DeEtta Jones of DeEtta Jones & Associates
Can you hear yourself think?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 397: DeEtta Jones
Here’s a question. Can you hear yourself think?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I’m asked to help their leaders discover their full potential and maximize their impact on the business and its people.
Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is DeEtta Jones. She’s the founder of one of the world’s leading EDI training and strategy consultancies.
She’s seen leadership and leaders through many lenses. And she’s learned that the best of them are not necessarily the ones making the most noise.
“I actually think that the most brilliant of leaders and humans spend far more time being quiet than trying to shape others. And that quiet time is spent thinking about, what I'm thinking, you know, understanding who I am, how did I come to be this person? Is this person who I am, does it feel good? Is this how I want to be in the world? Are there opportunities for me to make adjustments? And we have the opportunity to do that personal quiet work, which to me is the essence of great leadership.”
Leadership is changing in real time. I see evidence everywhere, every day.
The beliefs we have grown up with about leadership - that it starts with standing in front of a group and selling them on a vision, that your success depends on your ability to put everyone else first and yourself second, that your confidence and certainty is the fuel on which the race to the future is run.
There is still some truth in these. You still need to be a reference point, a compass, a constant.
But if you try to do those things and be those things before you have done the quiet work of understanding who you are, before you are clear about what matters to you, before you can be honest about when (and why) you get in your own way, then you are building your leadership on quicksand.
Knowing who you are and who you want to be are foundations strong enough to support not just your future, but that of anyone that matters to you.
Here’s DeEtta Jones.
Charles (02:23):
Deta, welcome to Fearless. Thank you for coming on the show.
DeEtta Jones (02:27):
Thank you so much for having me.
Charles (02:29):
When did creativity first show up in your life? When did creativity first show up as a thing in your life?
DeEtta Jones (02:34):
Oh, I've had a creative streak my entire life. I grew up without much in the form of assets or financial wellbeing. And so, creativity is oftentimes born from kind of finite resources with, to figure things out. But I think the most kind of fun, silly story that I often tell is that my first aspiration when I was, I don't know, 10 or 11, I grew up in Chicago, was to be a rapper, like a hip hop star before hip hop was a thing. So I used to write raps. I've always been in love with words. I used to write raps. I used to perform. I used to choreograph with my little sisters. So it's a silly way, but I definitely feel like even that love of words and exploring ideas and kind of being quick to figure out what's happening and put it into action in a way that makes meaning, but also engages others, has continued to be a lifelong passion.
Charles (03:29):
How did you express yourself as a kid?
DeEtta Jones (03:32):
As a kid? It's interesting. I always had a struggle with confidence as a young person. And I think there were a variety of different reasons. I'm biracial and I grew up in an environment that just didn't have much of that yet in the world. And so it was really difficult to figure out how to express myself or even try to figure out who I am and how I fit into the world.
And I also grew up in a religion that was very outside of the mainstream and oftentimes described as a cult. It's not a cult, but it was described as such. And so I found that I, if anything, suppressed a lot of my creativity and expression as a young person. By the time I got to college, which I barely made it to college because the circumstances up until then were complicated. But I exploded (laughs). All of a sudden this bottled up kind of energy and you know, that desire to express myself came unleashed. And I became a student, you know, the president of the student body, and I was leading marches and I was, rallies. I was adopting pit bulls. I was freeing the rats from the rat labs and the psychology department. I became just a bundle of unvarnished (laughs) unleashed energy.
Charles (04:42):
And where did that come from? Where did that release come from? Where did that trigger come from?
DeEtta Jones (04:47):
I think I've always felt different. I don't know exactly how else to describe it, but I've always had just a little voice in my head that said, “Am I supposed to be here?” The circumstances that I'm in, I grew up, you know, very poor. I always grew up kind of on the fringe of the mainstream, the cool kids, not quite able to fit in. And I've always felt like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm supposed to fit in with them, but I also don't know if I'm supposed to be here. I don't feel like my life is supposed to be limited or small, but I don't know exactly what it should look like. So I've always just had a sense inside of me that there's something else that I'm supposed to be exploring and something else that I'm supposed to be doing.
