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Leading Toward Liberation: How to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello everyone and welcome to academic life. This is a podcast for your academic journey and beyond. I'm the producer and your host, Dr. Christina Gessler. And today I am so pleased to be joined by Dr. Ann Marie Canyon, who is the author of Leading Toward how to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education. Welcome to the show, Dr. Kanyo.
- [01:32]
C
Thank you so much. Dr. Gessler, I am so glad that.
- [01:36]
B
You'Re here and that we're going to learn about your book from you. Before we do that, will you please tell us about yourself?
- [01:43]
C
Sure. So I am a first generation college student. I think that's important given the context of the book, which we'll get into soon. Because of my experiences in educational spaces and also in my career, I have learned a little bit of what to do and what not to do and the kinds of practices that might help all of us navigate and change spaces so that everyone can thrive. I'm a professor of psychology. My discipline is clinical health psychology. So I came up the faculty ranks as a assistant professor all the way up and have had different kinds of leadership positions. I spent 22 years at a public urban R1 institution in the Midwest and the last five years at a predominantly undergraduate institution in Washington State, where I also served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. I'm an executive coach and bring that expertise also. I really enjoy supporting other leaders who are trying to lead with liberation in.
- [03:04]
B
Mind because this is the academic life. We are curious about how people found their way through higher ed. It sounds like in reading your book you knew you were going to go to college, but how did you navigate that path?
- [03:17]
C
So my father immigrated from Spain when he was 15 and my mom moved with her family from Puerto Rico to New York when she was 12. And for both of them, this idea of education opens doors for opportunity. That was very central to my upbringing. So my father never did graduate from high school, but my mom did. And so that was. It was just a given that we were all going to go to college. I'm the youngest of three, and as I was growing up, my two older sisters went to college and then stopped out. So I was like the last hope of the family at the time. Eventually we all three got our college degrees, but that it was just, it was just a given. How we would pay for it, though, was a learning curve. And so I applied to a lot of different schools and had minimal guidance from the guidance counselor about how to navigate that. I ended up going to Princeton University primarily because of the financial aid package that they gave me. It was better than any of the state schools were able to provide. And so trying to figure out how do I get an education but also pay for it was a big. It was just a maze of processes and unknowns and applying for college too. I didn't have the help of parents who knew how to do that. And so I was doing a lot of figuring out on my own. And I think that's if, if anything, first gen college students, they learn the gift of figuring things out. And I, I think I relied on that for a really, really long time, always saying there's information out there that I don't have access to or there's like a way of doing things or a person to, to contact. And I don't know who that person is, but they exist. And it's my job to figure it all out. But that is really exhausting, which is one reason why becoming a professor was actually an appealing pathway for me. I had a couple of really fabulous mentors because my first two years of college, I really had a rough time transitioning from public high school to this private elite experience where all my friends knew how to study, they knew how to take tests, and I was trying to figure that out while I was trying to learn. And that was just a very rocky experience. But My two advisors that I had were fabulous and helped me see that there might be a pathway to the professoriate where I get to ask the questions that I care about and I get to have some autonomy over my job. That sounded so fabulous because my father was a New York City bus driver and he had absolutely no autonomy. He had to follow his schedule. There was a foreman keeping track of whether he was a minute late or not. So this idea of having agency and autonomy in my work and I get to remain intellectually stimulated, I get to choose some questions. All of that was very appealing based given my upbringing and also the way my parents cultivated a love of learning. So that's how I ended up going into academia initially is because of that kind of twisted path.
- [07:02]
B
Your book is called Leading Toward how to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education. You tell us in the book some of the things that inspired you to write it. For listeners who may not have heard of this book yet, could we start by having you tell us what the book is about?
