38: The Leader's Way

H:    Hey, Brandon.

B:    Hey, Hannah.

H:    Oh my goodness. We’re here at Yale Broadcast Studio.

B:    This is a historic moment.

H:    It is a historic moment.

B:    That they allowed us in.

H:    I don’t know about you, but I feel like we keep getting professionaler and professionaler.

B:    Boola boola. That’s all I have to say. It’s something that Yailies say, I guess, but I I’m not exactly sure what that means.

H:    You literally are 1, Brandon.

B:    A very poor one.

H:    If anyone is to know, it’s you. Yes.

B:    So we’re here in the heart of the university where, all the super important people come to record all their super important, interviews and Yeah. It’s beamed across the universe, I presume.

H:    Exactly. And to kind of give a little teaser, the reason that we’re here is we have such fancy guests coming in in the near future that we need to give a little test run to the Yale Broadcast Studio. And, of course, we have things to say to our people, but, stay tuned.

B:    Look at you teasing our content. It’s very capitalist of you.

H:    Very capitalist!? Oh no!

B:    And, of course, in service, to our community and, as a way of, of leveraging all of this professionalism here at Yale Studios, we have moved onto YouTube, haven’t we? Yeah. Do you wanna say any more about that? You have you’re the architect and prime mover.

H:    The prime mover. Survey says, literally, that, many of our alums and friends are on YouTube more than they’re on podcast apps. So that’s one thing. Another thing is we’re both just so gorgeous … That people probably wanna see more of our faces after seeing the new cover art.

B:    Yeah. What you can’t see behind the cameras, everyone, is the security detail. The scores of humans keeping us safe.

H:    Because we’re so fabulous? That’s right.

B:    Hi. I’m Brandon Nappi.

H:    Hi. I’m Hannah Black, and we’re your hosts on the Leaders Way podcast. 
B:    A Yale podcast empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology.

H:    This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, The Episcopal Seminary at Yale. 
    Okay. The reason we have gathered together today is to talk a little bit about leadership, the theme of this podcast. I wanna know– I’m gonna immediately go off script. Why are we called The Leaders Way?

B:    Oh, gosh. That’s a great question.
    So a number of years ago, before the pandemic, the board at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, of trustees, got together and felt like we needed to make a commitment not only to the Episcopal Church, the Christian community, to our own graduates, to provide lifelong learning opportunities. Because we know that, in three years, we cannot teach our students everything that they need to know about life and leadership and the Christian tradition and prayer and service within the church. I mean, no degree can teach this in any discipline. Right? Because the the needs of the world are changing, the challenges of the moment are evolving, more quickly than ever. Right? 
    And so, they recognized, and this is, gosh, over five years ago now, that we needed some kind of office that exists to support not just our own graduates, but from … but leaders from around the world who are serving within the church, outside the church, spiritual leaders, lay leaders, folks who look out at the world, see its brokenness, and recognize a kind of opportunity for healing. 
    And so the office of Transforming Leaders was born in the minds of the trustees before the pandemic. The wonderful, wonderfully generous community at Trinity Wall Street were early adopters as well, and came together with our donors and with our trustees to create the office that now sponsors this podcast, sponsors over a dozen online courses and workshops every year that folks from any background and around the world can take online. And it’s a beautiful way to study here at Yale, without going through the onerous process of applying to Yale. And then, of course, our Leaders Way program, our annual residential experience for clergy leaders.
    So, a long answer to your question, but I don’t think we’ve ever quite told the genesis story.

H:    No. And I actually, I wanna dive in even further because there are 2 I mean, the word the, we understand, but “Leaders” and “Way.” I’m gonna ask you about the word way first because the leader question is gonna be bigger. What what’s a way? Is it, like, my way or the highway?

