Michael Koehler: Welcome to Episode Five of On the Balcony. My name is Michael Koehler, and I am your host. In today's episode, we'll continue to examine Ronald Heifetz's ground breaking book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, and look at Chapter Five, 'Applying Power'. This chapter continues to work the distinction between leadership and authority, and introduces core resources that come with power and authority for the practice of leadership.

So, let's talk a little bit more about authority. In previous chapters, we learned that authority is relational. It gets assigned by people who authorize you, either formally through a contract, job description, or a mandate. We call this formula authority, and we all have a certain degree of formal authority, whether we are a manager or director or board member, elected official, or the CEO.

But authority can also be assigned informally, with the trust that people have in you, the attention they give, the charisma they assign to you. The President may have the same formal authority throughout their whole term, but the informal authority, their approval ratings, if you want, may fluctuate over time. And that's not only true for presidents, we're just much better at polling them. Two teachers may have the same formal authority, but one may be really appreciated by the students and parents, and the other one maybe not. To understand why, one needs to go back to the services people expect you to deliver for them - protection, direction, order - and examine how well you are doing.

If you own the role of authority, people expect you to some degree to solve problems, and as we know, that works particularly well for technical problems. But when the work is adaptive, we require more. That's the domain of leadership. And Heifetz suggests in this chapter, that people in roles of authority, formal and informal, have a unique set of opportunities to practice leadership. Here are three of them. The first one is focusing attention. With your authority, you can set the agenda and point people's attention to the difficult challenges. We often would do this by asking a provocative or evocative question. Sometimes we would share a difficult reality or some really unpleasant data.

The second leadership opportunity, if you are in a role of authority, is orchestrating conflict. Different people might have different points of view on the work to be done. And adaptive work often includes surfacing these people and roles of authority can invite those different viewpoints to the table. But this can also be risky. As the heat gets raised, not everybody might get it their way, and they might be disappointed with you.

Finally, the third leadership opportunity that Heifetz introduces us to is managing the so-called holding environment. Holding environment is an interesting term he borrows from the field of psychology, especially child's development. The holding environment is a space in which children can learn and develop. And for adults, it's pretty similar. It's a space in which problems can be tackled and conflict can be worked. A strong holding environment is capable of containing more conflict, more heat than a weak one. And good authority work helps strengthen holding environments, keeping people in the room and engaged rather than letting them break out into their factions and battling each other unproductively.

All right. That's a lot to talk about, and today's guest will bring a unique perspective to the table. I am joined today by Radha Ruparell, the head of the Global Leadership Accelerator at Teach for All. Teach for All is a global network that is developing leadership in classrooms and communities in more than 50 countries around the world. Radha is also an author of the book, Brave Now, the book she wrote as she fell dangerously ill at the cusp of the COVID pandemic, rather, will help us get in touch with some of the outer and inner work of authority to manage and contain all of the stress that comes with it. As with all our guests, Radha will bring a piece of the text from Chapter Five and together we'll chew on it deeply for more insight and application.

If you are an avid reader, I invite you to continue to read along with the book. Alright, let's get started.

Michael Koehler: Welcome, Radha! It’s good to see you.

Radha Ruparell: Hi, Michael, good to be with you.

Michael Koehler: I’m so excited to have you on the show and to connect about this powerful framework with you.

Radha Ruparell: Likewise, I think we're gonna have some fun together today.

Michael Koehler: So, we'll start our conversation on Chapter 5 of Leadership Without Easy Answers – 'Applying Power' is the title, as we always do with a brief summary. What were some of the core ideas as you were revisiting the chapter that stood out to you?

Radha Ruparell: So, a few of the ideas that stuck out to me, the first was just about this idea of authority that with authority we have power, and with power comes responsibility. But one of the things that struck me reading this, maybe 15 plus years after I first read it with this idea of there are both, formal and informal authority.

