Reimagining Leadership: The UC Berkeley Changemaker Story (featuring Alex Budak)

Let me shift just a little bit.

So as soon as you agreed to be on this podcast with us, I, of course, got all excited, went back to your Becoming a Changemaker kind of book to say, OK, Let me refresh my memory.

Let's put this together.

And there was a piece in there that talks about catalyzing change makers.

And I think you brought up the story of Sarika Saxena.

I don't know if that's exactly the right pronunciation.

And you were mentioning, and you just talked about the status quo.

So you were mentioning about how you give yourself permission to make change and how I'm guessing that's part of what this course or series of courses is all about.

And a lot of our work at the K-12 level is quite similar.

And so we become a barrier ourselves to the change that we want to create, or at least attempt to create.

And I love the fact that Sarika was able to give a story in terms of how not just She was overcoming maybe her own barrier, but including her brother in that whole experience.

I don't know if I'm ringing any bells for you or whatever, but I wanted to just take a second to say, okay, so I'm a changemaker.

I've kind of overcome my own barrier for seeing myself as an agent of change in my community.

But certainly whatever change, if I want to actually challenge the status quo, there's going to be some pushback somewhere.

If I'm in a classroom and I'm a student who's been given the authorization, let's say to question the status quo, How do I do it in such a way that it's kind of a win-win for everybody rather than turning into kind of a political fight or some sort of a yell, do it, but I'm still hanging on to the old system? Are there any kind of little nuggets that you might be able to share with us in terms of how one deals with that? What would it be like challenge of having to not just see yourself as a changemaker, but actually trying to get into that space of impact?

Yes, I mean, I think that first part is so important, that permission, that I think so many of us are taught to wait for someone else to tell us that we can be a changemaker, be a leader.

There's an irony that I'm a leadership professor, but I actually don't really like the word leadership.

I think that so many people are leaders, but don't see themselves in it.

And we could use a gender lens, a race lens, a class lens, even apropos here, an age lens to sort of say like, no, you don't fit some certain mold.

You're not a leader.

And that's, of course, why I like the word changemaker better.

But I think so often we're waiting for some moment where we can be a leader.

Someone says, okay, look, you have this many people following you.

You've done this thing.

You're a leader.