- [07:18]
C
Sure. So Leading Toward Liberation is about how leaders at all levels, whether people have a title or not, can co create a working environment in which everyone, not just the people who are privileged to know the right people or have the information, can thrive. It's about liberating the obstacles and liberating the system from the gatekeeping that typically happens in large bureaucratic organizations like higher education. And it means that leaders, rather than having a top down approach where they become the knowledge holders who make decisions for everybody else, they're really listening to the ground and changing the way they lead. So it's centering the experiences of other people who are sometimes the most vulnerable in their organizations or in their communities. And it's based on Latin American liberation praxis. But as one of the book blurbers says on the back, Leading Toward Liberation is a book for everyone. This is A quote from Dr. Lillian Comas Diaz, who's largely considered the godmother of Latin American liberation psychology. And I really love that because sometimes people hear, oh, it's Latin American liberation praxis, it's written by a Latina, then it's not for me if I'm not part of that community. And I would say no, it is truly for everyone because there are many different strands of liberation praxis. Latin American liberation practice is just one of those. But at the core of all of liberation work, it's about creating systems in which everyone is more fully human. They're free to be more fully human and more fully themselves, to be able to contribute the gifts, the knowledge, the experience, for the betterment of the whole, and that we're all working toward collective liberation so we can live in societies in which everyone can flourish. And so this book is about how do we take the learnings from that tradition and apply it to the current higher education context, knowing that higher ed originally was not created for everybody, that it was created as a gatekeeping system. So how do we move against that and create something different?
- [09:57]
B
And in the book, you tell us that you had read books on leadership, and you had read books on the structure of higher education, and they didn't go far enough. You felt a real need for this particular book and the way that you've structured it to help people. Can you talk about the gaps that you're filling?
- [10:16]
C
Sure, yeah. So there's a lot of leadership books out there, and there's a lot on leadership in higher ed, and many that I found helpful. When I was an associate provost, I would recommend these books, and they're great. Often they were written by somebody. Sometimes I couldn't connect with the strategies or the stories because they felt unfamiliar to me, or I felt like they were written for, for example, people who. Whose families have worked in higher education. So there's been some studies showing that many professors have parents or other family members who are also professors. And I didn't have that experience. So I felt like there were some things missing in there about the reality of what higher education is like to navigate for the rest of us. I also felt like sometimes a piece of advice about, let's say, how to have a committee meeting or how to do strategic planning or how to hold people accountable didn't account for the fact that sometimes those of us in leadership are held to a higher standard or to a different standard. And I'm right now I'll just share a specific example, so I'm not being so vague and abstract about it. When I was dean, I was the first person of color dean in the history of that unit. And there are times where I had to hold some people accountable who perhaps doubted whether I had the competencies simply because of who I was and if I was advancing anything having to do with inclusion or trying to make the hidden curriculum more visible and transparent to everyone. It was interpreted through this lens of faux meritocracy that the only way I became a dean was because of my identities and not because of my skills, experiences, and knowledge. And I felt like some of the books that talk about these kinds of leadership skills, holding people accountable, executive presence, they were not accounting for the fact that some of us can have all of those skills and yet we are still discounted or brushed aside or there's active pushback. And so I wanted to have a book that recognized that sometimes in these systems we have these other things going on, and leaders need to be able to navigate that, and allies need to recognize it when they see it and do something about it, too, if we truly want to liberate the system.
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B
And you take us right into that. Chapter one is the introduction. And you talk about how the system was designed to prevent change that you and others are trying to advance. And you talk about how people would tell you their stories when they left academia. But the stories you heard from the people who stayed behind in academia about why anybody left did not match what people had told you.
- [13:35]
C
Yes, and I think so. As an example, if someone leaves, oh, they're a hotshot. They were never going to stay anyway because they were so good, and they're going to get snapped up by another institution or industry was going to lure them away with a higher salary. We didn't have a chance. We brush it off, we do the search and we hire somebody else. But you're right, when I would talk to people who actually did leave, they would often say, well, I wasn't looking to leave, but because of what was going on in my department, or because I was being ignored and silenced or just. It wasn't, it wasn't a generative place to work. Too much drama or bad behavior was not being corrected. Like, I don't really want to work in a place like that. I can have a better career, more fulfilling career someplace else. So sometimes people leave because of that. Sometimes it's, they're running away. Because some of, some of what happens in academia can be so harmful. But what we do when we stay, if we don't know those stories, is we create a different kind of narrative that protects us from having to change anything. We just think it has to do with the individual and not with the system.