B:    Oh, right. It’s not “I did it my way,” okay? Which is a whole separate topic of grump, that we won’t, that we won’t explore.
    So the Leaders Way is … the word “way” is an ancient reference that I … that I think many of our Christian clergy leaders will immediately detect as a reference to pilgrimage. You know, it was in the Middle Ages the highest form of devotion to make a pilgrimage to a holy site, originally to Jerusalem, of course. Right?
    It over time became too expensive, too dangerous, to make that– to make that journey. And so pilgrimage sites cropped up all over, all over Europe, and these ways became methods of cultivating holiness and devotion. And this idea of going on a journey and being transformed and being changed in body and mind and in spirit, felt like the right metaphor for us. That leadership isn’t just a conceptual process. It’s just like learning is not the process of just cramming as much information into the brain as possible, but this is a process of growth, of change, of transformation that requires a kind of willingness to surrender, because we’re not in charge of it. At least, you know, from a from a Christian standpoint, we believe that, ultimately, the Holy Spirit is involved in this process of transformation.
So this idea of education as pilgrimage felt like the way to talk about this.

H:    It’s one of my favorite metaphors, too, for the journey of life and sanctification, and we all know at this point that my area of focus in my research is salvation, and I really love this idea of a journey. It has such a different flavor when we’re talking in soteriological terms than, like, God as a judge or punishment. Like, I love these scriptural metaphors that are about cultivation, even sort of a lot of gardening metaphors, parenting metaphors, and then journey metaphors.
    They’re sort of, I guess, a journey isn’t an organic metaphor, but there’s something about it that’s just a little bit sparkly and exciting and gritty too.

B:    Now this is interesting, right? Because I love this metaphor of the journey. And it seems to be the metaphor of the word du jour. Right? So, like, we’re all using it. And there’s sort of this double-edged sword. Isn’t it that the horse has left the barn? And, I’m often searching for synonyms and proxies for this word precisely because, I don’t know. You know, my daughters, you know, often watch The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, and I have been known to watch with them on occasion. And, there’s we have sort of a journey-count that goes on to watching the show. And each show has about 5.3 uses of the word journey, which to me is …

H:    So it’s basically a dead metaphor in that sense.

B:    Yeah. Yeah. So it’s an invitation that I’ve taken up to find another way of talking about journey– as much as I love it. Right? So I use it sparely.

H:    So I will tell you; I don’t think I’ve, like, verbalized this to you before. There’s a chapter in my forthcoming book about salvation as journey/ascent.

B:    Ascent.

H:    Because Gregory of Nyssa conceptualizes salvation as being like Moses’s hike up Mount Sinai.

B:    Of course.

H:    Maybe we just use the word hike from now on. We’re both hike lovers.

B:    I love it.

H:    The Leaders Hike.

B:    And another teaser. There’ll be a whole episode on Hannah Black’s book, the forthcoming.

H:    It’s slowly making its way through the machine of academia. So we’ll see how soon, maybe in a year.

B:    That’s so exciting. 
H:    It is exciting.

B:    And, you know, the journey is not unlike the word leadership in that sense.

H:    Do tell!

B:    Leadership is one of these words that’s come to mean almost anything. Yeah. Right? It’s just … the poor word is sort of dying on the side of the road from misuse. Yeah. Which well, I mean, which won’t and can’t stop us from using it because, you know, we’re humans and we have to talk to other humans and we want them to know what we’re talking about. I’ve developed, stolen a definition of leadership from my beloved Brene Brown, who many folks know as a researcher, who you know became quite famous on, for her TED talk on vulnerability, research in shame, and has done a lot of wonderful leadership training, all research-based, on, you know, how we can lead more effectively, more humanely. 
    And so I kind of started with her definition, and then … and then sort of amplified it, from just my own experience and my own values.

H:    Oh, I’m excited.

B:    Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I’m gonna read it, and then we could sort of unpack it.

H:    Okay.

B:    And I hope you’ll ask questions. But when I think about leadership, I’m thinking of “a courageous commitment to recognize and cultivate the potential in people and processes to inspire, to heal, and to transform, in the service of human thriving.”

H:    Okay. Say that whole thing again.

B:    Oh, my gosh. I know. I have to read it myself. Right? So it’s not like I’ve memorized this, but I do return to it fairly often to sort of check-in with myself and which piece of this/that needs a little work in my own life. “A courageous commitment to recognize and cultivate the potential in people and processes to inspire, to heal, to transform in the service of human thriving.”