A lot of times I just didn't have the opportunities or the resources or the vision to know what it was, but my life has just been kind of one foot in front of the other, trying to figure out what those things are. And then as an adult now, trying to figure out how to make space for other people, having some of those experiences. But sometimes we just have a little voice inside of us, I think.
Charles (05:44):
Do you have brothers and sisters?
DeEtta Jones (05:46):
I do. I have three younger sisters, and so I'm the oldest. And I was in many ways the caregiver for them. My parents divorced when I was very young. My mother worked three jobs, and so I was their primary caregiver for a number of years for my younger siblings.
Charles (06:04):
Do they have the same energy and reference point?
DeEtta Jones (06:08):
No, we're very different. It's the dog-gonest thing, how that happens, isn't it? Even though we are, you know, biologically the same, we're very different. And we have different kinds of energy and our energy goes in different places, but I definitely am unique even in that group.
Charles (06:25):
The debate about nature versus nurture is endlessly fascinating, right? Just through your own lens, how do you see that?
DeEtta Jones (06:32):
It's funny. I used to debate with my younger sisters who had children before I did about nature/nurture. So when their children, when they were pregnant, I was like, listen, it's all nurture. It's up to us. Everything we do or say, we have to be incredibly conscientious about it. We're going to make or break these children. And the day those children were born, they were the people they were, and they are still the same people. They are in their late twenties. And both of those humans are the exact same people as when they were two years old and three years old and seven years old. Which makes me wonder about nature/nurture. I definitely spend a lot of time with the nurture, you know, in my family with my own son. As I educate and coach others, I think a lot about the opportunity for nurturing, but I do believe that nature is a pretty solid force (laughs) to reckon with.
Charles (07:25):
So yeah, for sure it is. Do you think, just to kind of leap forward to what you're doing today, do you think therefore within the context of that, can you teach leadership?
DeEtta Jones (07:35):
Yeah, good question. I think about this all the time. My official answer is yes, or else I wouldn't be doing the work that I do. However, the way that people lead and the opportunity to define leadership in a way that allows for it to be expressed in many ways, is absolutely essential in order for that answer to work. So leadership in the way that I learned about it in all of the, you know, fantastic textbooks about leadership in management from the sixties, seventies, eighties, just doesn't apply to a whole lot of people, including a lot of people like me who just didn't come from a very academically rigorous background, who isn't a white man, straight, isn't a person who has come from generations of people who have gone to college and succeeded before me, or hadn't started and managed family businesses. And so for those of us who didn't come from specific spaces, we are able to still be leaders, but we need a different context. We need a different potential way of contributing that leadership. And also we need the confines to be opened up some. But I think that's happening in pretty significant ways nowadays.
Charles (08:46):
Thankfully. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, my perspective is that leadership is changing faster and more significantly, more multi-dimensionally than at any time in human history, perhaps. I've only been around for a very small part of that human history, but it feels to me, and it certainly looks to me, as though that's a true statement. Do you agree with that?
DeEtta Jones (09:04):
I do. I still believe that there are, and there's a lot of evidence of this, there's still a lot of barriers for the kind of titular leadership, that people seek and, you know, should have rights to. But absolutely, there's a lot of really interesting leadership that's happening. And also we're recognizing leaders in ways that aren't so formal anymore. Regular people are able to play these incredibly important influencer roles that position them to lead not just in small circles, but in ways that have the ability to impact the world, because we're so interconnected.
Charles (09:40):
What do you think are the characteristics that modern leaders, contemporary leaders have to exhibit these days?
