Redefining Leadership With Christina Blacken: Harnessing Narrative for Collective Change

In this episode of Empathetic Presence, I sit down with Christina Blacken, founder of The New Quo, to explore what leadership really means and how more of us can see ourselves as leaders. Christina talks about how storytelling and narrative shape our behaviors and leadership styles - something she's passionate about in her work. We dive into how true leadership isn't just about being in charge, but about influencing people toward goals that benefit everyone.

Christina shares some powerful insights about navigating leadership challenges, bringing ethical and cultural wisdom into our decision-making, and how each of us can step into leadership in our everyday lives. What I love about our conversation is how Christina balances pragmatic optimism with the importance of collective action - reminding us that meaningful change rarely happens through individual efforts. If you're looking to expand your definition of leadership and find your own authentic way to lead, this episode is for you!

Visit Christina's website: https://www.thenewquo.com/

Learn about her learning community: https://courses.thenewquo.com/products/communities/tnqcommunity 

Want to experience Empathetic Presence in action? Join my free monthly workshop and learn tools to express yourself in every setting. Register here. 

00:00 Introduction and Today's Topic

00:29 Meet Christina Blacken

01:44 The Power of Narrative in Leadership

02:43 Redefining Leadership

05:52 Understanding Narrative Intelligence

11:17 Pragmatic Optimism and Collective Leadership

20:54 Ethical and Cultural Wisdom

24:40 Engaging with Christina's Work

27:53 Conclusion and Farewell

Transcript

0:06

Welcome back to Empathetic Presence, a podcast to liberate our voices. I'm your host, Lee Bonvissuto. Today we're gonna talk about how too many of us don't see ourselves as leaders, and this can be particularly harmful in a society that is actively telling us that we are not leaders unless we fall into some dominant default. I'm so excited to interview my dear friend, Christina Blacken. Christina is teaching me how to use story as a powerful tool for behavior change. Christina helps us understand why narrative is so important, not just in leading organizations, but in leading ourselves. Christina Blacken runs the New Quo, a leadership development and behavior change training company where she helps leaders change their beliefs and behaviors so that they can overcome bias, deepen trust, and achieve equitable status quo breaking goals. She's trained over 14,000 people, and I'm so excited to share our interview here. Enjoy. Hey, Christina. Hey. Hey. How's your day going so far? It's feeling beautiful, although heavy, which I think is very relevant for this time. It's gray outside. It's been raining most of the night facing beautiful prospect Park, but there's still this flourishing of greenery and foliage despite the the greatness. Yeah, that's such a beautiful image and not surprising given how good you are at telling stories. But Christina, you know, can you tell our audience how do you use your voice? I. I primarily am using my voice right now as a witness. I think it's important to reflect what's happening in our times and to put it through the lens of how I digest the world, which is unique to my personal experiences and identity and the values that I care about. And so I'm reflecting back the ethical and cultural wisdom that we need in this moment to make more conscious and socially impactful decisions and communications and habits is. Collective leaders, and I've done that as a writer, as a public speaker, as a facilitator. And even though it's been challenging, because I think right now this kind of information is being attacked and criminalized, it just showcases how important it is to get these sorts of tools and different kinds of knowledge into people's hands so we can. Lead differently in a time where we desperately need it. Yeah. Lead differently. Wow. And something I've heard you say in your work is that, you know, so many of us don't see ourselves as leaders and how society can even tell us that we're not leaders. And so how do we lead differently when we might not see ourselves as leaders? That's a really great question. You know, often in the trainings I've done with organizations, I ask them, what does an ideal leader look like? I. And there's some really interesting research that was done by a professor named ER who was working with a group of executives abroad and had asked this question. And she asked them to draw what an ideal leader looks like, and a majority of them got a piece of paper and drew somebody in a suit, someone who phenotypically looks male, someone with straight hair, big ears. You know, you gotta be able to listen as a leader. And what's fascinating is they replicated the study multiple times with different groups and found the same Malcolm. And so we've digested a lot of media and stories around leadership needing to look male presenting. Needing to be tall. I think most presidents are over six foot. I don't think we've ever had a president that's under six foot. Wow. Google that and confirmed us in case. But essentially there's this really rigid archetype of leadership by both cultural and media narrative, but also by historical and policy. Practice where it barred most people, most demographics from leadership positions, um, by law because it wasn't legal to be able to vote unless you were a white land owning male for many, many years, especially in the United States. And so I think that has really created these understandable boxes for people where they feel like, if I'm not a guy, if I'm not white, if I'm not straight, if I'm not tall, if I'm not able bodied, I can't be a leader because that's not possible for me. It's not allowed. And undoing those narratives is really tough because then we see media like Wolf of Wall Street and all the quintessential businessy kind of narratives that we get about what leadership should look like. That kind of reinforces it. So I think one of the biggest things people