phone, but of course I have the workbook. It's basically a child. It's like a child. One of my children. All right, we're going to go to the timer. I'm going to give you two minutes. And during that two minutes, I'd like to ask everybody to put their zero-draft, first, I need you to write it down. If you don't write it down, it doesn't exist, all right? If you don't write it down, doesn't exist, I need you to make it data. So one of the data points we're going to have from today is your zero-draft definition of leadership. Now, what I'd like you to do is share your definition with others. And I know there's not a lot of time, but my hope is that this collective wisdom, we will see what other people say about what they think leadership is. And we'll see that the definition can be quite expansive. And it's really a personal definition because it depends on who you are, what you're trying to accomplish. It depends on a lot of things. So we're going to just look, I'm going to be quiet and look at the chat now. We've got another, little over a minute. So it's interesting, right? Some of the definitions are about individuals, some of the definitions are about others. Some definitions are attributes or words. Some have to do with personal skills. Some people have team. Actions. Got got another 15 seconds to enter your zero-draft definition to chat. Okay, so I see that we are finished with the time, and you can finish up putting your definitions into chat. This is way that I think we try to learn in the classroom as well. We have our individual work that we do on our own, and then we get together with a study group or with peers in the classroom with the teacher, and we bring everybody's, the collective wisdom up, and then we do it again. And this iterative process of individual written reflection and collective wisdom is a very, it's quick too, right? It doesn't have to take a lot of time. A little time and a little structure can help you move up that curve, be wiser, younger. So thank you very much for doing that. You can consider this your base, your baseline definition of leadership, your April 17th, 2024 zero-draft definition of leadership. And now, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about what I think. I wanted to first get your inputs. And I will tell you how I've been trying to think about leading and managing. All right, so this is the lecture part. It's a little bit like Don Quixote. You know, Don Quixote was fighting windmills, you know, windmills. And I am a little bit like Don Quixote. I am trying to stop using the words leader and manager, particularly leader. There are so many stereotypes that we have around the word leader, what a leader looks like, what a leader does, you know, what you have to be to be a leader. And so I'm trying to change the label, because labels manage meaning, and I've been using, I was using the word executive. So first, let me tell you a little bit about meaning, or managing meaning. My first job, I took my first job at Stanford Business School. And one of the senior professors told me, I'd come from psychology. So it was like a whole different world. And now, a lot of psychologists go to business school, but this was a while ago, and it wasn't such a typical path. And so he told me, you know, Linda, you know what we do? We help our students manage meaning. And I thought, wow, what does that even mean? I mean, manage meaning? So I'm slow, but good. It's taken me a while. But one of the ways we manage meaning is through the words we use, right? So what you call yourself and what you call others matters because it frames our understanding or the meaning that we give to the individual via the label.

Linda: Here's an example. I don't know how many of you are middle children. Like, you have an older sibling and a younger sibling, right? I worked with a woman who was amazing. She was unbelievable. She was smart, she was capable. She was a middle child. And being a middle child had a big part, was a big part of her identity, but it wasn't a positive, really, part of her identity. So for example, if something would go wrong, she'd say, it's because I'm a middle child, all my life. Not the youngest, not the oldest, I'm a middle. And I thought it was so interesting that she really had this image of herself. She had labeled herself as this middle child, and that that was the source of not happy things. So then I'm a mom and I have a middle child. And this boy is about three. I only had boys. So this boy is about three years old. And he says to me, "Mom, why did that guy call me a sandwich child?" And I said, "Oh, okay. What he meant is that you're the only one in the family who has an older brother and a younger brother. It's like they're the bread and you're the meat. You're the center of the family." Now, I did this because I didn't want him to have a negative connotation with being the middle child. And it was so salient in my mind, this woman that I worked with, it was just, it was a concern for me. So I explained that to him. Now, that boy is now 24-years-old. If you say to him, "Oh, you're the middle child.", he'll say, "Oh, no, no, I'm the center of my family." And to this day, that boy's email address is thecenter@, he has taken this label of being the center of the family as part of his identity. If you don't think labels manage meaning, we need to think again. This is why I'm trying not to use the word leader, because all the stereotypes associated with leadership, not leadership, sorry, with the label leader, like whether I am a leader or not. So I was using the word executive because I teach executives. I've been teaching in the executive MBA program since XP62. Do you know how long ago that was? I'm teaching this weekend, XP94. This is how long I've taught executive MBAs, right? So I used executive. But then what happened is I wrote this workbook, and Richard Thaler, my senior colleague, very, a great man, so kind, he gave me handwritten comments on the first four chapters of the workbook. And he said to me, Linda, you got to lose executive. He said, your students may think of themselves as executives, but executive doesn't apply to the audience, the broader audience, that you're trying to reach. So he gave me an assignment, he said, you have until tomorrow, I want you to email me 10 words to substitute for executive. Impossible task. I mean, I told him, I said, look, if there were a better word, I would've already come up with it because I've been working on it. Nope, that's the Thaler assignment. So my kid's playing baseball, I'm a baseball mom, I go to the baseball game, I get all the baseball moms working on this. We come up with steward, agent, actor, Sherpa, I mean, it was horrible. So I go home, I google antonym, synonym, and I come up with five words that I can't even put in an email. And he writes me back and he says, champion. Champion is your word. Not in the sense of winner, but in the sense of championing a cause or a mission, a vision. And so to advocate, but advocate has other connotations. So I did, this was literally two days before I submitted my manuscript for my book. I did a global search and replace 44 instances of executive for champion. I have to tell you, I haven't completely embraced champion, like it doesn't roll off my tongue, but I'm working on it, all right? So I'm going to use the word champion, and I'm going to talk with you a little bit about how I think about managing and leading. Now, I want to tell you something. This is not the answer. This is not the right way to think. This is the way that I, Linda Ginzel, have found most useful in my teaching and with my students. You don't have to agree with it, but I would like you to use this as a starting point, like a jumping off point, for you to think more complexly about leading and managing, all right? So we, number two, promises. One is you're going to draft your definition of leadership, and then we're going to think about how you use your definition of leadership to make the decision when do you manage and when do you lead? So we have to talk about leading and management to think about the choice. So that's where we're going now. This is one of my favorite images that I teach from, it's sort of the gist or the summary. Now, I have to tell you, I don't know, I really don't know much. I don't know what to do with followership. And I'm quite honestly, there are thousands and thousands of theories and articles about leadership. You can count the theories and articles, books on followership on two hands. The theory that I have graphed here is by Kelly. And the theories of followership, it won't surprise you. Two dimensions, behavior, thought, and action.