DeEtta Jones (09:45):
You know, all of the tradition, traditional as in, like, being strategic, is absolutely essential. I think vision is tricky because a lot of times we say vision, but what we are expecting from leaders related to vision is that they know what the future will be. I think instead, vision and visionary leaders have the ability to focus on the where we're going and not get so caught up in where we are or where we've been, that we can't get ourself out of the mud and towards a future that's more desirable and aspirational than where we are. I think a visionary, a powerful leader of the future, needs to be someone who has a tremendous amount of resilience, because we live in a world where leaders will get called out, will get held accountable in ways that are often incredibly uncomfortable and oftentimes really painful.
And I also think cultural competence, and I don't mean just the ability to work with people who are different from you, I mean, cultural competence as understanding that culture is shifting massively and in ways that are quite transformative all around us. And so, cultural competence also means, in my opinion, a leader's ability to look at myself and say, “Everything that I've learned and been practicing to date may no longer serve me in the future.” The models are shifting and the things that I have been practicing and have been rewarded by may no longer be relevant five or 10 years from now. And so I have to learn, I have to be constantly in growth and development mindset and mode.
Charles (11:15):
What's the profile of a leader who has the self-awareness to want to be able to take on that challenge? Because to suddenly go, everything that made me successful to this day might suddenly be irrelevant. So is it younger leaders who are demonstrating that? Is it people with a certain sensibility? Back to the nature/nurture question. What do you think are the characteristics of the people who are willing to challenge their own fundamental understanding about what has made them successful?
DeEtta Jones (11:39):
Good question. I think honestly, I think hardship, I think, I think one of my greatest assets, I'm not saying that I'm the most influential or inspirational of leaders, but I've always believed that one of the greatest assets that I have is that I came without much. That I understand what it's like to not have everything, I understand what it's like to be downtrodden. I understand what it's like to be marginalized. I understand what it's like to want something that I have no idea how to achieve it. You know, I understand those things. And so I have in me the ability to be empathetic. I have the ability to care genuinely, not just about my own circumstances or my own success, but genuinely care about the experience of other people. And I feel like that is the hallmark of what's going to be exceptional leadership in the future. And it's not just, you know, I care, but I care. Like, I get it. It's not happening on my watch, and I'm not going to allow my kind of comfort to be prioritized over doing the thing that is in the service of where we're trying to go together.
Charles (12:52):
Yeah, I mean, we are living in a world in which so many of the things that we used to rely on and trust are under threat. The world doesn't work the way we thought it did. COVID shocked all of us into suddenly realizing that we were living this fantasy, that we had some sort of level of control over things that happened to us and what the choices we made. Within that context, it's difficult for people to put their own needs aside, perhaps more so now than ever. When you are living with that level of uncertainty, when you're living with that level of mistrust, basically, of reality, what are the characteristics, I guess, of the people that you are coming across that allow them to put aside their own fear in many cases, their own nervousness about, are we all right? Am I all right? Is my family all right? And start to actually genuinely worry about other people? Because you're right, there's a difference between saying, “I'm empathetic,” and actually being empathetic.
DeEtta Jones (13:40):
Yeah, I love, you know, I was thinking about even the name of your podcast, “Fearless”. To me, it's not necessarily being fearless. I've never been fearless, ever. If anything, I act in spite of when I'm at my best. Like, when I'm at my best, I act in spite of my fear. I look myself, and I've done my own work in preparation for the thing that is a must-do thing. And I say, I cannot live with myself unless I make this choice to act. And I feel like those are the characteristics. And so it's people who have actually done the work before the thing needs to be done. Like, we're in a world right now where people are constantly, I talk to leaders every day who are constantly like, “Oh my goodness, this bad thing just happened.”
“How do we manage it?” And this bad thing just had happened, “How do we message it?” And this bad thing just happened, “How do we get in front of it?” And I'm like, “Listen, it's not what you do when the bad thing happens. It's what you've been doing up until then that tells people who you are.” And so, having a consistent practice, showing up in a way that is informed by who am I, what are my values? And that means I have to do my personal work. I don't start by putting my values on the wall in the office breakroom. I start by doing quiet personal work and figuring out who am I, what does this mean for me to show up in the world? And then how is it that I can have a positive impact on others in the service of a grander vision?
