A Conversation with Nolan Rollins: Access, Servant Leadership, and Equity

Narrator: Welcome to Belonging at the Top, driving performance through people. The podcast where leadership gets real and people come first. Your hosts are Dr. Natalie Parks, psychologist, behavior analyst, best-selling author, and your go-to expert for dismantling systems of injustice while building equitable, high-performing teams. And Anthony Butler, leadership coach, thought leader, speaker, and master of helping leaders unlock their team's full potential, one breakthrough at a time. Together, they're here to tackle your toughest leadership challenges with just the right mix of science, strategy, and a sprinkle of humor. In this episode, we sit down with Nolan Rollins, Urban League alum, author, and self-described builder. Join us for a powerful conversation about access, servant leadership, and the relationship between bias and equity.

Anthony I. Butler: Welcome back to another episode of Belonging at the Top. Natalie, how are you this afternoon?

Dr. Natalie Parks: Doing pretty good. How about you?

Anthony I. Butler: Pretty good. It'd be great if I said at the right time of day. It's the morning, not the afternoon, but that's all right. Today on this episode, we are starting our first guest of the season. We've got Mr. Nolan Rollins with us. Alpha Man extraordinaire. Got a strong tradition in the Urban League and some other stuff that he'll tell us about. Nolan, how are you today?

Nolan Rollins: I'm doing great this morning. How are both of you?

Anthony I. Butler: Doing well. Doing well. Doing well. Glad you know what time of day it is, and I didn't. So that's been a long night. Been a long night. All right. So Nolan, as you know, as we talked, you know, pre-show and before we agreed to join us on the show, we start off every episode when we have a conversation with the guests with one simple question and we go from there. And that question is, or the statement is: tell us about your leadership journey. How did you get to where you are in life today?

Nolan Rollins: Yeah, it's funny. I started to think about that question about my leadership journey and you know the older you get the wiser you get and the better your answers are and you order them better and I think had you caught me 15, 20 years ago I would have said hard work, determination, you know all the things, but catching me today at this ripe age of and experience I would say that my leadership journey actually began in silence. It was the silence of a kid who actually sat and watched how adults moved. It was the silence of a young man who watched how systems actually moved. It was the silence of a young person who was brought into the room with tremendous leaders who that person, that kid just got coffee, but they were in the room listening and understanding how the world actually works. And I think for me that's really where it began because my thirst for understanding how things work actually came from me being silent in the room. And I think that the more I think about it is probably one of the most important times in my life because I think that silence was actually the reps that I needed in the gym to be as vocal as I've been for the last 20 years, whether it be in writing or on a microphone or on a stage or wherever it is. So I think that journey began for me in silence because it also allowed me to understand people, right? It allowed me to understand human nature. It allowed me to understand how things actually move and it also allows you to understand those loud folks in the room are definitely the most insecure folks in the room. So, it's the people who are really paying attention to what's important are the people that you've got to get to know because that's actually where the future lies with them. So, I would say to you that it definitely when I look back on it and it could have something to do with my natural proclivity. I'm introverted. I have an extrovert's gift, but I'm actually introverted. I just, that's just how I'm designed in this world. And I think that introverted nature of mine allowed me to be silent for a long time and paying attention and listening and figuring out how things actually worked because then I could decide where I actually wanted to play and not try to play everywhere and just be really focused on that. So, I think the journey for me definitely started in silence.

Anthony I. Butler: It's funny you say that because I think hearing that I take another word from it. I think what that silence, you were able to be in those spaces. So there was the access as well that not everyone has that access or the opportunity to be somewhere where they can be silent and to observe and to take it all in and be a sponge. And I chose the word access on purpose. I think it ties directly into your current project as well, especially when you get into that. But I think access is a great way of describing it as well. So if I can steal some of your thunder and kind of add to your own analysis of your own history, but that's what I hear when I take away from it is access.

Nolan Rollins: I will tell you that I think you're absolutely right because being in those rooms presupposes that someone believed that you were worthy enough to be in that room, right? And that's access, right? So being in the rooms that I was in at a very young age, I mean, you know, kid from Baltimore City, single parent at the time, first-time college goer and anyone in the family. So someone recognizing something in me was all about that access because if you don't have that access, if you don't have those mentors and you don't have those sponsors, very different. You actually don't get to play the game. All you get to do is to think about the game because you can be silent and just be thinking about the game, but the way that you actually get into the game is you have to be given access. And that is not as easy as said as it is done to be true.

Dr. Natalie Parks: I think the other thing that struck me or that I thought about as you were talking about being silent and observing in the room is recognizing that even though maybe you weren't in the traditional way given access, right? Like you said, as a child observing adults, as a young man observing, being in the room and maybe I just went and got coffee, but you were listening as well. And when we think about leadership, one of the things we spend so much time on is teaching people to listen and to take in the information and to understand. And I think about there's a quote. I'm going to mess it up, but it talks about being the last person to speak in the room and to be the silent one in the room and how much you gain from that. And so I think it's profound that you look back on your journey and you recognize all of the spaces that you were able to soak in information just by actively paying attention to what was going on.