Linda: So this graph, this two by two, we have engagement on one axis and thinking on the other. And you can be low, it's orthogonal. So you can be low-low, high-high, high-low, right? They're independent dimensions. So with low critical thinking and low engagement, we have sheep. And that's what people think of, that's the stereotype people think of when they think of following. And nobody wants to be a sheep. And nobody, you know, nobody wants to follow, you know, just blindly following, not thinking, not acting, just, you know? But that's not what followership, that's one lower quadrant of following. If we move up this slope, and we get to effective follower, what does that mean? That means high critical thinking and high engagement. Thinking and acting. It's much like, I think, leading and managing. So that's all I'm going to say about followership. I would love it if other people could really help me. And my students have helped me think about followership more carefully across the years, but I think this is going to take me more time. I'm going to focus with you right now on leading and managing, all right? So here we go. Let's assume, let's assume, that you, each of you is a champion, all right? So you're a champion. Most of the time, most of the time, you are managing. So you're a champion, and most of the time, you're managing. So I'm just, let's see, who can I, I'm just going to, I can't see your faces. Okay. Let's go with Vasuda. Hi, Vasuda. I know you asked a question about multiple identities and such, but let's just focus on you right now as I, we'll go to questions later, but let's focus on you as a champion. So every one of you is a champion. Vasuda is my focal champion for this example, all right? So Vasuda, stay with me. Here we go. You are a champion. And most of the time, you are in the present. You are managing, most of the time. It doesn't matter what your title is, it doesn't matter what your job is, you are managing. And that means that you have your feet firmly on the ground that you're in the present. And when we manage, what we typically do is we use reward power and coercive power. So we can, you know, give people rewards, bonuses, we can net out punishments, negative outcomes. We can take away positive, which is also a type of punishment. We can give positives, right? So when we manage, we also use our power, the power of our title. So if I work for Vasuda, I don't, you know, he may ask me to do something, I may not be sure exactly why, but he's my boss. It's called legitimate power. He pays me, he rewards me, he asks me to do things. I don't have to understand completely why I do, but he says because he has legitimate power. I trust him. I believe that what he asks me to do is legitimate. And these types of power are external. They come with your title. So you have reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, it comes with your title. When you don't have the title, you don't have that power anymore. But that's managing. You're in the present. And when you manage, you don't need people's hearts. It's fine if you have them, it's nice maybe, but you don't need their heart, you just need their head. You need them to know what to do, your feet are firmly on the ground, you're in the present. That's why the image for managing is the map, because the terrain is charted, you can see where you're going. you've got a map, your feet are on the ground, the, you know, it's daylight, you can see what's happening, and you're basically maintaining or enhancing the status quo. And status quo is not a bad word. It simply means how things are. Now, don't let anyone ever tell you that management is not as important as leadership. It is. Management is what allows us to pay for our homes, to send our children to school, to live our dreams, and our people as well. If you don't have a strong, stable present, you don't have a future. You have to have, management is a platform for leadership, for change. So managing is noble, and managing is actually what Vasuda is doing most of the time, and so are all of you. You have a map. Once in a while, once in a while, Vasuda will make a risky choice. He will make a decision to leave the relative stability of the present and go to a place that doesn't exist yet to go to the future. Now, Vasuda, you can't make this decision too often because this is a risky choice. It's a risky choice because you have never been to the future. And you have, the reason that you go there is because, usually, you're dissatisfied in some way with a status quo. There's something about the present that you have an idea you could do better, you have a vision of a better tomorrow. Now, it can be a big idea, like capital L leadership, or it could be a lowercase L, but you have a vision of a better tomorrow of how to do things differently, and you leave the security of the present in order to go to the future. Now, when you are leading, this is a choice to lead, this is my idea. Again, you can argue with me, but this is, the next exercise is based on this, so stay with me, okay? So Vasuda, same person, same champion, mostly managing, once in a while, makes a choice to lead. Now, when he's leading or when you are leading, you are using different type of power. You use expert power. So this is the power you have because you have knowledge, experience that people respect, that people don't know the answer but maybe you don't either, but they trust you because you have expertise knowledge. That's called expert power. Then there's referent power, R-E-F-E-R-E-N-T, referent. It means to be referred to. So this is the power that Vasuda, you have as a role model. And for me, this is much better term than charisma. So a lot of people think, oh, you know, I'm a leader, they're charismatic, you know, I'm not charismatic. I'll never be charismatic or, you know, I'm not this, or I'm not extroverted enough. It's not about that, it's about what it is about you that gets people to want to follow you. And there are many different ways of, there's many different types of referent powers there are people. So don't let anyone ever tell you that you need to be a certain kind of leader, because they're just wrong. There's not one certain kind of leader that is effective. You have to, people tell me, well, you know, Linda, I don't know, I got to fake it till I make it. Well, that's fine, just don't fake it too long. Figure it out. Figure out what it is about you that gets people to want to follow you, because that's your referent power. And that's what you need when you take people to a place that doesn't exist.

