Michael Koehler: Welcome to Episode Eight of On the Balcony. My name is Michael Kohler, and I'm your host.

Today is the first of two episodes that engage with the theme of leadership without authority. If you've been listening to the show, you know that leadership and authority in our frame are not the same. You can practice leadership from any role in an organization or group. And it may be even easier, in some cases, to not be in charge.

We’ll begin to look at some of the resources for practicing leadership beyond what people might expect you to do. The chapter is titled ‘Creative Deviance on the Front Line’, and that summarizes beautifully why activists, advocates and organizers are particularly good at advancing adaptive work. You have more latitude for creativity, you can deviate from the status quo and the norms and challenge them more fully, even provoke people. And finally, you are more in touch with the data that is on the front line.

Our guest today will help us bring these ideas to life through a lens of community and leadership development in the state of Kansas. Julia Fabrice McBride is the interim president and CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center, a nonprofit organization that offers leadership development programs to foster stronger, healthier, and more prosperous communities through civic engagement. Julia will bring her experience as actor, coach, and executive to the table and help us understand rural communities a little better, including giving us a window into the adaptive work that is currently happening around abortion rights in the state.

As always, I invite you to take a look at the chapter. That's Chapter Eight from Heifetz's Leadership Without Easy Answers. Let's get started.

Welcome, Julia.

Julia Fabris McBride: Thank you, Michael.

Michael Koehler: We get started as we always get started, by getting to know you a little bit better. And, I'm curious to hear from you what roles, what identities, you are bringing to our conversation today.

Julia Fabris McBride: Well, first of all, Michael, I'm an actor. I'm trained as an actor. My first passion is as an actor, my first career was as an actor. So, this question of identity is both complicated and very, very dear to me. But I'll say, I am a cisgender woman, I am a bisexual woman married to a man, and a 60-year old mother of a 15-year old. I am a daughter; my parents are visiting from Ohio this week. So, I'm very aware this week of being a daughter.

I also just took on the role of interim President and CEO at the Kansas Leadership Center. So, I'm four days into that and doing my job as Chief Leadership Development Officer as well, trying to juggle those identities or roles. Is that enough?

Michael Koehler: Oh, that's plenty.

Julia Fabris McBride: I mean, I'm a Yogi, I'm a meditator. I love this, I’m a that -- and actually, Michael, what I loved about this framework from the very beginning, was the idea that there's a distinction between role and self. And that there's value, that this framework elevates the value of attending to that.

Michael Koehler: Yeah. And I can't help but seeing the connection to the actor.

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah. Like as an actor, you're always wondering, what would I do in this situation? And then, what would this character do in this situation?

Michael Koehler: Yeah. And, at least my fantasy is that actors feel much less funny around this idea that we're taking up a role, we're playing a role, not as something artificial, but actually as something to really relate to a situation, a context, a challenge, with empathy and compassion, enrolling yourself in that situation.

Julia Fabris McBride: Right. You're intervening to accomplish something, or to move something forward, or to become something yourself, or to help a group become what it's supposed to be.

Michael Koehler: I'm so excited to hear how these different roles and identities are coming to life as we're exploring this chapter together, ‘Creative Deviance on the Front Line’. I'm curious, what core ideas of themes have stood out for you from that chapter?

Julia Fabris McBride: The core themes that stood out to me this time that I read it, because I'm holding a copy of Leadership Without Easy Answers that I signed and dated in September 2008 when I first met Marty Linsky and was introduced to this book. So, I've been underlining in this book for 14 years. And the themes that struck me this time around were the idea of working across factions, and the idea that we can -- whether we have formal authority or not in our own system - if we want to get something done, we usually have to engage across organizations, or across factions, or across systems.

And, nobody has all the authority necessary to do that. So that’s one theme; the working across factions theme. The other one that stood out for me was leadership up and down the chain. So, sometimes I'm exercising leadership up, sometimes I'm exercising leadership down, sometimes I'm exercising leadership across. I mean, just a lot stood out to me in the chapter about that. And then the idea that's implicit in the chapter, Ed O'Malley and I have now just finished a book that's called When Everyone Leads: How Tough Challenges Get Seen And Solved. And I think the idea that we need cultures where everyone leads if we're going to make progress on our toughest challenges, is baked into this chapter though it's not explicit.