I think a lot about that right now because when I look around the world, so much of the leadership now is distributed, right? This idea is that anyone can exercise leadership. And so, I look at so many people around the world, you look at these social movements, so many people exercising informal authority. In my work in education, I see students, parents, and teachers. So, that was one idea, this idea of authority, and particularly this idea of formal and informal authority. So, that was one idea that stuck with me.

A second big idea, Michael, that came out in the chapter was this idea of a holding environment, right? This idea that, when you have authority, whether it's formal or informal, you have this opportunity to shape the container, to shape the space.

I've been thinking a lot about this, and again, it resonated with me in today's times, because as leaders exercising leadership, we can shape the container, we can shape this holding environment by who we invite into the room, right? Who's in the room and who's missing. We can shape it by thinking about what issues we bring to the table. Do we actually put the real things on the table? Or are we hiding? Do we get from the adaptive worker to the technical work? So, that stuck out to me.

Just one more thing, Michael, that really resonated with me from the chapter was this idea of trust. So, this idea that particularly when we've got informal authority, we might not have the formal power, trust means everything.

It reminded me, Michael, of this quote that I had heard, “We only move at the speed of trust.” That just came out so clearly. And I think when I look at what's happening in our world today, this idea of trust mattering, or the absence of trust, which is causing some of the polarization in the world today. That was just on top of my mind as I was rereading this chapter.

Michael Koehler: And particularly on this last item of trust, I think one of the beautiful things that this framework introduces us to that I think sometimes gets underutilized is this idea that authority work is really important work.

We sometimes think that, oh leadership – we all want to practice leadership, but authority work that is trustworthy, that is holding people, that is providing orientation and direction in the container, including for adaptive work, including for messy work, is really essential.

I think this chapter actually has a lot of really wonderful insights into how good authority works, both from a role of formal authority, but also as an informal authority. Looks like the reason why we don't trust authorities is often because they weren't trustworthy, right? So, kind of a need for more trustworthy authority figures.

Radha Ruparell: Yeah, it's so right, Michael, because, again, even the chapter title 'Power', or the word authority, it can be so triggering, because I don't think we have good models. But looking at it again, you remember that, again, when you have authority, you have power, when you have power, you have a lot of responsibility because you have a lot of tools to shape the conversations that happen. And so, I think I love this idea of looking at what good authority looks like. What does responsible authority look like?

Michael Koehler: I can't wait to dive into that with you today because we're, particularly in the education space, which is your field, I think that is a crucial question. So, we'll get to that. But before we go there, I'd love for you to share with us a few of the identities, role identities, and roles that you are bringing to this work.

Radha Ruparell: Sure! Yeah. So, one thing I say about my identity is I feel like a global citizen. So, I grew up in Canada to parents who grew up in East Africa to grandparents who grew up in India.

And so, now I do work in a global space. But I really hold these many different identities. I grew up in Canada, so I bring that Western lens. But so much of my upbringing brought in my Indian background – Gujarati, an Indian language, was my first language. Values like community and family I get from that. So, that's something that shapes me a lot. I think a lot about it these days when I'm working in this global network with 60 countries represented across the world.

So, that I guess brings me to the second piece of my identity, which is, I love what I do.

So, I had a Global Leadership Accelerator at Teach for All. It's a network, as I mentioned, in 60 countries around the world. What we're doing is working to grow leadership capacity all over the world of young people who go teach for two years in high-needs communities, and then exercise leadership for many, many years afterward. I'm working to grow leadership there.

So, a lot of how I think about my role is just also what I do. And recently, I've become an author. I can share more about that. But I wrote a book, so writing and being able to share myself, that's a piece of my identity, too.

But the last piece, I'll say, I'm in London this week, visiting my 4 nieces and nephews here, another piece of my identity is just related to my family, and I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, and I'm a very proud aunt of 6 nieces and nephews. I think that shapes me a lot. So much of the time we define ourselves by what we do, but being around these kids reminds me of just who I am as a human being. It's always grounding and it's a huge, huge piece of me.