Linda: Now, here's what happens, right? You have a vision of a better tomorrow, and it's so amazing and so, you believe in it so strongly that you leave the present. Now, the people who are following you, you better have their hearts because they're not going to follow you just with their head, they have to believe so strongly in your vision that they're willing to commit their heart to you because you might be taking them over a cliff, so they have to believe in you. When we're managing, it's nice if they believe in us, but they don't really need to believe in us. But when you lead, you need the commitment. That's my phone. Sorry, hold on. But see, I never teach in my office. This is why you don't teach in your office. All right. I'm back. And I forgot where we were. And this is being recorded, and that's really embarrassing. So let's figure this out. Right, we're going to the future. You might be taking people over a cliff. You have to really believe in your vision of a better tomorrow. And people have to be committed to you. So you need their heart. And you're managing with referent and expert power. That's my idea. And that's why on this image, we have a compass. Because when you lead, you only have a sense of direction. The terrain is uncharted. You've never been there before. So managing meaning through symbol, so you manage meaning through words, and you can manage meaning through symbols as well. And my symbol for leading, the choice to lead, is a compass. So this is the essence or the gist of what, how I think about leading and managing. And rather than go onto another more, rather than go into more detail, I want us to do an activity together, okay? That I hope will help you to articulate yourself this notion of leading and managing. So stay with me, this is going to be another data collection opportunity. And we're going to do one more activity, all right? And this is going to be worth it because there's a gift at the end for everyone. Okay, the amazing Jim March. So, you know, you don't know when you're young, when you, you don't know the influence you're going to have on people when, especially when, I said when you're young, but what I mean is that any interaction you have, especially with young people. I met Jim March when I was an assistant professor at Stanford. He was an amazing man. He should have gotten the Nobel Prize with his mentor, who did. It's a long story, which we won't go into. But I mean, I believe he should have gotten the Nobel Prize. He was my senior, one of my senior colleagues at Stanford. And I created this activity to help my students based on a juxtaposition that he offered us. So here it is. Jim March said that this is in the context of creativity and decision making and such. He said, we need to both explore and exploit. Now, if you don't like the word exploit, it doesn't have a negative connotation in his theory, but I know exploit has a negative connotation in the world, in language. So substitute exploit for optimize, okay? To optimize. So exploration and optimization are two broad kinds of activities through which a system adopts to its environment. That's his theory. Here we go. Exploration is the pursuit of what might come to be known. Optimization is the refinement and implementation of what is already known, okay? So what does this mean? If you think about it, leadership is exploration because we're going to a place that doesn't exist. It's unknown. It might come to be known. We could once, so look, okay, one more thing. I always have students who tell me, you know, Linda, I just want to lead. I want to lead. You know, I don't want to do management. I want to lead, you know? But what do they think? They're going to just have hallucinations all the time? Just going to have visions, just leading vision, one vision after another? Once you accomplish your vision, you're managing, it's the present. You don't stay in the future. You have an image of vision of a better tomorrow, you enact that, now you're back in the present, and you're managing. Or I have students who say, you know, Linda, I've just never had an opportunity to lead. I've only been a manager. I've just been a manager. Someday, someday I will, you know. Somewhere over the rainbow I will lead. But until then, no, no, no, I'm just a manager. This is what makes me crazy about the labels leader and manager. So in order to help us think about when to manage and when to lead, I'm going to ask you to stay with me with Jim March's, in his memory and his honor, and do an activity I call juxtapositions. And here's the intro. So for the next 5, 10 minutes, stay with me on this idea. Management is about stability. It's about the present. It's about being here. Leadership is about change. Leadership is about the future. It's about going there. So we will take this as an assumption. Now, the next assumption I need you to go with me for this activity is that neither is better than the other. Management, stability. So here's a question for you, okay? Really, what's better, being here or going there? Well, that's a stupid question. It depends. Sometimes you need to be here, you need to be present, sometimes you need to go there. Sometimes you need stability, sometimes you need, I mean, you know, they're both important. They're different. They're both important. I believe that these are choices that we make, and that we can make better choices. But not if we have all these stereotypes about leadership. You know, some people think leaders and managers are from a different gene pool, like, you know, oh, he's only a manager, oh, he's a leader, or she's this or she's that. We are champions. We do both. And we make choices about when we do optimization versus exploration. And we can make better choices, we just have to realize what we're doing. That's why it's important to know what your definition of leadership is and what you think about leading versus managing. So we're getting ready to go to the activity, all right? I do this in my executive MBA class. So some of my students I know have come to be in my classroom again. And thank you very much and welcome back. So some of you have done this before. So if you've done this before, you are up the curve, and you should be even more creative with your juxtaposition that you entered to chat this time. For those of you who haven't, or as a reminder, let me give you a couple.

Linda: You're going to create juxtapositions, all right? And the more creative, the better. So I didn't write these down for you, but here's an example, all right? I just, I do juxtapositions pretty often when I teach. And one of my executives told me that leadership is driving, playing golf, driving, and management is putting right? So you drive, you go far, management is accurate, it's in the present its putting. I've had people, you know, green pen is my signature symbol. And I give all my students green pens. I hope you'll be in my classroom. I would be so happy to welcome you to my physical classroom. Green pens, I give all my students a green pen. Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, speaking of Santiago earlier, the Chilean poet said that he himself wrote his poetry in green ink because green is the color of esperanza, which means hope in Spanish. So with hope, I give all my a green pen. One of my students told me that green pen is leadership and red pen is management. So they each have their place, right? You mark in red, you correct, you precise, and green is with hope and with growth, and with change, and such. Here's one for you. Again, I want you to think of your own. But what what happens is, okay, green pen and red pen, one isn't better than the other. They're different. They have different functions. What was the other one I gave you? Oh, driving and putting. They're skills. They're both important. You have to be good driving and putting to play golf well. Some people have told me, I mean, I want you to be creative, but things like art and science, water and wine, right? Things like this have come up. Here's one, and then I'll give you the two minutes to start thinking about this and putting it into chat. Remember, they have to be equal in valence. So your management word cannot be better than your leadership word, they have to be equal, all right? One can't be more positive, or higher status or anything like that. They need to be equal. And the more creative, the better. So here's the last example I'm going to give you, and then I want you, I'm going to give you two minutes, and I'm going to follow the chat, okay? One of my students in Hong Kong told me, leadership is a lion and management is a tiger. And I really needed that to be unpacked. And this is what he said. They're both majestic animals, they're both amazing creatures. One is not better than the other, right? That's one criteria. Check. But why? Why is the tiger a manager and managing, and why is the lion leading? And he said, well, tigers are in the jungle. They're in the trees, they're right in the thick of things. They're just, they're managing. They're dealing with the present. They're right there. Lions, they live on the prairie. They have a line of sight out to the horizon, to the distance, to the, future, maybe. And I thought that was beautiful. It's so interesting. This is going to tell you more about maybe what you think about leading and managing, but I would like to ask you to stay within kind of these constraints of leadership has changed, management, stability, leadership is the future, management is the present, leadership is there, management is here. So for example, another one, leadership is the moon. Management is the sun. The sun is right here, we're in daylight, we can see things, it's clearer. The moon is a little farther. It's changing, it's more uncertain. All right, you got it? Two minutes here. Is it two minutes? Yeah, that's what I said. Individual reflection, collective wisdom. Put your inputs into chat and let's follow along. Oh, let me set my timer on two minutes. Wow, 80 messages. Okay. Beautiful. Theory and practice. Guide and coach. Cooking and baking. Wow, sail and anchor. That's interesting. I never thought of that. Sushi rice and fish. Fire and water. Beautiful. Cocoon and butterfly. I have to think about that. Cocoon and butterfly. Truth versus dare. Oh, telescope and lens. I have one for you that's like telescope, kind of like that see clear, near versus far. Mitochondria versus nucleus. I never had a biology one like that before. That's great. Jerk versus friend? Jerk is negative, right? Friend is positive? I'm confused. Youngest child versus eldest child. That's an interesting one. I have to think, boy, I really have to think about, oh, finance versus accounting. Husband and wife. I had some, oh, isn't that beautiful? Listen. Oh, can you hear it? I love this. I turned it off. I love that ringtone, just makes me so happy. Someone told me it's from Super Mario Brothers or something, but it's so upbeat. Okay, that's our time.

