Ep 51: Intention with Dale Whittaker
92,000 Hours
Our last guest on the Changemakers season is Dr. Dale Whittaker. Dale is a Senior Program Officer in Postsecondary Success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he is focused on making more degrees possible for more people with greater equity.
Dale sits down with Annalisa to reflect on the role that intention has played in his personal and professional life. The conversation will surely leave you inspired and motivated to infuse your daily life with more intention. Dale invites us to truly ask ourselves: who do we want to be in this life?
Transcript
Annalisa Holcombe:
Hello all and welcome to 92,000 hours, the podcast where we acknowledge that we spend more of our lives at work than we do anything else. So let's explore how we can do our best to create purpose and meaning in those significant hours that we spend working. I'm so glad you're joining us today because this podcast will be a treat. Today we are speaking with Dr. Dale Whitaker. Dale is the advisor and principal officer in post-secondary success at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Annalisa Holcombe:
He's also a past president, provost, faculty member, and overall leader at many significant public research universities. He is someone I just love to speak with and listen to, and I think you will too. And today, he is speaking with us about intention.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Okay, I'm so excited. I am so thrilled to have Dale Whittaker join us on the podcast. Dale, you have been someone I enjoy working with professionally and also have looked up to as just a human. And so I'm honored that you would be willing to do this with me today. So welcome to the podcast.
Dale Whittaker:
I’m honored you asked. And I know it's gonna be fun, Annalisa.
Annalisa Holcombe:
It's gonna be fun and I have no idea where this is going to go. So how much fun is that? It's an adventure. But I do know the first question and I gave you a little bit of a heads up, which is the one I ask everyone. And It's very me, which is, let's just get real right away. And so if you remove any reference to work or maybe even volunteerism or sports, like the things that you do, and we focus instead on who you are, what are you most proud of about yourself as a person?
Dale Whittaker:
I struggled with the word proud, Annalisa, because of the way that I was raised. But I understand the question. And I think that I might ask-- I asked myself the question, sort of like, where's your sweet spot? And what makes you feel best? And the part that I'm most proud of is being fascinated in people's stories and believing in people and in so many ways that has you know come back to to as a gift to me over and over and over again but it's something that is natural it's like you it's something It's natural and yeah, it makes me happy.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Do you have any examples of that fascination and something that is like a story that would tell us why it's meaningful to you?
Dale Whittaker:
I have many, you know, so many thoughts.Well, I'll just tell you one that just happens to pop to mind. When I was in Florida and I was a Provost of the University, I liked to get out of the campus area and get downtown to coffee shops too, so I could think. And there was another person in there that early on, a Latino woman, her name was Wanda, Ramon B Ortiz. And Wanda was working on this big pile of stuff and I could tell and she was stressing and I could tell that it was like promotion and tenure-looking stuff and so I just asked her about it and you know she was feeling am I good enough do I want to do this I'm gonna push through this.
Dale Whittaker:
And, you know, we talked later, she found out I was provost, you know, because I wasn't there to help her in that role. I was there because I was really interested in her, but I really wanted to encourage her. She was an art faculty in a technical university. And now she's doing very well. She's a full professor now at a different university. She's exhibited at major art galleries. And once she got over the hump, it was just fun to watch her confidence bloom.
Annalisa Holcombe:
It's so interesting. I had this conversation once with a woman who was president of a community college. And I was asking her about becoming the president of the community college. And for so many of us, and her included, she talked about how important it was to have other people tell her that they believed in her. Sometimes we need that and you, it's interesting how you showed this to that woman in that moment when she needed that boost that yes, she is in fact good enough.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, yeah, one of the reasons that I loved being around universities was because people were always becoming, You know they were never like that They were never like I've made it Everybody had a dream or an idea or a struggle But there was always a future in front of them and it was so fun to be part of that to learn about it and to encourage them.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Okay, so that kind of gets to what we're talking about today because in some ways Those might link together or maybe you'll tell me if they do, but they kind of do. So we always have a theme and today we were talking about intention and, of course, I looked it up. It's funny because the definition of intention is not helpful at all. It said, "What one intends to do or bring about," which is not helpful, so.
Dale Whittaker:
Recursive definition.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Yes, exactly. And I was thinking, it does, I mean, That word, if we think about it, is laden with meaning for most of us. So what does it mean to you? And why were you interested in talking about that today?
Dale Whittaker:
To me, Annalisa, the opposite of intention is sort of frantic, random, short-term activity focused on process and maybe bureaucracy without clarity of why end to end. So, for me, so, let me try as opposed to using a recursive definition or an inverse definition. So, let me try that in the positive. Intention is about acting with purpose and trying to have, or seek clarity about to what end you're doing, everything that you're doing.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love that so much. And I'm gonna tell you an embarrassing story, which is many moons ago when I was in college, I had this guy that I liked very much. He was fun. We hung out together all the time, but I never dated him. And one day he took me to lunch and said, "Why are we not dating? We hang out all the time, like what is happening that this isn't working between us?" And he was handsome and fun and interesting.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And I remember at the time I thought, "I feel like your life just happens to you and you don't, you're not making any choice, I feel like you're not, you don't have a direction and you're just letting things happen. And apparently that's not attracted to me. And I didn't realize it until this moment.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, that's perfect example. Perfect example.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I don't know where he is now. So it just made me think…
Dale Whittaker:
He's listening to this podcast. Shout out.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Scott, you're a great guy. I hope you have. So I also, when I was looking up the definition, and I don't know if this could see it all, but I, right underneath the ridiculous definition, it said, in medicine, intention means a natural process of healing. And that was fascinating to me because in some ways, if we are intentional. Maybe we also heal ourselves, you know, like if we're really anyway, maybe I'm going a little bit too far, but that was, you know,
Dale Whittaker:
But you mentioned that we might talk about professional and personal and that's exactly the direction I would go with personally.
Annalisa Holcombe:
So let's do, um, well, let's not talk, let's talk about professionally and, and how do you, how, How do you use the idea of being intentional? And is there a difference between acting with intention and being intentional? I don't know, talk to me about intentionality in work, and how does that show up for you?
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, I have found that in in our previous work together and at least your experiences. I've always found that trying to envision a desirable future or something a little bit beyond realistic, something that requires you to change the status quo and the way you do things in order to reach it, but it is reachable.
Dale Whittaker:
I've always found that in the institutions, the organizations that I've worked with, when that's done collectively, when it's agreed upon, then you can start backing into the how do we get there and always continuing to re-anchor on those very clear goals. And so for me, it's a process that I've used over and over again. And it fits me and it works. I don't know, excuse me, of change leadership or change management, of moving an organization from where you are to a future that you can envision.
Dale Whittaker:
So for me, that's kind of about setting an intention. Moving with intentionality, I think that's a really interesting question I had never thought about it. But I that's, that's then the action. That's the, it's, it's revisiting, instead of just setting up processes, it's continuing to revisit, are we moving in that toward that end? Is what we've learned moving us toward that end? Are we making the choice right now to move toward that end?
Dale Whittaker:
And I had a friend. We only met a couple times, but he told me a story that, or he gave me a piece of advice that I've never thought about about it. I think it's really about intention. And he basically said, Dale, I believe that if you just decide where you want to be, what you want to be, how you want to be, and then you would just remember that, that your subconscious takes you there.
Dale Whittaker:
And he's like, have you ever gone to bed working on a really hard problem? But in the morning, you know, you have resolved it. And he said, that's exactly what I mean. It's your subconscious taking you there. And it works for organizations and institutions, too. So I think it's just about re-anchoring, reminding, keeping people moving in the same direction and managing the natural entropy of life. So, you know…
Annalisa Holcombe:
Oh, that's really good, the natural entropy.
Dale Whittaker:
And especially among humans, you know, the normal tendency is to pull apart, always. And so like a person that is trying to lead or to shepherd change, half the work is around, you know, hang with it, stay with us, stay the course, be persistent, support your colleague, you know, keeping people swept together and moving in the same direction.
Annalisa Holcombe:
That is interesting. The idea of shepherding change as a way of leading change. I don't think I hear people talk about that enough, but it makes so much sense. And it is reminding people of the intentionality of the work that this thing that we're doing that seems removed is actually here to get us to there.