- [15:03]
B
And one of the things that you tell us is that when you take it as a, as an experience by experience event, or a person by person event, then you're not looking at how it's systemic. And you gave some examples of how that had happened in your own life. And so you came to realize the importance of a liberatory, liberatory approach. If we're going to get to where we're surviving and thriving and having a liberation mindset, can you tell a bit about your own journey to realize it's not at a person by person level. It's at a system level.
- [15:35]
C
Sure. So when I, when I was a student, I was definitely looking at it as a, an, at the individual level. And I internalized a lot of what was happening. So my first week as a college student from a peer. You can't hear it now because I, I worked on it over time. But she said, is that your real accent? Because you sound so ignorant. So I, I grew up in New York. I had a very thick New York accent.
- [16:09]
D
And.
- [16:11]
C
I read that experience. I mean, I was mortified and embarrassed. But rather than seeing it as, I can't believe this person said this to me, it was more like, oh my gosh, I don't fit in here. And so that happened a lot throughout college. And then when I became a professor, whenever something odd would happen, like someone would talk over me at a department meeting or I would make a suggestion and people would say, oh, well, you know, you're just the new person. You just wait and you'll see how it is. Anything like that. I always just internalized it as, oh, I must still need something. There's something I need to learn here. I don't know everything. And that kept happening. When I got to be full professor and it still happened. I thought, oh my gosh, like, this has nothing to do with my expertise. There's something about this culture that is creating this dynamic. But I still didn't fully understand it as being a truly systemic issue until I left my department for my first leadership job elsewhere in the university. And then I saw that this was happening across disciplines, across departments for graduate students, for staff, for faculty. And it was really eye opening, learning that this is not, it's not just about me, it's not just about psychology, my discipline, it's not just about this university. This is what's happening across higher ed. And so at that point, I still was not using the language of liberation that came later. But I definitely, I can draw the through line or the developmental line through that. Almost like each time something would happen, it would be like a piece of the, like a skin, a layer of the onion skin kind of falling away and getting closer and closer to the core of what is happening and how can we fix this or resist it or change it.
- [18:26]
B
And the book takes us into why the particular liberation approach that you have, where it came from. It takes us into the literature, the history of, of it. In, in Latin America, we hear about some of the key people who helped develop it and different ways that they Implemented it and you saw it as something that could fit for higher ed. Sometimes we can see a model elsewhere and where we want to transplant it to, it won't work.
- [18:56]
C
Yes. So the model that I am pulling from is a model that was witnessed or lived out by some university leaders in El salvador in the 1970s and 1980s. And you might be wondering why El Salvador and why this particular university. It's the Universidad Centroamericana University of Central America in San Salvador, which is the capital, and that is a Jesuit run university still in existence and still doing great work. The Jesuits is they're a Catholic order of priests that are very well known in the education world. If you want to think like Fordham, Georgetown, Boston College, Marquette, all the Loyolas, almost all the Loyolas, Gonzaga University, those are all Jesuit institutions. And the witness that they show, which I'll explain in a moment of why it's so powerful, I think transcends faith and really gets to the core of what it means to be human. So in the 1980s, 1970s and 80s, Central America was caught in a proxy war between the United States and Russia, ussr, about who, you know, are we going to have democracy, capitalism, or are we going to have Marxism, communism? And so there was a lot of fear about what was going to happen in Central America. And at the time, in the 1970s in particular, the US or the Central American bishops had a conference actually in 1968 in Colombia, where they said, you know, a lot of our peoples are suffering at the hands of corrupt military and government leaders who are very focused on making money and retaining power. And they're getting support from various countries, including the United States, to be able to preserve the power structure, but it's hurting the people. And they developed and drew on the theology of liberation, in particular this idea of preferential option for the poor. How do we center the most poor and marginalized in our communities and really make all our decisions based on what is needed for their freedom and liberation, health and growth. So the Central American, the University of Central America, took that as their place of doing their work. They centered that in their work. And the president, his name was Ignacio Aacuria, was a Jesuit priest, theologian and philosopher who said, we can have a university that's different. And he wrote a paper called Is a Different Kind of University Possible? Where he centered this idea of liberation and preferential option