Nolan Rollins: Yeah, it's funny that you should say that word listen because I always talk about the difference between listening to respond and listening to react. And what most people do is they listen to react. They don't listen to respond because responding actually requires vulnerability on the listener's side. It requires being able to sit back and identify where there's actual opportunity to speak and to actually do something that means something, and not just responding to what you hear, not just kind of pushing your thoughts, your experience, your intuition into the conversation. So listening, it's incredibly important, right? Because you can get in a room and have the access. You can be silent in the room and what you say out of your mouth can be all wrong and you'll be never invited into another room. So that really, listening to respond and listening to react, I think it's really important because human nature, ego, all of those things want us to be able to react really quickly and we feel like the quicker we react and the more forcefully or the more whatever we react, the better it actually looks. And nine times out of 10, it's actually the opposite. It's actually the opposite. You wind up looking like the fool and you wind up creating this kind of image of yourself that walks into the room long before you do and you're then tolerated in the room and not wanted in the room. So I absolutely believe that listening is a critical component too for any leader, right? I mean, we're in the organization in the Urban League itself, we're always taught, we're always kind of pushed this kind of thought around servant leadership and that servant leadership requires one thing first: to be a servant, which means that you're actually not in front, right? You may be physically in front but you in every other way you are picking up the trash, in every other way you are turning out the lights, in every other way you are mopping the floor, in every other way you are doing the things that other people may not think that a person in that position would or should do, but you know that those are the things that are critically important to that leadership. So, I just think it's interesting for me. We spend a lot of time talking about leadership traits, but we don't spend a lot of time talking about the DNA that actually makes a leader a leader. Not just the traits, the great schools, the ability to articulate, the good grades, you know, all of these things that people say these are critical to becoming a leader, which are important. I'm not saying that they aren't important, but it's actually, I was, we were just having this conversation last night. I'm not, everyone who's listening, this isn't a name drop for the purposes of name dropping. That's not what this is. This is just a story. That's, let me tell you now. So I mentioned that we're in New Orleans and I spent six, six and a half years here in New Orleans as the CEO of the Urban League here and my son is coming back to New Orleans now to go to Tulane for grad school. So we were with a good friend of mine, Irvin Mayfield, Grammy award-winning trumpet player. So he was playing last night and we were talking with my son about the work that's done when nobody is watching and how important that work is. And what he talked about was the amount of work that he would do when no one was watching allows him to ease into things now when everybody is watching. So he went from just playing the trumpet to playing the banjo, the guitar, the piano, and all of those things because of the discipline. So, so those are the things that we're talking when we're talking about leadership are critically important to say out loud, to say out loud, because 90 percent of leadership is actually the things that people never see. It's only the 10 percent that they see and they love and they think it's great. The other 90 percent, you know, it's not for the faint of heart. It's just not for the faint of heart. And you all know this. And you'll get no trophies. You'll get no certificates. You'll actually wind up getting beat on because of those things because they don't think you're doing anything when you have 90 percent of that work that people just don't see. So, I think those things are important.

Anthony I. Butler: So, Nolan, you mentioned a bit of it now. So for those of us who can we kind of jump right into the conversation because I'm comfortable with you, Natalie already knows your background, but tell us about your leadership, like, background, like where, why are you on Belonging at the Top? We normally only ask leaders to come on anyway or somebody with a compelling story to tell. Where have you been a leader? What does your leadership look like professionally?

