Eileen:

Hello and welcome to a special edition of Soul of a Leader podcast where we ignite soulful conversations with leaders. On today’s episode, Dr. Alicia and Dr. Eileen sit with the founder and president of the CW Institute, Christopher Watts, to discuss servant leadership.

Alicia:

Welcome to the Soul of a Leader where we ignite the soul for leadership. Today we have Christopher Watts and I don’t need a long bio on this young man, I will start with telling everyone how I know him. It’s ironic, about 15 years ago, Christopher Watts walked into my office, he was a college student. I was running an organization called Athletes Against Drugs and most of our staff I hired through a college called Robert Morris and Chris has been with me from that point on. He worked at our schools, we had a number of schools. Now to see Chris doing what he is doing today, wouldn’t have never even thought about it. He feeds thousands and thousands a month, I think, close to about 20,000 people a month here within the Chicago land area. So without further ado, I want to welcome Christopher Watts to the Soul of the Leader podcast. How are you today Chris?

Christopher:

I’m always great, I live a happy and blessed life. Thanks for having me on.

Alicia:

Thank you so much. So with that, we’re going to have some questions going forth. We want to talk a little bit, we are in a state of change here throughout the United States and I know you are one of those individuals who are on the front line. What would you describe how you see the changes that are affecting some of the people that you have to serve every day? You deliver meals to a lot of people, can you start out just giving some background on that and what you see the change happening from a leadership perspective?

Christopher:

Great question, from a leadership perspective, over the past couple of years we focus primarily on feeding the homeless and residents of shelters. Then at the beginning of the year, it kind of started to include food insecure families. A lot of things just started happening. With this pandemic, a lot of people are out of work, there’s a lot of unknown out here. So, one thing I like to emphasize is that I’ve never encountered a starving person here in Chicago. I’ve encountered hungry and hungry and malnutritious. So people are always able to get food but they’re highly processed and have a lot of GMOs, it has a lot of sugar, it has a lot of sodium, which leads to other health issues. So I was just looking, there are some statistics that’s been floating around on social media about how 70% of the COVID-19 deaths in Chicago were African Americans. And you’d wonder why, because it’s not like a virus could be racist. It just doesn’t pass everyone else and looks for African American. We just have underlying health issues, we have hypertension, high blood pressure and things of that nature.

Christopher:

So I’m proud that with our food program it’s gourmet, nutritious food, it’s minimally processed, free range, no preservatives. We’ve even introduced food items to individuals. So just last week we picked up from a partner, I was able to share the leaf form of thyme and rosemary and those herbs, a lot of people have never seen that outside of a salt shaker that you buy off the grocery store. A lot of people probably never heard of red chicory or broccolini, not broccoli, broccolini, never saw it, never heard of it.

Christopher:

So when I’m able to introduce that to someone else, get them healthier options, not only am I giving them food, in which the money that they would’ve spent on food, during the time when they’re living check to check or just trying to save because they don’t know when the next time they’ll get another check, we’re also having some positive health impacts. And when you look at what fights a virus, it’s white blood cells, and how do you build that, plus your immune system has certain vitamins and nutritions that come from the food that we deliver that ordinarily is not accessible to the people that we deliver to.

Eileen:

And Christopher during this time, this is Dr. Eileen speaking, what are your thoughts about the supply chain? Has there been more open arms to give you more nutritionist food? Easier ways to get it into the hands of the people who need it? How has that supply chain changed because there’s such a more urgent need, especially in the Chicago land area.

Christopher:

I’m going to answer that twofold, there’s been more food than ever for the Kindness Campaign. So we’ve picked up grocery stores in the past two weeks, specifically Local Foods Market, we’ve picked up the Shop And Save franchise, we’ve also picked up from hotels and other places who don’t want to waste these food. So the amount of food that we’ve gotten, it’s probably up tenfold. During the month of March we started over 20,000 meals. In all of 2019 we served about 60,000 meals. We literally did about a third of 2019 in one month and I only see it increasing in 2020, especially over the few months.

Christopher:

In terms of the number of the people that we were giving it to, we’ve had to reassess how we deliver food because a lot of the… So we don’t just go dump and also, right, we take it to tent cities, we go to shelters. I make sure there were no preservatives, this is not something you could put in your refrigerator for weeks and months. I don’t want to overwhelm people with the same items, so we were making sure that it was just enough for a couple of days.

Christopher:

But with the 19 a lot of institutions, specifically shelters and recovery homes that we went to are on lockdown. I went to a shelter, I had been going to for two years and they told me that right now they was only accepting money and I’m like, “To go buy the same stuff I’m going to give you for free?” And I get it for cheaper and/or for free. So that was an eye opener. So what have we done as a leader, you just reassess, you reevaluate and you remobilize.

