Jae Rhee from Curtin University interviewed me as part of his Master's Unit on Leadership in a Dynamic Global Environment (Lecturer Troy Hendrickson). The interview was based on 'Diverse Leadership' and covers ideas relating to presenting to diverse groups, diversity in leadership and how my years of backpack travels influenced me as an educator. The article is re-printed with permission. Thank you Jae.
Interview with a Diversified EducatorProfile and Background of Glenn Capelli as an Educator
Glenn Capelli, the interviewee, is the founder of True Learning Centre and a professional educator in thinking and learning skills. He is also known as a writer, songwriter, radio and television presenter, and a public speaking professional. He is a Winston Churchill Fellowship Awardee and also member of MENSA - the High IQ Society.
He travels around the world, working with diversity across and within various cultures and groups. The extent of the diversity that he works with ranges; from five years old students to their teachers, principals and parents; from remote communities in the Australian outback to top private schools in the Perth metropolitan area; and from a group of CEO’s to workers in factories across the globe. Immersed in such diversity, Glenn has learned to appreciate and honour different ways of thinking, living and working.
Born in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, with an Italian immigrant family background, Glenn Capelli experienced the hardship that his grandparents went through in his early childhood. He reflects that this experience was possibly the cause of his interest in the issues of diversity and social justice.
Key Aspects of an Diversified Educator: Interest and Empathy
With his curiosity seeking to understand cultures other than his own, Glenn appeared to me as a dynamic learner and a thinker who endeavoured to find common cultural threads across various cultures rather than differences. Glenn went on backpacking over seven years in various places across the globe. During this period, he was a fish farmer in Israel, a comedian in LA, a travel writer in Kenya and a summer-camp counsellor in North Carolina. Upon his return to Australia in 1987, he established the True Learning Centre where he focuses on the creativity and quality of learning and thinking skills.
Glenn states that such diverse, rich and hands-on experience was essential for him as an educator, professional speaker and a business owner. He explained that the experience helped him grow as a person who came across extraordinary companionship along the journey and a range of different languages expressing diverse worldviews.
Glenn mentions that curiosity leads to the discovery of the multiple layers of other people and understanding leads to honouring other’s worldviews. Throughout the interview, interest and empathy came across as the key aspects of this educator who is immersed in a dynamic and complex world.
The Role of an Educator in a Diverse and Complex World
Glenn Capelli has, over time, accumulated an extensive knowledge and understanding of people and their skills. He believes that a complex world requires diversified group intelligence rather than individuals with high IQ’s, as IQ is merely a part of the whole concept of intelligence. According to Glenn, group intelligence consists of four different sets of intelligence:
• creative mind
• analytical mind
• practical mind, and
• emotional mind
He considers such a multi-dimensional concept of intelligence, diverse knowledge, capabilities and sometimes ‘odd’ skills are like crayons of different colours. Glenn states that, for an educator of thinking and learning skills, it is important to become aware of what is working for each individual because it is his role to tap into the individual’s authentic colours of crayons and encourage them to utilise those crayons in whatever setting they are situated.
Further, Glenn views that judging and categorising people prevent us from seeing the unique and true colours of individuals. Hence, having a genuine interest and empathy is critical, because it provides us with the opportunity to learn about others individually so that we have the opportunity to honour and accept their skills, personalities and potentials.
Diversity, Flexpertise, Systems Thinking and Leadership
Thijssen (2003) explains that flexpertise is the ability to maintain and apply expert skills and knowledge to diverse areas beyond the area of specialisation, while adapting and changing to dynamic environment. Our discussion about developing flexpertise was insightful as it is in line with the development of one’s capacity to adopt systems thinking approach. As discussed in Part 1 of this paper, the systems thinking approach sees the whole picture where complex and dynamic interactions of parts occur. Thus, the implication of developing flexpertise knowledge and skills lies in the development of one’s ability to understand and work with diversity.
From Glenn’s viewpoint, the appreciation of diversity and flexpertise is critical in order to understand the role of leadership because leadership essentially requires the ability to think and behave in a holistic manner (Skarzauskiene 2008). However, although systems thinking is imperative for leadership, Glenn notes that getting people to embrace such a holistic thinking approach is the greatest challenge in his work as an educator. Glenn’s comment, “Nothing gets affected by anything in collections, but everything gets affected by everything else in systems.” illustrates the need for educating people in systems thinking in a dynamic and complex world powered by diversity.
Glenn Capelli’s belief is that building up a rich pool of leadership needs to be encouraged so that more complete and enduring form of leadership can be attained and remembered among members of an organisation. The critical nature of this type of pool of leadership is that leadership needs to occur in each layer of organisations and within individual members, operating in a continuum manner and adapting to various situations and people.
Professional Principles for Excellence and Measuring Excellence
Glenn carries a very strong conviction in achieving excellence in his profession and measuring the quality of his work. He believes that excellence may be accomplished by practicing long, hard and well by attempting diverse methodologies involving some of those yet-to-be-discovered skills. Also, he considers that if his teaching concept has been taken for someone’s children or relatives, then it means his education was of value to someone. Glenn’s statement, “If I work as an educator and if the education is good, it’ll spread. But if you work as a marketer, you don’t know if it’s your advertisement or education” illustrates his belief in word-of-mouth campaign as an educator rather than a commercially driven salesperson.
Faith, Stretching and Embracing: a Way of Honouring and Exploring
Glenn Capelli suggests that we all need to believe in ourselves for what we aim to achieve and try some stretching and embracing by attempting to discover the under-utilised colours of crayons both in ourselves and others. This set of advice appeared to me as a way of honouring who we are and exploring who we want to be.
References
Skarzauskiene, A. 2008. Theoretical Insights to leadership based on systems thinking principles. Organizacijø Vadyba: Sisteminiai Tyrimai (48): 105. ProQuest Databases. http://proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au (accessed September 13, 2009).
Thijssen, J. G. L. 2003. Evaporated talent? Problems with talent development during the career. International Journal of Resources Development and Management 3 (2): 154 - 170. Inderscience Publishers. www.inderscience.metapress.com (accessed September 15, 2009).
Glenn's book
Thinking Caps is available at www.glenncapelli.com