Nolan Rollins: Yeah. So, so that so everyone knows that this isn't nepotism and it's not because Anthony knows me and we've known each other. It's not nepotism. That's exactly why you're here. So, so the journey started for me, I think, after law school. So, I'm born and raised, like I said, in Baltimore, at this point spent more time out of it than in, went to Virginia State University, finished there, came back home to Baltimore, the University of Baltimore for grad school, then went to law school in Florida, came back to Baltimore, and I had a mentor who was a judge. And this judge said, 'Hey, I have someone I want to introduce you to.' And this someone was Howard Henderson who is the CEO of the Urban League in Baltimore. So he says to me, and anyone who knows Howard, I love him dearly, that without him I am not on Belonging at the Top. I'm just not. Like, I know I can tell you the names of people who made it possible for me to have this conversation with the both of you. But what he said to me, what Howard said to me is when you get your first real job, I want you to do something for me. So, I got my first real job in the State's Attorney's office in Baltimore City. And what he wanted me to do was to start the Urban League Young Professionals in Baltimore. They hadn't had one at the time. So, we sat down, we talked about it, and what we did was we found very different leaders in the community who were all young because we needed something that wasn't built already. We needed a young professional organization that was a training ground for new leaders. That was a guaranteed hub for building a system that when people go through it, they're going to come out on the other side extremely strong, extremely thoughtful, extremely community facing. So, we did that. So, a group of us founders started the Urban League Young Professionals. I was fortunate enough to be the first president of the Young Professionals in Baltimore. From there went on to be the president of the National Urban League Young Professionals. So I had 67 chapters around the nation, 10,000 members, served on the National Urban League's board. I was fortunate, again, fortunate to be in the rooms, to be listening, to actually be seated with the access, Anthony, that you talked about before, from people who, you know, if they walked by me on the street in any other instance, I would be unremarkable. I would be unremarkable, but there was something with me being in the room. So, I got a chance to sit on the National Urban League's board and become really close friends with all of the corporate titans who were on the board. So, then the National Urban League said, 'I wonder if we can train our own and have them become CEOs in this Urban League movement around the country.' So, I was their test case. I was the case that they said, 'Hey, I wonder if we can develop these young folks, train them in how the Urban League works, train them in servant leadership, train them in what it means to go into a community and be a strong supporter of the community's needs and a great advocate and then put them into our affiliates.' So, they came to me and said, 'Well, what do you think about these places here?' And I wasn't interested in any of them to be honest with you. The first group that they came to me, I was like, 'I don't, you know, I don't know.' No. Right. So then they said, 'Well, what do you think about New Orleans?' I was like, 'That's exactly where I want to go.' This was post Katrina. This was because I'm a simple builder. Like, I'm not the person who you call when everything is working well. That's not, that's never going to be me. If it needs to be built, developed, and that's the thing that really gets me going. So the National Urban League President Marc Morial, who's from New Orleans, whose father was the mayor of New Orleans, he was the mayor of New Orleans, they sent me down to New Orleans post Katrina to rebuild the Urban League. And again, there was nothing here, right? There was the building was gone, the people were gone. Like it was, and I always say, not just the building and the people were gone, but by the time I got here, the money was gone. So the fanfare of what happened in New Orleans was gone. This is after the cameras leave. This is after they, you know, everyone has gone on to the next kind of big problem. So I become the CEO of the Urban League here in New Orleans. No good deed goes unpunished. I do that for about six and a half years. They then send me to LA to be the Urban League CEO in LA. So that's kind of been my leadership journey. And I have to say this, but for the Urban League and but for people like Marc Morial, Howard Henderson who helped me to start, Maudine Cooper who was the CEO of the Urban League in Washington DC, but for people like this who said, 'Come on in here, kid. You know, we think that you have something that we can help to develop.' We're not having this conversation. So again, for me, my leadership comes from listening. I fundamentally believe that I moved really quickly through this Urban League movement because of that, because of people who were seeding into me, because of my willingness to listen more than I actually spoke, and because of my willingness to actually, you know, do things that, that are that 90 percent that people never see and be comfortable with it and be comfortable with doing the things that people never see and never getting a certificate or a trophy for it.

You know, I think one of the things I think about, and when you talk about the servant leadership and you talk about being willing to, you know, how you enter a new community, a community that you're not from, that you don't necessarily know, and a community that you want to serve, right? Not just lead, but truly serve. And that being quiet and that listening component. And I think, you know, right now in the world that we're living in, whether in America especially, but I think even worldwide, we are so polarized by one another. And people are so focused on being right or being on the right side of whatever value lesson issue it is that we have lost some of that trait of listening. And I think when you pair it with how the younger generation interacts with one another via text message and cell phone and those things, they are also missing out on so many opportunities to listen. And so my question in that is, understanding that there might have been some core behaviors that you did, of listening, of being quiet, of soaking up information when you recognized that you had access and opportunity, for another young person coming up and thinking, 'How do I gain some access? How do I get put in these rooms?' What might your advice be to them?

Nolan Rollins: Yeah, you know, I think the world is so incredibly noisy right now that we've done a great thing and a tough thing at the same time. The democratization of voice is a great thing, but the democratization of voice only means the democratization of opinions. And every opinion isn't a valuable opinion. And that is not an insult because I know somebody like, I can't believe he said that, but it's accurate. Let me unpack that for you because I appreciate you, that little tickler, Anthony, because this is what I mean. It is an opinion to believe that someone should have more access to the rights that America actually gives. There are people in this country who believe that rights should be given differently to different people for different reasons. There are people in this country who actually believe that women should be in a certain position. That is an opinion. So when I talk about the opinions that I'm talking about, this isn't to be disparaging. It's actually to be honest about where we are and what we live in in this country. And we've got to be adult enough to have these conversations. I am unafraid to have a conversation that there are people in this country who actually have the opinion that the totem pole is actually a totem pole that only certain people should be at the top. That's actually not what democracy looks like. That's not what the Constitution was written for. That's not what the Declaration of Independence was actually written for. That's exactly why the country was created, because the founders believed that there should not be a totem pole that had a king sitting at the top. So if you fundamentally believe that, now, there have been back and forths about whether or not these things are happening and all that, that's not what I'm talking about. It's a very ironic premise that that's what it's founded for and then how it actually played out. But that's absolutely, but again, it's important to unpack that there are people with these opinions and if we don't believe it then let's just look at what's happening in our country right now with democracy. Let's just look at what's happening in our country with voting. There are people who are of the opinion that some people's votes should not count as much as others. That is an opinion. So when I say that all of these opinions, there are some that have merit and some don't, I'm absolutely unafraid to give you examples of what that looks like. And those are examples of what that looks like without being disparaging, without saying people's ideas aren't valuable. But there are some ideas that aren't helpful to the American condition. And there are some ideas that are not helpful to what democracy is supposed to be. There are some people's ideas who actually want to create a world in which there's a caste system that guarantees most of us aren't at the top. And it doesn't always matter your color. What we're finding right now is what true power looks like. Power doesn't give a damn about color. Power cares about power. And if we're really honest about that, we can then say to ourselves, so if power cares about power and power does not care about democracy, then we've got to be really clear about what we're fighting for. And that's what I'm talking about, about opinions and about strong opinions around the table.