Linda: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. You did a great, great job. So now, here's my BAFO ending and my conclusion. I hope that I know you don't have access, I think to the chat after this is over, but I hope that you get a sense by just scrolling and scanning what other people think and how amazing and expansive you can be about leading and managing, about how you make choices for your future self, okay? So I have a few more minutes, and I'm going to tell you about my gift, the gift that I have for everyone. And here it is. So there is a little picture book based on juxtapositions. Now, here's how I want you to think about this. You just did the exercise. You're an adult. You're from all over the world. You all know young children, all right? And they don't have to be babies. I'm talking about kids, elementary, junior high, high school, college? Okay. Adult kids. I have adult kids and I have done this activity with them. So here's the story. This is a, I'm trying to change, as you know, I'm trying to change the global conversation around leadership, all right? Get people, remember my fighting windmills, I'm trying to get people to stop using the word leader and all the stereotypes that come. And I want, I think we need to start younger. We need to start helping younger people think differently about what is leadership and what is management. And so there is a children's picture book that is free and available for download. It's a family and friends project. And it's at choosingleadershipbook.com, "Little Champions". So this like, right here, where this green thing is. So watch this. Oh geez, I was thinking that I'm on the website, sorry. Here. So this is one of the images. This is the same young girl, same person, who is leading by composing, she's creating the future. And the same person, same champion, is managing by playing that music in the present. So I love this image because it shows that you can, the same person manages and leads. The other images in the children's book, our sun and moon, lion and tiger. But here's the cool thing about this. Here's the gift, okay? The book is available in 40 languages so far, 40 different languages. And you can download it free in your language. And here's my offer to you. If you do not see your, this is a family and friends project. Nobody is making any money, nobody is selling it. We're just giving it away. If you don't see your language and you'd like to talk to a young person in their native tongue with you, then I will give, I will happily give you the translation credit. So if you, I just posted Amharic, you know, Ethiopian Arabic, and Tagalog. Those are my last two. Before that, I did Urdu and Bulgarian. I mean, I didn't do it, my community did it. So you can send me an email if you'd like to translate, and tell me what language you'd like. It's linda.ginzel@chicagobooth.edu. And I would be so happy to give you the translation credit. This is the last page, the bottom of the page where it says, you know, let children tell you why the moon is leading and the sun is managing. Or let them just talk about what they think. Try to imagine how do we help the next generation to employ their own definitions of leadership and counter globally held stereotypes about leadership. So that's my gift to you. I'm so, it's my passion project. I really, really, really love it. And I hope that you'll be able to use this as a resource in your own life. There are also little videos there that you could use to learn in your own, in your workplace, in your community, whatever you'd like to do, you can teach, you can facilitate written reflection and collective wisdom. And that will lead towards, I hope, a better future self. So I'm almost finished. I wanted to say one thing about the University of Chicago, and then I will stay and take questions.

Linda: You know, I teach all over the world. I was in Singapore last fall when we were opening the executive MBA program, because there was still like Zero-COVID in Hong Kong, so we were in Singapore. And it was crazy. I had a broken ankle. It's the first time I've ever sat in front of my classroom with my foot. Anyway, sorry. It was the image that came to my mind. Here's the story. I was listening to my colleague, Mike Gibbs, who was welcoming all the new executive MBAs from all over the world on Zoom. And he said something amazing. He said, you know, sometimes people think that they go to the University of Booth, and they don't realize that they're part of this amazing university. It's called the University of Chicago. This is an amazing, world class, like, best institutions in the world, on the planet. And so many people don't even realize that Booth is part of the University of Chicago. So I have to leave you with this. If this is the only time you're in my classroom, I have to leave you with this, okay? This is the motto of the University of Chicago, and I hope to welcome you. I sincerely hope to welcome you to my classroom in person here at the university. For me, this is the essence or the gist of what we do here. Now, the motto is in Latin, and I never studied Latin, so I have to tell you, I can't pronounce it in Latin, so I'm going to say it in English, okay? Two parts to the motto. First part, let knowledge grow from more to more. What does that mean? Why do we grow knowledge? To own it? To collect it? To possess it? To display it on a shelf? To dust it off when company comes? Butter is like, I mean, butter, knowledge is like butter in the hot sun. You can collect it all you want and it can just disappear. Second part of the motto of this great university. First part, let knowledge grow from more to more, so be human life enriched. let knowledge grow from more to more, so be human life enriched. The purpose of growing knowledge is to do something with it. Now, I don't know what you think enriches human life, but you should. You should know. You should figure that out. and I hope that the time, this small amount of time that we've spent together will help you to do that. That you'll continue to develop your perspective, you will continue to grow your understanding of leadership and the choices you make, and the future self that you will become. And my last thing is a blessing for you. May you have fewer happenings and more experiences. So it has been such a pleasure to be with you, with all of you today. And I never end when I'm supposed to, and I did. It's one o'clock.

