Episode #11 - Collaboration: Developing a clear leadership vision, orienting toward new possibilities

18 November 2022

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Robert Leckey interviews Joe MacInnis, a medical doctor studying leadership in high-risk environments, whose pioneering undersea research earned him the Order of Canada, and Taylor Owen, the founding director of the Center for Media, Technology and Democracy and an Associate Professor in the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. They discuss the components of deep leadership, on breaching the gap between academia, the publics, and the policymakers, on the need for new kinds of collaboration, and for public eloquence of leaders in a time of multiple crises.

Transcript

Robert
Welcome to the Communications and Sharing Knowledge series of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Brave Spaces podcast.
Today we're discussing collaboration, developing a clear leadership vision, orienting toward new possibilities.

Taylor Owen is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communication, the founding director of the Center for Media, Technology and Democracy and an Associate Professor in the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He's the host of the Center for International Governance's Big Tech podcast, where he's also a Senior Fellow. With former chief justice of Canada, Beverly McLaughlin, he is the co-chair of the Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression. He was previously an Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia and the research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia School of Journalism. A 2006 Pierre Elliott Trudeau scholar, Taylor Owen obtained his doctorate from the University of Oxford. He has been a Banting scholar and an Action Canada Fellow. He received the 2016 Public Policy Forum Emerging Leader award. And his work focuses on the intersection of media, technology and public policy.

Joe MacInnis is a medical doctor studying leadership in high-risk environments. He has collaborated with the U.S. Navy, Canada's Special Forces, and the Canadian government. Since 1963, Dr. McInnis has participated in 60 science and engineering projects under the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. In recognition of his pioneering undersea research, he was, in 1976, named a member of the Order of Canada. Dr. MacInnis has been a member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation since its inception and is now an honorary member of the organization.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how communications and knowledge sharing has been central to your work, Joe?

Joe
Thank you, Robert. And let me start by saying, it's a delight to be in the company of two academic superstars. But to come to my interest in leadership, I spent 10 years leading research teams beneath the ice of the Arctic Ocean and had the good fortune to work with the U.S. Navy and Canada’s Special Forces. Communication, speed trading information, is central to everything that I do. For the past two decades, I've been trying to understand the psychology of leadership in high-risk environments. My work has taken me three miles under the ocean with marine scientists, to Afghanistan, to interview military teams fighting the Taliban, and to Houston, to spend time with astronauts preparing to fly to the International Space Station.

Ten years ago, I summarized my thoughts in a book, Deep Leadership, Essential Insights from High-Risk Environments, published by Random House. But since writing the book, I've learned many things about high-risk leadership. Among them is the importance of the trinity: deep empathy, deep eloquence, and deep endurance.

Deep empathy is an intimate awareness of your team, your task, your technology, and your terrain. Central to this is the self-awareness and the emotional intelligence to know your own feelings and the feelings of your team partners. Deep empathy builds trust.

Deep eloquence is articulating your objectives and inspiring your team with words and actions that are accurate, brief, clear, and clever. To command the moment, as you know, we must command the language and speed trade information.

Deep endurance is having the physical and mental resilience to succeed in your mission, no matter how long, difficult or dangerous. The core of deep endurance for me is fierce ingenuity. So, recently I expanded my interest in leadership by interviewing scientists, artists, politicians, journalists. And now I've interviewed 50 people, including Jane Goodall, James Cameron, Margaret Atwood, and Maria Ressa, a journalist from the Philippines who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. Their beautiful minds gave me new perspectives on leadership, values, and skills.

But you asked at the beginning about sharing knowledge. Sharing knowledge is essential to my work. With the help of some wonderful editors, I've written nine books and published articles in Scientific American and National Geographic. With the help of some inspiring producers, I created radio programs for CBC Ideas and television programs for CBC and The Discovery Channel. And along the way I discovered that knowledge is not power. Sharing knowledge, speed trading information with eloquence is the true source of power because it inspires others to act.

Robert
That's fascinating. I love the deep empathy. Taylor, tell us a little bit from your side of things, how communications and knowledge sharing are essential in your work?