can do is to unpack and redefine leadership outside of appearance and outside of domination. But really what is it about when it comes to sharing your voice? Moving people towards a goal and doing that in a mutually beneficial way that can create a new status quo that benefits everyone. That's a definition of leadership that I'm excited about, and ultimately I base a lot of my work in. Wow. There's so much to unpack there, Christina, which is why I wanted to interview you because I really think that what you're speaking of is this seismic shift. And not just in organizational leadership, but in societal leadership. And right now we're just witnessing so much failure of leadership and people who are not good leaders, or they think that the only way to lead is through dominance and control and fear, and, and you and I both know that that's just not effective. It just doesn't work to, as you said, like move people towards a goal that's mutually beneficial. That can really create positive change for more people. And you keep using this word narrative. And what do you mean by narrative? Can you unpack that a bit? Yeah. You know, one of the primary tools, so I've developed a change model over the last six years called the new Quo Change Model, and it uses neuroscience, which is all about reducing our responses to change in difference from threats to rewards. And it also uses a concept called narrative intelligence, which is understanding how a story affects bias, belief, and behavior. And it also uses a concept around DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion principles. So how do you get people to react to change in difference? With curiosity, with conscious narrative, and then ultimately in a way that can benefit a multitude of people of different demographics. And so narrative intelligence, when you boil that down, is a concept that was developed by artificial intelligence researchers a few decades ago, and they're really trying to figure out how do we get algorithms to organize information like humans? Because humans are very unique in that we organize info in our brains in a narrative format. For memory recall, for decision making, just par, the immense amounts of information we're getting and kind of automate it more. And the great thing about that is most of our habits are kind of unconscious and driven by these internal stories, kind of like an inner set of libraries that we use to make decisions and just decipher information. The downside of it is if you have a set of narratives that are narrow or full of stereotypes or maybe missing chapters that it should have. You might make some inaccurate decisions, you might make some biased decisions. You may not actually make the connections or build the trust that you need to achieve certain goals. And so being able to expand the sets of narratives that we're consuming on a regular basis also makes us more conscious, intentional, and effective in how we communicate and also how we may lead. So I often teach and talk about that in my leadership model and also in the learning community that I run and the trainings that I'm doing. That narrative is one of the most powerful tools for behavior change, for navigating differences and for achieving better outcomes. And that requires, first, that sort of internal story making, shifting that, and then using external stories to move people towards a better future. The way that you talk about story, I think is so novel and unique. A lot of the people in my world are very intimidated by storytelling. That word feels really buzzy and kind of like executive presence, right? Like what does that actually mean and is it a skillset that I need to work really hard to develop? But what you are saying is that it's far more internal. And it's really a tool to harness to, and I'm hearing you talk about, you know, change management, right? Mm-hmm. And and even conflict navigation, right? Yes, absolutely. And it's bigger than just this marketing tool, right? It's funny too, because I think there was a statistic that came out a couple years ago that 65% of all of your daily conversation is in narrative format. So that means there's a beginning, middle, and end. There's some sort of event. There's usually a transformation, and that is how you're conveying information to your homies, your friends, your most intimate partners, you. Family lovers, whatever, and we're doing it so unconsciously because it's such an innate way of humans communicating. So ironically, we're all storytellers now. Some of us get paid to be storytellers as filmmakers or entertainers and actors or writers. And so we might refine our storytelling making skills that. Creates new experiences or ideas for people that maybe the average person isn't doing every day and they're like anecdotes of what happened to them that day or week. But it's a skill that everyone has and can ultimately improve. I think most kids start telling stories by the age of five. They're, even if the stories are nonsensical, they're like, the red ball bounced from Mars and the trees did X, Y, and Z. And you're like, what are you talking about Bobby? But like they're clearly trying to convey some kind of. Idea through narrative. So what I love about it is it's already innately a skill you're using. It's something that when you're conscious and intentional with it, you can then create different outcomes and impacts, and when you become conscious of it as well, you can be more intentional with the stories you consume. Because we consume and digest more information than ever in human history. You are, I think there's like a terabyte of information created every single day and just the amount of messages you're getting, marketing messages, media messages, like political messages, societal messages. It's a lot. So being able to decipher which ones to keep, which ones to believe, which ones to put into your internal library is incredibly important for being a healthy, functioning human. And so even just learning that, even if you're not creating stories, but you're being more conscious of the ones you consume and tell and keep, that is also a powerful