Alicia :
Hello and welcome to the Soul of a Leader Podcast, where we ignite soulful conversations with leaders. In today’s episode. Dr. Alisha and Dr. Eileen sit with the Chief People Officer of the Chicago Food Depository, Dr. Valerie Parker to discuss grace and leadership. Welcome to Soul of a Leader Podcast. In today’s episode, we have the Reverend Dr. Parker who built a successful career in human resources after earning her BA in psychology from John Hopkins University. She began working in their area of training and development for a nonprofit organization, allowing her to couple her psychology degree with her passion for teaching. Welcome to Soul of a Leader Podcast, Dr. Parker.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Thank you. Oh my goodness. I’m here.

Eileen:
Well, welcome. We are so glad to have you here, Dr. Parker, and thank you for taking the time to talk to us and our listeners today about your soulful leadership. We appreciate it.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Well, thank you. And thank you for inviting me and I, I hope and pray that your listeners will be edified and encouraged and even might find humor in some of the things I say. Cause I find humor in the things that I say to myself. So hopefully they will too.

Alicia :
We like humor.

Eileen:
We do, we like humor. We like laughter, we love joy. So Dr. Parker, tell me a little bit about your leadership style and how throughout your career, how you’ve developed it and or how it’s changed over your career.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Yeah. You know, I, when I get that question, I always feel like I’m changing it every time I answer. So it almost feels like I’m not authentic to myself, but then I realized I am changing. I’m ever-evolving. Right? So I often use sports analogies as a method of communicating things about who I am. So I would probably say my leadership style is very direct. I really believe in being an encourager so that people can realize their full potential, but is encouraging. I also, in using some of the values that you shared, I also like to believe that I continue to let people experience some sense of dignity with their failings. So I will be forthright and say, “We’re going to go through this together and you are going to fail because that’s how we learn. Right? But you’re not going to be alone. I’ll be there with you.”

Eileen:
Yep.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
“And we’ll get through this together.” And so I’d like to think my leadership style is authentic and it’s one of journeying together. And in being authentic, I don’t often sugar coat things because I think the world has enough sugar to go around. But I think it is really, really important for people to kind of have somebody to journey with them, to touch the harder things in life and not be left alone. So I think that’s, that’s really how I approach leadership. I also approach it in a way that is a servant centered. So what am I here to do for you? How can I make your career better? How can I make this organization better? How can I make you better? And so I don’t think about what can you do for me, but it’s like, what can I do for you so that you can be your best self?

Alicia :
Wow, that’s amazing. And you know, one of the things that I like about something that you talked about is getting people to understand failure. We often look at failure as you know, it’s a failure, there’s nothing I can do. No that is where you learn the most. And what I can recall a little bit synergy from earlier, I listened to Pastor Creflo Dollar. And that is sometimes often when you get your greatest breakthrough, your greatest learning moments, or greatest lessons learned. And so what I would like to ask your question, how do you get people to understand how they need to find that faith or that, or that passion and that moment of when they think they failed?

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Yeah. I think it’s important to allow them, the grace and the space to feel, feel sad, to feel defeated. Too often, we want people to move quickly to a place of being okay. I want you to sit with it a little bit longer and so then, and reflect upon it. And then let’s begin to unpack it and talk about what, why do you consider it a failure? And the more you engage people in the conversation of why they thought it was a failure, they began to realize it wasn’t really a failure, it was a teaching moment. I really hate that word or phrase teaching moment, but it really was. I’ll give you an example. I use my children as examples because I paid for them to be everywhere they are in their life. I paid for it so I get to use it.

Alicia :
Absolutely.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
You all my intellectual capital. My son, youngest son was I think about 10. He was playing baseball. And he said to me, after, after practice or after a game, he said, “I, he said, I wasn’t really good was I, mommy.” I go, “No, you sucked.” And if I, if I can say that on the podcast.

Alicia :
Yes.

Eileen:
Absolutely. Yes you can. Yes.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
But then I said, because one acknowledging, he acknowledged that he wasn’t performing well, I didn’t leave him right there. I said, “So tell me why you feel this way.” Well, he named the specific skills that he was not exhibiting in terms of someone who is proficient at the sport. And so then I asked the question, “Do you want to be good at this?” So that’s the question we ask people when they fail, yes, there isn’t a time where we just kind of process and we talk tactically about what I did wrong and I should have done this. The real question is, do you want to be better at it? Right? And if you do, now, what did we learn from this failure? So he said to me, “No, I really don’t want to do this.” And I said, “Good. Now I’m going to spend my good times doing something else.”

Dr. Valerie Parker:
My other son who plays basketball and me, and I’m a former, no I’m a, I currently play bass-, I still play basketball even now. They lost a game. It was just horrible. We told the kid don’t go out and foul. Just please don’t go out and foul anybody. They were up. Don’t go. It’s real simple. Don’t foul. What do you think he did as soon as he got out there? Of course, are you kidding me, right? And they lost. So in that locker room, they all sat in quietness after they had to separate the kid who fouled from everybody else. And he said after we sat, right, allowing him time to process, allowing him time to think about this, I didn’t pressure him on what do you think went wrong? What could, what could have been done differently? I said, “Where do you want to go from here?” And he said, “I want to go back in the gym and I want to be better. And I want to help my team to be better.”