And doing that work intensively in an ongoing way without interruption, so that when the complicated situations arise, which I have no doubt, they will continue to arise as they have been, kind of nonstop and even faster pace all the time, and even more broad scale and even more difficult to manage all the time. That then we at least have some rapport, and we at least have the ability to kind of wade through these very complicated and ambiguity-filled spaces together, knowing where each other is coming from. That's the part that's the hardest though. And I think you nailed it when you said ambiguity. Humans don't like uncertainty, right? This is an incredibly painful, especially adults, this is an incredibly painful space for us to be in. So the only way that we can get in front of it, I think, is by developing those deep and meaningful relationships and showing up consistently and aligned with those values, knowing that there's going to be so many times that we're going to need to be able to trust others’ intentions, even when they're under duress or when they're not at their best.
Charles (16:16):
One of the growing realizations that I've had over the last few months, I think it's fair to say, is, this will sound obvious to begin with, but there is so much inherent tension in leadership itself. There's the tension of short-term results versus creating an environment that in the long run is actually more successful. There's the tension of, what do I need as a human being? What do I react to? What am I afraid of versus what do people need from me? We could go on. One of the tension points that I think most leaders struggle with, is they over-index on the near term as I would regard it, and the near term could be the next five years. Yeah, and they don't very often think very hard about what's going to matter to them 20, 30 years from now.
I mean, sometimes I use a reference with clients, when you are on your deathbed. When you look back at your life, the things that you are so stressed out about in this moment, you will have literally completely forgotten ever happened. None of this stuff will be meaningful. You won't remember the clients, you won't remember the person, you won't remember the issue. You won't remember the challenge. You won't remember the quarterly earnings, none of it. How do we help leaders deal more effectively or maybe introduce more meaningfully, the tension that I think ultimately is going to be most important to them, which is, who do you want to be? What matters? What's going to matter to you? What's the impact you want to have? What's the difference you want to have made? How do we help them with that?
DeEtta Jones (17:35):
You know, for my clients who are leaders who have children, I ask them to focus there. Now, this analogy doesn't work for people who don't have children, of course. But if you have a child, you know that, you know, my son last week, my whole world, left the faucet on in the laundry room, flooded my entire house, (laughs). You should see my house right now. It's awful. It's awful. I promise you, in five years, I will be giggling. I'm giggling about it now. It happened last week. Because the love that I have for him is so much bigger than the awful mess that's in my house right now. Like, who cares? Is he okay? Are we going to be okay? Is me scolding him and making a huge deal out of this and having a negative impact on the way he's feeling about himself around a situation that he has literally no control over at this point?
Could he have made a different choice then? Yes. But how I handle it, that's all that matters at this point And on my desk, all I care about is that child being happy and whole. And I feel like that same kind of orientation is what would be so helpful for us to think about when we think about ourselves as leaders. That this is the bigger picture. And I tell people this, when we're in our organizations, when I'm in organizations with people, I say, when we talk about vision, the same way that I think about vision for my life and for, like, the relationship that I have with my son, for example, in my mind, the words that I use are happy family. And happy family, every day in a happy family is not a pretty day.
Every day is not easy. Every day is not calm, right? Happy family does not mean every day is perfect or easy or glitch-free. But happy family is the aspiration. And as long as I have that in my mind, then every, that's the long haul. That's where we're going. And I think the exact same thing works in an organization. We can still have happy family or some version of that in our mind's eye as we think about what kinds of relationships, and impact do I want to have in the service of this organization, in the service of my leadership role. And if I think about, and I orient myself at that happy family level, all this stuff along the way becomes easy. It becomes easy. It's so, like, oh my goodness, I know that was a horrible mistake, but we're going to figure it out. And more than anything, I'm happy that we're going to do this together. And on the end of this, on the other side of this, we're going to laugh and we're going to be okay.