Dr. Natalie Parks: So, I think you gave a perfect segue as you talked about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and what it truly stands for. You have a book coming out soon entitled Incremental Equality. And one of the things that you talked about in your book is the kind of juxtaposition of the way the Constitution was written and what the Constitution actually says. And yet it was written during a time where there is a very clear inequality, where slavery was happening. Right. And so when you think about that, I guess maybe first lead us into your book a little bit, but I would love to also hear how that history and that foundation of this country leads us even to kind of where we are now and the fight that we are still fighting. And before you answer that note, I'm going to ask one other thing too. Tell us about the catalyst for you to write the book and then go into that.

Nolan Rollins: Yeah, I'm sorry. I think you know what, we're, trust me, we're all on the same page because the catalyst was in my mind as the leading, when she said lead in, I was literally thinking, all right. So you've heard a bit of my history. The thing that I didn't add was when I was in law school, what I really focused on was the Constitution and contracts because again, I'm really interested in how things work. So, it was the Constitution and how resources move. That's what I think about contracts. It's just how resources actually move. So because you've heard my history and now you've heard my education, what I began to realize during the work is that there are patterns in how our country moves. And those patterns actually force us into this amnesic state where we actually forget that we've been through this thing before. We think that because we're going through it at this moment that it's never happened before. And nothing could be further from the truth. There isn't a thing that we're seeing today that we have not lived through before or worse. And that's the other thing that we've got to be really conscious about is everything is terrible or it's a catastrophe when it's happening to us. But there are things that have happened to others that there isn't a word written in the English language that could describe it. We can put a word to a catastrophe. We can put a word to inequality. We can put words to that. But there are no words that actually can describe what it looks like to have strange fruit hanging in Mississippi during the hot summer. There are no words that can actually describe what it looks like to be enslaved and to be whipped for whatever reason. There aren't real words that actually capture that human condition. So, while we have tremendous challenges, tremendous headwinds right now that we're going through, I do not discount that. My premise is simply that the better we are at recognizing the patterns and how our country actually has moved since its inception, the better we are at developing systems for what the future should look like. So, that's really the lead into the book. It's education for me. It's the work in New Orleans. It's the work in Los Angeles. You know, there are parts of later iterations of this work that when I get to New Orleans and, you know, Hurricane Katrina's actually happened and we're dealing with this Stafford Act. And the Stafford Act basically says, 'Hey, we're going to help with recovery.' But the way that they were using it was actually, it was unequal. So the people who were in the wealthier places got the value of their homes, but the people who lived in the Ninth Ward got the value of their homes at the time that it was purchased. So it gets crazier. So at one point, the Ninth Ward was the largest Black-owned community in the nation because they passed these homes down generation to generation. So you have to imagine generation to generation those things being passed down. Houses couldn't have cost more than $15,000 when they were purchased, if that. If that. Right. So, so we're really talking about a system that was built and designed in a way where it was baked in. The inequality was absolutely baked in. And I'll share a little something that we did in the Ninth Ward that I think is really important. But that's the lead-in for me. Being able to see those things in Baltimore where I grew up, being able to see those things in New Orleans where I work, and also being able to see them in Los Angeles. I mean, the interesting thing about a place like Los Angeles is it's wonderful at masking its reality. Oh, yeah. Because that's what it's great at. Like, it's great at telling great stories, but it's horrible at telling its truth. And its truth is far more dire than it is. I mean, that's how you have a Rodney King. That's how you have what's happening, what happened with the police department there. That's why you had consent decrees with the police department. It wasn't because they weren't great storytellers. It was because they were horrible at telling the truth of what's happening inside the city. So those are all patterns. So for me it was really how do I begin to talk about these patterns in a way that does a few things. I'm a Generation Xer. I'm a huge hip-hop fan and I think the greatest MC of all time is KRS-One. Fight me. So, but what he, whole another episode, man. I know. I know, that could be another episode, but what he did was he spent a lot of time in this space that he coined as edutainment. So, the reason I wrote the book as a novel is because there were two reasons. One, the pain that I take the family through is way too much pain for a real family, whether or not it's actually real, because the truth is these are real instances. It's way too much pain for a single family to go through. It's way too much pain for a technical document that gets us there. So that's why I use voices and characters, but it also was very much impacted by people that I met along the way. There are people in that book whose names are different who I've actually met. There are advocates in that book who, you know, there's a Ma Celeste in there that's based on a woman here in New Orleans who, God rest her soul, her name is Mama D. But she was an advocate for the people in New Orleans and would stand up in city hall and city council meetings and go off. But you know what they would do? They would call me and say, 'Nolan, can you have a conversation with her?' Again, willing to listen to voices who may be different, but who are there for the right reason. So, that's the kind of pretext for writing the book, right? That's how we wind up getting there. And then what the book does, it really takes you on a journey. You mentioned a little earlier about kind of these founding documents we were talking about. I fundamentally believe that you can create a perfect document at an imperfect time for a later perfect time. And that's the way I think about the Constitution. That's the way I think about the Declaration of Independence. It was a perfect document at an imperfect time for a later perfect time. So, they could have never truly done all the things that they said that they wanted to do for anyone but themselves. Right. Again, it was a self-serving document. That self-serving document was a perfect document for a later time. So that's the way, that's really where the impetus for the rest of the book winds up coming from. It comes from these imperfect people, these imperfect times, but the impact that it has on very real people who were living through them, the impact that it has on these two families, that one is African-American that came from artisans and architects from the Congo and a white family that comes from Paris right after the French Revolution. And we're watching how these families navigate this country in a way that one is given and a way that one is actually taken. So one is given freedom and one's freedom is actually taken. And we follow what that give and take of freedom actually looks like through the novel. But its impact is all from the work that I've actually been a part of. And I think if we're really honest and look around, we would recognize that there are patterns that pop up all day, every day. All day. It's, it happens continuously, which means that we can take that same micro vision of patterns and look at the macro in the way that humanity has actually been moved and worked through here in the country and say there's, there are patterns that can be picked up. So that's really the impetus for the book and the way it was actually written.