practice as well, especially right now with generative AI and where things are going in terms of the speed of information and how it's being created and who is creating it. That's really fascinating because what you're talking about with conscious and unconscious storytelling, right. And also the way that narrative can help us, but also the way it can hurt us. Mm-hmm. And that is really, really interesting. I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of the, the reality of what we experience and how, you know, if we're complying in advance, we are actually, you know, our reality becomes that fascism is at our doorstep, right? But how can we activate our communities through narrative to change our reality? Yeah. I think a huge part of. Narrative making that can be really destructive, especially when it comes to political messaging, is apathy and dystopian storytelling. The dystopian storytelling for people feels like, well, it's more realistic because it's looking at the worst case scenarios and it's preparing people. But ironically, all this research shows that dystopian storytelling is really demotivating. So if you're constantly constructing narratives that. Things are hopeless, they can't be changed. The worst is going to happen. You, you don't feel any motivation to make any changes'cause it feels like there's nothing in your control and nothing you can do. And that is one of the ultimate tools of oppression is this sort of apathy and hopelessness and dystopia, which is why there's all this. Weird sort of narrative making around immigrants and minorities and marginalized populations being others and being dangerous and destructive because it allows people to then justify their oppression in this dystopian sort of fear driven narrative making. And we can see that it's not based in reality or truth, you know? And I think that's really important to keep in mind so that people can still feel. Pragmatic optimism and pragmatism, meaning bad things are happening. We're not gonna pretend they don't, but we're also not gonna pretend that there's absolutely no solutions and that there's absolutely. There are incremental small things we can do in our immediate relationships, in our communities, in our environments that can move us towards a better outcome instead of just sitting and doing nothing. And so pragma pragmatic optimism means you're creating narratives that are rooted in reality and also aspirational. So if we do these things together, what is this positive incremental outcome that might happen? And I think that's the important part of being a leader and thinking about the narratives you're constructing is. How are you motivating people towards a new and better outcome? Even if it seems like things are really challenging in the moment. I think most leaders are struggling with that, right? There's a lot of uncertainty. People are really afraid. They're tired, they're burnt out. There's a lot of instability. And so as a leader right now, your job is to create a vision. A vision for the future. A vision to keep people motivated and engaged, even when uncertainty is here. And so I think the narrative making piece of that is incredibly important. Yeah. So much of fear can really take away that vision. And Audra Lorde hope is a verb, right? And so really interesting to. Collective leadership. I know you've talked about that a lot. I've heard you talk about right now, in this moment, you know, we are all the leaders, how can we all lead? And I wanna know, you know, you've been internal at organizations, you've trained over 14,000 people, you've worked with giant companies like Next Door, thinking about community and really building societal culture. And so how do we move these tools into this moment? How do we all. Use story to create change. How do we all lead? Christina? I love that question because most people feel like they're not a leader unless they have a formal title. And I want people to realize that leadership is just the practice of influence. So if you are getting your family to eat a new vegetable, if you're getting your friends to go see that new movie you were excited about, if you're getting, you know, your partner to try this new activity that you didn't think they would. That is an act of leadership and people are doing it all the time. We just don't recognize it formally because it doesn't have a big, fancy title attached. So I think the first thing is people getting clear on what's their, their levers of power that they can pull. And I, I do this often in my learning community. So I run a learning community that's a weekly newsletter and mastermind monthly to help people to discover what their unique leadership strengths are. And one of the activities is a power audit. So you're essentially figuring out what are kind of my. Different things that I can pull in my life. I have like financial power, what? What's my capital look like? I have social community capital. I have knowledge and specific expertise and skills. I might be able to use those things. So you look at all your resources, I. You look at the challenges or restrictions you might have, and then you figure out which ones you want to pull towards the goals that you care about. So for example, the grandma in a, that's a hyper connector, local woman who really knows how to gather people, has an immense amount of social capital power that she can use to organize people for the midterm election, for example, like, well, midterms are important, it's gonna impact local policies. I'm gonna start hosting potlucks to get people to learn about it and get registered to vote and take them out to the midterm elections. That's one example of a collective leadership action based in your own, you know, expertise in areas of power or the CEO who has a lot of formal maybe financial capital and power, who's like, you know what? I really wanna choose a different compensation model at my company. We're gonna work on the concept of a worker cooperative where. The employees of the organization also are co-owners of the organization, and we're gonna rethink our compensation structures. How would that