Michael Koehler: Yeah. I think it is such a, both beautiful and provocative idea still even like three decades after the book was written, that leadership is not just authority, that everybody can lead, that you can lead with authority, that we can lead without authority, even without informal authority. I mean, Heifetz makes this big case that, even if you don't have an audience and much attention like that may be when you're the freest, to do some provocation, to have some latitude as he calls it, on the front lines. And, I just love it, and at the same time, it is so daunting. It is so hard because as Heifetz points out in the chapter, many people wait until they gain authority to begin to think about leadership. If I were only a head of school, then I could finally influence the policies of the school and the way how things are going. And we underestimate actually the power we have when we’re on the front lines.

Julia Fabris McBride: The other thing that's on my mind, Michael, is that story of the two lieutenants in Vietnam. And I'll admit that as I read this chapter, that section caused me to really think about moments when I didn't exercise leadership. And then I also got to thinking about all the people in my community who are out there exercising leadership every day. That was the other beautiful thing about this chapter; is that, I kept thinking about one more person who was exercising leadership to try to make progress on something that was really important to them.

Michael Koehler: Terrific. I'm really excited to dive into those themes more as we explore the piece of the text you've brought. I have one more question before we get started. Would you share with us just in a few sentences a little bit more background on the Kansas Leadership Center, and its mission and its work.

Julia Fabris McBride: The Kansas Leadership Center's mission is to foster civic leadership for healthier, stronger, more prosperous Kansas communities. And our vision is a civic culture in Kansas and beyond, that is healthy, and prosperous, and able to make progress on the most daunting challenges. And we do that through leadership development and civic engagement, publications, research. Our mission is focused on Kansas, but we also serve and interact with partners across the United States and around the world in all sectors. We're just over 15 years old.

Michael Koehler: And a lot of the work you're doing is not exclusive, but like you are building a lot from this framework in your work to my understanding, right?

Julia Fabris McBride: Oh, definitely. We built the KLC leadership framework, a set of five principles and four competencies, built on the definition that is in this chapter, of leadership is mobilizing people to make progress on the toughest challenges. Leadership is mobilizing people to make progress on adaptive challenges. So, that definition of adaptive challenges, that idea of leadership as an activity has been a core piece of KLC from the very beginning.

Michael Koehler: Terrific. And, for listeners, the link to KLC will be in the show notes. You can find out more about the work there and the amazing programming they have. So, let's dive into the quote that you brought for us today. What piece of text, Julia, stood out to you as you were rereading this chapter?

Julia Fabris McBride: "In fact, many people daily, go beyond both their job description and the informal expectations they carry within their organization, and do what they are not authorized to do."

Michael Koehler: That's a beautiful quote. So, where's that situated in the chapter? We're pretty early on here in the chapter, right?

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah. This is three pages into the chapter and he's just talked about how leadership without authority has been the domain of women for a long time, and he's starting to get into examples of people like, Rachel Carson, and Gandhi, and Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King, who exercised leadership beyond the scope of their authority. And he follows that first section with talking about the benefits of leading without authority and the ways in which authority can really be a constraint.

Michael Koehler: Yeah. We talked a lot about the constraints of authority in previous episodes. So it's interesting to think about "why is leadership actually easier?" Or some parts of leadership, some parts of addressing adaptive work easier when you are not within the constraints of a formal role of being in charge. How would you describe that in your own words?

Julia Fabris McBride: Well, when you don't have the constraints of authority, I think number one, you are freer to focus on one issue or one big challenge, and to make your life and work, or your year, or month, about that challenge. That's one thing. Most of the time when you have a lot of formal authority, you're also having to make sure that the budget is balanced, and the organizational structure is sound, and people are showing up for work. Or even if you're the board chair of a nonprofit, you're having to deal with governance issues and nominating the next slate of officers. But if you really don't have any authority, you can ask the dumb question, or the provocative question.

Michael Koehler: I agree, and, the timely example to me is always, Greta Thunberg, the climate change activist. This young woman who is dedicating, really dedicating her life to that issue and embodying it so strongly. And I will say, with the tens, and hundreds of thousands other young people that are on the streets partnering, and also not with much authority, also practicing leadership in their communities, or local organizers, and so on, and so on.

But that is a big piece outside of these constraints of the roles you would name. I will say one more thing, which is risk. We often think it is risky work to practice leadership without authority. But what we underestimate is like how risky it is to practice leadership with authority. Because you can be pushed out of office, you can be thrown out. If you are too provocative, you're losing a role faster than you got it. And that's often why politicians, for example, or senior authority figures are really risk averse because of their authorizing environment.