Dr. Natalie Parks: So thinking about, and my background is behavior analysis, and so studying behavior and systems of behavior is interesting to me. Clearly, when you talk about patterns repeating themselves and you put that in the context of a system, and the system of whether it's not just the government, because I think the government only works in the context of all the other systems that we have in the country. How does one not just recognize those patterns, but how do you truly, truly change those patterns when the systems are set up to repeat the patterns, right? Like, that's the whole point of a system is to make the pattern work and keep going. So, how do you disrupt that?

Nolan Rollins: I love the question. So, there is a bias that's built in to everything. There's just a bias that's built into everything. And the first thing that we've got to get ourselves past is saying out loud that there's a bias that's built into everything. Because then we can start to say, okay, what is that bias? And how do we move that bias to a place where it helps the system to function better? We've got to be, and we talked about this a little bit, we've got to be really honest about who we are, where we are, and what's impacting what's happening here. And the challenge is power is uninterested in that conversation. It's absolutely uninterested. I just wrote a piece, I'm on social media, so I just did a piece the other day about revolution and how revolutions actually start with a whisper. They start with voices. They start with people. They start with, that's how revolutions actually start. Revolutions don't start with power. Revolutions don't start with systems. They start with a voice, a whisper, and then they find another voice, another whisper that they agree on, and then it grows from there. I would argue that that's where we have to be. What we've got to do is we've got to make some decisions that this vertical is going to be tackled by these folks, this vertical is going to be tackled by these folks, this vertical is going to be tackled by, because there's so much. It's funny. So lawyers are always talking about just throw something up against the wall and see what sticks. There's so much of that that if you just keep looking at the wall, you're never going to do anything because you're actually trying to do that. So the better organized we are at saying, hey, there's a vertical that says our school system is absolutely deplorable. So let's make sure that we have people who are very focused on that school system. We need the advocates, we need the educators, we need the intellectuals, we need everyone who can do that. There's another system that says, 'Hey, our prison industrial complex is deplorable. All we're doing is feeding Black and brown bodies into a system that's helping to boost an economy that's now more privatized than it's ever been before.' I can go down the list. I can do this all day long, right? So, so it's really how do we organize in that way? But again, it's that whisper from the individuals who then create a collective. We've seen it time and time again. Brown v. Board of Education doesn't happen without that whisper starting. The Montgomery boycotts do not happen without that whisper starting. What power is really good at right now is helping us to forget that we ever did those things before. We've seen it done before. We've seen systems broken before. Now, what we haven't seen is the staying power. What we haven't seen is we've seen it broken, right? We've seen segregation broken in schools, but what we haven't seen is the systemic, how do you then make sure generations from now that we've broken the machine, that the machine is doing what it's supposed to do, right? Tax policy, from where money is actually going, from schools, to, from the property taxes, too. I mean, you get those things. So, so I think that's how we've got to be thinking about this. We, number one, we have to be intentional about who's doing the work, how they're doing the work. Number two, we've got to be able to say to ourselves, this thing is actually broken, right? And number three, we've got to be really clear that we're fighting power. And power concedes nothing without struggle. It concedes nothing without struggle. It is not going to give up power just because we are emotionally connected to the thing that we care most about. It could care less, but there's opportunity there.

Dr. Natalie Parks: No, I guess I'm thinking about it and one of the things, you know, I definitely agree and I like your frame of thinking about starting with a whisper, but also recognizing that we each need to figure out kind of where our strengths best lie, right? And to what path or issue. At the same time, I think part of why we haven't completely corrected the system is because the system ties all of the lanes together. And as we focus on one lane, and education is a big part of my lane, I can't fix education until taxes are fixed and the military spending is fixed and segregation is fixed and redlining is fixed and all of those things, right? And so while my expertise is in education, I think we also have to be much more willing to say my expertise is education and yet I don't know the law. So I still need someone who is over here working on this other part of the system. And we have to figure out how we're going to correct that system together and not separately. Because what happens is I look at the system again. I'm somewhat of a nerd and a geek too. The system we're talking about, it's more than one system. It's very, it's multifaceted, multi-headed like the hydra, right? So not to get too deep into mythology and everything else, but if you cut off, if you dismantle one system, that one system is part of a bigger system that all it's going to do is be replaced with something else anyway, right? So it's that unified approach of you've got to handle each thing at the same time. It has to be concurrent. You can't do them independent of each other or you won't have any success. And then the other comment I had is going back to, you initially said, talking about bias in the system, and what I think I heard, I want to make sure I'm clear, because what struck me, this is what I got from that, is that your comment wasn't that we neutralized the bias. It's that we use the bias against itself. That's what I took away from it. So, am I properly interpreting you, understanding that it's there? It ain't going nowhere. But how do we use that bias in our efforts to dismantle the systems as they exist?