Michael Koehler: Because you have played such a core role in that sort of Teach for All network, I just love for us to spend a minute or two sharing with our listeners who are not that familiar with Teach for All, just kind of the core mission and what's the connection to leadership development?

We heard young high potentials get placed for two years into schools, but then also they're supposed to exercise leadership, like, tell us a little bit more about what is going on there? What's your theory of change?

Radha Ruparell: Yes, exactly. So, we are a global network and we have these independent organizations now in 60 countries around the world – Teach for India or Teach for Nigeria. In each country, what we're doing is we're recruiting promising young leaders. So, these are, oftentimes, university graduates or young professionals who go teach for two years in high-needs communities, oftentimes, when we don't have teachers.

But that experience of teaching for two years, it's not just teaching. We consider teaching as an act of leadership because so much of what you're doing is you're building trust, you're creating this holding space and holding environment. In addition to that, what we believe is every year thereafter, is also exercising leadership.

So, those two years are just in some ways, a ground to begin to discover your leadership, but we have people now working in all parts of the system to change the system at all levels of the system.

So, some stay on as teachers, some stay on as school leaders, and at the core of our work is our mission around pooling collective leadership so all children have the opportunity to achieve their potential. Because, at the end of the day, Michael, and you'll know this from doing work in systems, some of the challenges we're facing in these countries are so complex. There are children who are left behind because of caste, because of race, because of income level, by no fault of their own, and one person is not going to solve that problem. So, we need students, parents, community leaders, and teachers to come together.

So, that's the core idea of growing collective leadership. Then my work is around how do we develop these leadership capacities? And how do we bring people across the globe to develop these leadership capacities together because we also have seen that you learn faster when you're doing it together and you can get inspired by what's happening in another context. So, that's some of the work that I'm up to.

Michael Koehler: And it's really win-win-win. As you place your fellows, the idea is they have immediate impacts either because there's a need, there are not enough teachers or there's a need for inspiration in that system. It needs some fresh perspective and some new innovative approaches.

But then, if I understand correctly, they are benefiting from those two years as a learning experience for themselves around their future career and development. The hope is that they stay in the education space or at least in the social space to continue to provide leadership.

Radha Ruparell: Yeah! At least 70% of people stay and that's the big idea, then they can actually affect system change from many different parts of the system. The last piece I'll say is, it's not just about going to leadership capacity, these young people who are in roles of teaching and eventually policy in school leadership, but also young people who are the students.

So, our belief is to create a world where students can shape a better world for themselves and for all of us. More and more, we're seeing the power of activating the leadership of students, which is why again, my identity as an aunt comes into play because oftentimes the work I do with adults. Last night, I did some of this work with two of my nieces - I have to tell you; kids learn things faster. So, I have huge hopes around what happens if we do this work when growing leadership with young people, and not just do it with adults.

Michael Koehler: Gosh! I love that. It sounds like hope is a theme that is really, really present for you and for the whole organization. So, I'm curious to hear, Radha, which quote you brought from the chapter that somehow touched you? Would you read it for us?

Radha Ruparell: This was a tough one, Michael. There were so many good ones. But let me tell you, the one that really called on me, and a bit of the context was, there was an example that was shared in this chapter about a doctor, Dr. Parsons, and she was working with a family where one of the family members was quite severely ill and had to confront that it might be a life and death situation.

And so, here's the quote, “Part of the know-how Parsons required was inner discipline - poise. She had to have the emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration, and pain. She had to be able to raise questions about preparing for the possibility of death, without getting too anxious herself.”

Michael, the reason I picked this is, we talk a lot about these holding environments, we talk about the ability of those who are exercising leadership to hold a lot of conflicts, to hold a lot of tension, and to hold different views. And yet, I don't think we talk enough about the inner work that we need to do ourselves, that inner discipline, that poise, that groundedness that's required in order to be able to hold that.