Kara: Well done.

Linda: And I will stop sharing and turn it over to you, Kara.

Kara:  Yeah, great. No, that was fantastic. Thank you so much, professor. And I'll read some questions from the Q&A that were posted early on. So thinking back to the earlier slides, when you referred to Vasuda. Just curious about like how the, how does this interact with the multiple identities on an individual, excuse me, how does this interact with multiple identities an individual has?

Linda: So I don't think that they're, I think they're orthogonal, right? So for example, we are complicated beings, right? So let's take, we have a behavioral repertoire. You can call it identities, whatever. But we're complex people. So we have this hierarchy or we have these behaviors that we can draw from, these ID, I'm sorry, identities that we might have. And what we do is we select among our various options, behavioral options, what makes the most sense in the time that we're together. It doesn't mean you're a chameleon or you're fake. So for example. If I'm in front of my, like me, right now, in this classroom, if you describe me to my neighbor, our kids play together, she may think you, I don't know that Linda. And she doesn't, because I don't behave this way when we're sitting there together and our kids are playing together. This is my classroom behavior. This is, I have a goal here, I have a role, I have things I have to do. So I select parts of who I am in order to be most effective in this role, in this activity. What you will do when you're managing or leading, you will decide which elements of your identity or self or behaviors make the most sense in the situation. Now, if you're talking more about identity, like deep view of who I am and what that means, I mean, you've got to have fit between who you are and where you work. And that's a different notion, right? About identity. But I don't think there's any conflict or anything about the role of leading and managing that affects really your behavioral repertoire as you are deciding which elements of the self are most effective for you to enact either behavior. I hope that's helpful.

Kara: Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. Adam asked, do you think of the lack of studies on followership is because there's a negative stigma with being a follower or a, you know, sheep, as we sometimes say?

Linda: I imagine so, right? Because I have to tell you, I wasn't even sure I would put it in the book, you know? So what happened, the reason I wrote a book, I never intended to write a book. I'm a complete accidental author, completely. The only reason I have this book that I teach from is because leadership is such a mess. I mean, people will honestly, people will sell you anything you're willing to buy. And I had a hard time teaching this class with integrity. I really did. I mean, I couldn't figure out what it was. It used to keep me up at night, like, how am I going to teach this? What am I going to teach that, like, and so I actually created my own workbook and I decided I'm going to teach personal development, and people coming up with their own perspective, figuring it out and doing the work, and we couldn't do that all in the classroom. So I had to give them a resource that they could do outside the classroom. Complete accident that this became a book. It just was a necessity. So I almost, I asked my students, I don't know what to do with leadership. Should I leave it out? They're like, of course you shouldn't leave it out. You have to have leadership in there. And I was like, but I don't know that much to say about it. So I did give some activities like, what makes you an effective follower? When are you engaged? And when are you actively, you know, when are you actively engaged and critically thinking? And how can you create that environment? Remember, I'm a social psychologist, so it's all about how do you create a strong environment that moves people in a more productive direction. So that's kind of the way that I was thinking about followership is, but I don't really know how followership is necessarily different from effective management or even leadership. You know, I asked experts this all the time, and one of the answers that I got from someone I respect a lot is, he said, well, leaders follow in front. I've been thinking about what does that mean? Some of my students tell me that we follow as we're learning to lead. I think that could be true and important. But I think when we lead, we also follow. So I don't think it's only when we're learning, I think it's just a very complicated, I think leadership is stereotyped, I think followership is even worse. So, yeah. Sorry. Short answer, yes.

Kara: Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. That's interesting. Martin asked at the very beginning, building off the idea, it isn't real until you've written it down and reflecting through recording. He's curious to know your thoughts about sketching and drawing as a way to process these happenings, or any other tips on just generally how to process. because a lot of us process things differently. Yeah.

Linda: I love that. I love that. So I want to tell you that's excellent. And I have in my leadership class, two assignments about creating frameworks, okay? So like, how do you, so when you're in the classroom, the teacher gives you a rubric, right? So they tell you, you know, here's what we're looking for. Do this, do this, do that. And you're smart. You can follow a rubric. You can get an A. Get a good grade. That's not hard, right? I mean, they gave you a structure. The question in life is you are not often always given the rubric, so you have to create your own. You have to create your own framework, your own understanding. So I have this activity, this exercise, I'm sorry, this assignment in my MBA classroom where people have to create a framework for learning vicariously through observation. So they have to decide what do they want to learn from observation? What kind of structure are they going to create? What data are they going to collect? Who are they going to get it from? What are they going to do with it? What's the outcome? So it's like complete, it's like an exercise in managing ambiguity, all right? And I had an architect who drew this, who drew his framework out in three drafts. I didn't even understand what he was doing, but he clearly understood it. It was clear that he was making progress on his framework, on his putting structure to ambiguity. So I think it's really important, whatever, but I do still really want it to be tangible. Like, I literally kept this architect's three drafts that he turned in for his assignment, and I show it to my students. because I'm like, look, I don't know what, you know, they're like, well, what are you looking for? Like, what do you mean framework? I'm like, I'm not looking for anything. I'm looking for you to tell me what framework makes sense for you. So I just want to say one more thing. I know you didn't ask me this question. But the one thing I want to say is that, you know, we have to get better at managing ambiguity. One of my executive MBA students, she asked me, I don't often get asked for letters of recommendation from my MBAs, from my undergrads, yes, but not from my MBAs. And she asked me to write a letter. She was being considered for this big job, this big international talent search agency, leadership development company. So I did, and she got the job, and she told me, you know, Linda, do you know what these companies are looking for? They're looking for executives, for managers, who can manage ambiguity, and they can't find them. And I thought, you know how many years I've, I just told you, I've been teaching 30 plus years executive MBAs, thousands and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of students. If my students can't manage ambiguity, I'm doing something wrong. There's something wrong. I'm not helping them do what they need to do. So I started creating these assignments, which students hate. They hate it. They want to know, what do you want? Tell me what you want. And I tell them. I want you to figure it out. And you're in the same position as everyone else. Everyone's trying to figure it out. So it's not like you're the only one, everyone's trying to figure out. But the more I can help you practice putting pen to paper, and figure out what kind of structure you want to create to manage ambiguity, the wiser younger you'll be, and the further you'll be up the curve, and I hope the more successful, happy, however you want to define that. So I'm really working on trying to help people manage ambiguity and writing, drawing, whatever helps you capture the gist or the essence, and hold onto that, more power to you.