so that all of the research, the teaching, the social outreach that is done by the university should be in service of the communities. That means that we can't be these ivory towers who are working off in our own little space, ignoring what's going on in the world. And his provost was Ignacio Martimbaro, who was a social psychologist, also a Jesuit priest. He is largely known as the founder of liberation psychology. So he took this idea of liberation theology and preferential option for the poor and said, in psychology, then, if we're trying to understand people's thoughts and feelings and experiences, whether it's for research or clinical work or anything like that, we need to always understand that my thoughts and feelings are grounded in a socio political historical context. What happened in the past to me, my people, the land, all contribute to who I am today and what I'm experiencing and what is going on in the contemporary context, Socio political context also has an impact on my thoughts, feelings and behaviors. So applied to leadership, then what he did was say, okay, in psychology. What he was going to do was use psychology in service of the larger community for collective liberation. And what was happening in the country at the time was that the government, the military, much of the press, and some of the church were trying to silence what was happening. And so they would tell other countries, everything is wonderful in our country, we have such prosperity. But what was really happening was not. That was not the truth. So he created an institute for social, for public opinion, where they would do mass canvassing and surveying people all in the countryside, in the city. What is your actual experience? And the results showed that people's quality of life had gone down. The number of jobs, the availability of fresh water, food, all had decreased since the governmental oppression. And then Martin Barrot made sure to publish that, send it all over the country, but also outside of the country, so that the truth and the knowledge was shared with other people. And that's an example of how, for him, he was able to use his research and scholarship and expertise as a psychologist in a liberatory way. The kinds of things that these leaders experience because of their advocacy and outreach include things like the government withholding funding from them and saying, we're not going to fund your activities anymore because you're too subversive. You're not aligned with our national priorities. They were branded as communists or indoctrinators of students. They were threatened with deportation, and also they received death threats. And the campus was bombed several times. And then they were assassinated on November 16, 1989, along with several other people because of that work. And when I hear even just telling their story, like I'm having an emotional reaction because it feels so familiar. And what I find inspiring about their story is that they were so wedded to the truth and the integrity of what it meant to lead in this way that they did it anyway. And I've been to El Salvador twice since the beginning of writing this book. And when you meet community members who knew them or who are still reaping the fruits of their leadership, they celebrate these people for the model and the witness that they were able to provide and the continued hope and yeah, the hope that has been inspired by their leadership. It's really remarkable to see that. And I think in today's higher ed landscape where there's so many threats, some that have been percolating for a long time, others are new threats, this kind of leadership and putting our work in service of the people is really inspiring. And it just hits differently.
- [27:23]
B
You tell us early on in the book on page 30. This book is meant to outline liberatory methods for practicing higher education leadership. Leaders who adopt this practice can more effectively co create academic environments in which people can be free to contribute their gifts and have fulfilling careers. And throughout the book, you invite us into a number of scholars work that inspires and informs you. You share personal experiences and you offer practical advice. There are places to stop and reflect throughout the chapters. And then the chapters end with a set of reflection questions. And on page 31 we see what those questions are going to be like. And one of the questions there is what aspect of liberatory leadership unsettles your beliefs about leadership? And there are several more there for readers and listeners to dive into when they can get a copy of the book. Chapter two takes us into crafting a liberatory personal mission. And you point out for us that pretty much all of higher ed has a mission statement. Any campus you're on somewhere has a mission statement, whether you've read it or not. And that this part of getting ready to do the practice is really important. And one of the things that you let us know makes it worth it, because a lot of us want to skip these hard things, is that it's easy to get demoralized or derailed or overwhelmed. But if you have this liberatory personal mission and you work it out through a mission statement, it will serve as a compass for you. You tell us you know, it's not gps, it's not going to tell you if you arrived, but it's going to keep being a compass that orients you back to why you do the work and how you do the work. How did you come to the idea that it's not enough for the institution to have its mission statement, but we must each have ours.