Dale Whittaker:
Yes, exactly. You know…
Annalisa Holcombe:
You're collecting those dots for people who may not have been in the room at the there to see where they fit in that process and how important they are.
Dale Whittaker:
Exactly, Annalisa, and where they've come from. And also understanding that in an organization, or even in a group of half a dozen people, everybody has a different way and contribution to getting to there. So it's not about telling people what to do. It's about asking, how are we doing to move towards, you know, in that direction?
Annalisa Holcombe:
Have you found that to be helpful for you? I mean, are you have you experienced in your work? Are you experiencing it now? How does that work for you in terms of like a daily practice at work? Yeah.
Dale Whittaker:
So for me, like within my own realm or within the realm of influence that I'm responsible for?
Annalisa Holcombe:
Either one.
Dale Whittaker:
I would say it, it always works or it has worked very well and, uh, from an organizational point of view. I'll come back to like from a personal point of view in my work if that makes sense. I see those as slightly different because it depends on role and scope of authority for the second one but… but the process of change that I've really enjoyed and I've used is let's set our goals and targets. I'm an engineer. Sometimes they tend to be quantitative.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Which is fascinating about you by the way, Dale, this quantitative engineer guy who is like one of the most fascinating storytellers that I know.
Dale Whittaker:
Thank you. And then once we've got clarity on but keep the goals the same, give people freedom for how they reach it, distribute the responsibilities according to strengths. So in the university that means a college of business may do more fundraising, the college of science may generate more PhD degrees or do more research, for example. So distribute according to… and then continue to bring people together.
Dale Whittaker:
We did it on a quarterly basis, a whole campus meeting, hold people up there to do an exceptionally well, look at the data together, and then release everybody again. And I've probably done that at three universities in over 30 years. And it's what I'm doing. Annalisa, by the way, crowd, is familiar with the work that I do with the Film Litigates Foundation, but it's the same process process we're using there and it is working. It influences behavior when people think they're part of a team but their own ideas are valued and they're heading in the same direction and somebody cares when they make good progress for it. Somebody sees them.
Dale Whittaker:
Personally on a day-to-day basis it has more to do with how I protect my time, how I try to stay strategic rather than bureaucratic, how I try to grow the people around me that are part of that, you know, my partners on the team, because we all get much stronger together. And so it really has to do with managing the chaos that can be part of just doing a job.
Annalisa Holcombe:
How do you do how like thinking about that intentionality when you're not the leader of the of what you're doing more people that listen to this podcast will find themselves in that situation. How can those folks also lead from where they are with intention, how do they, what advice do you have for people in that situation?
Dale Whittaker:
I don't know if this has to do with intention, but I have advice. And let me just acknowledge right at the top, people have different needs at different points in their life. We all have kind of this lifelong developmental pathway. And there's a decade or two of building what Ladens would call ego, misunderstood in American culture, but really building your identity, knowing what you're good at, knowing what you want to do, knowing where you fit.
Dale Whittaker:
That doesn't happen the day you get your degree and leave college. It can take a decade. It can take two decades. And the reason I'm saying that, Annalisa, is because most people will be in that phase that we're talking to you probably. And during that time, it's really easy to feel the pressures of unstated expectations from your boss, from your team, from your culture and it manifests in things like, I need to go to every meeting, I need to show up, I need to show my face, I need to respond to every email.
Dale Whittaker:
And so I want to acknowledge right here that it's really hard not to get caught up in that. That's some ways to manage it. One way is to realize that your mind, it depends on your job, but your ability to think clearly has as much value as all the pieces of paper emails that you push. And so try to identify and protect time on your calendar. And the key to that is to talk to your boss about it and be clear and have an agreement. Don't try to hide it, you know, make that part of the value you're creating for your organization. So protect time, but always communicate about it. And if you have a boss that says, you know, I don't respect that, then, you know, that's a different kind of challenge. That's like a cultural challenge that you would have to think about yourself.
Dale Whittaker:
And then figure out what the big rocks every day are, the ones that move those priorities, and make sure that you make progress or get those done. You know, that's the 80/20 rule. I have to say even at the age that I am at a very advanced age, even at my stage in life, there are times when I'm a little bit brain dead and so it sees you're just to go through 55 emails in court, sort of process them, then it is just to shut that off and to write the three pages of, you know, something that needs thought.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I totally, I totally understand that that whole, I think it is really profound, your statement about the unstated expectations about pushing paper, being in five million meetings, you know, like the things that we're doing, like like, but rather than who we are that we bring to the table and it is hearing out that balance and then finding a way to advocate for it. I have an example that just about four years ago, maybe, I was so busy in meetings all the time, just busy that I had this problem that I needed to solve and it felt so overwhelming. It was just, I had no idea how I was gonna solve it and I wasn't sleeping at night because I didn't know how to solve it at work and I didn't know what to do.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And then I shut down meetings for a day at work and said, "I've gotta solve it." And literally having no meetings, the answer was actually pretty simple and it came to me relatively quickly when I didn't have all those other things. And it was such a good lesson for me that I needed some quiet time to let my brain actually do the do the work it needed.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah I have this image that I've got a hole in the top of my head and things just keep pouring in and what happens is the things that I need to think about need to float to the top and sometimes you just have to make that space but if you can make that space on a daily basis or three times a week those kind of things don't become so overwhelming.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love that. So I was thinking about, I did some research on this idea of intention and I found this information from the Center for Creative Leadership talking about intention at work and they emphasize three aspects and I'm interested in your thoughts on those which one is they actually said three aspects of living with intention both at work and at home. So this is Intention goes across all of our areas of our lives. And one was the first step is to gain clarity by identifying your values. And I am really interested in that in terms of organizationally how important it is to know your mission, vision values and actually know the values of the organization and then your own as they align with that place. And then, yeah, to go ahead… Yeah, please speak to that. I think that's really fascinating.
Dale Whittaker:
Well, the first thing. Yeah. First of all, statement in a story, the statement is, and especially for people that earlier in their careers. Well, no, I think it's everyone. You're never going to have a dream job, or you're rarely going to have a dream job, and almost every job, even if we're running our own businesses, there's like 50 to 60% of just stuff that has to get done, and 40 to 50% of stuff that really moves the ball. And you just have to accept that, acknowledge that, and carve out the time and expectation to just do that directory work or that transactional work. So that's one thing.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I have a friend, Dale, that called that. His advice to me was embrace the suck, that even the best relationship has parts to it that suck, that there's always going to be something. So embrace it.
Dale Whittaker:
Every morning, just expect to have that. And when you get it, you know it, and then make sure you have time for the rest of it, the And then this, and just to finish that, too many people leave a job because their expectations don't match that. But now I'm gonna talk to you about lineman values, which I think is a good reason to take or leave a job. I worked, I'm just gonna be straight up here.
Dale Whittaker:
I went through a real journey in my life around equity, around racial equity. And it started in 1992, and I was part of the Kellogg National Leadership Development Program. And in this fellowship, there were 40 of us. And there were, I think that I was brought on as the token Texas white racist guy from the country. That, actually, I think it's a little overstatement, but I was definitely the most conservative and traditional out of the 40, and I went on a long journey there, and I'm still continuing that journey.
Dale Whittaker:
In everybody's story, everybody's value, and the understanding of historic harm and structural bias, I came to understand in very experienced, experiential ways with people that I really cared a lot about. So that has been a value for me that everybody has the opportunity to thrive and that means acknowledging structural problems. I worked three decades of my life in Texas, Indiana, and Florida in public universities and it got consistently harder and harder to live my values.
Dale Whittaker:
I left Purdue, I left Indiana for that reason because of a change in leadership and an expectation that we were going to deal with diversity. That may be an overstatement but it was the action. And I left Florida really for the same reason. And now I'm with And so what I'm saying is I had a personal value. I liked a lot of my job, that there was something about my job that never aligned. And it was the inability to speak out about racial injustice.