Kara: Okay, great. Wholeheartedly. Amir asks, considering the rapid evolution of workplace dynamics, especially with remote and hybrid models, what are your insights on developing leadership skills that bridge the gap between traditional in-person management, leadership, et cetera, and that now that like the digital dynamic that many of us are contending with?

Linda: Well, that's so interesting. Aren't we in the digital dynamic right now?

Kara: Exactly. Yeah.

Linda: And so I want to tell you, I was shocked at how intimate Zoom can be. Like, right now, I don't see any of you, but I see Kara. And I feel like I'm talking and looking right at her. I feel like she's right there. So when I was teaching during Zoom, and I was doing a lot of teaching during Zoom, people had, you know, different backgrounds. Some people had their camera blurred. But if I saw the background, I'd be like, what is that? What flag is that? And I would start having conversations with people. This was, you know, I would come on early before Zoom and I would stay later. Actually, the children's book? That was created on Zoom with my Hong Kong executive MBAs from 4:30 in the morning till 6:30 in the morning Chicago time, because I was teaching for them during their afternoon. And they were not happy because it was COVID, and they weren't meeting with their friends and their students. So I said, I'll stay on after. I'll chat with you, you know, nobody's up in my house for the next couple hours. So I'll have coffee. We could talk about the class. We can talk about whatever you'd like. And their children were coming home and sitting on their lap. And I'd start talking to the kids. And this is how we came up with this idea, that these kids needed their own book about leadership. So this, the idea in this book, it all came from my students on Zoom. So I think that we can do it in person, on Zoom. I just think that you have to structure it, you have to have the time right for Zoom. I mean, like, right? You have more informal interactions in person, but I think leading and managing, we can be as intimate. I really believe that. Not as informal, because you're not running into people in the bathroom or grabbing coffee on Zoom. But I do not think it is a barrier. And I think that we can, and I have heard from students, so you see, I'm not that introverted, right? But I have heard from students who aren't like out there, that they love Zoom. They manage so much, they're so much happier on Zoom because they can have these conversations with people. They can feel like they're connecting in a way that they don't feel often that they're able to do in the office, which I think is really interesting. There's not a lot of research yet that I'm that familiar with on, or that that has much of a consensus about it. But they are doing research on it now. And so I'm a fan, I'm a fan of Zoom.

Kara: Yeah, I think the hybrid work works well and we make it work. Vale or Vale, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, asks do you think there are managers who don't lead because their vision of the future? Excuse, sorry, tripping over my words here. Do you think there are managers who don't lead because their vision of the future is provided by external agents or external factors?

Linda: Well, okay, but remember, that I'm only using my definition and my framework of leading and managing. That would mean that the person who's managing is happy with that. There's no problem for them. They're happy with the external definition, and that's working. Because otherwise, they would make the choice to lead, because they'd be dissatisfied. So the answer is yes, they're not leading because they don't feel the need to change because they're fine with the definition that the status quo or the present that they're optimizing. And again, you don't need to lead all the time and you shouldn't. You shouldn't be leading all the time. Like my example of my students who tell me, you know, they just want to lead like as though, you know, they're going to just live in some future state, have these visions all the time. So, but I think it depends on what your definition, the question's definition of leadership is and how they're thinking about constraints on their own choices and actions.

Kara: Yeah. Yeah, that's really helpful. And this question came in just a couple minutes ago. The individual is a current leadership strategy consultant working with a client who is much more senior than they are, and they do not want to start a conversation about how their leadership could be better. Do you have any suggestions on how to begin a productive and lasting conversation to get buy-in and inspire change in others?

Linda: I think you should do what we did today. I think you should ask this person, what's your definition of leadership and how do you think about that, and see what they say about what they think they're doing when they lead. What do they think is the difference between leading and managing? You know, I have to tell you, my sister-in-law uses these images from the children's book, the juxtaposition on she teaches and justice ministry, she teaches, man, what do you call it, like attorney generals and big shot lawyers. And she uses these pictures. And she has them talk about leading and managing because it's sort of like a free way to, you know, you're not talking about leading and managing really, or you're not talking about your industry or your job or you, personally, you're talking kind of free flow. What do you think about leading and managing? So I think that would be a very non-confrontational, very enlightening way. I do these exercises because I try to get students to think about their own definitions of whether they're, whether they might want to change their definition and behave differently. But I'm not kind of shoehorning that. So I think you could use these type of activities, these type of questions, have them talk about what they think is, what's their understanding of leading and managing, how are they trying to enact that? So more through questions rather than through directives, especially given the situation, the context you described. Good luck. I hope it works well for you.

Kara: There are a lot of comments and a lot of appreciation for the images that you used throughout the session. And someone was just curious, like, how do you create those?