H:    Oh, I like that. Yeah. It’s sort of quintessential, Brandon. It’s sort of dense and … Well, the thing that’s standing out to me and then I wanna hear more of what you have to say about it. But I have one of those really funny, old, thick books of favorite quotations that I must have found at some quirky book store. You open it, smells really good. My dog was trying to lick the book because it had that old book smell. Yeah. But the quotes about leadership in there that I was the most drawn to were the ones that highlighted how leadership is actually about not you. It’s about other people.
    Things about, putting people in charge of things, and then not getting in their way. Or empowering people, inspiring people. It’s really not about you at the end of the day, which is, I think, one of the things we get really wrong about leadership. But … tell me more. Tell me more.

B:    I think you’ve said it so beautifully. I mean, I hope at the end of the day that my particular approach to leadership is the empowerment of others to find their gifts, often to find gifts and capacities that they might not actually at first realize that they have, that there’s this space to grow, space to discover. Yeah. 
    Space is a big word for me. I’m, I’ve always been intrigued by this kind of lead from behind model. I’m sort of a shy leader. Spotlights are places that I think I’ve actually been called to, but sort of avoid and sort of … I have to kinda argue with God a bit before I step into them. And I’d much, much rather see others step into a spotlight and shine. Like, watching others thrive –I mean, zi think it’s interesting in my long, cumbersome definition. I mean, the two words that are really important to me are the first and the last. It’s courage and thriving. And supporting the growth and thriving of other people is, I feel like, my life’s work and my life’s calling. So in that way, it’s a really … it’s theological. Leadership is theological because it’s vocational. Because it’s a calling, right, that’s unique to all of us. 
    But to start with the first word, courage, because this is not easy at all. And so to lead requires lots of trust, it requires faith, and it requires, you know, what Brene Brown would call vulnerability, that experience of—

H:    Which I just had the pleasure of listening to our friend, Hilary Raining, give a workshop on yesterday!

B:    Yes.

H:    Just fabulous. Yeah. Sorry. I don’t wanna slow your roll. Vulnerability!

B:    No. No. No.No. I mean, we slow for Hillary. It was Hillary. She’s a fantastic teacher, priest, yoga teacher, spiritual director, certified forest bathing instructor, and someone who sort of opens our students to

H:    And was teaching our Leaders Way Fellows yesterday about leading with vulnerability and courage.

B:    Yeah. I think, unfortunately, in today’s culture, we’ve sort of half imbibed Brene Brown’s teaching on vulnerability. And so what we get is vulnerability as oversharing, as a kind of airing of all your dirty laundry so that you feel seen. It’s very …

H:    Well, Brene’s line from the Daring Way curriculum is we’re not asking you to live tweet your bikini wax. So that really … that’s not gonna leave your mind anytime soon.

B:    Yeah. That would not be an upcoming workshop in the office of Transforming Leaders. No. No. I mean, but her point is really well taken. Right? That there is a kind of confessional quality to social media, to culture right now.

H:    That’s true. And some of it’s a fake vulnerability.

B:    Oh. It is a place of hiding. Right? Yeah. Right?

H:    You’re only posting what you’re proud to be posting. So if you’re posting about, you know, your weakness … it’s all calculated.

B:    It’s all calculated. Yeah. So this leadership stuff is hard. And one of the things that makes it hard and demands a kind of vulnerability or courage, I kind of almost think of those words interchangeably, you know, for these purposes. Anyway, is that it requires being, I mean, stunningly imperfect in front of other human beings. Right? And, I mean, something we talked about with our clergy leaders at Leaders Way. 
    I can … I can remember sitting with our, you know, forty clergy leaders who came from across the world this summer, and you know, they’d all gathered here at Yale, and there was lots of nervousness. And I … it felt like an inspired moment just to name that leadership is hard, and it requires being so imperfect in front of other people. I suspect in other professions and other walks of life, your imperfections can be much more hidden.

H:    And often are deemed unprofessional. So, actually, you’re supposed to check them at the door or at least cover them up.

B:    Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I have a heart for supporting leaders who are who are willing to do this, who wake up in the morning and willing to sort of make themselves vulnerable in this way; to be of service to people, to improve systems, to help people grow. I mean, this word vulnerability, of course, comes from the Latin word vulnus, which means wound. It’s this capacity to be wounded in some way for the service of the world.

H:    Yeah. Yesterday, we were talking and one of our fellows was saying vulnerability feels like an open wound. And another fellow actually said, 
It’s more than that. It’s when the wound is being touched.” And we kept returning to an image of the wounded Christ as leader and as the kind of leader we’re following in the footsteps of, which again is so different from how we tend to view leadership as a culture.