- [29:18]
C
Well, it came from a conversation with my own executive coach of a few leadership positions ago. We were talking about how everything interests me and I think that's probably something that happens to a lot of people involved in thought leadership or academic work. We love all the ideas. And I was finding myself saying yes to, to everything and then feeling resentful afterwards about, I don't have any time to do anything or to think because I committed to all these things. But it was my own fault partly. And my coach asked me, well, what, what, like why, why do you do what you do? So she, she's the one who asked me this mission question and I sat with that and wrote a very lengthy mission statement for myself that was too long, but it was a start because it helped me begin to think like, well, what is important? Why, why do I say yes? Why is this particular ask that's being made of me interesting to me. Is it just fomo like I'm. If I don't say yes, I'm afraid I'm never going to get asked again. Or is it because it truly is tapping into a gift or a cause that I really care about? And since I've usually, when I work with people as a coach, that's one of the first things we do is just hone in on what's important to you and why, what energizes you? Sometimes people can't answer the direct question, but then, you know, we can say, well, what energizes you about your work? What depletes you about your work that can tap into the kinds of things that should go or not go into your personal mission statement? But it did, truly. Before I would say yes to additional asks, I would look at that personal mission statement, say, does this new committee assignment or this job someone wants me to apply to, does that tap in? Will I be able to live my mission in that work? And if it didn't, I might suggest somebody else or say no, thank you, or find out if there is a way for it to tie in by asking some more questions. But if it did, I could say, yes, I'll do that. And it just, it really did clarify things for me in a way that simplified my life.
- [31:57]
D
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- [32:11]
C
Prices and participation may vary.
- [32:14]
E
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- [32:43]
B
And if the goal of leading towards liberation is for human flourishing and for people to be more fully human in spaces, and that has to include ourselves. But so many of us are taught that things are a calling and they're really a job, and that we shouldn't be mindful of things that are wearing us out too much and then we can end up with burnout. And you caution us against getting to burnout. In this chapter you talk about paying attention to your feelings and your values, that a mission statement is not set in stone and that, you know, you, you may feel you have a calling in life, but these things people are asking you to do are jobs.
- [33:25]
C
Yeah. And I, I also mentioned a conversation I had once. It was just on a bus at a conference. And this idea of just because someone asks you to do something or just because you have a calling doesn't mean that you have to do this particular thing or that you have to contribute in this particular way. Really thinking about what you can uniquely contribute or what you can uniquely do, I think is another piece of that mission. And that also kind of cuts away all of this noise about calling. Any kind of guilt you might feel about saying no, it's easier because it's like, well, you know, five other 10 other people can do that. It doesn't have to be me. Perhaps I'm being asked because I do say yes to everything. And now it's time for someone else to say yes. That's not my responsibility. So that is, I think sometimes people hear that this is. They wonder like, how is this related to liberatory practice? If you keep talking about collective and systemic change. But this is an individual change. And I would say, well, because it requires liberatory collective action requires that we know ourselves really well, that we protect our peace, which is one of the other chapters. So that we can, we have the energy and the fortitude and the space to be able to contribute in a way that's unique to us.
- [35:03]
B
And this chapter really invites us into self awareness and to doing a. An inventory of ourselves. Where we come from, where we think we come from, what we value, what we think we value. Because sometimes those aren't all in alignment. We're carrying myths or misconceptions or we're not really going deep enough to figure out enough of these things in order to embark on the work. You caution us against saviorism and against doing work that's going to make it short term. You know, we have to take care of ourselves so we can keep going and not burn out or get disillusioned. So an example of questions on page 40, there's questions to ponder about your story. There's many there. But one is in what spaces do you have more or less power, privilege and authority and why? And that seemed like an essential question for anyone considering leadership or who is in leadership. But it's surprising how many people don't do that interrogation.