Julia Fabris McBride: Well, and also because they represent an organization and they have so many people placing a kind of expectation on them about what the organization represents. So, somebody who doesn't have that constraint of the top job is more able to explore issues and move things forward.

I had forgotten that in this opening section, Heifetz addresses the word 'follower', and it really shows up mostly in the footnote. But he says, just as you said just now about the people who are out on the streets partnering. That's not following, that's exercising leadership in their own sphere of influence.

Michael Koehler: Yes.

Julia Fabris McBride: That's really an important distinction between everybody following, and everybody being able to exercise leadership and mobilize people within their sphere of influence.

Michael Koehler: Julia, I would love to read the line with you one more time, and I'm going to offer that I'll read it. And as I read this line to you, I invite you to let your mind wander and think a little bit about images, metaphors, songs, creative pieces that may not directly relate with your experience yet, but just see what's coming up, as we enter a little bit, kind of, the associative space. So here comes the quote, "In fact, many people daily go beyond both their job description and the informal expectations they carry within the organization, and do what they're not authorized to do."

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah. When I hear that, I just picture people in my little town here. I live in Matfield Green, Kansas, and there are 120 people within the township, about 49 in the town, and this is a community that should have disappeared by now, but it hasn't. We have a town council and unlike many little towns, we have water from a city well, and our trash gets picked up. And, we have an art gallery in town, and a nonprofit at each end of town that does community gatherings.

And that's all because people from very different factions in some cases are exercising leadership every day to keep this town vital; and that's, Brad, who runs the Volunteer Fire Department, that's Donny who serves as mayor, and keeps the water flowing, that's Cindy and Bill who are working to get the art gallery that won't leak, and Tia and Matt, who do the School for Rural Community and Culture, and Lynn down the street, at the Center for Cowboy and Ranching History. And, it's all these people headed in the same direction differently. Sometimes they collaborate, and sometimes they argue or don't speak to one another about something, but they're all headed in the direction of keeping this rural community in the center of the Flint Hills, which is a gem of environmental beauty. They're keeping it alive, for themselves and their descendants.

Michael Koehler: What a beautiful picture and description of these real people. The two associations I have as I'm imagining myself into that world is, agency and purpose.

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah. Agency and purpose, and a sense of, ‘If not me, who?’

Michael Koehler: Beautiful. So, what's your sense? Like, what is driving people? Like, why are they doing all of this even though people may not have -- that may not be part of their job descriptions, and, that may also not be part of the informal expectations other people have of them?

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah. Maybe only one of the people that I just mentioned gets paid anything, all of these people are self-authorized. They step up to run for office because no one else will, or they decide that the school needs to be renovated, and the school that is no longer a school needs to be renovated and opened up for community play, and conversation, and art, or that the gallery needs to be on the scenic byway so people can stop and ask questions and orient themselves. A big piece of what drives them is the idea of home, and I think home here, because it's so beautiful. I think the beauty of the place, and, if anything, if everybody in town has one thing in common, it's they recognize how rare and beautiful Matfield Green, Kansas and the Flint Hills are.

The other thing, Michael, is there are people all over in my life who are doing similar things. And, as I was preparing for this podcast, I was thinking, okay, Chris Green, the Executive Editor of KLC's Journal Magazine is determined to create places and spaces where people can actually change the civic culture of Kansas through dialogue and through work together. And then, we do some work with the Missouri Hospital Association and the Kansas Hospital Association. And, they have no real authority with the hospitals that are members, but they recognize a shared challenge of retaining and engaging people in the healthcare industry, and they are using Heifetz's model of adaptive challenges and exercising leadership as an activity to try and build bridges among hospitals and other healthcare institutions so that they're not competing against each other.

And then there's our friend, Christina Long, who's dedicated to growing minority business. And, Christina herself has a small company, but she shows up everywhere in Wichita, Kansas, and around the state to speak on behalf of growing minority-owned businesses, to provide resources, to partner with government agencies, to make it easier for minority-owned businesses to access listings of businesses on government websites, for instance. But she's clear about her purpose, and I don't see her getting as distracted as somebody who had a lot more authority might, by other things that they had to do or had to be, or had to represent.

Michael Koehler: I love all of these examples, and I would love to pick one or dive a little bit more deeper into one, maybe one that is particularly close to your own heart and your own experience. Something that you have been in yourself, or journeyed with as a coach, or support or over a while. So, I'm just going to read, one more time, the quote, and invite you to connect to your own experience. So here it comes; "In fact, many people daily, go beyond both their job description and the informal expectations they carry within their organizations, and do what they are not authorized to do."