Christopher:

So our food insecure families, like the number of seniors that we serve, have increased. Now we’re delivering these foods to individuals who are adhering to social distance guidelines, we wear the gloves, we wear the masks but we leave it on the steps, ring the doorbell and walk away or make a phone call to someone. So in terms of who we traditionally serve, that has changed, but it’s opened up for more people that we serve and we take it to their house so they won’t have to come out of the house. With a big emphasis on an increase, primarily coming from senior citizens, individuals with disabilities, especially those who have compromised immune systems with COPD.

Alicia:

Wow, one of the things that I hear you say Chris, and you don’t really say it, but it’s your actions and what we represent, our mission here at Soul of a Leader, is we like to see some characteristics of authentic leadership, or we like to say we talk to ordinary people, extraordinary leadership ability. So I hear you say that you are really leading from your soul with passion with a sense of inner strength because it takes that to do what you’re doing in such a time like that where your numbers are increasing. How would you define some characteristics of authentic leadership in your own words?

Christopher:

Most importantly is leading by example, by doing it first. So since this pandemic has started, I’m probably out delivering food personally probably 50 to 60 hours per week, and this isn’t my career. I’m always getting calls, prior to that I was probably spending about 10 to 12 hours per week actually increasing the food. My hours and commitment has increased and so has the other people’s, we’ve had more people come along. Now at times it’s just sometimes this stuff is just unplanned. I’ve gotten phone calls at 11:00 AM saying, “Hey, we heard about you from such and such. How can you help us?” And we were there by two o’clock picking up enough people, enough food for maybe to serve a thousand meals, just like that in the course of three hours.

Christopher:

Today we picked up a hundred meals and within two hours all 100 meals had been distributed between the shelter and a couple homes. So leading by example by doing it first. To service with dignity. I always say that not a single person ever asked me or The Kindness Campaign to come share food with the homeless and food insecure families or any of the other programs that we do like violence reduction, neighborhood clean up, working with at-promise youth. This is something that we decided to do and we ask people to give us their confidence and their trust and allow us to serve them. So I always got to keep that in mind, not a single person ever said, “Hey Chris, why don’t you start delivering food?” Or asked me or anybody with the Kindness Campaign.

Christopher:

I’m humbled that I had their confidence and their support that they allow me to serve them, that so many people will literally call me up and just say, “I got something for you, can we get…” And we’re talking about organizations and people. And we’re talking about during a period of time over the past couple years that, especially over the past five years, where it’s hard to get monetary donations unless you’re a big organization because there’s been so much across the media misappropriating funds, you’ve got people who are supposed to be serving the homeless, 91% of the money and resources going to salaries, nine percent is actually going to the people. People don’t have a lot of trust out here for you, right? We’ve seen food operations specifically that weren’t doing what they were saying they were going to do. Delivering spoiled or expired food, so I always think what would I want to do? So that’s kind of how I develop how we service people.

Christopher:

One thing that I’m proud to say is that I’ve never done what I call, make people fight a bottom. So we are determined and see who we can serve has determined our capacity. And then after that we find if they fall into any other service group. So there’s never a call, “Hey, we’re looking for senior citizens only or you got to have food stamps or you got to have section 8.” We don’t know everyone’s situation, you never know what’s going on. And because someone can’t fall into a predetermined government category based on a poverty line, does not mean that they don’t need help. Random acts of kindness have always been our model and sometimes people just pay it forward. If you are kind to someone they’re going to pay it forward, so we service people, they’ll figure out who we service before.

Christopher:

Now we’re definitely not pulling up in Lincoln Park or Wicker Park or anywhere right there. We primarily serve the South Side, Grand Crossing, Auburn Gresham, Inglewood, Parkline, out in the South suburbs, parts of the West Side, Lawndale, Garfield Park. We service shelters and tent cities all around the city of Chicago, but as a leader, you lead by example by doing it first and you are always open and you show other people how to lead as well.

Eileen:

I hear it very in your voice about kindness. Do you see, and research has shown this, that one act of kindness observed by others ignites other acts moving forward. So even if the person, the recipient is not receiving the kindness but observes it, it starts a ripple effect of waves. As you serve these communities, are you seeing some of that energy happening?

Christopher:

Definitely, so I have a motto, if someone won’t copy what you do or steal what you’re doing, you’re not doing anything well. So I’ve seen individuals copy… I won’t even say copy, be motivated and accept the torch. The Kindness Campaign’s mission is to create leaders. This ain’t to be kept to myself. This ain’t to be kept for us. We cannot service everyone. More people doing it is a great thing. I’ve had people reach out to me and say, “My family or friends want to do this.” I will schedule something so that they can go pick up the food with their family and friends, let them know some service areas where they might want to go and lead it themselves. It definitely does have a ripple effect. Our ripple effect started with YouTube and Facebook, just posting videos. We started with just standing on corners giving away hugs, high-fives, handshakes, smile, water and kindness cards and people saw us from that. From that, it’s grown to food operations, it includes a school based program, it includes virus reduction and it includes mentoring at promising young adults.