B:    Yeah. Which then sort of reminds me of one of the other words in in my definition, which is commitment. Because commitment for me sort of implies this ongoing choice. We’re not leaders because one day we decided and we turned on the leadership light, and it’s over and done.

H: Yeah, what’s the Deal with leaders–are leaders born? Is everybody a leader? What’s going on here with the category?

B:    Yeah. Well, I mean, this is part of, I think, the watering down of the word. I mean, of course, there’s a way in which all of us are leaders. We’re leaders in our families. We’re, you know, we can be leaders in our communities. Of course, in the office of transforming leaders, we’re working with people who’ve been identified as leaders. Right? They lead congregations or organizations or, you know, they see in their lives that recognize the kind of calling, that God has called them to help serve, organizations and groups of people together. So, yes. I mean, I think I wanna preserve both definitions. Everyone’s a leader, but then there is a special kind of … where your job is “leader.” Where your job is, you know … you have souls entrusted to you. I don’t even necessarily mean that in the theological or ecclesial sense. But you have other human beings who are counting on you and counting on your service and counting on your wisdom. And what you do is affecting a whole group of people. And so, therefore, there’s a kind of daily commitment. 
    You know, and I think, for me, at the beginning of Leaders Way, I also found myself saying, life is hard. You know, in the Christian tradition, we have a cross that we put up, you know, at the center of our churches or, you know, in the Roman Catholic, often in the in the Episcopal church, we put crucifixes. Right? We wanna be really clear about how hard this is and the kind of sacrifice that this can entail. And even, you know, in the Buddhist tradition that has nourished my life deeply, that … you know, Buddhism begins with “life is pain” or “life is suffering” or dukkha, depending on, you know, how we wanna translate that word, dukkha. It’s hard, and so it requires a kind of continual choosing every day. And I don’t know. It’s hard, and many days, you know, I wanna sort of sit on my couch and eat potato chips and, and watch Netflix. Right? And that pull is real. I’m not being hyperbolic.

H:    Right. No … Well, this is fun, so I wouldn’t currently rather be doing that, but for most of the work week.

B:    No. I was, I was teaching last, last semester, new preachers in a homiletics class. I’m honored to teach alongside Professor Carolyn Sharp. Brilliant, wonderful, wise, funny. And, I started out the class with, “This is really hard. And it will never be easier than it is today.” My students remember that.

H:    The unwelcome truth.

B:    I don’t know. I just believe in naming this with as much compassion. I hope humor, gentleness, but, like, the truth will set you free. It will kick your butt before it sets you free, but we have to start with the truth. And I think people want the truth. I don’t know. Maybe everyone doesn’t want the truth, but I wanna think they do.

H:    Yeah. I think there’s clarity that truth brings and in naming something like that as difficult. One thing you’re avoiding or at least mitigating is unspoken imposter syndrome, which is just rampant at a place like Yale. And I’m sure a lot of our leaders who are listening feel that, at least from time to time. I don’t preach as much as you do, but there’s a feeling when you preach, like, “Who the heck am I to be getting behind a pulpit, and preaching the word of the Lord to these people?”

B:    I mean, there’s certainly a natural impostor syndrome, when you stand behind a pulpit.

H:    Yeah, there’s something that’s different from impostor syndrome that I’m describing.

B:    Yeah. Yeah. How do you see it when you’re working with your students? Right? You’re working with early Christian texts. You know, you’re seeing often 1st year students, I would think too, although I presume there’s a mix.

H:    Yeah. There’s kind of a range. This year, I don’t have very many first years. But, you know, I am more familiar with the imposter syndrome of all my PhD peers from back at Cambridge. Because the thing about impostor syndrome is you don’t realize that other people are struggling with it unless you’re close friends. So I don’t know that my students are struggling with impostor syndrome, but you know how you can kinda pick up on their insecurities. I imagine some of that is coming from a place of impostor syndrome, but then I hear it from other Yale professors because those are my actual peers now, you know.