Julia Fabris McBride: That quote is pretty daunting. I mean, I'm looking at it, you just read it, and I'm really asking myself, “When's the last time I did that, and have I done it lately?" My best example, Michael, comes from -- I mean, it's 20 years ago now, and I was not even part of About Face Theatre company yet, but I went to a show there and I heard Eric Rosen talk about wanting to form a youth theater for LGBTQ youth and their allies. I think it was 1999 or 2000. And, that wasn't in Eric's job description.

I mean, About Face Theatre had a mission to do plays related to the LGBT experience, but I don't think, Eric, if he was making any money at all at the time, got hired to start a youth theater. But he and Kyle started standing up and talking about it. And, I had some grant writing skills at the time, and just volunteered in that moment to be part of it, and they said, ‘yes’. We ended up a group of six actors and writers and nonprofit managers, and we created that youth theater and we engaged 20 kids the first year, kids between 14 and about 19, and, it was the scariest thing ever because we felt like we had -- we thought about all the things that could go wrong.

And we had grant money by that time, and, if this goes wrong, and if something bad happens, and if we get accused of hurting these kids in any way, or if the story that goes out there is bad for any one of these kids leaned into each other. Like, I don't know that I've ever leaned into five other people since, and that program just grew and grew, and it's still around, and it's morphed, and it's changed. And, Megan Carney is now the Artistic Director at About Face Theater in Chicago, and this youth theater continues on, and of course it's online, and it's totally different. I think it really contributed to LGBT rights, particularly in Chicago in the early 2000s.

Michael Koehler: Wow.

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah. To literal policy change.

Michael Koehler: Back then, when you sort of connect to that earlier version of yourself, what gave you the courage to do something that you were not authorized to do?

Julia Fabris McBride: Together, we had the skills to do it, and the sense of shared purpose. The commitment to supporting those young people to become happy adults surrounded by community, and the sense of purpose around making sure those stories got told in ways that parents could hear and members of the broader community could hear, so that there was a more welcoming world for them to enter. Some of it was our small group of adults feeling like we don't want these kids to go through what we went through as young people. And some of it was just, we didn't have a whole lot to lose. I didn't have a whole lot to lose. The potential gains would far outweigh the risks.

Michael Koehler: Beautiful. And as a gay man I can only say how happy I am that you did that in those early 2000s.

I’m curious about one additional theme that has shown up in this chapter which is abortions rights. Would you bring us into the discussions around the recent vote in Kansas on the constitutional right to abortion – and the adaptive work around it?

Julia Fabris McBride: The amendment was, basically, if you were voting NO, you were voting against changing the Kansas Constitution, and you were voting with the most recent Kansas Supreme Court decision back in 2019 saying that the constitution as it stands, protects the right to abortion, likely with restrictions. There are restrictions on the books in Kansas about abortion that the Kansas Supreme Court has found to be constitutional. But at its base, you were voting "no", we're going to stick with the constitution. We're not changing the constitution. We're going to stick with what we have. "Yes" was a vote to add a constitutional amendment that would say, basically, this constitution does not protect the right to abortion.

What I'm really proud of that Chris Green, Executive Editor of The Journal at Kansas Leadership Center did was, two days before the vote, he convened a conversation that's online that started out with spokespeople, the authorities from both sides, talking about their view of what's in the amendment, and what it would mean. So, there was some back and forth, not live, but between those two, clips from this person and then clips from that person - both sides.

But then, there were six graduates of Kansas Leadership Center programs invited to a conversation facilitated by Chris Green, and his primary goal that I think he accomplished, was to show that these six people who understand how complex these challenges are, and how difficult it is for people with vastly different worldviews and values to live together in a state and make laws together. Chris's goal was to show that we can have a civil conversation in which the people -- and there were many people who joined on Facebook live and other places, to be part of that conversation, to view that conversation and comment -- can gain an understanding of how, what the other side is feeling or thinking. So, this was a really concrete example. Kansans had to vote "Yes", or vote "No". And Chris brought together people who were determined to vote "yes", and determined to vote “no".