- [36:02]
C
Yes. And sometimes people do a surface level interrogation and they stop, they, they stop too soon. So if I were to say, look at, you know, I mentioned I'm a first generation college student and a lot of my experiences come out of that. And that perhaps is carries with it some marginalization, exclusionary experiences I've had. It also taps into strengths that I bring to different spaces. But it's also ignoring that I have privilege also. And so being able to, you know, the fact that my parents had health insurance all the time we were growing up, we never had to worry about that was a privilege. And that came from my father's job as a bus driver. And in the time when he got that job in New York City, racism still alive and well everywhere. But he is from Spain, from northern Spain, very light skinned. It was probably much easier for him to get that job than somebody else who came from Central America or Latin America or who was black or other kinds of things. So if we don't recognize the privilege privileges that we have had that got us to where we are and that might still be operating today. We just live in the marginalized identities that we have. We can do some real damage in, not in, in continuing to, to enact our privileged authority in a way that harms other people. So that, that question, it's a lifelong question like I don't ex, I'm still learning some things about myself, my history and my experiences where I'm like, oh, that was something I needed to learn. And that growth mindset is very much a part of liberatory practice, is just remembering like we're always learning. We should be trying to seek out more learning and self reflection and self knowledge and hopefully that's a lifelong endeavor. But if we think I know who I am and it's static. And that's it. That's. That's the danger.
- [38:26]
B
And you tell us in the book we are trying our best and we may make mistakes. You encourage us in several places to adopt a growth mindset. And you also encourage us to look at how people with former titles are leaders, but also people without former type formal titles are leaders. And I think that's really helpful for people who think, well, but I'm not really a leader. And yet they are in leadership capacities in going through these questions and really reconsidering, oh wait, I do have authority in that space and how am I using it or abdicating it? There are sections of the book that invite us into the problem with silences, the problems with not advocating, and how that reinforces power. We're still in the same chapter on page 48 there's another section which is the questions to ponder about values. And there's many questions there for people to take time and sit with and come back to. One is what do you want people to say about how you accompanied them, supported their growth, empowered them, or collaborated with them to create liberatory systemic change? As we go along in the book, you remind us that the book offers leaders a guide for practicing liberatory leadership skills. And I appreciate the emphasis on practicing that. It's a lifelong work to keep practicing and growing in that. Chapter three is called Reading Reality to support liberatory Actions. And this chapter really encourages people to take a clear eyed view of the structures and the systems where they're working. And one of the ways you encourage people to do that is a listening tour. And in that you talk very clearly about what kind of listening you need to do to do an effective listening tour. Can you talk to us about that? Because many people say they're going to have listening sessions and people leave and they think no one listened to me.
- [40:20]
C
Yes, I have been on the receiving end of that. And also I've experienced some listening sessions where people really took my, like actually listened to me. Maybe they didn't act on a particular thing that needed to be changed in the way that I wanted to be, but I could tell that they were considering it and valuing what I had to contribute. So the listening tour, standard practice in many leadership books. And this would be an example. You asked me earlier about the gaps and there are a lot of books that say you should have a listening tour. Make sure you have people from different parts of the organization, different types of roles. So that would be an example of like, yes, and when we go on a listening tour and someone shares something difficult with us, a temptation for some leaders, especially if you have a command and control or power over type of mindset about what a leader is, that experience of being on the receiving end of listening tour can feel very demoralizing, a waste of time. It does not build trust for the leader who oftentimes they're new and they are trying to build trust to advance some change. So it means that we have to listen to people believe what they're telling us, including if it's something we don't want to hear, or it's something embarrassing, embarrassing about the institution or creates another problem for us. Perhaps we learn that someone who reports to us is engaging in oppressive actions or creating strife. So we listen and then we act upon what we learn. And perhaps that's in the moment where we thank people for sharing something that might be hard for them to share. It could be afterwards where we thank someone for taking the time and maybe we have some additional questions. But it also means we act and we also think about the system, not just that individual. So if someone were to share something about some interpersonal interactions or policies or procedures that appear to be problematic, we don't just shrug our shoulders and say, oh, well, but we try to figure out, well, what's the best way for us to look into this more or to improve things by listening to the people who actually told us about what is going on. So part of this also means that we are seeing the strengths of people who are experiencing what is happening and are sharing these experiences with us, have the solutions within them to change it. I don't have to be the leader who imposes a solution that is coming from outside the people themselves. That's a lot. And there's another part of listening tour which means as we're listening, we're also paying attention to how we're feeling as we're listening. And that type of empathic listening is a feature of ac companiamiento or accompaniment, which I talk about in chapter four. And that does take practice if you're not used to paying attention to your internal responses. So as someone's talking to you, is your blood pressure going up? Are you feeling hot? Are you getting angry or defensive? Do you want to? Maybe you're defensive about yourself and decisions you've made. But being able to monitor that while you're listening to other people is really important because if you act without monitoring those inner reactions, it is possible that you will say or do something that shuts down the other person and creates an environment of for people where they don't feel safe. And especially on a listening tour, when you're trying to build a culture of trust and safety, jumping in to disagree with somebody or tell them they're wrong or anything like that has has an opportunity to make a bad first impression and then you will not hear what's really going on. And you really need to listen when you're reading reality and doing a listening tour because this is your opportunity to scan what is happening on a broader context so that you can do the best you can to move things forward in a healthier direction.