Dale Whittaker:
And so when I got to the Gates Foundation, I found it was exactly the opposite. It was almost like you were expected to. And it took me a while to get used to that culture, but it felt so freeing to me and it was the first time that I felt like I'm really… My work is totally aligned with my values. There's still this bureaucracy and drudgery and you know embrace the suck part of it but the work we're doing…
Dale Whittaker:
What matters and the words we're using matter and so I think that's the one thing, at least to your number one point, that really you have to find an alignment with the culture of your workplace in those values that are most important to you. It may not be all of your values, but those that are really core to who you are.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Gosh, that's important. And it makes me funny. If we talk about it, I actually feel a little bit weepy and I don't mean to, but I'm really worried about how we're talking about equity and what's happening in our society. I just moved as I talked to you about and July 1st, we're recording this in July of 2024 and July 1st was the date that all of the state institutions in Utah had to change their structure so they didn't have specific centers based on equity.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And so all of the women's resource center or the Black Student Union don't exist anymore. And it's really hard and scary. And I wonder what this conversation that we're having about aligning with your values will change the way that universities are structured in different states in our country. Because people will either say hard things and put their careers on the line, or they'll move.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, I think, you know, saying hard things, putting your curves on the line, we can have a discussion about that that as well. I moved, by the way. And I said, there are things that I put my career on one.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Which is also, I wrote a, I wrote a, I didn't finish my PhD, but I wrote a paper about that, about, that's when we care deeply and passionately about something and that, and it's not aligned with our values. We have choices. And that this is actually literally the next stage in what the Center for Creative Leadership talks about, which is identify your values and the second is act with agency. That is how we are intentional, is you have agency to deal with it and some of it clearly has consequences, but there's agency that we all have how in living our lives.
Dale Whittaker:
I think saying that as well, Annalisa, is that to some extent, agency is a privilege that not everybody has, not everybody can leave a job, not everybody can move out of a community. And that's something that you have to acknowledge and some people just have to live and live with resilience and try to do the best for their kids, their community and their family.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And it's an interesting thing in terms of those with privilege who can leave use their agency to speak up instead. You know, like, what is their role in terms of anyway, super interesting and really hard.
Dale Whittaker:
I think speaking up does matter. I think that we need to give people grace as well. And, you know, and there's also the concept of time and process and speaking up with a lot of other people, organization, so we can have a whole nother discussion about that, but I, I'm still, there was a time recently in my life where that kind of core piece of who I am that always leaves everybody is doing what they think is the right thing. It just may be different than what I think is the right thing. They're doing up for the right reason that got really shaken at one point in my life I had a hard time believing that ever in having a hard time believing in everybody And I've got to say that that's come back. It's part of that intentional healing part of living on an island by the way Part of thinking my own thoughts, where was I going with that?
Annalisa Holcombe:
Oh, I love it. It showed up as intentional healing too. I was thinking about your values and how others…
Dale Whittaker:
Oh, I was-- to wrap that, I was thinking about believing in democracy. At some point, the crowd will swing. And for every radical swing, there will be a swing back. And, you know, you're just starting to see it happen in Europe in July of 2024, when there was so. Yeah. My basic belief is to believe in people and to believe in like the concept of democracy, meaning a lot of people have the wisdom.
Annalisa Holcombe:
This goes to my, I love this because I literally wrote down, um, if we're talking about intentional, is it worth us talking also about positive intent and assuming positive intent in others and how that applies to our professional and personal lives?
Dale Whittaker:
I feel like 99.9 % of the time, it's definitely, for me, it's always been the way to go. And what the results from that is the other person feels empowered and grows, trust grows, and productivity, like if it's you and I, our joint productivity just is so much higher. There's no question.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I was reading an article that said, however, that assumption of assuming positive intent is tricky because all of us have experiences where we know someone who says I am doing this with good intentions and then we can't believe the way they acted and whether it was really true right like there’s…
Dale Whittaker:
Words and actions are not always aligned.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Yeah so that's it it's one of those things where people talk that through so um anyway I am yeah… let's, can we talk a little bit about intentionality and how that shows up for you in your personal life as well?
Dale Whittaker:
We can.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Let's do.
Dale Whittaker:
Okay, I'd be happy to.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Where do you want to start?
Dale Whittaker:
Anywhere.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I was thinking, I mean, this is like really goes somewhere, but I do this research and just see what shows up when I Google ideas of intention and intentionality. And I found this amazing article in the… maybe you've listened in the past to the On Being podcast, or you've read some of their stuff. It's Krista Tippett. She's on-- she used to be on NPR.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Anyway, there's a… I was reading about it, and you should, because it's super interesting. But there was a discussion about-- that I read about, like Buddhism and intention and karma and how what we actually put out in the world through our intention, like shows up for us in our lives. And so, I mean, that's like really going somewhere, but how about that for a promise?
Dale Whittaker:
I'll think about that one. I'm, yeah, I have so many thoughts about that, but…
Annalisa Holcombe:
But can I just do it this way, I will say in my position as a fundraiser I in my last role ever I hired every single person on the team and when I did I sent them this book the Soul of Money and some of that some of that book I love and some of it I don't love but there's a part in the Soul of Money that I love that was about donors and like that we all get money and it flows through us None of us actually own it because it comes and then it leaves and so it's a river, right?
Annalisa Holcombe:
And some of us have giant rivers and some of us have little streams. But it still happens and that we have intention especially if we have any extra whether it's 10 cents or whether it's 5 million if we have any there's intention that we infuse into that money that's going out into the world. And it's a way I liked my team to think about any funding that was coming into our organization that it was infused with some values that were important to honor. So does that exist in your personal and/or professional life?
Dale Whittaker:
It does, and I would say for me, it's time. So for me, it's the 90…is it 92,000 hours? That made me think. In the last five years, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to spend time in just a few things. One is I really have, when I was so busy and so important and so structured and so in demand, meaning that I let other people decide what I was going to do with my time and it got to the point at least where I let other people put words in my mouth and influence my thoughts tremendously. Because there are so many things to get done.
Dale Whittaker:
It was like, you know, you're the professional. You tell me on that. You tell me on that. When I left that job. And, and just for your audience. I didn't leave that job intentionally. I thought I was going to be university president for the next 10 years and I really got into a conflict with the new governor. It got manifest in a different way. It got manifest in the way that my predecessor used money, but it was really an issue with the new governor and our values were different and it ended up in me making what I thought was this serious leadership decision to do what was best for the institution rather than what was best for me.
Dale Whittaker:
I think if I was going to be university president that decision really hurt my career. I didn't know there was anything after that so the intention that I lived with was how am I going to spend my time? How am I going to learn what my path is? How is my life going to matter? It doesn't matter if it…
Annalisa Holcombe:
You were soul searching, you were doing it at that time. This must have been like really hard on your identity and you're like, yeah, I can't even imagine.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, a lot of it had to do with letting go, forgiving and you're not holding a grudge and starting to believe that, you know, a half a dozen of people that were personally ambitious, instead of ambitious for their, for other people, they remain the exception and not the rule. Even though they get a lot of air time, they remain the exception and not the rule. Anyway, the…
Annalisa Holcombe:
That's actually beautiful and important that those folks are the exception and not the rule.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, and just when I mentioned ambition, when we talk about leadership, I think that the great leaders or people who have, it goes back to intentionality for the organization have great ambitions for their organization. the people who have great ambitions for themselves are changing jobs all the time or trying to find the next best dollar. They're trying to get a better title. So I had ambitions for the organization and I think I left it in as good a shape as I could.
Dale Whittaker:
So I came away from that with a lot of trauma and to your point kind of just trying to figure out so Who am I? And I decided that I was going to continue to notice the really small things. In fact, I didn't decide that. I didn't decide anything to be honest Annalisa. I tried to make decisions. I tried to figure out what my future was. I tried to be intentional about healing. And none of that worked.
Dale Whittaker:
So what I did was I just started painting and exercising and hiking and rowing and consulting. I had good friends that brought me in. And all of that grew. And now let me just say that I'm very intentional about how much time I save for my own mind, for the small things, for exercise. I get up at five o'clock every morning, I have a ritual, I make coffee, take it to my wife and then I go out and get on the water for two to three hours and then I shower and do my gate's work. And then in the evenings, we take care of the cabin here, walk in the woods, do whatever we need to do.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I heard that from Dale that you said something to me when I asked you once I asked you something about what was important to you in your life. I think I was looking for my own sense of what was important to me and it stuck with me because you told me how important it was to you to live where you want to live and have like have these moments that matter to you because that's how you make a life of meaning for yourself.