Taylor
Sure. I've also had the privilege of interviewing Maria Ressa recently and I was similarly affected by her. If anybody deserves the label of saint and character, and role in the world, it is her, she has a saintly aura to her. She's really quite remarkable. and very affecting, I find. So, communications is both this thing I study and the thing I do. So, it's sort of on both sides. I study how people communicate and the technologies and medias through which they communicate, and the effect that infrastructure, the infrastructure on which we communicate, how that changes what we are able to say, what we were able to do, and what the social and democratic effect of communication is. So, on the one hand, I have a deep interest in understanding these systems and particularly how they've changed over the past two decades, frankly. But then, because these issues are fairly pressing to the moment in terms of how our democratic societies are functioning or not, and how we're all embedded in these new communication technologies, speaking with publics and to publics, and with policymakers, and to policymakers is also central to my work. It's not a tangential afterthought or a form of knowledge mobilization. I actually do embed that kind of engagement and communication in all aspects of the work I do. And that means working with civil society on projects, it means doing public outreach at all phases of projects. It means putting real resources and time into things like podcasts and public writing. And it works… It means working directly with policymakers, trying to help them navigate these changes as well. So, communication kind of plays multiple roles in my life. Both an act that I do and something I study, but everywhere it’s central.

Robert
Taylor, just pushing a little further on that. You talked a little bit about working with policymakers or communities, but how would you characterize the importance of collaboration in the work you do?

Taylor
Those are examples of collaboration. I think, very often scholars see collaboration as working with another academic on a paper.

Robert
Co-writing a paper.

Taylor
Right. And that is a kind of collaboration, absolutely. And I actually do a lot of that, I actually have always coauthored rather than primary authored. And I think that's something that in the social sciences we, frankly, don't value enough.

Robert
You can co-teach as well, but…

Taylor
Sure, I think all these things are good, and I think the natural sciences do this a lot better than the social sciences do, generally. We don't value that kind of collaborative thinking and working together in the same way that the natural sciences kind of intrinsically do. But no, I think it means reaching outside of one's community, frankly. Yes, I can learn things from other academics, but I learn a lot more when I engage with publics. For one, a great recent example is part of that commission you mentioned that I'm involved with, with Beverly McLaughlin.

So, we have this expert commission, and it's eight eminent people that we've recruited to think these big things together and work through this challenge of governing free expression on the Internet. But we've paired it with a citizens' assembly of 42 randomly selected representative citizens of Canada. And they work through these same issues in parallel with us, they hear from the same witnesses… And it has been this just unbelievable process of collaboration in my mind, where we have been wrestling with this same problem together. And we come to different places, because we have different lived experiences and knowledge bases. And I have learned just a tremendous amount from this group of 42 citizens, who has been struggling with the same challenge that I'm struggling with on this commission side of things. So, that to me is a form of collaboration. But it's not one that's generally valued in the academy or incentivized in scholarship. It's something you have to sort of reach outside of that world to benefit from.

Robert
It's fascinating. And it's making me, as a lawyer, think… the jury is, maybe, the one obvious process where we do think the 12 laypeople just sort of coming in and working together have something crucial to give, but there's not a lot of other settings where we imagine that just bringing citizens together is going to be fruitful, eh?

Taylor
Yeah. So, just to push a little farther than that, there's a whole new school of deliberative democracy emerging, right? That we should be engaging citizens in the process of democracy and democratic participation. And I recently interviewed for my podcast, a political theorist named Hélène Landemoore, who is a political theorist at Yale. And she's one of the leading scholars in this space. And she uses exactly that example, that we have one place in our entire democratic apparatus, where we've institutionalized citizen participation, and it's the jury and that's it. Nowhere else do citizens get direct access to democratic decision-making, and she thinks we should expand it radically.

Robert
There's disciplinary committees or nominating committees, where you've got mostly experts and two lay people, but it's not the same thing.

Taylor
It’s fundamentally different, I think.

Robert
Joe, I'm thinking, in your opening words to us, you talked a little bit about how leading involves choosing the right words and really communicating. And I wondered if you could tell us a bit more from your perspective, of the importance of eloquence and public representation.

Joe
I've been thinking about this for some time. So, I'm going to start by putting eloquence and public speaking in the context that it has for me. And I'm working with Thomas Homer-Dixon and the Cascade Institute on what we call cascading emergencies: the COVID crisis, climate disruption, wealth inequality, runaway technologies, and the rising threats of nuclear war.

And if ever there was a time for public speaking eloquence, this is it. So, unfortunately for me, as a physician, our cascading emergencies are compounded by mental issues: anxiety, fear, despair, depression are as near as your neighbor or your frontal lobes. And, as we all know, negative emotions drain energy needed for constructive thinking, making it much harder for the public speaker to reach her audience. So, again, for me, the problem is further compounded by the global assault on facts and the truth. Around the world, from Afghanistan to Turkey, to Russia, as you all know, science and rational thinking are under attack. And in America, where I've done most of my work, truth-killing barbarians are at the gate. Democracy is unraveling. So, this is prime time for enhanced forms of public speaking. We need to hear words that are accurate, brief, clear, clever, words that inform, encourage, inspire. And again, as you all know, Churchill knew this, Lincoln knew this. So did Martin Luther King. That's why their words spoken in time of crisis still resonate today. So, the challenge – and it was fascinating listening to Taylor – the challenge for each of us is to recognize the context, understand our audience, and take our public speaking to new levels of eloquence.