Charles (19:59):
What's fascinating about this is that part of actually being a really effective, impactful leader who really genuinely makes a difference in people's lives, starts perhaps by being more selfish than people recognize they need to be. Selfish, through the lens of, what really matters to me? Who do I want to be? How am I going to evaluate my life at the end? If you don't start with that reference point, to your point, you probably don't have the courage, the determination, the resilience to make the tough choices that are necessary in the short run to create the kind of environment that allows people to actually unlock their full potential. Is that a fair and true statement?
DeEtta Jones (20:38):
In my world? Yes. Absolutely. I actually think that the most brilliant of leaders and humans spend far more time being quiet than trying to shape others. And that quiet time is spent thinking about understanding who I am, how did I come to be this person? Is this person who I am, does it feel good? Is this how I want to be in the world? Are there opportunities for me to make adjustments? Because all of us came to be who we are through situations that weren't always our own doing. And sometimes we were filled with messages or experiences or hurts that are no longer serving us, or patterns that are no longer serving us. And we have the opportunity to do that personal quiet work, which to me is the essence of great leadership. And then how we bring it forward.
And more importantly, create space for others to either witness us doing important work in a way that allows kind of vulnerability, and also modeling the importance of growth. And also create space for other people to show up in their own glory, without them needing to fit into the mold that I have in my head about who my little niece and nephew would be if I just nurtured them enough. That I could actually kind of create the container for them to be the happiest and wholest version of themselves without any preconceived expectations from me.
Charles (22:04):
Two of the qualities that are most often ascribed to the kind of leadership that you and I are talking about are transparency and honesty. Those seem like things that most people who aspire to being meaningful leaders would want to have as part of their description. Those two words are easy to say and incredibly hard to meaningfully actually present, own, exhibit, behave through the lens of. You've got a ton of experience of seeing people talking about, I want to be transparent, it's important to be honest. How do leaders actually bring that to life in a way that is true?
DeEtta Jones (22:47):
I love the words transparency and honesty, because they're so used and they're mostly misunderstood. And if I ask, if I go into an organization and I ask a large group of employees, “What do you want from your leaders?” The most common words are transparency and honesty. There are a couple of others, but those are way up there. Absolutely. But the definitions are rarely accompanied. And so we oftentimes talk about, what does transparency look like and what does honesty look like? Transparency, to me, is a process. And it's, the other reason why I love it is because transparency is, it's not just a nice-to-do, it's a how-to-do. And it's a way that I can demonstrate my values. And so once I've done that important work of thinking about what my values are, and I've decided to contribute to an organization where they're aligned and shared values, where my values can help to shape how it is that all of us experience this organization together, then the opportunity is, how do we display those shared values in a way that are actually helpful in everybody experiencing those shared values at the personal level?
And transparency, to me, is one of the most important of those. So here's how transparency is for me. It's not just saying that I will tell you before I make a decision. It's telling you how I'm making a decision. It's telling you we have a decision to make on this topic. Here's who the decision-maker will be. Here's the process by which the decision will be made. Here's how it is that ideas will be generated and explored. Here's the percent possibility that we're actually willing to consider alternative ideas. Sometimes, as a leader, I get people together in a room and I say, “I'd like to hear all the different points of view,” but actually I'm about 60% convinced about which direction I want to go already. Transparency is me saying that. It's me saying, look, let me just be clear with you.