So, let me just read it again, just with that thought in mind, right? “Part of the know-how Parsons required was inner discipline - poise. She had to have the emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration, and pain. She had to be able to raise questions without getting too anxious herself.”

So, this really, really captures my attention, because so much of the work I do and so much of what I believe is important is that we have to grow our inner capacities. We have to be able to grow our own leadership and our own self-awareness and our own compassion and our own internal ability to deal with conflict if we ever wish to be able to hold that for other people.

Michael Koehler: Wow, that's terrific! Radha, I want to invite you as we chew on the sentence before we go to experience, I'm sure you have a lot of experience, but I want to go to intuition first.

So, I want to invite you, as we sit with the sentence, and I'm going to read it one more time, we're going to hear it a lot of times today, just to let your mind wander a little bit and see what images, metaphors, stories come up for you as you hear these words.

“Part of the know-how Parsons required was inner discipline - poise. She had to have the emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration, and pain. She had to be able to raise questions about preparing for the possibility of death without getting too anxious herself.”

Radha Ruparell: I have a few that come to mind, Michael. The first was, I'm laughing now because I was on a plane coming here to Europe just a couple of weeks ago. I was sitting in one of the emergency rows and there were parents with a small child. The air hostess had come to them and basically explained how the masks work the oxygen masks, right? This idea is that please take care of yourself before you take care of others.

One other image that comes to mind Michael is that I have a park nearby. It's about a 5-minute walk. Pre-COVID, I barely went to the park and now I go every single day. I take a walk in that park. In that park, there's this big, huge, huge tree. And when I'm having a difficult day, I go and I lean on that tree because it's so big and so grounded. And sometimes, I imagine my feet almost like roots growing deep into the earth and imagine being grounded. And that image comes to mind when I think about this. What is that inner discipline? What's that poise? What is that ability to be grounded, no matter what's being thrown at you?

Michael Koehler: I think, as I'm listening to you, Radha, this word inner discipline, like my first association was kind of a forceful-like discipline, like you need to exercise more and you need to figure it out, right? But I think what you're reminding us here is that discipline doesn't need to come from strength. It may come from love, it may come from self-compassion, and it may come from a spiritual grounding, almost, as I'm listening to that image of the tree, the touch of the heart, to develop that emotional capacity to hold all of these difficult emotions that come among the stakeholders as they're confronting the difficult challenges.

Radha Ruparell: Yeah, and I love that you said that because I think language really matters. And that word, and in some ways, actually, now that I'm reading that, that specific word doesn't resonate either with me but the spirit of it does.

And so, I think this idea of inner poise, or inner spirit, or whatever that word is for you – and sometimes we don't even have language for it but it's a physical feeling of when you feel centered, when you feel present, when you feel whole, or when you feel your best self.

I love that you just noted that because I think for each of us, we can figure out what's the word or sometimes what's the image that has us feel that feeling of grounded that we can withstand anything, and that, then we have the capacity to also hold space for others?

Michael Koehler: So, I'm not a native speaker of English. I will say that the word poise has not been part of my vocabulary. I see this here, I see the emphasis you put on it every time you say it. It's actually in the book. It's in italics. Poise, like he says, 'inner discipline - poise', right? There's an emphasis on that. So, what does poise mean to you?

Radha Ruparell: It's a great question. I haven't even thought about it that much. Let's see. It's so good sometimes when you think about words, and what they mean to us. The way that I would interpret it that actually resonates with me for this notion here is when you feel at peace, like, when you feel like you can be truly your authentic self.

Poise reminds me of a dancer who is out there on stage, but they're just truly themselves. I think sometimes poise can have an external connotation, right? This idea that how do others perceive you, but my felt sense, how it really works for me is when I think about that inner poise, that inner peace, that feeling that what you're doing out in the world, and who you're being is consistent – when you're not hiding something.

I think about this in these times, it's when you're able to remove your invisible mask and just be as you are without judging yourself, without hiding, and accepting all pieces of you, the ones that you like, the ones you might not like.