Nolan Rollins: Yeah. So, you know, when they talk about inoculating yourself against a snake bite and they actually give you venom to inoculate yourself against a snake bite. Yep. They don't say stay away from the snake. They say we're going to give you venom because that is actually going to be the thing that inoculates you. Right. Right. So when we think about how we get there, we can't pretend that, and remind me of this. I want to put it in the parking lot. So, I've been doing some work on AI right now that I think is really important when it comes to bias that I think we've got to talk about because this is the next iteration of encoding a system that moves bias. So, absolutely, it's definitely using that bias against itself, but it's using that bias as the argument, as the reason that we're doing what we're doing. I think that's a critical part of this. But let me go back to the pushback that I love from both of you. And again, it's a pattern. There is nothing under the sun that we haven't seen before. The reason that the civil rights movement happens is because the president says, 'I want to do it, but you make me do it.' When he's signing the civil rights bill, he has a group of people sitting around him who are for the same thing, but do it differently. That's how you actually get this done. You had economic justice people in the room. You had porters in the room. You had legal folks in, you had a group, a collective of people who had different disciplines, education, whether it be redline, you had that, had different disciplines, the legal side, and they had a common goal. There's nothing new under the sun. We've done it before, but the goal is to make us look at the wall that we've thrown everything against and think there's nothing we can do because this wall is so damn big and there's so many things on the wall, right? We've done it before. We just have to have the discipline, and this goes back to something I mentioned earlier, to not think that because voice has been democratized that everything is something worth chasing. We become Pavlovian and kill ourselves. We become that dog that anytime they throw a ball one way, we're looking that way. And there's none of us that can actually survive that. And that's what the system is hoping. The system is hoping that it can overwhelm our expertise because our logical thinking says there's no way for me to get to where I need to go unless these folks get there. And that is absolutely true. The answer is system. Systems don't, individuals themselves don't break systems. Systems break systems. So again, revolution, it's the whisper. It's people agreeing. It's them then coming together to create their system that breaks system. And that work is, you know, that's that 90 percent work. It's not sexy. It's not, it's none of the things that are going to, you know, there are amazing people who did amazing things throughout the country, whether it be Bayard Rustin who was the architect of the civil rights movement, but nobody, people don't know his name, he was the strategy behind it, he's the 90 percent, but the reason they don't know his name is a whole other, there's a whole other list, a whole, that's exactly right, part of that system, right? That bias that's built into the system. But again, I like the fact that we all knew that name, but I'm just, I expected this group. I definitely expected we knew it, right? But I think that's the important way to be thinking about this.

Anthony I. Butler: Now, what that also presupposes is that we have the kinds of voices and leaders who can actually, are respected enough to convene the way that we're talking about right now. Because it's one thing to have a common enemy. It's another thing to have a common strategy. Yeah. Because they aren't always the same. They're not always the same. They're usually not. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. They're usually right.

Dr. Natalie Parks: So, I want to, there are two things. A lot of my work is in bias and the book that Anthony referenced earlier was social justice of behavior. So, we've talked a lot about bias, and I always like to ground things to say when someone says bias, I think it's one of those words that we all have an idea about, and yet we all think slightly differently about it, especially as that word has been weaponized more recently and probably always. But when I think about bias, I think about it on two levels. One, the responding of the person and my tendency to respond to two different individuals or two different groups of individuals in a way over time. So there's a pattern of responding that results in differential outcomes for those two individuals or those two groups of individuals. Right? If we put that in the context of me responding within a system, it is that I either hold power in the system that has much larger differential outcomes. Right? So if I'm a hiring manager, for example, I'm in a system of an organization, but my bias to hire people that are more like me results in much larger outcomes than if I was just making a purchase and chose who to go to at the checkout line, right? And so recognizing that bias within systems is partially created, like a system is created to help influence the responding of the individual within that system so that the entire system has different outcomes for different people. Is that agreed upon as how you're thinking about bias?