Robert
I mean, this is public speaking beyond the sound bites that a politician is going to get on the news cast, right?

Joe
No, this is public speaking with the idea of inspiring action, getting people to change their way. It's extremely difficult now, compared to 10 years ago.

Robert
Fascinating. Back to you, Taylor. What are the steps? I mean, you talked about how you don't just study communication, you act it, you enact it. But what are the steps that you personally take to be a leader in communication?

Taylor
I mean, it sounds kind of trite, but just doing it, frankly, and deciding to place value in it. As you do. I think there are choices in our profession, in the academic world of how one wants to communicate with the world and whether they want to engage in the public act of communication or not. And it's not always valued inside the incentive structure of the research world. So, it's a choice. You don't have to do it. And in fact, you can be penalized for doing it, frankly, because not only is it not incentivized, but it takes time away from doing other things, right? Like, I could have many, many more academic publications if I didn't spend a lot of time right now working on my podcast or writing op-eds for newspapers or working with governments. None of those things are really intrinsically rewarded inside the system, but it's a choice, right? And it's a choice, because it’s something I choose to value. Now, that being said, I think there are some places within universities and within the research world, where they do value it more. And that's, frankly, why I've ended up in a policy school. Policy schools, at least in principle, should value engaging with policy. And engaging with policy means engaging with publics. And so, it is kind of built into the system of policy school or a journalism school, which teaches the engagement with publics. So, it's kind of why I've ended up in those places, I think, because they are places that have self-identified as valuing these things too.

Another thing that I really try to do, and this comes with advancing through the academic system a bit, is really valuing it with the people I work with, and particularly with students. I think graduate students right now… a lot of them don't want traditional careers in academics. A lot of them do want to participate in public debates. They see this not just as something to do on the side of their work, but as something that they really want to do, as core to their contribution. So, I do try and create a place through the Center, through the supervising that I do, to help and value, and incentivize, and create the right incentives for that work to be done and valued. And I just don't think we do enough of this in this space. Even just little things, like: a lot of my students, some people at the Center, spend a lot of time in the media. And as you know, that's a learned skill and you have to do hundreds of these things to get better at them. And the more I can create a space, where we can experiment in public and learn from each other, the more people that will come up through this system that value this and do it, like Joe says, at a level, where it's heard. Because good communication gets heard more and has more impact than bad communication. So, we all have to learn this together.

Robert
Joe, you mentioned that you published a number of books. Tell us a little more about the steps you take to be a leader in communication yourself.

Joe
Well, first of all, bravo to Taylor for the podcast and also for encouraging young minds to really get into the public sphere. And let me say that for me, there are two forms of public eloquence: public speaking and public writing. Using words, images, and gestures to inform and inspire an audience.

Public eloquence is a performance art. And I'm now speaking to the students who want to know more about it. And like any complex endeavor, it requires planning, practice and performance. Essential to the plan is, analyze your audience: what do they need? Understand your subject: what do you really know? And so, fill in the gaps with research and tell a story, embed your facts in a dramatic character-driven narrative.

And so, when I tell them, my students, and I'm sure Taylor does too, when you're going to speak in front of an audience, you should prepare a script. Write short, supple sentences, edit, re-edit. Memorize your words, so you can step away from the podium and speak from your heart. The real secret: rehearse, rehearse. Turn stage fright, because we all have it, into muscle memory. And when you perform, have a conversation with your audience, make eye contact, speak directly to someone, be humble and humorous. Start strong, finish stronger, and finish on time. So, just to come back to what Taylor said, in a social media world, we live inside a continuous question, what's the best way to express this: print, voice, video? Whatever platform you choose, your objective is to build trust and inspire action. One way, as I said, is through stories. They reveal layers of meaning about you and your subject. They offer warnings or a way ahead. Stories are research with a soul.

Robert
Joe, you've talked to us a lot about how one leads through communication. Is there a particular example you can think of, where you've sensed that kind of eloquence has had a meaningful impact?

Joe
Well, this is an easy question and a tough one. But again, some years ago, I had the good fortune to see how a man, intensely aware of the importance of eloquence and the needs of his country, inspired dramatic changes. Pierre Trudeau was my friend for 30 years. He devoted his life to two fundamental principles: improve yourself, contribute to the wellbeing of others. And we made 50 dives together, exploring the mysteries and beauties inside the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. And when you dive together, your lives depend on each other. So, very quickly you get to know, who the person really is. And Pierre was brilliant at choreographing facts and experiences into leadership narratives. He commanded the language. He wrote with fire, he spoke with fire. In 1970, he asked me to come to Ottawa to help write Canada's first national ocean policy.