At the end of the day, I have to be the one to make this decision. I will share with you my criteria, and I'll also let you know that some of the criteria that I will be applying is confidential. So I can't share every bit of information with you, which is why I will reserve the right to make the final decision. I'm bringing us together to explore possibilities, but I want you to know that I'm already leaning in this direction. I want that to be available to you. I'm also open to being influenced. So I want to hear dissenting points of view, which is why we're coming together. That's transparency. What people typically get frustrated about from our leaders is when all of us are brought together in a faux process, and we assume that I actually had a voice, and we don't know how, what it is that I said in that meeting translated to the decision that I'm now seeing being implemented. And so transparency is about the how. And I can also say there's information that's confidential, or I am the decision maker. Everything doesn't have to be consensus in order for it to be transparent or honest. And I can be really honest about what my role is, what your role is in a way that allows for people to feel like they're being treated like adults.
Charles (25:56):
Yeah, I read somewhere, people want to be soldiers. They want to feel like they have a voice and the ability to participate on their terms and that they can affect the outcome. Rolling that forward, what do you think therefore are the biggest mistakes that leaders are making these days in terms of creating a truly supportive, safe, caring, nurturing, trust-based environment?
DeEtta Jones (26:18):
Honestly, it goes back to something I said earlier. I think leaders right now are being a bit too episodic that they're running from crisis to crisis. Because the world is filled with so many, I absolutely understand. You know, there's just one thing after another. COVID and George Floyd. I mean, there's things happening all over the world, and there's just constant stuff happening. So I understand feeling like, oh my goodness, there's so much, I can't catch my breath. However, again, thinking about that bigger picture and anchoring to, what is it that we are trying to create, what is that vision for us? That it's not just about bottom line. It's not just about growth. It's not just, you know, those are important, but bigger than that. What is that thing? And then using that to help leaders be able to create a path that says, in order for us to get happy family, we need to every single day practice the things that happy families practice.
We have to make the kinds of investments that every single day happy families make in ourselves. We make sure that we meet regularly. We make sure that we have very specific ways that we communicate with each other. We make sure that information flows multi-directionally. We make sure that we have reviews and opportunities for feedback and opportunities for people to make adjustments in their performance before they feel like they've been dinged by a changing bar, for example. We make sure that we proactively create space for people to have their needs or expectations met. We create career ladders, whatever it is, but we think about whatever those practices are, and then we shift from kind of the episodic and the reactionary to what I would describe as something that's much more aligned with the idea of kind of cultural transformation, and allowing a new culture to take form in the organization that allows for many different people to feel much more like, as you were describing, soldiers. Like we have an ability to contribute actively in becoming who we want to be together.
Charles (28:20):
Nobody knows better than you that there is an enormous focus these days on creating environments that are truly equitable, diverse, and inclusive. What does success look like? There's so much, I think, misunderstanding, and there is also still, and again, you would know better than I, but my sense is there's still also a sense in some places that we have to do this. This is an obligation. We need to check the box so that we can avoid being criticized. What does success look like when you create a truly EDI environment?
DeEtta Jones (28:51):
So a truly EDI environment, if, you know, at some point we're all going to figure out that EDI is just not the right box, that this is just, it's just us. Like, this is just life. Like, we are different people. We do have complicated tapestries that each of us is bringing to an organization. And so, you know, the way that we've been doing this, where we have a couple of programs celebrating this month or that week or that day, and checking boxes when we hire this person or when we promote that person, we're going to realize that all of those things are incredibly kind of wrong-minded and narrow. And they're fine for now, but hopefully in the very near future, those will be things that will just be simple things that happen in an organization, just core.
But a truly EDI organization is where your, our employees are saying, I'm here because you care about me. I'm here because I care about what we are doing together. We are here because we see ourselves kind of co-owning the opportunity to become something that is powerful and impactful, and that aligns with our values, And once we get to a place where, not just through marketing and our external environment and our clients see us as truly wonderful, but our employees actually see us as a place that they choose to work because they know that they're doing something that aligns with their passion, their skills, and also that contributes to their ability to have a positive impact in the world, that's when we've really done it right. I also think that EDI right now is moving significantly from being much more programmatic to much more embedded and systematic, and we're understanding at kind of systems-levels how it is that EDI connects into the work of all of us.