Nolan Rollins: So, it is, and what I tend to do, so my grandfather used to always say to me, 'Nolan, you got to put it where the goats can get it.' So, he always would say to me, 'Hey, buy this thing. Put it where the goats can get it.' So, here's the way I think about bias. I actually like my spaghetti with the sauce on top. I do not like my spaghetti with the sauce mixed in. I like the sauce on top. Now, let's imagine that I'm the head of a cafeteria in Baltimore City and the kids are having spaghetti that on that Monday. Guess how their spaghetti is going to come to them? With the sauce, right? That's bias. But that's it. That's it. It's no more complicated than that. Now, there's some bias that's insidious, right? There's some bias that's actually built in from a DNA that what I just described is more likely than not the way my family eats spaghetti. So if my father was racist, there's a good chance that I have some of those things. Again, that's how it moves. That's how bias moves. So I think being really comfortable with talking about it that way, I think it's really important because I think you're right, the word has been weaponized and it's been so weaponized that everyone gets defensive and now we're having an argument about what's the best way to eat spaghetti. I just like it on top. Right. But I use a really trivial thing, yeah, to give a very specific way that bias actually seeps into a system. And it seeps in naturally. It didn't seep in because I was being, you know, it was something that I was saying I want to force my opinion on someone. It seeped in because that's the way my family eats. It's an unconscious, right?

Anthony I. Butler: It's an unconscious incompetence that leads to [garbled in the auto-transcript, check against audio] treatment. and when I always say in my trainings that when, where does the rubber meet the road is when you have that unconscious incompetence, meaning you don't know that your behavior or thoughts were potentially offensive until someone tells you, hey, bro, that's kind of off-putting, your way you eat spaghetti is offensive, until that happens you have no sense of knowing that my choice of putting the sauce on top of my noodles was, you know, potentially offensive in some way. But once you find out, you have a decision to make, right? That's where the rubber meets the road. The decision is, do I double down and like, well, that's how my daddy did it, I'm going to keep doing it that way? Or do you go, 'Oh, wow. I didn't know that. So maybe the next time I serve lunch on Mondays, spaghetti day, maybe I'll make it as an option, kids can choose. You can have it just mixed in or with the sauce on top,' and then you move forward. It's the response to that aha moment when you've got that educational moment when someone, to your point, Nolan, is having the conversation with you, like you might want to rethink that behavior, that thought, that policy, because it might have this impact. It's the response to that knowledge that makes you consciously incompetent or you become consciously competent where you're moving forward in a new direction where you're actually taking that knowledge and trying to do better.

Anthony I. Butler: I think that's part of the, as we talk to leaders, I'm going to bring it back to why we even have this podcast in the first place, because people like, why, what are they talking about today? Spaghetti and stuff, right? I'm serious. That is, as a listener, and if you are a leader, you should be listening to your team, the people behind your stakeholders, the people that report to you and that you collaborate with, that sometimes you're going to hear things that you don't like. Well, I mean, a lot of times you're going to hear things you don't like and it may be about your personal style, right? And so I think that is where that listening, that quiet reflection that you have to go through as a leader to be an effective leader, that if you refuse to do that, if you are always going to be loud and you're going to bang the desk and say what's right and I'm at the top and I'm at this my totem pole and I'm going to lead it, whatever it is, then you're not going to be successful in your leadership roles. I think that is one of those clear things. We talk about bias and you can probably go back to at least five or six episodes. We probably mention bias in every episode we talk about. Oh, right. But it's key to what we, what this podcast is like, you've got to understand it. You got to know it exists. And to my earlier point, yeah. How do I weapon? You can weapon, again, another one of those negative words that have a negative connotation. Just because it's weaponized doesn't mean it is used for evil, right? You can weaponize something for good, right? So I think it's how do we use those things to improve our lot, our community, improve the systems to move forward. Other than that, if you're not doing that as a leader, you probably aren't a great leader.

Nolan Rollins: And I will say this, it's funny, as I was listening to you, there's, for me, we get confused with things that last loud and things that last long. And what tends to happen is those things that last loud to us seem like they're pulling the world down around our ears. And what we forget is those things that last loud don't last long. They just don't, they don't have the staying power. They may be insidious at the time. They may be, but they just don't have the staying power. But there are insidious things that last long that go back to this conversation that we're having about bias that are actually built into the system. And what those insidious things that do that last long that are built into the system allow for the next last loud to come along. Yeah, that's how these things work together. And I think the better leaders are at making it simple for people to understand, like, life is not esoteric. Life is actually to be lived. And because it's to be lived, it should be able to be explained in a way that is putting it where the goats can get it. It's never that difficult. It's never, and it's generally, you know, the lauded who want it to feel unaccessible so that it can be explained in a way that you can, that they can only explain it so they can lead in the way that they want to lead. Right. Well, it goes back to power. That's exactly right. It's just another piece of power. If I'm talking in a way that sounds so complex, it seems as though I hold something you don't. That's exactly what makes me powerful. And I think that we've been living long enough and, you know, I'm actually at a point in my life where, and again, I was fortunate enough with mentors and sponsors who helped me to get there really quickly. Like, I am under no preconceived notion that any of this, number one, isn't a gift from God. That's number one, first and foremost. But number two, isn't because of people seeding into me early and often. And I'm at a place where I'm very comfortable with the debate about anything, anytime, anywhere, because there's an opportunity to make this country closer to this perfect document that it created than it's ever been before. But there's also an opportunity to get closer to the date that it was created than we've ever been before. Right. Right. We got a choice. Yep. We've got a choice.