So, working in the privy council office, I saw how a master leader, co-creating with his cabinet and senior officials, changed Canada forever. Repatriation of the Constitution, wage and price controls, expanded rights for women. Pierre was a master of self-awareness, audience awareness, and deep eloquence. And you can see it in his 1984 final speech as Prime Minister. It's on YouTube. There's no podium, no notes. Only a man speaking from his heart.

Robert
Thank you. Taylor, can you give us an example of where you've really sensed the impact of leadership and communication?

Taylor
That’s a tough example to follow

Robert
It is hard to beat that one.

Taylor
… both in style and substance. But, it's tricky to demonstrate impact, I think. There's a struggle you often find in the policy world and journalism, where you're constantly being asked to show your impact or demonstrate you made a change. And that's just not how these systems work. The public… publics are more complicated than that. They change their minds based on all sorts of things, and policymakers are too, right? There's no one single thing that changes a policy or creates a policy. But I would say that in the past few years I have taken a much more public and, in some ways… I don't want to use the word “activist,” but a more public stance on the role that certain big tech companies are playing in our lives.

Five years ago, this was a conversation nobody wanted to have. Governments weren't listening, the public weren't that interested. But over the last five years it's really fundamentally changed. And now governments around the world, in part because publics around the world are concerned about these sets of issues, about how we're being affected by these technologies and the behaviors of these companies, that the debate's entirely changed. And there's now this sort of window of opportunity to really shape policy as it's being made. In Brussels for the EU, in London for the UK, in Washington for the US, and in Ottawa, frankly, where policies on this file are now being created. And I'm fairly involved in those policies in all those jurisdictions. And so, I think, the lesson there is that sometimes, when you start talking about these things, and you put yourself out in public, it's not clear where it's going to head or that there ever will be a window to have impact. But if you're not doing that, when that window opens, you won't be there.

And on this one, the people who started researching and studying, and speaking out about these sets of issues are now helping governments to write policies, to address them. And that has potential impact. It's not for sure yet. These issues are complicated and there's lots of debate about what and whether a government should do in this space. But there are people at the table now, who are a very different set of actors and scholars and policy people, and think tank people, than were in this conversation five years ago. And it's because they stepped out into the public over the last five years. So, there's a lesson there, I think, no matter what your topic is.

Robert
I agree.

Joe
If I can say, I'm very heartened by what you just said, because we need… I'm so, so excited that you're in the front line of that big tech question. It's so critical. Good for you.

Taylor
Thank you. It's a big one, and there’s no easy answers here, that’s the thing, too.

Robert
If you had to recommend to us a book or an article, or a video, or other medium that you think the people listening to this conversation would benefit from reading or listening to, what would you suggest to us?

Taylor
I probably would’ve suggested something else, but Joe's mention of Maria at the beginning makes me think, listen to her Nobel Peace Prize-winning speech.

Joe
Yeah, hear, hear!

Taylor
It summarizes the challenge we face in our communications infrastructure. It summarizes the challenges we face in the space of journalism. I think, it highlights some of the biggest policy problems we face as democratic societies, and she does so from a place of lived experience in the harshest environment and consequence of that infrastructure. And I think, if ever there was a canary in the coal mine for where we're headed or could be headed if we don't change our relationship and how we engage with these technologies, then she is it. So, I would recommend that.

Robert
Thank you. My mother has shared the speech with one of her grandchildren, but I have not yet listened to it myself. So, I will take your recommendation.

Taylor
Now you have your homework.

Joe
Taylor's right. It is really writing with fire. She's… it's an amazing presentation

Taylor
It is.

Robert
And Joe, what has informed your views that you would recommend to us?

Joe
A year ago I watched the inauguration of President Joe Biden, and part way through the proceedings a slim black girl stepped up to the podium. Amanda Gorman was, as you all know, 22 years old, the first National Youth Poet Laureate. And for the next four minutes, she transfixed us with a 700-word poem. And she started with a question, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? And she imagined a country, in her words, committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions. And she closed with the thought, there is always light if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it. Amanda Gorman used her voice as a musical instrument. She animated the air with her hands. The co-creation of her voice, her hands, and her heart was radiant. Amanda Gorman, for me, writes with fire and she speaks with fire. If you want to see deep eloquence in action, listen to her presidential poem. And if you want to be inspired by personal leadership, read her Wikipedia profile.

Robert
Thank you. Taylor Owen and Joe McInnis, what a privilege to speak with you today. Thank you so much.

Taylor
Likewise. Thanks to you.

Joe
Privilege is mine.