Dale Whittaker:
And we're in a small community that we're very rooted in, which we've never been before. We've always followed the job. And, you know, the job was where we lived. Annalisa, I want to tell you a story about a little time. I remember when the stress was highest, this was down in Florida, in trying to make a decision about what I was going can do with the future. And I laid on the pool deck by the pool and looked up, hoping I wasn't having a heart attack, and looked up. And the image that kept coming to my mind, it came to me every time I felt stressful, was sweeping the cabin floor with all the windows open and a little bit of sunshine on the floor of the cabin, not a single sound except the birds and a little bit of dust in the sunshine.
Dale Whittaker:
And when I come here and I feel those moments, I realize how special those are and how I didn't have them when I was over-programmed in a concrete city, driving an air-conditioned car and living in a different way. I'm not trying to be critical of most people who live that way. It's just that it was a change for me and it was not intentional that the way I live it is intentional.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love it so much because it is, I mean, when I, I know it sounds hoo-ha, hoo-hoo, like woo, but it's like this whole, that idea of getting quiet and listening to whatever yourself is telling you. I don't know. In some ways, there's like such incredible beauty about you living with intentionality, understanding your values, acting with agency. And then in some way that whole thing that I talked about that there was this idea of intentionality and karma, but in some ways karma showed up for you in a really positive way to lead you to the life that you may not have gotten to.
Dale Whittaker:
Absolutely. Mary and I talk about that all the time. It was never our intent, it was held to go through, and we are so grateful. We are so grateful. We could have been 80 years old and never have gotten to the life that was really us. And then we're launching a business together.
Annalisa Holcombe:
You are?
Dale Whittaker:
So I'm intentional about retiring and from working for somebody else and intentional about launching business.
Annalisa Holcombe:
What is it?
Dale Whittaker:
An art gallery. I am an artist, as well, and a retreat center, Quilter's Retreat. And so we will…
Annalisa Holcombe:
So with her, this is what, this is what, very, right?
Dale Whittaker:
That's right, it's our, it will be our joint business. So we have, this we're being very intentional about it, and it's for our next 10 to 15 years.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Oh my gosh, it's your joy. You're going to find your bliss. I love that so much. So I have to tell you that I was reading about you and I can't help it because this is so funny to me and perfectly appropriate. It's about your personal life so I'm reading about you in UCF Magazine and you know it's like get to know Dale and it's literally use this word I hadn't intended so you use something about intentional to go out but she was so intriguing.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And it was about how you met Mary that you had not intended but then so you were not your so I'm really interested in that like you use intended intentional in the language and now we're talking about that so talk to me about those things that show up in your life that it might be unintentional but you can tell there's something about it that you should be following. And for you, that was, you didn't intend to go on a date with your wife, but your whole life changed in beautiful ways as a result.
Dale Whittaker:
I think that's, I think it's karma, not serendipity. I think that's karma Annalisa. I think that we overestimate our personal agency at times in terms of the ability to control our path to that future. I think that idea of intentionally I started out with about imagine a future and you're subconscious will take you there. Sometimes you just have to allow things to unwind and realize that instinct in your gut, in your feelings are as valid of intention, of a representation of intention as rational thought and accept that.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I totally agree. There is like that whole get quiet and listen to your guts a little bit and there's wisdom there. It's really interesting too, because we're, as we were talking about it, that that third aspect from the Center for Creative Leadership said the whole agency is know your values and then act with agency. And then the third one was optimize the people around you, like have good partnerships or good relationships and that's how you will live with intention think critically about who you surround yourself with.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, and you have to invest in them and Lisa. Yes, you know, it's it… Yeah, it's about not just choosing but accepting the people around you and that alignment and believing in them and investing in and that's where the karma comes back. Too many people make it about themselves. You know, make it about… that if you just allow it not to be about yourself and invest in them then, but at the same time, when people are taking, it's kind of like being with a job where you're not blind in the values, there are times you just have to walk away from people. You don't really owe anybody anything.
Dale Whittaker:
And there are times when the partnership, the team work or whatever just doesn’t… it’s not healthy. Might be the best way to say it. Yeah. And you have to be able to recognize that and be mature and communicative and leave that situation. Really it's not invest in it.
Annalisa Holcombe:
It's hard, but also important. So I wanna make sure I'm acknowledging your time and I think that this idea of like talking about who we spend our time with. And for me, the lovely story is that I get a chance to spend time with you. And then the story about you spending time meeting your wife and how in the end, this is gonna turn into like a story of finding yourselves on this island that turns into the next phase of your career that wouldn't have had all this, which is…
Dale Whittaker:
We didn't know each other until we left Florida and were locked down for COVID. We didn't know each other during 30 years of our marriage in the way that we have in the last 10 years of our marriage.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I believe, you know, what I learned during COVID is how much I actually really love my family like actually like them as human beings it was it for me it was a good experience in that aspect that I was like I… I could have been a homesteader I could spend all day long with you and still like you and want to spend more time so that was good. I like to… I, mentors are so important to me and I've told you this in the past before but I consider you a mentor of mine even if you don't know that you are, but I deeply appreciate the time that you've given me when you haven't had to and the ability to talk to you about things that were not completely structured on this path we were supposed to be talking about, but allowed me and yourself to be human in the conversation, which opened up pathways for me of learning about things that I would never have known about. So thank you so much for being a mentor to me.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I still will keep learning from you. And I would love to open up time for you to talk a little bit about anyone that has been a mentor to you that, you know, you could acknowledge here and honor them in some way.
Dale Whittaker:
Okay, Annalisa, I'm, I'm a… I worked hard on this thought hard about this. And It's not an obvious answer for me because there have been so many meaningful people in my life, but I have to say that I have learned the most and grown the most with people who saw me as a mentor. And I struggle with that because a lot of times it's like one person knows the answer and the other one is learning it. And it turns out for me to be exactly the opposite.
Dale Whittaker:
It's more like the people who I find interesting and fascinating and fun, and I care about who they're gonna be when they're 75. And you know, It's kind of random. It's like you, I mean, you coming into my life, it's kind of random who those people are. And it's not intentional.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Maybe the person at that coffee shop, that woman we talking about.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, exactly. And she and I are still very, very close. And it's a little bit like, I didn't intend to go out with Mary, but decided to put down my math homework and go in. It just happens And you know it in the moment, you actually know it in the moment that you're gonna be with this person, watching them grow, watching them make choices. And sometimes you've had an experience that they're about ready to go through. And maybe that's seen as mentorship.
Dale Whittaker:
So what I have to say, the way I have to answer your question is I have grown and received the most through people who are developing and building their lives and they're very human and they're willing to share it and they're willing to be vulnerable And I'm willing to be vulnerable and it's a side-by-side And I find that so much fun and I become so richer or so much richer… From those relationships, so I'm gonna call that a mentor relationship.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love that so much I think that that I agree with you when when people have asked me that question before. I, at the time I was at a university, I said, Oh, my goodness, it's the students who think I'm their mentor, but they are my mentors. I'm learning so much.
Dale Whittaker:
Spot on. Yeah.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And it's a joy of working in that type of an environment is being surrounded by folks that are becoming, as you said.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, exactly. That's one thing I miss, by the way.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Yeah, you're missing it. You look for it in other ways.
Dale Whittaker:
Exactly.
Annalisa Holcombe:
What a joy to have this conversation with you and for you to spend time with me. And all of the listeners, I know that people will want to follow up with me and will be so grateful for the conversation as well. Thank you so much, Dale, for spending your time. Dale Whittaker: Thank you, Annalisa, for inviting me.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I know that time is a precious resource and I appreciate that you gave us this time.
Dale Whittaker:
You're very welcome.