It just gives me the image of some people that I know who are just truly authentic. So, maybe poise is not the right word, but maybe it's that inner peace, that inner authenticity. I think those words resonate a lot more with me.

Michael Koehler: I'm going to read the quote one more time. This time, I invite you to let your mind wander and think about experiences in your own life, that can be in your role in Teach for All as you are holding the leadership development work in that network. Or it can be in your world as an author and somebody who's kind of sharing their own unique contributions with the world. So, the question will be what experiences did you have in your own life?

“Part of the know-how Parsons required was in inner discipline - poise. She had to have the emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration, and pain. She had to be able to raise questions about preparing for the possibility of death without getting too anxious herself.”

Radha Ruparell: The first thing it made me think of was about two years ago, and this was the peak of the global pandemic, and I'm working in this global network and all work is education. And all of a sudden, schools are shutting down all over the world. It's chaos. There's uncertainty. At the core of what people do, there is uncertainty.

We're working in communities where you can't necessarily transition to online learning. There may be no internet access. Children might be trekking two hours to get to school. You may not even speak the same language as parents.

And so, there was a lot of stress on the system. And so, I ended up connecting a lot with some of the senior leaders in these organizations that are leading this work. And they would come to me and say, “I don't know what to do. My team, they're completely stressed out, they're burnt out, they're working around the clock to keep children in school,” because in some cases if girls miss a year of school, they're being forced into an arranged marriage, or they're being forced to leave and they're never going to come back to school again. So, the stakes were quite real.

And so, these leaders and sometimes in formal authority positions were holding a lot. And they said, “My team is burned out, we're working around the clock, there's a lot of stress, and I'm not even able to physically see them, what do I do?” And the question that I would ask them, and I didn't even have to wait for the answer, because I could actually physically see it in their bodies and how they were showing up is, “First, let me ask you a question, how are you?”

And almost always, that person had not even had a moment to pause and think about that. And what I wanted to help them see was “You are trying to hold so much for so many people, but the quality of your interventions depends on the quality of your inner state, right? Because if you're stressed and fragmented, that's what you're putting out into the world.”

In this quote, it said, “She had to be able to raise questions without getting too anxious herself.” Now, if you haven't even paused for a moment to recognize, you're gonna be afraid to ask the question, you might not even be able to ask your team member a question about 'How are you?' if we're not able to take care of ourselves and our inner state and understand our emotions. It's so challenging to be able to hold that space for others.

So, I think that when we're talking about this idea of holding the environment, let's think about how do we support people and how do we support ourselves to grow that capacity? Especially Michael, I think about this, in our world, when we're dealing with so much trauma, so many issues around equity, like the depth of the issues people have to hold, we have to give people room to pause and slow down and actually be able to deal with them themselves. So, that's the first example that came to mind when I saw that quote.

Michael Koehler: Yeah! And the words, 'uncertainty, frustration, and pain' are so real there, that when we are working in spaces where there’s trauma, it’s so real and the work around trauma shows up.

The other thing you said that I just want to highlight is the holding environment as the problem-solving space is the space in which this difficult work, this difficult adaptive work can take place. So much of that holding environment is being provided by the people in authority roles, by the elders, by the people who are in the formal senior jobs, by the people who hold the trust, right?

What you said, I thought was so beautiful, and matches with my own experience, as I'm coaching those folks, is who is holding them? As you are providing the holding environment, who is holding you? Because it is a lot to carry.

Radha Ruparell: Yes, exactly. Every year, for example, we get together the CEOs from our network, and it's a space where they can actually hold each other. It's just remarkable about what they're holding for others. And yet, so often they don't have that space. It's one of the most beautiful times of the year when they can just be with one another and they share just in a few minutes: 'What am I proud of from this year, and what was challenging?' And that space is where they can also collectively hold one another. I think oftentimes, they realize they don't have these spaces.