Alicia:

If you could see me, if you would have a video, you would see me smiling. I see so much in you and I’m probably one of your biggest fans at this moment because it takes a level of courage, I heard a lot come out of you. Dignity is extremely important because it is a very sensitive area that you are helping people. And for me to witness that and hear you say words like trust, these are characteristics that leaders in your position, and I will say you are extremely humble about it and you don’t say that you are, it’s the way you deliver a service to people who are in most need. So I want to ask, what is the most important thing to you when you’re out there? What level of courage do you kind of put on yourself. What level of integrity do you like to embrace yourself with when you go out and see and feed 20 some thousand people?

Christopher:

Integrity is key. Having people’s trust during the time where the people that we service the most, they’re not the most trustworthy. They’ve definitely been let down by systems and institutions which leads to the current. But how do I demonstrate integrity? Some of the things that I don’t do is that… I always say this, there doesn’t need to be a face with homelessness, there’s no need to be a face with at-promise youth. I don’t take dead pictures of people’s faces, no one will ever have to smile with something and I take a picture with them and post it online or need to say their names such and such. That level of… I just hand stuff to people and at most, I might take some pictures from behind people’s heads sometime, but I just don’t like to do that. That level of integrity that people see that they don’t have to pose and be the face of a kind act, that goes a long way and people do notice-

Alicia:

Yes it does.

Christopher:

… people notice things of that nature.And that came from when I was young, for a little while I was in a group home and at the group homes throughout Missouri had rolled an event called Sunshine Variety Club, I guess those were the people that donated vans or transportation or even they paid the marketing cost. So I used to ask them to drop me off a couple of blocks away, then I’ll walk to school because I didn’t want nobody to know I was in a group home. So people asked me why, then that leads to other conversations. Then I probably would have gotten teased in school. Now this led to an argument and a fight. Things just weren’t going on. 

Christopher:

You don’t necessarily want to do what I call exploiting sometimes, or making a face with that and like I said, how I lead and think about these things, I think about how it would affect me. How it would’ve affected me as a young child when I was in a group home and then living with my grandmother. I always think that I don’t want to put no type of rules or obstacles in a way that would have prevented the person that helped bring me alone when I moved back to Chicago. So that’s kind of why I don’t make people say, show me a birth certificate when I’m doing an after school event. I don’t say you need to be on food stamps if you want some food, that’s not my concern. I think with the people in that situation, the government will take very care of them.. We’re like a value added plus we service a few more individuals that just need it.

Eileen:

You lead an organization that probably has volunteers, how do you challenge yourself as a leader, others to be their best and live what your energy is displaying, what you might be spiritually sharing with these people who are following you or going out there and meeting with other people who you are serving?

Christopher:

I like to look at it that we’re serving together, not leaders. I typically tell people I’m the moral support and administrative coordinator. I’ve only given myself a chief kindness officer title for the purpose of banking, contracts, grants and things of that nature, and that’s because they require something like that. I kind of took the lead on handling all the paperwork, the quarterly filings with the IRS and the Illinois Department of Revenue, the commercial general liability, the banking and the things of that nature. I handled a big bulk of the administrative part, right? When I look at our core members that I call outstanding members and outstanding partners rather than volunteers, we have the same vision and we are always going to do what’s right.

Christopher:

So I’m very confident with my core outstanding partners. If I wasn’t around and someone had to ask them something and they had to lead it, the outcome would be the same. It’s about being on the same page, having that vision that everyone knows and empowering them to do the same thing that I would ordinarily do. And when you have that energy, I like to say, I have what I call my spiritual influence that I influence the most and then they have their spirits of influence as well and we kind of just bring it together so we always have more than enough people to get the job done from a skill set, from a human capital standpoint.

Christopher:

One thing I want to add is that The Kindness Campaign has no goals. We’ve never said during this year, this month we want to feed this many people. We want to touch this many children. We want to decrease violence by this much. We literally just say we want to do something and we just do it, there’s no goals we just look to make an impact. Impact is the only goal, it just got to get better. Something that’s visible. I never used data for the most part… I mean, I say never, I never use the data because I always say if you close to the streets, I don’t need to look at the Census Bureau or the Department of Labor statistics to know that people in Inglewood and Auburn Gresham are living below the poverty line.