Annalisa Holcombe:
My deep gratitude to Dale for his honesty and his brilliance. This discussion was the epitome of how I wanted to end the Changemaker guest series. Dale is wise, interesting, thoughtful, and definitely authentic. And he brought his whole self to this interview. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can learn more about him at his personal website, which is www.realdalewhittaker.com. You can even look him up on Wikipedia if you want. He has a Wikipedia page. And you can connect with him on LinkedIn as well.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Thank you so much, Dale. We've now reached the end of our ChangeMaker series, but we have one more bonus episode for you next week. You see the team members at 92,000 hours met and we talked about what we learned this season and reflected on some of the lessons. It was fun for us to put it all together and to make some sense out of it. And while we do this, you'll be able to see some of the other folks behind the scenes here at 92,000 hours. That will mark the last episode of the season, so please join us next week. I think you'll find it worth your while. See you then.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Hello all and welcome to 92,000 hours, the podcast where we acknowledge that we spend more of our lives at work than we do anything else. So let's explore how we can do our best to create purpose and meaning in those significant hours that we spend working. I'm so glad you're joining us today because this podcast will be a treat. Today we are speaking with Dr. Dale Whitaker. Dale is the advisor and principal officer in post-secondary success at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Annalisa Holcombe:
He's also a past president, provost, faculty member, and overall leader at many significant public research universities. He is someone I just love to speak with and listen to, and I think you will too. And today, he is speaking with us about intention.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Okay, I'm so excited. I am so thrilled to have Dale Whittaker join us on the podcast. Dale, you have been someone I enjoy working with professionally and also have looked up to as just a human. And so I'm honored that you would be willing to do this with me today. So welcome to the podcast.
Dale Whittaker:
I’m honored you asked. And I know it's gonna be fun, Annalisa.
Annalisa Holcombe:
It's gonna be fun and I have no idea where this is going to go. So how much fun is that? It's an adventure. But I do know the first question and I gave you a little bit of a heads up, which is the one I ask everyone. And It's very me, which is, let's just get real right away. And so if you remove any reference to work or maybe even volunteerism or sports, like the things that you do, and we focus instead on who you are, what are you most proud of about yourself as a person?
Dale Whittaker:
I struggled with the word proud, Annalisa, because of the way that I was raised. But I understand the question. And I think that I might ask-- I asked myself the question, sort of like, where's your sweet spot? And what makes you feel best? And the part that I'm most proud of is being fascinated in people's stories and believing in people and in so many ways that has you know come back to to as a gift to me over and over and over again but it's something that is natural it's like you it's something It's natural and yeah, it makes me happy.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Do you have any examples of that fascination and something that is like a story that would tell us why it's meaningful to you?
Dale Whittaker:
I have many, you know, so many thoughts.Well, I'll just tell you one that just happens to pop to mind. When I was in Florida and I was a Provost of the University, I liked to get out of the campus area and get downtown to coffee shops too, so I could think. And there was another person in there that early on, a Latino woman, her name was Wanda, Ramon B Ortiz. And Wanda was working on this big pile of stuff and I could tell and she was stressing and I could tell that it was like promotion and tenure-looking stuff and so I just asked her about it and you know she was feeling am I good enough do I want to do this I'm gonna push through this.
Dale Whittaker:
And, you know, we talked later, she found out I was provost, you know, because I wasn't there to help her in that role. I was there because I was really interested in her, but I really wanted to encourage her. She was an art faculty in a technical university. And now she's doing very well. She's a full professor now at a different university. She's exhibited at major art galleries. And once she got over the hump, it was just fun to watch her confidence bloom.
Annalisa Holcombe:
It's so interesting. I had this conversation once with a woman who was president of a community college. And I was asking her about becoming the president of the community college. And for so many of us, and her included, she talked about how important it was to have other people tell her that they believed in her. Sometimes we need that and you, it's interesting how you showed this to that woman in that moment when she needed that boost that yes, she is in fact good enough.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, yeah, one of the reasons that I loved being around universities was because people were always becoming, You know they were never like that They were never like I've made it Everybody had a dream or an idea or a struggle But there was always a future in front of them and it was so fun to be part of that to learn about it and to encourage them.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Okay, so that kind of gets to what we're talking about today because in some ways Those might link together or maybe you'll tell me if they do, but they kind of do. So we always have a theme and today we were talking about intention and, of course, I looked it up. It's funny because the definition of intention is not helpful at all. It said, "What one intends to do or bring about," which is not helpful, so.
Dale Whittaker:
Recursive definition.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Yes, exactly. And I was thinking, it does, I mean, That word, if we think about it, is laden with meaning for most of us. So what does it mean to you? And why were you interested in talking about that today?
Dale Whittaker:
To me, Annalisa, the opposite of intention is sort of frantic, random, short-term activity focused on process and maybe bureaucracy without clarity of why end to end. So, for me, so, let me try as opposed to using a recursive definition or an inverse definition. So, let me try that in the positive. Intention is about acting with purpose and trying to have, or seek clarity about to what end you're doing, everything that you're doing.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love that so much. And I'm gonna tell you an embarrassing story, which is many moons ago when I was in college, I had this guy that I liked very much. He was fun. We hung out together all the time, but I never dated him. And one day he took me to lunch and said, "Why are we not dating? We hang out all the time, like what is happening that this isn't working between us?" And he was handsome and fun and interesting.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And I remember at the time I thought, "I feel like your life just happens to you and you don't, you're not making any choice, I feel like you're not, you don't have a direction and you're just letting things happen. And apparently that's not attracted to me. And I didn't realize it until this moment.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, that's perfect example. Perfect example.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I don't know where he is now. So it just made me think…
Dale Whittaker:
He's listening to this podcast. Shout out.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Scott, you're a great guy. I hope you have. So I also, when I was looking up the definition, and I don't know if this could see it all, but I, right underneath the ridiculous definition, it said, in medicine, intention means a natural process of healing. And that was fascinating to me because in some ways, if we are intentional. Maybe we also heal ourselves, you know, like if we're really anyway, maybe I'm going a little bit too far, but that was, you know,
Dale Whittaker:
But you mentioned that we might talk about professional and personal and that's exactly the direction I would go with personally.
Annalisa Holcombe:
So let's do, um, well, let's not talk, let's talk about professionally and, and how do you, how, How do you use the idea of being intentional? And is there a difference between acting with intention and being intentional? I don't know, talk to me about intentionality in work, and how does that show up for you?
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, I have found that in in our previous work together and at least your experiences. I've always found that trying to envision a desirable future or something a little bit beyond realistic, something that requires you to change the status quo and the way you do things in order to reach it, but it is reachable.
Dale Whittaker:
I've always found that in the institutions, the organizations that I've worked with, when that's done collectively, when it's agreed upon, then you can start backing into the how do we get there and always continuing to re-anchor on those very clear goals. And so for me, it's a process that I've used over and over again. And it fits me and it works. I don't know, excuse me, of change leadership or change management, of moving an organization from where you are to a future that you can envision.
Dale Whittaker:
So for me, that's kind of about setting an intention. Moving with intentionality, I think that's a really interesting question I had never thought about it. But I that's, that's then the action. That's the, it's, it's revisiting, instead of just setting up processes, it's continuing to revisit, are we moving in that toward that end? Is what we've learned moving us toward that end? Are we making the choice right now to move toward that end?
Dale Whittaker:
And I had a friend. We only met a couple times, but he told me a story that, or he gave me a piece of advice that I've never thought about about it. I think it's really about intention. And he basically said, Dale, I believe that if you just decide where you want to be, what you want to be, how you want to be, and then you would just remember that, that your subconscious takes you there.
Dale Whittaker:
And he's like, have you ever gone to bed working on a really hard problem? But in the morning, you know, you have resolved it. And he said, that's exactly what I mean. It's your subconscious taking you there. And it works for organizations and institutions, too. So I think it's just about re-anchoring, reminding, keeping people moving in the same direction and managing the natural entropy of life. So, you know…
Annalisa Holcombe:
Oh, that's really good, the natural entropy.
Dale Whittaker:
And especially among humans, you know, the normal tendency is to pull apart, always. And so like a person that is trying to lead or to shepherd change, half the work is around, you know, hang with it, stay with us, stay the course, be persistent, support your colleague, you know, keeping people swept together and moving in the same direction.
Annalisa Holcombe:
That is interesting. The idea of shepherding change as a way of leading change. I don't think I hear people talk about that enough, but it makes so much sense. And it is reminding people of the intentionality of the work that this thing that we're doing that seems removed is actually here to get us to there.
Dale Whittaker:
Yes, exactly. You know…
Annalisa Holcombe:
You're collecting those dots for people who may not have been in the room at the there to see where they fit in that process and how important they are.
Dale Whittaker:
Exactly, Annalisa, and where they've come from. And also understanding that in an organization, or even in a group of half a dozen people, everybody has a different way and contribution to getting to there. So it's not about telling people what to do. It's about asking, how are we doing to move towards, you know, in that direction?