So, I encourage those who are in formal authority positions, find the code, and find the support network, there's no shame in getting support. In fact, it's the opposite. Again, if we want to be able to hold space for others, we have to be held ourselves.

I guess, Michael, that brings me maybe to my second more personal example. I went through a difficult challenge these last couple of years. So, in April 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, I fell very ill with COVID. Just to paint a picture, this was a time when nobody I knew had gotten COVID. New York City had just shut down, the hospitals were overrun, and you couldn't even get in there. They were making makeshift facilities.

At that point, there weren't even masks for doctors, right? This was the time. I got very seriously ill. There were moments when I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. And then for months, when I got out of it, I faced a series of challenges, deep waves of fatigue, where I couldn't get out of bed for more than one or two hours. My heart didn't work properly. They found a lesion in my brain.

And so, life as I knew it turned around. It was really challenging. And to this day, I'm still dealing with some of the consequences of that. And so, when I went back to work, one of the challenges that I faced was my own inner state because I was still dealing with constant physical and mental stresses working with this illness and trying to lead in an environment where people were looking for me as an authority figure to hold space for them.

That's when I realized that, and this is actually where the word discipline does resonate with me, that discipline of building practices to ground myself became extremely important. And so, some of the practices I developed, I was almost forced to. One practice was slowing down so I sometimes had to lie down and rest in the middle of the day, something I never would have done.

So, with the discipline of knowing when I needed to pause, I built practices like going for a walk every day in the park. That park that I told you about which I'd rarely visited before, now I literally go every day because, for me, movement provides stillness and movement provides calm.

But the other thing that really supported me, and it comes back to the conversation we're having, and it reminds me of a quote in this chapter is that friendship can be a holding environment. I relied on some amazing friends and colleagues who held me and supported me. So, I had one colleague at work, who, when I fell, started texting me every day, just one message, 'How are you? How are you doing?' To this day, two years later, I still get a text message. That space is a holding environment because, in that space, I can say whatever there is, like, 'I'm having a horrible day.' 'I had a good day today.' And somehow, I can release the pain.

Sometimes we think about holding environments as this massive thing with many people, but sometimes in a one-to-one space, you can have a holding environment. I had another colleague who I worked with a lot, and when I came back to work, I said, “Do you know what? My nervous system is dysregulated so my fight or flight response is going to be activated more often than usual. And I have less hours in the day to get things done so I may be in action mode. But I want you to tell me when you see me operating from a place of stress because I do get more stressed and tired.”

She was there for me. She held space for me and because we had a deep level of trust, she was able to name things and bring perspectives I didn't want to hear. And that space was just another holding environment that allowed me to feel held so that I would have the capacity then to eventually hold others.

Michael Koehler: Yeah. Thank you for sharing your journey. That learning sounds like a very intense journey.

Radha Ruparell: It has been tough, and also probably enlightening at the same time because all of these things we take for granted, we no longer take for granted anymore and we start seeing things in a completely different way.

Michael Koehler: In a previous episode, we were talking a lot about the disequilibrium that kind of comes with difficult challenges and the stress, the heat. I think that the way you describe that as kind of the nervous system as a space that is an indicator for disequilibrium, I think was so beautiful.

One of the tough pieces here is when we get too over regulated, when we're in that panic zone and in that danger zone, our own capacity to notice and to hold ourselves diminishes and I love that practice of having a friend, having a confidant, having somebody who watches out for you. It sort of helps you notice that I'm over regulated now. I need to do whatever it takes to come back down to that learning zone or even below, comfort zone or rest zone to pick up that work again.

Radha Ruparell: Yeah, and I think everyone should have practices, but the practices can look different, right? For some people, it's a meditation or mindfulness practice. For those who say, 'That doesn't resonate,' I say, 'Maybe there's something with some movement, like, that's your moment to pause.' And for some people who don't want to do the individual work, I think having somebody there for you, like a confidant can make such a difference.

So, whatever it is, but that's a thing I encourage everyone who's in any position of exercising leadership to find that practice that allows you to slow down and just notice where you're at.