B:    Oh, we are peeking behind the blue curtain. Woah. It’s been said. Yeah. Right. I mean I mean, you have a couple of things happening here. Right? Not only are folks in our field expected to, sometimes rightly, often wrongly, to speak for God. Preachers, theologians. Right?

H:    Yeah. And there’s a good pressure there, to be clear.

B:    Right. Yeah. I mean, this is the sandbox we play in. Right? I mean, we’re not talking about widgets. We’re talking about something sacred. However you understand that. Something ultimate. However you understand that. So we wanna get it right, and we wanna help others to think through– especially our students, our often younger students, to –”How do you do this responsibly?” In a way that minimizes harm, in a way that maximizes …

H:    And with preaching, with an awareness that theologically, what’s happening when you’re preaching is God is moving and speaking to the people and you’re being a vessel of that. We used the idea of the clay vessel a lot over this last summer with the Leaders Way Fellows, and that that’s the image I have when I think about preaching.
    But then, yeah, the Yale professor imposter syndrome is a slightly different thing where you’re thinking, “What if a student asks me a question I don’t know the answer to,” or “I shouldn’t write this article. Somebody else probably knows more about it. I don’t … I haven’t read enough books. I haven’t–I don’t– I must not know every …” Duh. Nobody knows everything. But there’s a pressure in academia to feel like you do know everything. And even among master’s students, there’s a, like, “Well, I read this in undergrad. I’ve never seen this before. I don’t know what that means,” you know, and there there’s just a lot of, like, wobbliness emotionally.

B:    Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, I think this happens to leaders of all stripes, but especially church leaders. We’re expected to know so much about everything. And, yeah, I mean, I think it comes from this deep place of wanting to serve and to be of help, and having wrestled with so many of these questions ourselves, really wishing that we had clearer answers, right? You know, faith demands so much not knowing and so much trusting. I mean, this is the leadership journey, it’s the faith journey. We’re ultimately trusting in this mystery.
    And that’s why, you know, the early church writers are– they still continue to inspire me because they remind me just how much mystery is involved. They were much more comfortable with it than sort of 21st century folks. I don’t know. Maybe this is changing, but I … yeah.

H:    No. I think that’s exactly right. And it doesn’t mean you don’t do rigorous philosophical theology. It just means you understand that God is mystery, and you’re only gonna get so close to fully grasping. You’re not gonna wrap your mind around God. You’re just gonna be able to kind of behold God.

H:    If you’re enjoying the Leaders Way podcast, you might like to join us in person as a Leaders Way fellow. The Leaders Way Yale certificate program combines the best of seminary, retreat, and pilgrimage. Fellows meet in person at Yale for a week in June, then continue their learning in mentor groups online. To learn more, visit our website.

B:    You might also like to join us for one of our upcoming online courses or workshops. Our learning space is hopeful, courageous, and imaginative.
This year’s offerings include courses and workshops on prayer, preaching, conflict management, and more.

H:    Clergy and lay leaders from every country, denomination, and seminary background are warmly welcome to join us for all of our programs.

B:    You know, when it comes to theology, we’re talking about something that’s invisible. When we talk about leadership, we’re also talking about something that’s invisible. And what I mean by that is that I think so much of leader–the work of leadership is not seen. It’s literally invisible, meaning  … and I mean this sort of two ways. One is that it it requires a kind of inner work. Yeah. This is not about, you know, fancy initiatives, sexy initiatives, and …

H:    Your Yale certificate.

B:    Yeah. It’s certainly not about, you know, Yale degrees or certificates. I mean, it’s about … it’s about trust. It’s about patience. It’s about hope. It’s about believing in people. It’s about honoring the infinite worth of others, the image of God in other people. Right? And so it requires a kind of constant trust within and trusting that you’re imperfectly perfect or perfectly imperfect. Right? That you’ve been called to this in some way, and you’re not gonna do it perfectly, but you’re gonna do it in a way that’s unique to you and in a way that only you can do.
    And that requires a lot, a lot of trust. I keep coming back to this word. It’s at the center of my understanding of leadership. And the piece that goes along with trust for me is presence. Being present to God in prayer. I don’t know where I’d be in the kind of leadership journey that I’ve made without a really grounded prayer life. But also being present to other people. That leadership really is about being available. Really in the moment, a kind of dropping everything and attending. Right? Honoring. Honoring the presence of God in another and honoring whatever is coming up alive in the other person that I’m attending to in the moment. And I mean, some research suggests that almost 50% of the time we’re distracted in life.