help us to empower the employees, for them to have more resources to give them engaged and retained for the organization and they can make that decision that creates more equity and longevity for that organization. So those are acts of collective leadership where we're all thinking of our unique strengths. For pulling those things, and we're seeing how it benefits the entire group. And it's funny in the sense that like humans are an interdependent species. Everything we do is affected by another human no matter if we acknowledge it or not. And so when we lean into that collective strength, we can look at this kind of like the Avengers. We all have a unique role to play. And when we are all aligned to our strengths in a way that's beneficial to everybody, we all win. And I think if we looked at it more like that versus the zero sum game that currently our political leaders are saying. There's only so many resources and only a few of us deserve them. And so we can't practice collective leadership and that structure with those narratives and that kind of derails everybody. We can't innovate when people are not able to eat their basic needs. So I'm like, how do we innovate as a species if we can't even get the basics of food, water, shelter, education, and security down? And people are hell bent on potentially, um, derailing us from that. And I think this is the, the practice of it is everybody in their own areas of control, in their own communities making small actions that align their daily habits to their values. Because if you can close that gap between what you do make and say every day with your actual values, I think it will benefit everybody. It'll kind of have a ripple, almost domino effect. Yeah, I agree. And it really takes a certain level of confidence for leaders to engage in shared leadership and collective leadership. I know at the height of the pandemic, I worked with this pizzeria that is employee owned. I. And really practicing shared leadership and even within this shared leadership structure, having to help every single employee detangle the narratives around power and influence that are so ingrained in our default structures of hierarchy. I. So I really, really respect that and, and I love that because what we're seeing right now nationally and at at a lot of the big companies is real insecure leadership of leaders who don't have that confidence to be able to hear diverse voices and have more voices heard at the table, and this insecurity, this dominance, it's so toxic and it's such a reflection of their own insecurity. It really is. I think it's such a great term to call it insecure leadership because. The irony of traditional leadership needing to be very dominating and transactional. And impersonal is based in fear, right? Where you're like, well, I can't be seen as weak. I can't make a mistake. I can't do things that people might question, and so I'm gonna just dominate. Don't take any feedback in, don't share power, and that's gonna help us feel safe. And we have all of these. Really powerful pieces of information and research that shows that that doesn't work. It just leads to more distrust and breakdowns, more conflict, more resource, um, inequity in terms of who's getting what they need. And it doesn't really create any kind of security whatsoever. So it's, it's funny that the things that people are grabbing for to not feel insecure only creates. More insecurity and instability, and I'm hoping that we're getting to see in real time the failures of the dominant leadership that has been pedestal and supported and celebrated in our society, which is this very transactional, exploited, dominating style of leadership is failing spectacularly. You know, people are unhappy, they're underpaid, they're overworked, they are not getting their basic needs met. And a majority of it is because of bad leadership practices. So I, that's the silver lining of this, is people seeing that, oh, this narrative that leaders have to be mean and strong and ruthless and almost sociopathic to be successful is a lie. And it's always been a lie. And that's why our society has struggled so much. We have not had a functioning, multicultural. True democracy anywhere in the world, in a functioning healthy way that lasted. And so we're in an experiment and I think we're seeing some of that failure of it, but I guess the silver lining is people are saying, Hey, actually we need a new narrative around leadership in general for everyone. If we're going to survive this moment and not just survive it really thrive, how do we move beyond this moment and build something that is a legacy that we can be proud of and that isn't just repeating the mistakes of the past. Fascinating. And you talked about ethical and cultural wisdom. Can you say more? Yeah. So ethical wisdom is really more than just knowing right from wrong. It's really this deep understanding of human nature and our relationship with others and the world around us, and the cultivation of character and insight. So you can make more values driven decisions and culture. Wisdom is around collective knowledge and insights and practices that were developed over a generation of time, and it's really about problem solving and maintaining harmony. In our environment and social structures, and both of those kinds of groups of wisdom are things that we take for granted. So that's like ecological stewardship or alternative business models, or thinking about historical context for why inequalities exist. All of these things that are really useful information to make more informed decisions that typically are overlooked and now they're being criminalized politically in terms of what can be taught in, in terms of. Social history and cultural issues. And so that's one reason why I focused and really started to push my work in this area because I think it's information and knowledge it's gonna become more and more challenging to get access to, and it's some of the most critical things that we need to have a functioning in healthy society and really relationships with one another. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And that's why voices like yours are so important right now, because you can remind us of this wisdom and also just our own power. And I love the way you talked about practice of influence and levers of power. These words even influence, it's such a weaponized word, right? Of who feels like they can have influence, and even this idea of if I'm influential, am I manipulative? And you know? Mm-hmm. Even the. The weaponization of the word power, right? Yeah. There's a lot of lot of hangups and baggage around language, which I think is so powerful and interesting and important, and why people kind of shy away from conversations around power or leadership, and also why I don't even really talk about leadership and lead with the information and wisdom first and how it can improve your life, even if it's a practice of leadership. Some people really don't feel. Like, oh, leader, that's not me. That's not I, I don't, I'm not a CEO. I'm not a manager, or whatever their assumed responses are. And often it's a block before people even get the chance to realize that it's a practice. That all of this is a practice of building your relational skills, your conflict resolution skills, your decision making skills, your self-reflection skills, all these things that can help you to live a. Better life, a more values aligned life, a healthier life, a more wellbeing in your life. And I think if you think of the ultimate goal, I hope it is wellbeing. If we're thinking about like what is a goal of a functioning society? I would hope it's everybody's wellbeing is, is taken care of for spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally. And if you ask people, how do we get there? They'd be like, I have no clue. Right. So I think this ethical and cultural wisdom is one helping us to get to. A society or, or a goal of wellbeing for everyone. Yeah, absolutely. I even have a few clients within the healthcare space who are now focused on wellness and that at the deepest level of what does it actually mean to care for our employees, you know, particularly in healthcare settings of caring for the people who care for the rest of us and making wellbeing a priority. And it's something that has just been overlooked in our capitalist society, and I think in, in ways that will continue with AI and technology and really taking over our humanness. And so I really appreciate your work. I, you know that I think your work is the foundation for so much of our future moving forward. And so tell us how we can engage with your work, where we can find you. You mentioned a learning community. Can you tell us some more? Yeah, so it's called the New Paul Learning Community. It's more than a book club. It's a mastermind informed by neuroscience and psychology and history, and I send out weekly newsletters on forward topics. Which is Undertold history media news analysis with an equity lens. Reveals of tools and strategies and social justice books that are targeted by bands and then original prose that focuses on social issues. And all of this information is informed by this psychology aspect of expanding the sets of narratives that we consume. The ethical and cultural wisdom that we take in can help us make better decisions, better multicultural relationships, and achieve more socially conscious goals. And anyone can join. There's a rolling sort of admission. It's a$10 a month fee for the content. Or$70 a month if they wanna be part of the Mastermind and they can join or get more information at bit.ly/TNQcommunity and TNQ is capitalized, and I'm hoping that this is a space for people who are really wanting to lean into this information, this information that's. Being seen as bad, and there's executive orders trying to remove some of those kinds of information from schools and corporate settings. And I think that individuals seeing the importance of accurate, truthful storytelling that inspires them, that gets them to think differently, that improves their creativity and innovation is so important to building the future that we hope for And. Weathering this moment of a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. So I'm excited to lean into it and continue it. You know, as a writer, a storyteller, and a facilitator. And also if people want to just learn more about me, they can go to my site, thenewquo.com. I'm always putting up information around my work, and I do leadership development and training for organizations, and I. Even though this is a hard moment, I'm excited in the sense that more and more people are realizing that they are the collective leaders that we need. They are the leaders that we've been waiting for. And if more people can see their power and even just the small day-to-day ways that they're living their lives, I think we're going to create something beautiful beyond this moment that we can't see why quite yet. But I know it'll be possible. Yes. Thank you, Christina. Thank you for all of the work that you do, both for institutions and organizations, but now with this learning community for us, for the people, and your work is so necessary and important always, especially right now. I'm so glad and grateful that we had this conversation. Well, thank you for elevating a new perspective around us, owning our voices and spaces that are high stress and that don't respect us, and don't see us as our full. Wonderful complex beings that we are. I'm just inspired by the work that you do because so much of us need those internal tools, overcoming the hormonal, the stress, the anxiety, the things that can get in the way of us being our fullest selves and being the collective leaders that we need. So I appreciate the space you're making and the voices that you're elevating and amplifying. I think that's all part of this work as well. So just admire and appreciate you. Thank you, Christina, and check out the show notes for links to Christina's Learning Community and The New Quo to learn more about her important work. Thanks so much for tuning into this interview with Christina Blacken. Please subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. 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