Annalisa Holcombe:
Have you found that to be helpful for you? I mean, are you have you experienced in your work? Are you experiencing it now? How does that work for you in terms of like a daily practice at work? Yeah.
Dale Whittaker:
So for me, like within my own realm or within the realm of influence that I'm responsible for?
Annalisa Holcombe:
Either one.
Dale Whittaker:
I would say it, it always works or it has worked very well and, uh, from an organizational point of view. I'll come back to like from a personal point of view in my work if that makes sense. I see those as slightly different because it depends on role and scope of authority for the second one but… but the process of change that I've really enjoyed and I've used is let's set our goals and targets. I'm an engineer. Sometimes they tend to be quantitative.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Which is fascinating about you by the way, Dale, this quantitative engineer guy who is like one of the most fascinating storytellers that I know.
Dale Whittaker:
Thank you. And then once we've got clarity on but keep the goals the same, give people freedom for how they reach it, distribute the responsibilities according to strengths. So in the university that means a college of business may do more fundraising, the college of science may generate more PhD degrees or do more research, for example. So distribute according to… and then continue to bring people together.
Dale Whittaker:
We did it on a quarterly basis, a whole campus meeting, hold people up there to do an exceptionally well, look at the data together, and then release everybody again. And I've probably done that at three universities in over 30 years. And it's what I'm doing. Annalisa, by the way, crowd, is familiar with the work that I do with the Film Litigates Foundation, but it's the same process process we're using there and it is working. It influences behavior when people think they're part of a team but their own ideas are valued and they're heading in the same direction and somebody cares when they make good progress for it. Somebody sees them.
Dale Whittaker:
Personally on a day-to-day basis it has more to do with how I protect my time, how I try to stay strategic rather than bureaucratic, how I try to grow the people around me that are part of that, you know, my partners on the team, because we all get much stronger together. And so it really has to do with managing the chaos that can be part of just doing a job.
Annalisa Holcombe:
How do you do how like thinking about that intentionality when you're not the leader of the of what you're doing more people that listen to this podcast will find themselves in that situation. How can those folks also lead from where they are with intention, how do they, what advice do you have for people in that situation?
Dale Whittaker:
I don't know if this has to do with intention, but I have advice. And let me just acknowledge right at the top, people have different needs at different points in their life. We all have kind of this lifelong developmental pathway. And there's a decade or two of building what Ladens would call ego, misunderstood in American culture, but really building your identity, knowing what you're good at, knowing what you want to do, knowing where you fit.
Dale Whittaker:
That doesn't happen the day you get your degree and leave college. It can take a decade. It can take two decades. And the reason I'm saying that, Annalisa, is because most people will be in that phase that we're talking to you probably. And during that time, it's really easy to feel the pressures of unstated expectations from your boss, from your team, from your culture and it manifests in things like, I need to go to every meeting, I need to show up, I need to show my face, I need to respond to every email.
Dale Whittaker:
And so I want to acknowledge right here that it's really hard not to get caught up in that. That's some ways to manage it. One way is to realize that your mind, it depends on your job, but your ability to think clearly has as much value as all the pieces of paper emails that you push. And so try to identify and protect time on your calendar. And the key to that is to talk to your boss about it and be clear and have an agreement. Don't try to hide it, you know, make that part of the value you're creating for your organization. So protect time, but always communicate about it. And if you have a boss that says, you know, I don't respect that, then, you know, that's a different kind of challenge. That's like a cultural challenge that you would have to think about yourself.
Dale Whittaker:
And then figure out what the big rocks every day are, the ones that move those priorities, and make sure that you make progress or get those done. You know, that's the 80/20 rule. I have to say even at the age that I am at a very advanced age, even at my stage in life, there are times when I'm a little bit brain dead and so it sees you're just to go through 55 emails in court, sort of process them, then it is just to shut that off and to write the three pages of, you know, something that needs thought.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I totally, I totally understand that that whole, I think it is really profound, your statement about the unstated expectations about pushing paper, being in five million meetings, you know, like the things that we're doing, like like, but rather than who we are that we bring to the table and it is hearing out that balance and then finding a way to advocate for it. I have an example that just about four years ago, maybe, I was so busy in meetings all the time, just busy that I had this problem that I needed to solve and it felt so overwhelming. It was just, I had no idea how I was gonna solve it and I wasn't sleeping at night because I didn't know how to solve it at work and I didn't know what to do.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And then I shut down meetings for a day at work and said, "I've gotta solve it." And literally having no meetings, the answer was actually pretty simple and it came to me relatively quickly when I didn't have all those other things. And it was such a good lesson for me that I needed some quiet time to let my brain actually do the do the work it needed.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah I have this image that I've got a hole in the top of my head and things just keep pouring in and what happens is the things that I need to think about need to float to the top and sometimes you just have to make that space but if you can make that space on a daily basis or three times a week those kind of things don't become so overwhelming.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love that. So I was thinking about, I did some research on this idea of intention and I found this information from the Center for Creative Leadership talking about intention at work and they emphasize three aspects and I'm interested in your thoughts on those which one is they actually said three aspects of living with intention both at work and at home. So this is Intention goes across all of our areas of our lives. And one was the first step is to gain clarity by identifying your values. And I am really interested in that in terms of organizationally how important it is to know your mission, vision values and actually know the values of the organization and then your own as they align with that place. And then, yeah, to go ahead… Yeah, please speak to that. I think that's really fascinating.
Dale Whittaker:
Well, the first thing. Yeah. First of all, statement in a story, the statement is, and especially for people that earlier in their careers. Well, no, I think it's everyone. You're never going to have a dream job, or you're rarely going to have a dream job, and almost every job, even if we're running our own businesses, there's like 50 to 60% of just stuff that has to get done, and 40 to 50% of stuff that really moves the ball. And you just have to accept that, acknowledge that, and carve out the time and expectation to just do that directory work or that transactional work. So that's one thing.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I have a friend, Dale, that called that. His advice to me was embrace the suck, that even the best relationship has parts to it that suck, that there's always going to be something. So embrace it.
Dale Whittaker:
Every morning, just expect to have that. And when you get it, you know it, and then make sure you have time for the rest of it, the And then this, and just to finish that, too many people leave a job because their expectations don't match that. But now I'm gonna talk to you about lineman values, which I think is a good reason to take or leave a job. I worked, I'm just gonna be straight up here.
Dale Whittaker:
I went through a real journey in my life around equity, around racial equity. And it started in 1992, and I was part of the Kellogg National Leadership Development Program. And in this fellowship, there were 40 of us. And there were, I think that I was brought on as the token Texas white racist guy from the country. That, actually, I think it's a little overstatement, but I was definitely the most conservative and traditional out of the 40, and I went on a long journey there, and I'm still continuing that journey.
Dale Whittaker:
In everybody's story, everybody's value, and the understanding of historic harm and structural bias, I came to understand in very experienced, experiential ways with people that I really cared a lot about. So that has been a value for me that everybody has the opportunity to thrive and that means acknowledging structural problems. I worked three decades of my life in Texas, Indiana, and Florida in public universities and it got consistently harder and harder to live my values.
Dale Whittaker:
I left Purdue, I left Indiana for that reason because of a change in leadership and an expectation that we were going to deal with diversity. That may be an overstatement but it was the action. And I left Florida really for the same reason. And now I'm with And so what I'm saying is I had a personal value. I liked a lot of my job, that there was something about my job that never aligned. And it was the inability to speak out about racial injustice.