H:    I mean, I feel like I’m distracted 70% of the time.

B:    Right. Right. I mean, our culture kind of cultivates a chronic distraction in us. So if leadership is anything, it’s just about attending to … to the sacrament of the present moment. The sacrament, small s. Right?

H:    Yeah. Yeah. So did we get to each kind of tidbit of the definition?

B:    Are there others? Are there are other pieces? I mean, yeah. I mean, it’s important to me that in in the definition, people and processes get named.

H:    Okay.

B:    Right? So on the one hand, we’re honoring the individual humans that are … that we’re called to serve, and that’s really important. At the end of the day, it’s always about human beings. Right?

But if we only honor human beings, we can miss the way in which collections of human beings together form a system. Right? And sometimes, if we’re only looking at leadership as people focused, we tend to miss the dynamics, the habits, the patterns that happen that are just sort of organically created for good and for ill sometimes. Right?

H:    That’s really interesting. A lot of what my seminarians I had in class last year were wrestling with was the inheritance of a colonially-shaped Christian tradition. And they were wondering things like, “How do I lead a liturgy that’s not harmful to people” … those kinds of things. And that’s more the process side of leadership.

B:    Oh, my gosh. Right? To reckon with this legacy, hundreds of years, thousands of years of colonialism within Christianity. It will require 100 of years to untangle, to heal.

H:    And courageous creative minds.

B:    And courageous creative minds. And so, the path of leadership fundamentally is a healing path. And maybe this is the last part of the definition just to unpack, that it’s our conviction from a faith perspective that the world is beautiful, but it’s also broken. This is something that was hard for me to embrace when I was a young divinity student. I was optimistic, naive, sheltered, had incredible layers of privilege that sheltered me from a lot of the hardship of the world as well. 
    As I get older, as I study our tradition, as I try to be a sort of keen student of the world, the best I can be connected to what’s happening across the globe, it’s all too real for me the ways in which human beings hurt one another, disappoint one another, fail to live up to our values, the way in which I fail to live up to my values. Right? This is an imperfect process. Right? So the leadership path is a spiritual path of healing and transformation. And so in the leadership that I’ve done, either in, you know, my retreat ministry, as executive director of a nonprofit, I’m trying to think about … how can this community of humans working together bring some kind of healing into the world, for the community, but also for ourselves. Right? It has to be personal. It has to be real.
    And, gosh, it’s been really real for me as I’ve, you know, led and had success and led and had failure. And, so it’s a journey.

H:    A hike up Mount Sinai, if you will. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, I wanna hear more about your own personal leadership journey, speaking of all of your experience in retreat ministry and at Copper Beach. Where did Brandon the leader come from?

B:    Oh my gosh. You know, I mean, I think I came into the world incredibly attuned to suffering, for better or for worse. My family system was imbued with many layers of mental illness, psychosis, I mean, really serious and intense mental health struggles. And as a child, watching the people that I loved, the people who were caring for me, suffer, and even from a young age, knowing that what I was seeing wasn’t healthy, was destructive, was scary, brought a kind of attunement. Right? It was a survival mechanism. Right?
    In order to keep myself safe, I needed to be attuned to the moods, the kind of mental health status of the people around me. And like so many things in life, it’s a blessing and a curse. Right? It brought a young child lots of responsibility, too much responsibility in some ways, but then made me, I think develop some empathy and compassion skills that have really, really served me well. And so … Yeah.

H:    For those of you who don’t personally know Brandon, you can walk into a room, and he’ll say something like, “There’s a disturbance in the force.” Okay. “I know I’m sad, Brandon, but I’m at work right now.” No. I’m just kidding. I love it when you do that. Oh my gosh. Your attunement is very sensitive in the most helpful way.

B:    I hope it’s always helpful. So I, you know, went to seminary and, you you know, was preparing for priesthood in the Roman Catholic tradition, felt, over time, really called to being a partner and getting married, and met my wonderful, luminous spouse, Susan, and we came to Yale. She came to the School of Public Health. I came to the divinity school knowing that …

H:    So were you Yale students at the same time? Cute!

B:    We were Yale students at the same time. It was very gross.