- [45:38]
B
The book has nine chapters, as you've mentioned. Chapter four is accompanying others as a liberatory practice. Chapter five is leading courageously when it matters most for people who want to get started with seeing examples of courageous actions that can empower others to engage in collective work of liberation, you'll find it there and also gives you perspective on what could or might happen when you're challenging the status quo. Chapter six is growing liberatory leadership skills and others. This is really about developing others, encouraging others, and it gives concrete ideas for removing obstacles that may be in the way of others who are really poised to take on more leadership except for these obstacles. Chapter seven, as you mentioned earlier, is called Safeguard your Peace where you're going to be assessing what depletes you and what energizes you. There's some solutions offered to protect your peace because you need the energy to persist. Chapter eight is assessing your next steps in leadership. It talks about how growth is a natural outcome of a leadership practice that emphasizes freedom. And in that chapter you can have some self reflection prompts to ascertain to know how to let go and what are some signs that it might be time for you to move on. Chapter 9 is called Parting Thoughts and it's where you offer us a good dose of hope before we finish the book. We're coming close to the close of our time together, so I'd like to invite us to talk about some of your parting thoughts and if you'd offer us some hope, please.
- [47:13]
C
Yeah, absolutely. One of so I love higher education and I think I hope that comes across in the book. It really is a place where we can learn, we can grow, we can think about the students, the kind of education we're providing to our future leaders in society, in our communities. It's a wonderful place to work and it has also some work to do. We all have some work to do to make it a better place because not everybody feels like they belong. And in some of our institutions, we've seen people leave, we've seen people disengage. But what I really like about Latin American liberation praxis is that there is always un autro mundo possible. And in English, that means another possible world. There is always another way of doing things, another future that we can be working forward, working with each other to move forward. And Jennifer Gomez, she's a psychologist at Boston University, talks a lot about dreamstorming in her own scholarship and work. And I love this way of thinking about it rather than just brainstorming and listing ideas. We can dream together. We can dream about what that alternate reality is, and then we can together bring it into reality. It doesn't have to stay as a dream. And I've seen pockets of this in different places that I've worked. I've seen leaders who put this into practice, and they are truly inspiring and they're doing great work on their campuses. And so I know that it's possible. And what I'm hoping this book will do is bring more people together to create that other possible world that we've all been dreaming.
- [49:18]
B
And finally, what do you hope this episode sparks for listeners?
- [49:23]
C
I hope that listeners have a sense of curiosity about how liberation can further their own dreams or maybe even uncover dreams that they have long since given up on, maybe dusting them off and saying, you know, I'm not going to give up on that. I'm not going to make myself unhealthy either. But I'm going to see who are the people who share this way of thinking, who are my people, and how can we get together and take some action, even on a small scale?
- [50:00]
B
Thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Kanyo, and sharing from your book, leading Toward how to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education. I'm Dr. Christina Gessler. You've been listening to the Academic Life. Please join us again.