Michael Koehler: Radha, we're slowly approaching the end. I'm just curious as you've been sort of sitting with the framework and sort of expanding the frontier and thinking about application, if there's anything else that you want to share with us that you feel is worth sharing, potentially relative to the theme of this chapter but maybe also beyond that?

Radha Ruparell: The two things that come to mind are, one, there's a huge dialogue these days around equity and social justice. I'm thinking increasingly about how we bring these two pieces of work together, right? It shouldn't be leadership and adaptive leadership on one side and equity.

And so, so often, when I'm using this framework, it is around seeing where there are injustices in our global world. How do we use these tools to bring that to the forefront? I'm doing a lot of work around trauma and healing right now. And so, often I bring the tools and concepts from here. So, that's one thing I'm thinking about a lot.

The second thing and we started on this a little bit at the beginning of the call, it’s how do we bring this thing to younger people? Because I have been shocked, again, doing this work with young people, as young as 8 and 10, my nieces and nephews, how they can actually get these concepts in a quicker way, and oftentimes in a simpler way.

I just think about what if I had these tools or these ways of seeing the world or even just these questions in my mind at a younger age? And so, I think we should be creative and bring this to young people. I bet they'd actually have a lot to teach us. I think about things like climate change where I'm learning more from young people. But imagine now if they had some language or common language to talk about it. I don't know, maybe, Michael, that should be your next project. On the Balcony for Children.

Michael Koehler: Gosh! Yeah.

Radha Ruparell: Something to think about.

Michael Koehler: I so much enjoyed our conversation. I would love to finish our conversation by inviting you to read that quote one final time. And then, I have a very brief question for you as we wrap up today.

Radha Ruparell: “Part of the know-how Parsons required was inner discipline - poise. She had to have the emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration, and pain. She had to be able to raise questions about preparing for the possibility of death without getting too anxious herself.”

Michael Koehler: Radha, looking forward, what actions are you being called to take?

Radha Ruparell: I think this conversation we just had around bringing this work to young people is something that was just a spark in my mind and it just got activated here. That's where I have some energy. I might even begin trying this over the next few days with the four little guinea pigs I have in this home. But yeah, it really would be incredible to bring this to young leaders. And so, that's what I'm called to do next.

Michael Koehler: Thank you so much, Radha! It's been such an inspiration to learn from you. I'll link a bunch of the resources that we talked about on the show so that our listeners can find you and read your book. I wish you all the best in bringing these frameworks further out there to both the educators and the young people.

Radha Ruparell: Thanks, Michael. It's been fun to do this with you as well.

Michael Koehler: Coming up, a preview on the next episode of On the Balcony.

Welcome back to On the Balcony. Usually, this is the part of the show where we'll shift gears and I receive some coaching. Unfortunately, today, we'll need to take a pause. The summer break and a COVID infection have thrown our production schedule off a little. But we'll be back in two weeks with Chapter Six, with the title 'On the Razor's Edge'. That week, we'll be joined by LGBTQ+ rights advocate, Ian Palmquist. We'll talk about the constraints people in authority have to manage change, and how he as an activist has used the framework to advance LGBTQ+ rights. We'll also explore the intersection of identity and leadership a little bit more, and how that might be a dance on the razor's edge itself. Here's a preview:

“Marginalized people shouldn't have to do that work for people who are in systemic power. I think that's right, like we shouldn't have to. And when those of us who can have whatever other sets of privileges we have to be able to do that work, it can be incredibly powerful.”

If you like the show, press the subscribe button and leave a review. That helps others to connect to this really powerful framework. On the Balcony is brought to you by KONU - Growing and Provoking Leadership. We’re produced by Podigy. Editing – Riley Byrne and Daniel Link. Cover art by Kenneth Amoyo and Rosi Greenberg. Our music is called ‘Change in Blue’ by Hannah Gill and the Hours.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you for Episode 6 On the Balcony.