Linda: Well, so it's very interesting. I actually hired a company. I worked with, it was Ink Factory. It was, and it was some years ago when they were relatively new. They were a relatively young company. And what happened was they, I love images. And I don't use PowerPoint in the classroom. I use PowerPoint for you because it's just easier on Zoom. But in the classroom, I use a document camera. And that allows me to just move fluidly through different topics without having to kind of sequence it. Like, even, like I teach negotiations. And one of the things you're not supposed to do in negotiations really is to sequence, I'm going to say this first and then this is going to happen. because you don't know what's going to happen. So if your preparation is too sequenced, you're not going to be as flexible and be able to respond to what's happening. That's the same with PowerPoint for me. Some people use PowerPoint, amazing in the classroom. But when I'm teaching three hours, if I sequence a three hour PowerPoint, I will have put so much energy and effort into it that I will think that that's the best class I could offer, and you're going to sit there and watch every single page of that PowerPoint. Because I will believe that I would not be doing my job if I didn't give you the best class possible. But with the document camera, I know kind of where I want to go, but it allows me to be much more fluid, and to say, oh, you know, I was going to cover that later, but let's do that now. And then I grab that. So images allow me to be more flexible. Images capture just an essence. I hate it when people put a ton of words up on a slide. I just, I really don't like it. And I need people, for this topic, I need people to take their own definition, their own understanding. I need them to own the knowledge in their own way and not to memorize what I said or what I think, but to capture what they think so that they can use it. So Ink Factory was, I did a talk for Booth, and Ink Factory was hired to capture the essence of that talk. And they had one image that was an image of Davis and Hogarth, which is the model we use at Booth for learning. It basically says that there are two kinds of knowledge and two kinds of skills. Conceptual knowledge is what faculty bring to the classroom. I'm conceptual knowledge. Domain knowledge is what you bring. So that's your, the knowledge from your industry, from your domain, from your education, from your geographic look, you know, all that. That's what you bring. So domain knowledge and conceptual knowledge. And generally, we mix that up in the classroom and we're golden. But Davis and Hogarth said, knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. Remember? Remember the University of Chicago motto? Let knowledge grow from more to more. So be human life enriched. Let knowledge grow from more to more. That's not the end of the motto. That's not the end of the story. Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. They have another part of their framework, which is skills and behaviors. So two kinds of knowledge, conceptual, domain knowledge, two kinds of skills, action and insight. Action skills are your ability to put that knowledge, conceptual and domain, into action like negotiation and decision making, interpersonal influence. And insight skills are your ability to learn the right lessons from experience. This is being wise or younger. This is collecting data, doing experiments, being your own coach, writing things down. And so anyway, they captured a great image of that, and I contacted them and I said, can I use this image? Like, can I use this in my teaching because this is perfect. And then I hired them and those are the images, but we worked together to create them, and I'm very happy to teach. And I'm also teaching a class, a leadership class only from, well, not only, but for movies. So that was another one of my, one of my goals was teach only with images, And another goal was enough with the, all these case studies. I mean, it's fine, case studies are fine, but there are a lot of them. And so let's use movies as case studies because I want people to also learn from everyday inputs. And so those are movies and images are two of my favorite vehicles for learning.

Kara: I agree. As a visual learner, it's very helpful. I believe I've been in one of the sessions a long time ago where you used some video images to talk about leadership is a very helpful framework. There's variance of this question that have come up. So I'll ask it in this way. The question is, from your perspective, how does one evaluate whether their leadership practices or choices between management and leadership are effective? So how do we measure the effectiveness of our leadership map?

Linda: Well, I mean, one thing is your own satisfaction, seriously. I mean, to what extent are you, do you feel, I mean maybe this sounds too floofy, but fulfilled or satisfied, happy, content? To what extent do you feel restless and unmoored? Like not, you know, do you feel like you're in flux? do you feel like you have a rhythm, that you have a, maybe even a type of peace? Do you want to do more? Do you feel an impetus that you're not doing enough? So that might mean that you need to be thinking more about taking more risks to change. If you feel like you're moving too much, like me, I got to tell you, I want to do more management. I'm doing way too much leading and I'm exhausted. And so part of it is my own balance between when do I manage and when do I lead? And part of it is we are naturally good at certain things. Like some of us are like naturally, we default to change and to putting things into flux. And some of us default to order in things. So there are a lot of different things. Also, maybe whatever your definition of success is. I would also have you, in another day, we could have done what's your definition of success in thinking about how that changes across time and how your definition of success drives your choices and your behaviors. But I would have you think about, for the question, I'd have you think about what's your definition of success. And how does that jive with your feelings about your success at managing and leading, and maybe the frequency of the choice. So if you don't feel happy with what's going on, you might be doing too much leading and not enough managing, or too much managing and not enough leading. And there's no like correct equilibrium. You have to decide for yourself and your situation. But I would go with both external and internal, how I felt about these choices, vis-a-vis my definition of success, and the maybe external worldview of how I'm enacting, how I'm making these choices on the job or in my life or in the community.

Kara: Okay, thanks. Howard is curious, and a few others as well, to what extent cultural norms shape our understanding of what constitutes a good leader? Any response to that?

Linda: Well, cultural norms shape our understanding of what constitutes, fill in the blank, okay? So yes, of course. And we have to think about what that means. So not just national culture, but corporate cultures, right? Different industries have different norms. And you know, what is corporate, what is culture? Corporate culture, like, think about it. How many of you think that you work in a company that has a strong culture? Okay, so what does it mean to have a strong culture? It means that we have a view of the world that we all buy into. And it doesn't mean it's a righter, it's a correct view, it's just our view. And like at Booth, we have a view of the world. We have a very strong culture. Harvard has a different strong culture. It's strong, it's a different view of the world. It's not about being right or wrong. It's just like, it's like the joke about the fish. Like I heard it on the radio the other day that this older fish swims by this two younger fish and the older fish says, hey, boys, how's the water? And the younger fish look at each other and they say, what's water? So the idea that it's just around us and you know, culture, strong culture, it's a social control mechanism. It is, it controls our behavior because we buy into it. We fit or we don't. We're in or we're out. We make decisions based on the fit with our culture. Now, I'm talking about corporate culture, right? So it affects everything that we do. And we have to think about not just our ethnic culture, how we are viewed, you know, so like I'm Korean, I was born in Korea. I grew up with a whole different notion about Asians, about women, about education. And each of you has your own idiosyncratic notions about this. And then I live in a world that has different ideas. So there's not a short answer to this. The answer is yes. Actually, I've noticed a trend. The answer is yes to every one of these questions so far. It's just yes and. Yes and what about that yes is important. So I think it's important to have self understanding, you know, about who you are, your own culture, your own corporate culture, your place in that, how that might fit or not. And I don't think, so people talk about self-awareness. Self-awareness is fine, but self-understanding is what we're trying for.