Dale Whittaker:
And so when I got to the Gates Foundation, I found it was exactly the opposite. It was almost like you were expected to. And it took me a while to get used to that culture, but it felt so freeing to me and it was the first time that I felt like I'm really… My work is totally aligned with my values. There's still this bureaucracy and drudgery and you know embrace the suck part of it but the work we're doing…
Dale Whittaker:
What matters and the words we're using matter and so I think that's the one thing, at least to your number one point, that really you have to find an alignment with the culture of your workplace in those values that are most important to you. It may not be all of your values, but those that are really core to who you are.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Gosh, that's important. And it makes me funny. If we talk about it, I actually feel a little bit weepy and I don't mean to, but I'm really worried about how we're talking about equity and what's happening in our society. I just moved as I talked to you about and July 1st, we're recording this in July of 2024 and July 1st was the date that all of the state institutions in Utah had to change their structure so they didn't have specific centers based on equity.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And so all of the women's resource center or the Black Student Union don't exist anymore. And it's really hard and scary. And I wonder what this conversation that we're having about aligning with your values will change the way that universities are structured in different states in our country. Because people will either say hard things and put their careers on the line, or they'll move.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, I think, you know, saying hard things, putting your curves on the line, we can have a discussion about that that as well. I moved, by the way. And I said, there are things that I put my career on one.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Which is also, I wrote a, I wrote a, I didn't finish my PhD, but I wrote a paper about that, about, that's when we care deeply and passionately about something and that, and it's not aligned with our values. We have choices. And that this is actually literally the next stage in what the Center for Creative Leadership talks about, which is identify your values and the second is act with agency. That is how we are intentional, is you have agency to deal with it and some of it clearly has consequences, but there's agency that we all have how in living our lives.
Dale Whittaker:
I think saying that as well, Annalisa, is that to some extent, agency is a privilege that not everybody has, not everybody can leave a job, not everybody can move out of a community. And that's something that you have to acknowledge and some people just have to live and live with resilience and try to do the best for their kids, their community and their family.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And it's an interesting thing in terms of those with privilege who can leave use their agency to speak up instead. You know, like, what is their role in terms of anyway, super interesting and really hard.
Dale Whittaker:
I think speaking up does matter. I think that we need to give people grace as well. And, you know, and there's also the concept of time and process and speaking up with a lot of other people, organization, so we can have a whole nother discussion about that, but I, I'm still, there was a time recently in my life where that kind of core piece of who I am that always leaves everybody is doing what they think is the right thing. It just may be different than what I think is the right thing. They're doing up for the right reason that got really shaken at one point in my life I had a hard time believing that ever in having a hard time believing in everybody And I've got to say that that's come back. It's part of that intentional healing part of living on an island by the way Part of thinking my own thoughts, where was I going with that?
Annalisa Holcombe:
Oh, I love it. It showed up as intentional healing too. I was thinking about your values and how others…
Dale Whittaker:
Oh, I was-- to wrap that, I was thinking about believing in democracy. At some point, the crowd will swing. And for every radical swing, there will be a swing back. And, you know, you're just starting to see it happen in Europe in July of 2024, when there was so. Yeah. My basic belief is to believe in people and to believe in like the concept of democracy, meaning a lot of people have the wisdom.
Annalisa Holcombe:
This goes to my, I love this because I literally wrote down, um, if we're talking about intentional, is it worth us talking also about positive intent and assuming positive intent in others and how that applies to our professional and personal lives?
Dale Whittaker:
I feel like 99.9 % of the time, it's definitely, for me, it's always been the way to go. And what the results from that is the other person feels empowered and grows, trust grows, and productivity, like if it's you and I, our joint productivity just is so much higher. There's no question.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I was reading an article that said, however, that assumption of assuming positive intent is tricky because all of us have experiences where we know someone who says I am doing this with good intentions and then we can't believe the way they acted and whether it was really true right like there’s…
Dale Whittaker:
Words and actions are not always aligned.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Yeah so that's it it's one of those things where people talk that through so um anyway I am yeah… let's, can we talk a little bit about intentionality and how that shows up for you in your personal life as well?
Dale Whittaker:
We can.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Let's do.
Dale Whittaker:
Okay, I'd be happy to.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Where do you want to start?
Dale Whittaker:
Anywhere.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I was thinking, I mean, this is like really goes somewhere, but I do this research and just see what shows up when I Google ideas of intention and intentionality. And I found this amazing article in the… maybe you've listened in the past to the On Being podcast, or you've read some of their stuff. It's Krista Tippett. She's on-- she used to be on NPR.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Anyway, there's a… I was reading about it, and you should, because it's super interesting. But there was a discussion about-- that I read about, like Buddhism and intention and karma and how what we actually put out in the world through our intention, like shows up for us in our lives. And so, I mean, that's like really going somewhere, but how about that for a promise?
Dale Whittaker:
I'll think about that one. I'm, yeah, I have so many thoughts about that, but…
Annalisa Holcombe:
But can I just do it this way, I will say in my position as a fundraiser I in my last role ever I hired every single person on the team and when I did I sent them this book the Soul of Money and some of that some of that book I love and some of it I don't love but there's a part in the Soul of Money that I love that was about donors and like that we all get money and it flows through us None of us actually own it because it comes and then it leaves and so it's a river, right?
Annalisa Holcombe:
And some of us have giant rivers and some of us have little streams. But it still happens and that we have intention especially if we have any extra whether it's 10 cents or whether it's 5 million if we have any there's intention that we infuse into that money that's going out into the world. And it's a way I liked my team to think about any funding that was coming into our organization that it was infused with some values that were important to honor. So does that exist in your personal and/or professional life?
Dale Whittaker:
It does, and I would say for me, it's time. So for me, it's the 90…is it 92,000 hours? That made me think. In the last five years, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to spend time in just a few things. One is I really have, when I was so busy and so important and so structured and so in demand, meaning that I let other people decide what I was going to do with my time and it got to the point at least where I let other people put words in my mouth and influence my thoughts tremendously. Because there are so many things to get done.
Dale Whittaker:
It was like, you know, you're the professional. You tell me on that. You tell me on that. When I left that job. And, and just for your audience. I didn't leave that job intentionally. I thought I was going to be university president for the next 10 years and I really got into a conflict with the new governor. It got manifest in a different way. It got manifest in the way that my predecessor used money, but it was really an issue with the new governor and our values were different and it ended up in me making what I thought was this serious leadership decision to do what was best for the institution rather than what was best for me.
Dale Whittaker:
I think if I was going to be university president that decision really hurt my career. I didn't know there was anything after that so the intention that I lived with was how am I going to spend my time? How am I going to learn what my path is? How is my life going to matter? It doesn't matter if it…
Annalisa Holcombe:
You were soul searching, you were doing it at that time. This must have been like really hard on your identity and you're like, yeah, I can't even imagine.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, a lot of it had to do with letting go, forgiving and you're not holding a grudge and starting to believe that, you know, a half a dozen of people that were personally ambitious, instead of ambitious for their, for other people, they remain the exception and not the rule. Even though they get a lot of air time, they remain the exception and not the rule. Anyway, the…
Annalisa Holcombe:
That's actually beautiful and important that those folks are the exception and not the rule.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, and just when I mentioned ambition, when we talk about leadership, I think that the great leaders or people who have, it goes back to intentionality for the organization have great ambitions for their organization. the people who have great ambitions for themselves are changing jobs all the time or trying to find the next best dollar. They're trying to get a better title. So I had ambitions for the organization and I think I left it in as good a shape as I could.
Dale Whittaker:
So I came away from that with a lot of trauma and to your point kind of just trying to figure out so Who am I? And I decided that I was going to continue to notice the really small things. In fact, I didn't decide that. I didn't decide anything to be honest Annalisa. I tried to make decisions. I tried to figure out what my future was. I tried to be intentional about healing. And none of that worked.
Dale Whittaker:
So what I did was I just started painting and exercising and hiking and rowing and consulting. I had good friends that brought me in. And all of that grew. And now let me just say that I'm very intentional about how much time I save for my own mind, for the small things, for exercise. I get up at five o'clock every morning, I have a ritual, I make coffee, take it to my wife and then I go out and get on the water for two to three hours and then I shower and do my gate's work. And then in the evenings, we take care of the cabin here, walk in the woods, do whatever we need to do.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I heard that from Dale that you said something to me when I asked you once I asked you something about what was important to you in your life. I think I was looking for my own sense of what was important to me and it stuck with me because you told me how important it was to you to live where you want to live and have like have these moments that matter to you because that's how you make a life of meaning for yourself.
Dale Whittaker:
And we're in a small community that we're very rooted in, which we've never been before. We've always followed the job. And, you know, the job was where we lived. Annalisa, I want to tell you a story about a little time. I remember when the stress was highest, this was down in Florida, in trying to make a decision about what I was going can do with the future. And I laid on the pool deck by the pool and looked up, hoping I wasn't having a heart attack, and looked up. And the image that kept coming to my mind, it came to me every time I felt stressful, was sweeping the cabin floor with all the windows open and a little bit of sunshine on the floor of the cabin, not a single sound except the birds and a little bit of dust in the sunshine.