And so it's moving hopefully out of being siloed to HR or to an Equity Diversity & Inclusion Officer or small office to something that is really owned by and led by managers, and led by people who have a lot of different kinds of roles in organizations. And it's also connected to many other sorts of things. You know, there's so many other strategic things that we do that touch EDI. And to me, EDI is what we do, but it's also how we do it. And so, I think the systematic and embedded nature of EDI is what we're going for.
Charles (31:11):
One of the things, and again, I think you see this way more often than I do, but one of the things that I think a lot of leaders find challenging is they put together EDI practices that they feel or are advised are just, inclusive, thoughtful, moral. And then even within the context of that, they find they come across an individual or two who, for whatever reason, in many cases it might be a personal trauma they experienced years before they joined the organization, but their behavior, their insistence on being seen in a certain way, becomes a real challenge and in some cases a threat to the organization and to the leader themselves. How do you advise leaders deal with those kinds of situations where they've done everything you would ever ask them to do, and they're still met by a situation or a personality that just is not interested in being part of the thing that they're trying to build?
DeEtta Jones (32:07):
Yeah. You know, and that's the painful part about leadership, is that we are going to have to have gumption. We're going to have to say, this is who I am, and this is who I ain’t. At some point, as leaders, we're going to have to make some choices. And so when I described resilience and even hardship as being helpful sometimes, this is why, because there are going to be a lot of times when, despite all of our best intentions and also efforts, we seek wise counsel, we've allocated resources, we've put in the time, we've done our own work, whatever it is, and we still are met with resistance. That is absolutely going to be the case, and it's going to be the case for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes in situations that we didn't even see coming.
You know, I live in the United States. In the United States, you know, several years ago, George Floyd was murdered. People like, say something, do something. And so leaders had to figure out what to say and what to do. And then shortly thereafter, it was anti-Asian hate crimes were happening. What do I say? What do I do? And then fast forward, we've had all of these different issues, things that have come from the Supreme Court. People are like, what do we say? What do we do? There's so many different issues all the time.
So as leaders, there will always be, I think, the expectation of us to have a message, to be comfortable and confident delivering that message, and to expect that that message is not going to land well 100% of the time with 100% of the people, and that is the cost of leadership. And that's what makes us leaders that we're willing to stand in the arena, oftentimes separate from other people, but not just out of our own self-righteousness in the service of this greater vision that is not just self-serving, but it's also, it's about us together pursuing something. And leaders have that extra responsibility for taking some of those hits along the way.
Charles (33:56):
And how do you know when to flex and when to draw the line?
DeEtta Jones (34:00):
That's tricky. I think that needs to be kind of case-by-case. I think it's always helpful to have advisors, kind of a kitchen cabinet advisory group around us. We can say, help me think this through. Am I missing something? Is there another point of view that I need to consider? And so having wise counsel, having an executive coach, having someone who can give you another point of view, who's coming from different lived experiences, who can see things differently or experience things differently and will be willing to share that, is helpful. It's also though the case that we have to think about kind of anchoring to that larger set of values. And so sometimes we flex as far as, like, standing firm with a specific choice or a set of actions because it's aligned with a larger vision.
Sometimes we might have to say, “Is our larger vision missing something?” But if we've really done the due diligence and put in a lot of, you know, the appropriate amount of kind of inputs, as far as diverse experiences and voices and points of view and needs, then that vision should be the thing that we always anchor to. It's tricky, though. It is tricky because there may be times when we're wrong. You know, I'll give you an example of what I mean and why I'm so hesitant about this answer is because I think about, and many great leaders in the past have had this quandary. I think about, for me, one of my all-time favorite kind of heroes is Malcolm X. And the reason why I love Malcolm X is not, I love, love, love that he had such strong convictions, and that he always, he was like kind of an unimpeachable character.