Kara: I like that.

Linda: Being aware is, again, necessary but not sufficient. We need to understand what it means. Once we understand, we can change our actions. Being aware is just a state of mind, right? But understanding, that helps us to figure out, okay, what could we change? If we understand why we do this, and we change this, what might the outcome be? So I think that's what's really important, is to go for self understanding. And culture is an element of understanding the self.

Kara: Caitlin is curious if there are any movies or if you could share any of the movies that you do cover when you do the movie session.

Linda: Oh, Caitlin, I hope that you could be in my class. So I do not assign, it won't surprise you. All this stuff about ambiguity and everything. I don't assign the movies. My students choose. I put them in groups of five, and they choose a movie that they think has leadership themes.

Kara: Oh, I like that.

Linda: They then decide what are those leadership themes. And then they create a framework that generalizes beyond the movie. So for example, if the movie's Lincoln, remember Lincoln? It was about band of rivals and how you listen to get consensus among people who have different ideas. So they made their leadership lessons about coming to consensus through diverse opinions. And they created a framework about the process by which we do that and how we make decisions with diverse groups. So that's the essence, or just from the movie, it's not about Lincoln, it's not about what Lincoln did, it's about what we can do and what we can learn from this case, from this case study. And then everyone in the class gets the frameworks for each movie, from each movie group, and each movie group gets 20 minutes to teach in an interactive way the lessons from their movies. So the movies are all over the board. I just finished teaching this class and Caitlyn, we had "Mulan," "Moneyball," "Fight Club," which I was not sure how that was going to go, they did an amazing job, "Devil Wears Prada," "Coach Carter". The best one that I had for followership, my students, I told you they're helping me with followership, was "McFarland, USA." It's about a coach who goes to teach, goes to coach track. And they created a whole framework around followership with this track metaphor. It was fascinating. So whatever my students bring to me, that's what we learn from. And it's amazing. But in the workbook, choosing leadership, I do have three movies that I kind of show you how to analyze a movie or how to, not analyze, but how to come up with questions. And the movies I chose were "Rashomon" for identity. It's a Japanese Kurosawa, black and white movie, silent, that talks about different, helps you think about why people tell a different story. What is it about their identity. Then "Invictus" for a kind of organizational globe, a social, bigger, bigger change, bigger issues about Nelson Mandela and the Springboks. Oh, and "Temple Grandin." "Temple Grandin" is a biopic, it's Claire Danes, she's amazing. And she's actually a professor at Colorado State University. She has a very, you know, she's like on the spectrum and she, it's about how she thought, how you think differently, and how that is a way to think about leading and managing. So anyway, any movie, any movie.

Kara: Oh, I love that. That's really helpful. And then we just have two minutes left, so I'll do two quick ones. And Minnie would like to know if you have any book recommendations. And then the last question, which I appreciate, is just like, how do we practice leadership skills in our daily lives? Any thoughts about practicing this in our day-to-day lives and any books you might recommend?

Linda: Oh, books. Look, here. Let me show you.

Kara: I was laughing when I saw that because I've seen your office. That's great.

Linda: I mean, I don't know what to recommend for you on books. Let's see. It depends on what kind of books you want. Send me an email, seriously. If you want to learn about social psychology, I would have you read my, again, my favorite social psychologist is Dan Gilbert. He has a book called "Stumbling on Happiness". And it was, it's one of the early books in positive psychology. One of my neighbors didn't know that Dan was my friend. And she said, I read this book and I finally understand, I finally understand about happiness. She was shocked that this is, you know, basically the godfather of my children and my academic big brother. So that's a sentimental favorite. I love that book. But there are so many good books and it just really depends. But I'm serious. Send me an email, honestly, and tell me what you want to learn or what genre, what you're interested in. I read "Killer Angels", it's about the Civil War, it's one of the best books I have read. Again, too many books. And then how to learn from everyday.

Kara: Yeah, just like how are you practicing leadership skills in our daily life? And then we can end on that again.

Linda: I actually think that if we think about how do we, I think there are all kinds of skills you can practice in your daily life. I think community building is a skill. I think making people feel welcome, heard, understood is something we don't do enough of because we're busy, we're running, we're doing this and that. And if we made that salient and made that focal, and we went around trying to actually be present with people and see them, that is a leadership skill. I think hospitality is a leadership skill. You can't engage people if they don't feel comfortable. If they don't feel like you're, you know, you see them. So community building is a skill. I practice every day. Everyday, I do something to build community. And I'm pretty good at it, but I am nowhere near an expert at it. And I work on that every day. I think thinking about listening, and really listening, these are mostly my skills I'm working on, because I talk a lot, as you can tell. And I have to get myself, I have to focus on listening, and just not coming through, oh, here's the answer, or here's what I think, or oh, that reminds me of something that happened to me. I'm kind of empathetic so I'm always trying to make connections with people. And sometimes, by trying to make connections, I'm actually like doing the wrong thing because I should just shut up and listen. And I think leadership is a series of skills, and skills benefit from practice. So I would have you sit down and think about what skills would you like to get better at, and then work on one or two. You know, one of the skills I'm working on? Avoiding. I'm not kidding. I, Linda Ginzel, am working on avoiding. I think that, you know, I like being efficient, I like getting things done. So if we have an issue or conflict, I just, let's just talk about it, let's just figure it out right now. I'm sure that we can fix it. But it may not be the right time. The person might not be able to listen. I may not be able to hear. I have to pick my battles and pick the time, and I just think it's always the right time to solve the problem, because then we can just be rational and go on. That's a leadership skill, knowing when to act and how to act. All of these are. So you have to decide what's most worthy of your time and your attention and write it down.

Kara: Yeah, that's a perfect way to end. And I want to thank you so much, Linda, for this great session. And for those who are on, this will be, that was recorded, will be posted in in the next week or two. But as Linda said, feel free to reach out to her or myself with any additional questions. Of course, congrats to the admins that are on the call. We really appreciate all of your time today, and thank you for joining us. Thanks again, Linda. Bye, everybody.

Linda: All the best. See you in Chicago.

Kara: Bye.