Anthony I. Butler: So before we close out, because that would have been a perfect spot to end, but I want to come back to another market, and I think this might be a better place to end, is how does AI, in your version of how bias works within AI, how does this get us either closer to the ideal of the document or back to 1776, or are we going down the path of Skynet again, because we are Gen X and so we all know our Terminator references. Yeah. Terminator and War Games. Right. Exactly. Right. The list is long. It is long. It's amazing. In fact, the movie in 1984, we're like, that's relevant 30 years. How about that? How about that? Where we were like, oh, this is crazy, but I love it. Never happened, and here we are. That's exactly right. Right.

Nolan Rollins: So, here's the thing. We've never seen the potential of bias to move as quickly as it's moving with AI. That's the fundamental truth that we all have got to really get our arms wrapped around. So, I would say it like this, because this thing can move so quickly. It's always about who creates that system. So, again, my spaghetti analogy. So if I'm creating a system that says this is how we're going to decide what a valuable community looks like, a valuable community is going to be one that is the tax base is high. A valuable community is going to be one where the education that the children are getting, they're getting above grade education. A valuable, like, the list, I'm going on with a list of what a valuable community looks like. And then you then say to yourself, so what we're going to do is we're going to create a system that identifies these valuable communities around the nation and then make our tax policy based on these valuable communities around the nation. So when you create a space where AI is deciding what we're doing, how we're going to move policy, and how quickly we're going to move it, and it's built by someone who thinks that way, oh, we're in trouble. We're absolutely in trouble. And this goes back to, and I put it in the parking lot, but this, and again, we've seen this before. So over time we've heard tax policy around this country, right? So it's been empowerment zones, it's been opportunity zones, the list goes on. It's been new market tax credits and every single time if you go back and look at the data of them, every single time the wealthy have figured out how to use those things in a way that supports them, right? You never hear about it being used the way it says it's going to be used. Creating jobs, putting money back into communities. Well, here's a little dirty secret for someone who actually understands how patterns work. We actually built a facility in the Ninth Ward that I was just at the other day using new market tax credits. No one knows it. What we did was we literally used tax policy to build a community development and Head Start facility for poor kids who are living in the Ninth Ward. That's, this is what I mean by understanding how this stuff works. Because if you understand how bias works, you can turn that snake venom into something that you can use because it was not designed for that purpose. It happens every single time. But we've got to get really adept and good at turning that venom into something that's going to inoculate our folks. So again, going back to the conversation about who's in the room, who has subject matter expertise, we agree on the problem that we're actually moving toward, and we know who's going to be the tip of the spear on each of those. That's the kind of stuff that becomes important because AI is moving so quickly. So I'm quietly working on, I'm kind of going to say it, I'm quietly working on a platform called ECHO that actually leverages and understands what policy looks like, its intent, what it actually has done, and the impact it's had on people. So, I've been able to do that with a bunch of things. So, we did it for the president's AI policy. And when I tell you it is scary in terms of the impact on jobs as opposed to what it says, in terms of the impact on moving tax dollars as opposed to what it says. So again, how do we fight in a way that's commensurate with where we're going? Right? We're no longer having conversations that are just about marches. We're no longer having conversations that are just about sit-ins. We're no longer having conversations that are just about being able to say, 'Let me do a campaign where I'm writing letters or sending faxes to.' That's not where we are. That's not where we are. Power hopes that we stay in a mindset that's not leaning into the future, that's actually leaning into the past, and it's not organizing the now in a way that's going to get us to where we need to go. So AI is a tremendous opportunity, but it's also a tremendous threat, but so was the Constitution.

Anthony I. Butler: Yep. I think that's a perfect ending point, right? That's it right there. It sounds like he might be a writer. Speaking of, tell us, tell us how people can purchase your book. When does it drop and how do they get a hold of you?

Nolan Rollins: Absolutely. The book will drop on Juneteenth, fittingly. So, you'll be able to get it at Amazon. You'll be able to go to nolanrollins.com and buy it on the website. You can check me on all of my socials at Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. I'm on all of them at Nolan Rollins. And I will just say this. I've written, I do my social media in a way that I want my son to be able to look at it and say, 'I'm in a class and I'm getting valuable information.' Right? That's how I think about social media.

Anthony I. Butler: There you go. Is the book available for pre-order now if they go to the website?

Nolan Rollins: The book is available for pre-order. You got to put it where the goats can eat it, man. Put it where the goats can get it. That's exactly right.

Anthony I. Butler: Yeah. All right. Well, again, Nolan, thank you for coming on the show, man. I think you have now reached the record for the longest episode that we're going to have. So, you know, that was a good conversation. I can keep going. Lots, I saw Natalie was taking notes. Lots of content we're going to get from here to help, you know, spread the word about your book. But I think, again, some lot of, a lot of nuggets here that where leaders or those who are aspiring to be leaders can take away on how they are developing their own leadership style, what's in their DNA and how they can get access to those rooms, to put them in opportunity where they can have an impact on their teams and their communities. So thank you again for being on the show. With that, I'll end like we always end. Remember that great leadership starts with belonging.

Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Belonging at the Top. We hope it sparked new ideas for fostering belonging in your leadership journey. If you found it insightful, please like and subscribe to our podcast for more thought-provoking discussions. We'd also love it if you could share it with others who might benefit from the conversation. If you have any feedback or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes, please email us or drop us a note on Instagram or LinkedIn.