Christopher:

I don’t need to look at a report from the food depository or the US Department of Agriculture to know that we got food deserts on the South and the West Side up out here, I could literally look at it. I could go look downtown, look North and see how stuff look there, then come back and look and be like, “Hold on a second, we’re missing something here.” Right? I know people, I talk to people. What I do, it’s nothing professional about what I do. We’re not professionals. We don’t deliver services professionally. There’s absolutely nothing professional about not being able to make ends meet, not knowing when your next meal is going to come, not being able to eat healthy foods or feed it to your children, not knowing how you’re going to get out the house during the virus and you are immune compromised.

Christopher:

Everything we do is very personal to everyone else. The only professional thing done by the Kindness Campaign is some legal stuff on the paperwork side, that’s a small part of our time. And everything is delivered with a level of compassion and personal touch because it’s very personal to everyone else. We don’t deliver professional service. We deliver all personal services in a personal way.

Eileen:

Great.

Alicia:

Amazing. I like how you took the words professional service and now you call it a personal service because it is personal. It’s a personal situation that you don’t need the stats to prove to you where the people are starving or where people need help, which is extremely valuable and extraordinary for you. As we get ready to end, I just have a few more questions. How would you describe the next level of where the Kindness Campaign is headed in a leadership perspective?

Christopher:

To be honest, I don’t know where it’s at right now. What’s unbelievable to me a month ago then a year ago, so like I said the Kindness Campaign, I was working as a parent educator, the program, and the government cut it, then a group of people was like, “I hate that the program got to end, we’re doing good work.” So I was like, “Well, do we really need a government funded program to do the work? We could literally just… They need us, we don’t need them.”

Alicia:

Absolutely.

Christopher:

So we were standing on corners, giving away hugs, high-fives, handshakes, smiles, water, kindness cards that we bought ourselves, we were doing community cleanups, we were doing something at the local school. Then people were seeing it, then it just kept growing. So I did the 501(c)(3) paperwork so that the Internal Revenue Service wouldn’t think that I was committing tax fraud. But as you know, people started sending me money, stuff hitting my account, people giving me things, I’m online with these big donations. I wouldn’t have wanted the IRS to think I wasn’t reporting income assets of donations or anything. So then more money started coming in and so I had to get the account and we got a contract because we were just doing consistent work.

Christopher:

We answered the call. We’re asked… we answer the call, we get to a certain way and some would be like, “Well here you go, you should do this as well.” I’m proud that I don’t have to say, well let me figure out what’s a grant out there for and start working that way which might exclude people. We do what we know is best and what needs to be done and if someone agrees with us they’re more than welcome to support, other than now we’re not going to alter or change our vision to get a little bit of money or to say we have some support or something. If you like what we are doing and believe in it, support it the way that it is.

Eileen:

Wonderful, that was really great. Thank you so much. As we wrap up here, we always like to ask the question, please leave us some words of wisdom around leading with your soul for us and our listeners. And how would you leave us with today, Chris, with some words of wisdom.

Christopher:

Always be kind when you can, you always can be kind. We define kindness as sharing your strengths rather than your weakness, so everyone has a strength to share to someone no matter what it is. Even with being the administrative leader of the Kindness Campaign, I look out to other people for help to lend me their strengths and it happens, that might come from editing something, that might come from producing something, and that might come from looking at someone to help me with setting up with QuickBooks. There’s a number of things that I look out… I get help all the time, so just as many people as I and everyone else with the Kindness Campaign help others, we also receive help ourselves and it’s just beyond belief. If you just do what’s right, everything else takes care of itself. Just do it, no matter what you’re doing from a personal or a business standpoint, if you just do something and you’re doing it at a level that people think is great, they are going to support it.

Eileen:

Well wonderful, thank you so much.

Alicia:

Amazing, yes, Chris, you were amazing.

Eileen:

Chris, we’re so grateful and cannot thank you enough for being part of Soul of the Leader and being on our podcast and spreading your mission that in your impact is so wide. And you are really impacting and changing lives every day, every minute and we cannot thank you enough. Thank you so much.

Alicia:

Chris, I just want to say thank you so much. I certainly appreciate it, I can see the growth and the potential, what you’re doing. I’m sending all blessings to you because I know every work that you have done, you have blessed others and we certainly appreciate it and you continue to do great things to help those in need.

Christopher:

Well, thanks for allowing me to share my story and the great work that the Kindness Campaign is doing. Hopefully someone will hear this and do the same thing.

Eileen:

Thank you for joining us on Soul of the Leader podcast, we are igniting a new way of leading with your soul and interviewing ordinary people with extraordinary impact. Thank you for listening to the stories of our leaders who will help and guide you on your leadership journey. For more information on our podcast, please visit our website at http://www.soulofaleader.com. Thank you for listening.