H:    I’ve never put that together. It’s very gross? No. The listeners need pictures from this era of Brandon on Instagram.

B:     Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s a lot of hair. But yeah. We’ll come up with some. And then, I can remember, so clearly, being in the reading room in the divinity school library, finishing up my very last paper as a third year divinity student preparing for graduation and getting a call from what is the largest Catholic retreat center in the world.

H:    A literal call.

B:    No. Because I didn’t have a cell phone. Yeah. So, what would it have been? It was probably an email followed up by a phone call on a landline. Right? Which, you know, I answered while watching cable TV.

H:    It’s come to my attention that the young’uns don’t use the same hand gesture for a phone call. They go like this, just with a … Flat hand like a cell phone.

B:    What? Wow. The world is changing right in front of our eyes. Sorry. Sorry. No. I’m just digesting that. It’s a lot. Okay.

H:    So you wrote your final paper at YDS. You got a call that was an email and a call on the landline.

B:     Wow, you’re such a good listener, Hannah Black. Yes. Right. So, anyway, so I received this call as a lay leader in the largest Catholic retreat center in the world. Many tens of thousands of folks attend retreat there every year. So I was leading, gosh, I don’t know, between, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 retreats a year. Weekend retreats, day retreats, week-long retreats for lay folks, for clergy, religious, for ecumenical leaders. It was amazing, you know? And I spent 18 years of ministry preaching and doing pastoral care, and, you know, on the non-profit side of things, helping to oversee staff; 50 staff members, full-time members, part-time members. We had 50 acres. We had 2 capital campaigns. I was learning all sorts of things about board development Yeah. And marketing, and strategic planning, and just how to care for humans, making tons of mistakes, as I said before, like, in real time, in front of other people. 
    And, then about halfway through my 18 years at Copper Beach, really felt called to share the kind of contemplative practices that have been become so important to me, centering prayer, mindfulness meditation, Zen meditation, walking meditation, with a a larger with a larger community, and so we formed a nonprofit, that was not religiously affiliated in any way. We called it spiritually independent, and Copper Beach Institute was born.

It lived on the the grounds of the retreat center and monastery, and thousands of people just started traveling from across the country, from across the region. They started flying in from around the world, to sit in circles and and pray and meditate together to sort of meet the ache that they were feeling inside and around them in our world, which is just beautiful and broken in so many ways. So, you know, by the end of my 10 years as the executive director of Copper Beach Institute, we had had, you know, well over 50,000 people from 50 countries who are all sort of committed to a life of contemplative practice and compassion, you know, in some way. And so it was really, really exciting, sort of launching a community, launching a nonprofit, fundraising to support it, marketing it, creating strategic plans. But then at at the end of the day, also just sort of sitting in circle with others, and teaching about prayer and meditation, which is really where my passion is.

You know, my my life and my leadership has really been rooted and grounded in in in practice and sort of a daily commitment to, to prayer, which has helped just to keep me sane over over the years. Yeah. Oh, wow. My leadership journey is just like a little a little sprout compared to yours. And, as you’re talking, it’s making me think back to my days as the head prefect of my high school.

My gosh. I’ve got the Harry Potter vibes now. There was there a cloak. There was no cloak. Not until the Cambridge days.

But I think, you know, when it came to my leadership position in Clare Chapel and Clare College Cambridge, that was really because somebody had, when I was in high school, pulled me aside and said, you should really consider this leadership role. And I said, nah. I don’t need to be, you know, that self important. I don’t need this. I don’t whatever.

And the the teacher said, that’s why you would make a great leader. And that’s something that I’ve really carried with me ever since. Yeah. Which again, pointing to the problems of leadership in our day. The sort of, like, we we like to kind of poke fun at your leadership brand and feeling like you’re a superstar rather than feeling like you’re a helper of others.

And I think, if my very, very, very young leadership journey has taught me anything, it’s it’s that that to be a really good leader is not because you want to be special special. It’s because you want to listen to others and help them to flourish. Oh, my gosh. I wanna say so many things. 1st, I wanna say, I mean, you have such an organic gift for leadership, Hannah.