Dale Whittaker:
And when I come here and I feel those moments, I realize how special those are and how I didn't have them when I was over-programmed in a concrete city, driving an air-conditioned car and living in a different way. I'm not trying to be critical of most people who live that way. It's just that it was a change for me and it was not intentional that the way I live it is intentional.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love it so much because it is, I mean, when I, I know it sounds hoo-ha, hoo-hoo, like woo, but it's like this whole, that idea of getting quiet and listening to whatever yourself is telling you. I don't know. In some ways, there's like such incredible beauty about you living with intentionality, understanding your values, acting with agency. And then in some way that whole thing that I talked about that there was this idea of intentionality and karma, but in some ways karma showed up for you in a really positive way to lead you to the life that you may not have gotten to.
Dale Whittaker:
Absolutely. Mary and I talk about that all the time. It was never our intent, it was held to go through, and we are so grateful. We are so grateful. We could have been 80 years old and never have gotten to the life that was really us. And then we're launching a business together.
Annalisa Holcombe:
You are?
Dale Whittaker:
So I'm intentional about retiring and from working for somebody else and intentional about launching business.
Annalisa Holcombe:
What is it?
Dale Whittaker:
An art gallery. I am an artist, as well, and a retreat center, Quilter's Retreat. And so we will…
Annalisa Holcombe:
So with her, this is what, this is what, very, right?
Dale Whittaker:
That's right, it's our, it will be our joint business. So we have, this we're being very intentional about it, and it's for our next 10 to 15 years.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Oh my gosh, it's your joy. You're going to find your bliss. I love that so much. So I have to tell you that I was reading about you and I can't help it because this is so funny to me and perfectly appropriate. It's about your personal life so I'm reading about you in UCF Magazine and you know it's like get to know Dale and it's literally use this word I hadn't intended so you use something about intentional to go out but she was so intriguing.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And it was about how you met Mary that you had not intended but then so you were not your so I'm really interested in that like you use intended intentional in the language and now we're talking about that so talk to me about those things that show up in your life that it might be unintentional but you can tell there's something about it that you should be following. And for you, that was, you didn't intend to go on a date with your wife, but your whole life changed in beautiful ways as a result.
Dale Whittaker:
I think that's, I think it's karma, not serendipity. I think that's karma Annalisa. I think that we overestimate our personal agency at times in terms of the ability to control our path to that future. I think that idea of intentionally I started out with about imagine a future and you're subconscious will take you there. Sometimes you just have to allow things to unwind and realize that instinct in your gut, in your feelings are as valid of intention, of a representation of intention as rational thought and accept that.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I totally agree. There is like that whole get quiet and listen to your guts a little bit and there's wisdom there. It's really interesting too, because we're, as we were talking about it, that that third aspect from the Center for Creative Leadership said the whole agency is know your values and then act with agency. And then the third one was optimize the people around you, like have good partnerships or good relationships and that's how you will live with intention think critically about who you surround yourself with.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, and you have to invest in them and Lisa. Yes, you know, it's it… Yeah, it's about not just choosing but accepting the people around you and that alignment and believing in them and investing in and that's where the karma comes back. Too many people make it about themselves. You know, make it about… that if you just allow it not to be about yourself and invest in them then, but at the same time, when people are taking, it's kind of like being with a job where you're not blind in the values, there are times you just have to walk away from people. You don't really owe anybody anything.
Dale Whittaker:
And there are times when the partnership, the team work or whatever just doesn’t… it’s not healthy. Might be the best way to say it. Yeah. And you have to be able to recognize that and be mature and communicative and leave that situation. Really it's not invest in it.
Annalisa Holcombe:
It's hard, but also important. So I wanna make sure I'm acknowledging your time and I think that this idea of like talking about who we spend our time with. And for me, the lovely story is that I get a chance to spend time with you. And then the story about you spending time meeting your wife and how in the end, this is gonna turn into like a story of finding yourselves on this island that turns into the next phase of your career that wouldn't have had all this, which is…
Dale Whittaker:
We didn't know each other until we left Florida and were locked down for COVID. We didn't know each other during 30 years of our marriage in the way that we have in the last 10 years of our marriage.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I believe, you know, what I learned during COVID is how much I actually really love my family like actually like them as human beings it was it for me it was a good experience in that aspect that I was like I… I could have been a homesteader I could spend all day long with you and still like you and want to spend more time so that was good. I like to… I, mentors are so important to me and I've told you this in the past before but I consider you a mentor of mine even if you don't know that you are, but I deeply appreciate the time that you've given me when you haven't had to and the ability to talk to you about things that were not completely structured on this path we were supposed to be talking about, but allowed me and yourself to be human in the conversation, which opened up pathways for me of learning about things that I would never have known about. So thank you so much for being a mentor to me.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I still will keep learning from you. And I would love to open up time for you to talk a little bit about anyone that has been a mentor to you that, you know, you could acknowledge here and honor them in some way.
Dale Whittaker:
Okay, Annalisa, I'm, I'm a… I worked hard on this thought hard about this. And It's not an obvious answer for me because there have been so many meaningful people in my life, but I have to say that I have learned the most and grown the most with people who saw me as a mentor. And I struggle with that because a lot of times it's like one person knows the answer and the other one is learning it. And it turns out for me to be exactly the opposite.
Dale Whittaker:
It's more like the people who I find interesting and fascinating and fun, and I care about who they're gonna be when they're 75. And you know, It's kind of random. It's like you, I mean, you coming into my life, it's kind of random who those people are. And it's not intentional.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Maybe the person at that coffee shop, that woman we talking about.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, exactly. And she and I are still very, very close. And it's a little bit like, I didn't intend to go out with Mary, but decided to put down my math homework and go in. It just happens And you know it in the moment, you actually know it in the moment that you're gonna be with this person, watching them grow, watching them make choices. And sometimes you've had an experience that they're about ready to go through. And maybe that's seen as mentorship.
Dale Whittaker:
So what I have to say, the way I have to answer your question is I have grown and received the most through people who are developing and building their lives and they're very human and they're willing to share it and they're willing to be vulnerable And I'm willing to be vulnerable and it's a side-by-side And I find that so much fun and I become so richer or so much richer… From those relationships, so I'm gonna call that a mentor relationship.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I love that so much I think that that I agree with you when when people have asked me that question before. I, at the time I was at a university, I said, Oh, my goodness, it's the students who think I'm their mentor, but they are my mentors. I'm learning so much.
Dale Whittaker:
Spot on. Yeah.
Annalisa Holcombe:
And it's a joy of working in that type of an environment is being surrounded by folks that are becoming, as you said.
Dale Whittaker:
Yeah, exactly. That's one thing I miss, by the way.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Yeah, you're missing it. You look for it in other ways.
Dale Whittaker:
Exactly.
Annalisa Holcombe:
What a joy to have this conversation with you and for you to spend time with me. And all of the listeners, I know that people will want to follow up with me and will be so grateful for the conversation as well. Thank you so much, Dale, for spending your time. Dale Whittaker: Thank you, Annalisa, for inviting me.
Annalisa Holcombe:
I know that time is a precious resource and I appreciate that you gave us this time.
Dale Whittaker:
You're very welcome.
Annalisa Holcombe:
My deep gratitude to Dale for his honesty and his brilliance. This discussion was the epitome of how I wanted to end the Changemaker guest series. Dale is wise, interesting, thoughtful, and definitely authentic. And he brought his whole self to this interview. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can learn more about him at his personal website, which is www.realdalewhittaker.com. You can even look him up on Wikipedia if you want. He has a Wikipedia page. And you can connect with him on LinkedIn as well.
Annalisa Holcombe:
Thank you so much, Dale. We've now reached the end of our ChangeMaker series, but we have one more bonus episode for you next week. You see the team members at 92,000 hours met and we talked about what we learned this season and reflected on some of the lessons. It was fun for us to put it all together and to make some sense out of it. And while we do this, you'll be able to see some of the other folks behind the scenes here at 92,000 hours. That will mark the last episode of the season, so please join us next week. I think you'll find it worth your while. See you then.