You don't look back and say, oh, let me tell you about all of Malcolm X's mistresses. Like, he's not one of those people who had a public life and then a private life. He lived in his values every step of the way. And he was willing for those values to evolve. He continued to learn all the way until his death. And he was also willing to apologize and say, the thing that I've been out here preaching and standing for and trying to convert people to for years and years, I made a mistake. I had it wrong. I now have new and additional information. And so the reason why I waver about standing firm and shifting is because I do also think that it's really important for leaders to be in learning mode and also to be willing to be humble and to be able to say, you know what, I thought I had this figured out, but I may have gotten this wrong this time.
Charles (36:18):
There's a real shift in attitudes between people who are in their twenties and thirties and people in their fifties. I mean, the war in Gaza has really drawn this out. If you look at opinion polls, it seems like if you are 35 or below, you've got one very specific view about who's in the right and who's wrong. If you're 50 and above, there seems to be a completely different point of view. How do leaders bridge those kinds of gaps that in many cases, obviously, are intensely personal? I mean, shifting somebody to a different point of view is, you know, at best difficult and at worst, impossible.
DeEtta Jones (36:50):
Yeah, this topic is what's happening right now in the Mideast. It's overwhelming for every single person with whom I speak to about it. And I've actually had people who, depending on who they're sitting with, will argue different points of view. You know, if they're sitting with this group, they'll argue that point, they're sitting with this group, they'll argue that point. And so I think everyone is not just at a personal level struggling with it, but also sees the complexity and can see themselves understanding all of the different sides of this. And when I talked earlier about leaders being culturally competent, I think this is exactly one of the reasons why. It's the ability to think about kind of cultural relevance or relativism.
Where I'm willing to move out of binary thinking, there's either a pro-this or a pro-that, or an anti-this or an anti-that, and move beyond that to a place where I can understand the different dimensions of a very complicated situation and still be values rich. So it doesn't mean wishy-washy, whatever you say, okay, I'll go with it. But cultural relativism is that I've done my own work - that values work that we talked about - and I'm also willing and able to be in spaces where other people are coming from different places. I can respect and listen to those. I can also explore complicated issues without feeling like I have to reduce them down to a binary answer. And that to me is part of the opportunity for, I think all of us, especially leaders, is to be in those spaces because we are called upon to create those spaces for people.
Charles (38:21):
Yeah, the importance of being open-minded from a leadership standpoint has never been more important, I don't think.
DeEtta Jones (38:26):
Yeah. Open-minded and also values rich, right? So, not just that we're pushing, going with whatever you say. Or, just so easily convinced, but also like, okay, I genuinely want us to come to a place of deeper ability to communicate, to care about each other. Like that empathy that we talked about earlier. Empathy can't exist if I don't know you, I can't care about you if I don't know you, if I'm not willing to have a conversation with you, if I'm not willing to listen to you, describe where you're coming from or why you're coming from where you're coming from. So in order for us to get to some of the attributes that we're describing associated with great leadership of the future, we have to realize that there's kind of stepping stones to get to that.
Charles (39:06):
Yeah, absolutely. The whole idea of having a leadership ethos has always been more important than people understood. I think now it's mission critical. I'm not sure that you could even begin to succeed as a leader if you don't have a personal leadership ethos to navigate some of this stuff. You and I could talk about this all day, and I'm conscious you have things to get to and so do I, but I would love to get you to come back on at some point in the very near future and pick this up, because I think there is so much more to explore in these areas, and you are such a powerful and articulate expressor of I think ideas that people are beginning to come to understand are important. But I don't think yet fully appreciate the fact that this is foundational from a leadership standpoint.
DeEtta Jones (39:45):
I'm honored, I'm honored to be here. I love, love, love this conversation. Thank you for giving me space to share with you, and I'd be honored to come back.
Charles (39:53):
We'll absolutely make that happen. Thank you, DeEtta.
DeEtta Jones (39:55):
Thank you. Take care.
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