It’s, it’s like a humility and a compassion. Other people sense in you this empathetic soul and this wise soul. So, I mean, I don’t know that I would say sprout, but if you wanna claim sprout status for me Sprout in the sense that my my leadership jobs has been, few and, you know, littler. I see. I mean, like, in your short time at at Yale Divinity School, the folks that you know who count on you, who talk about you sort of radiantly and thankfully is is many.

So Very kind. One thing I wanna know is if you have a leadership challenge you’d be willing to share that you’ve encountered along your journey. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So many.

So many. I, I’ll come back to this theme of trust, and that is and and it’s not dissimilar to to what you were describing before in a teaching and and sort of theologian vocation, and that is the self doubt that, if I knew more, if I read more, if I were quicker, if I were funnier, you know, more clever. If I were taller. If I were I literally think that sometimes. Yes.

This is, this is the podcast for mighty vertically challenged people. Neither of us. There is a place for you. Neither of our legs below the camera level hit the floor right now. So there’s, yeah, there’s a there’s a not so much impostor syndrome.

I I think it’s taken me, you know, a a a good 20 years to to get past the impostor syndrome. Like, they’re gonna find out I’m a phony and fake. Right. It’s not so much that. It’s that a real leader knows a lot more, has read a lot more, can quickly and easily quote things.

And and look, that’s some folks’ gifts. Some folks are certainly much better read, or, you know, have, all the the sexy folks at their, you know, fingertips in terms of quoting and citing. It’s, again, this sort of trust that, in fact, I’ve been I’ve been called to this. I guess I have. I’m here.

And so really trusting that the gifts that I have, while imperfect, incomplete, and always in need of expanding and developing, are enough for the moment, are are enough. And so, you know, I I go back to, to Paul, you know, my grace is enough for you. Right? So it’s it’s not so much, that I’m enough by myself. It’s that somehow that with God’s grace and with the calling that I’ve received to be here, that I really believe, that I have been called to this work, and and God will call me to something else at some point, That it’s enough.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done with as much compassion and presence as possible. And I think at the end of the day, those are the two wings of leadership. Right? It’s the wing of compassion and the wing of presence.

And if I can be flapping those two wings, as imperfect as it is, it’ll be a good day as a leader. Let me ask you one final question. What’s giving you hope, Brandon, Nappy? Oh, the Leaders Way podcast trademark question. You know, I asked this question well, you asked this question if someone hit our gas precisely, I think, least for me, it’s precisely because I really sometimes struggle with cynicism.

It may be the shadow side of my unique, leadership, footprint Attunement. In the world. Yeah. Yeah. It’s precisely because I’m so attuned to the many ways that there’s suffering in the room, in the system, in the world, that sometimes well, 2 things can happen.

Sometimes I can get really cynical and think, like, it’s all just a mess. It’s impossibly broken. Which then so that’s sort of step 1, and then step 2 is even worse. It’s despair. I thought step 2 is gonna be a solution.

No. We’ll we’ll get there. Step 2 would be despair. Right? Yeah.

And but that’s not even as bad as it gets. Step 3 is complete dissociation. Dissociation. Right? Disconnection, unplugging, and I’m on my couch eating chips Yep.

Watching reality TV that’s just, you know, rotting my body and my mind and my soul. So I so I wanna name that that, slippery slope exists for me. Ironically, what gives me hope amid all that is that we’re made in the image of God, and that I believe all all beings have infinite worth. And and the blessing of attunement is not only does it help you to see the brokenness, like, in vivid, high def detail, but I also get to see so much beauty. You know, I’ve got I’ve got daisies that are just getting ready to bloom in my garden.

It’s it’s, you know, almost October. Mhmm. My incredible wife made me coffee this morning. You know, we get to have this conversation. I have amazing coworkers that I get to the honor of of learning from and and working with.

You know, there’s untold beauty that that exists in the world, and so much grace, and I’ve received so much love in my life. So what gives me hope is that the presence of God is moving in in discernible ways, in ways that are manifest in terms of the beauty and goodness of the created world and the other humans that I’m blessed to to get to know in daily life. And so there’s an abundance of reasons to hope. Thank you for listening to The Leader’s Way. Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast.

You can learn more about this episode at berkleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at the leadersway.podcast. And you can rate and review us on your podcast app and be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. And if you like this episode, please share it with a friend. Until next time.

Peace be with you.