Now, the real tricky part is, that we want to continue to do that work around this decision and this issue of abortion and continue to bring-- because it's not over at the vote. We still have to live together, and we still have to find ways to be in community together and to create a civic culture that can be prosperous and healthy and where we all can live. So, the Kansas Leadership Center is going to continue to post those conversations among people who have a basis of training in the Kansas Leadership Center framework, and its distinction between adaptive and technical, and the idea that leadership is an activity, and it's about working across factions. We're going to continue to bring people together to see what happens, and see what good can come of conversations where people have a grounding in those kinds of skills and ideas.

Michael Koehler: And what's interesting for me about that is, we hear a lot in the chapter and also when I think back about my conversation in Episode Six, a lot around the role of advocacy where you advocate on behalf of a certain point and try to mobilize, and your approach here as Kansas Leadership Center, even though people at the Center may have their own opinions on the issue, your approach really is an inclusive approach around convening across boundaries and across different factions. And I'm curious, what's the advantage of convening diverse perspective in a conversation over saying, for example, we take a stance and share our own opinion?

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah, let me start with a different example, and then maybe we can come back to this one. Last year, we worked with a city here in Kansas that did not have a non-discrimination ordinance on the books. And, the city council was considering an ordinance, there had been public meetings that really ended up being one side for however many minutes that they had, getting their national talking points out there, and then the next person. And it was going on and on, and it wasn't helpful to the City Council members in deciding whether or not they had a good ordinance in front of them, and let alone how they were going to vote.

And it was destructive to the community because basically, people were showing up and yelling at each other. That city engaged with KLC to facilitate two evenings of conversation and come up with a report that outlined the different points of view, and exactly what the ordinance said, what it meant, what everybody in the room representing different stakeholders had agreed that it meant, and the places where people had differences of opinion about not only what it meant, but whether or not it should pass. And I think that we have a similar goal with the conversation around abortion in Kansas.

We want people to be able to understand what the other side believes and thinks. And we want people to come together and be able to weigh in thoughtfully and listen to one another, as we try to come up with policies and laws for how we live together. Now, not everybody is going to be happy when it comes to these things. There are winners and losers.

But if we can, for instance, come out of the vote and have conversations, post conversations now with people who voted "yes" and who voted "no", and really try to diagnose and understand, "Okay, what is the situation we're in now? What are these restrictions on abortion that are on the books? What are you concerned about? And what will it take for you to stay in Kansas, and live here and feel at home here, and be able to greet your neighbor who had a "yes" sign or who had a "no" sign, greet your neighbor happily and civilly when you see them in the morning, and possibly work together on other things?"

Michael Koehler: What I'm hearing is, progress is when we understand each other, and we understand where we're coming from, maybe values and beliefs that are in the background of these different positions, the things we care about, and when we're able to maybe also hold the difference in a way that allows us to live together, and collaborate, and both feel at home here.

Julia Fabris McBride: Yeah, exactly. Progress is a civic culture that's more able to make decisions for the common good. Progress is a culture that's more able to make hard decisions and carry on living together, and being creative together.

Michael Koehler: Julia, I want to invite you to read your quote one more time, and then I'll wrap us up with one final question around the future.

Julia Fabris McBride: "In fact, many people daily go beyond both their job description and the informal expectations they carry within their organization, and do what they are not authorized to do."

Michael Koehler: So, thinking about the future, Julia, what actions are you being called to take?

Julia Fabris McBride: I am being called to make leadership less risky for others. To help at least over the next six months at KLC and definitely beyond, to encourage people to speak their mind, to ask hard questions, to stretch beyond their comfort zones. We need people who have the courage to say, "This is what I care about", and the support from people with more authority, to be able to try things and fail, and try things and move it forward, and try things until they get it done.

Michael Koehler: I love that. Julia, it's been such a joy to have you on the show. I wish you all the best for that work. And I'm so grateful you've been here.

Julia Fabris McBride: Thank you, Michael. This has been so much fun.

Michael Koehler: We'll be back in two weeks with Chapter Nine of Ron Heifetz’s book Leadership Without Easy Answers for the title ‘Modulating the Provocation’. We'll have more insights on leadership without authority from Ashley Stewart, Transformational Coach and Facilitator, Racial Consciousness Consultant, and former Executive Director and Assistant Superintendent for Talent and Organizational Development at Baltimore City Public Schools.

If you liked the show, follow us and leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform.

On The Balcony is brought to you by KONU - Growing and Provoking Leadership – and hosted by me, Michael Koehler. We’re produced by Podigy: Editing – Riley Byrne, 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 Nine, On the Balcony.