Dr. Valerie Parker:
So part of our responsibilities as leaders is to nurture that self-reflection and, and also in the nurturing, the self-reflection, we allow people to be something different than maybe they set out to be. If you want to be a CEO and somewhere along the journey, whether you fail at something or whether you come to the realization that this really isn’t what I want to do, it really is okay to press pause, reflect, what did I learn from this? What can I carry someplace else? And I think we don’t do enough contemplation. We don’t do enough self-reflection and we don’t give ourselves enough grace to say, “Yep, I did that for a while. I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Eileen:
Well, and when I heard earlier and you know, Alicia and I have talked, it’s either a blessing or a lesson, right? Just, just move forward. And that’s what you said. But you said grace in the space and your story about letting the person the young man playing basketball, think on his own, how would you define grace in the space and how do you support that as a leader? I mean, is that what you meant by having him sit there or share another time when you did that? Because I don’t personally, I know I don’t do it enough and we don’t speak about grace enough.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Yeah. I think because we’re required to just go and get things done. Right? And so grace and space simply sitting, sitting with the discomfort, just sitting, sitting with the discomfort in a contemplative way, what went wrong? You don’t have to talk out loud. You don’t have to analyze it, but just sitting and sitting with that employee, right? Sitting with that basketball player, sitting with that colleague, I work here at the Greater Chicago Food Depository. And I have a colleague who I really enjoy doing that with. She will come and she’ll ruminate about how, where she thinks her failings were. And I’ll just sit. And she’ll say, everybody calls me by my last name. She goes, “Parker. You’re not saying anything.” I’m not, am I right? But we’re so, we’re so conditioned to, to help people move along. There’s time for reflection. There’s time to actually sit with the discomfort.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
I learned that in seminary from one of my favorite professors, who’s a pastoral care professor. And I had just maybe six years, six or seven years previous had finished my studies at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Those are totally different approaches to learning.

Alicia :
Yes.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Totally different. And so at Booth, it was go, go, go, learn, learn, learn, contribute.

Alicia :
Yes, it is.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Right? In seminary, it reflects. And so as he gave us something to consider, I wish your viewers could see me. He went, he’s also a psychologist. So he would offer something for us to reflect upon. And then there was this I’m going to do it for your audience. And then there was this.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
And so that silence, right?

Alicia :
Wow.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
And so I’m looking around thinking, wait a minute, is this what, I’m the store for, for the next nine weeks? I can’t do this. But it was, it was a skill set, but he taught us to sit with the discomfort of whatever he asked you to reflect upon. I get up often and take walks around our building to do that. What, what do I need to think about? How do I approach an employee who I would rather just put out the door, right? How do I approach congregants who are demanding of us? How do I approach folks in the community who are struggling, who are suffering, right? How, how do I approach that? I need to pause and I need to be able to sit with the discomfort of whatever it is they’re going through.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
And part of that discomfort is listening to their story and listening, not with an ear to jump in and provide direction, but listening with an ear to provide a place of solace and compassion so that they can process it themselves. So that then maybe the next time we’re together, we can sit and we can unpack it and talk about it.

Alicia :
Wow. You know, so I hear it. You know, I hear so much out of that and I’m smiling, you know? Absolutely. The listeners can’t see it. And what I heard you say is really helpful because you are correct. We do want to rush people along to get them to figure out, okay, that’s that now? Okay. Move on. But I like the part you say, sit and let them think and to me, one of our values I’m looking at is at that moment of sitting, do you encourage, or do you think that the people are starting to find that inner strength or do, what values do you think that that particular individual, when you say, “Hey, sit in silence for a moment”, it reflects on whatever that is that happened. Is that a moment where some of these values would come up like courage or challenging themselves to be better or understanding?

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Yeah. Well, for those who have a faith tradition or a sense of spirituality, it causes you to pause and think outside of yourself and to engage your tradition so that you have something else to lean on besides yourself. I think of the other of your values that it causes us to do when we sit in with the discomfort is trust. If the person is sitting with you and willing to journey with you through your difficult times, because we talk about difficult times as being all of those things that we understand, death, disease, loss of employment, by what people sometimes internalize is a sense of failure. And they may not trust enough people to be able to share. And so if you’re willing to show somebody that you can sit and listen and ask questions that go to, how do I, how, how can I encourage you?

Dr. Valerie Parker:
How can I help you get back that dignity that you feel like you’ve lost? How can I make sense of what seems unfair to you? You can’t know how to move forward in the dialogue with them without listening and without considering what you’re thinking about as well as you sit with them. And so, yeah. So when I think about your values, those are some of the cause I actually circled them. Trust is, is really important to me because remember I started out by saying I’m really direct. And people won’t receive that. If they believe that they can’t trust you. If they believe that they can trust you and that you hold their heart in a crucible, right? And their emotions and their thoughts and their feelings in a crucible, they won’t open up to you no matter how long you sit in that quiet. Right?

Dr. Valerie Parker:
And so I think that’s where my pastoral sensibilities are integrated with my secular work sensibilities.

Alicia :
Yes.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Because ultimately at the end of the day, no matter what your tradition is, and I don’t impose it on anyone, we still want to be treated with dignity. We still want to know that we can trust the people with our failings. Sure. I can trust you when I’m doing well. Everybody can, but as soon as I make a mistake, have you abandoned me? Have you thoughtless of me? And, and have you walked away from me, not trying to help me understand how to process this myself? This happened to me many, many years ago in my career when I first came the Vice President of Labor Relations for, when I became the Vice President of Labor Relations for an organization, a multi, a multi conglomerate organization. It was my first, first few weeks. And I was, no I was Director of Labor, the Director of Labor at this organization. And we were in a labor dispute. I had never been involved in a labor dispute. I’ve had other elements of my labor career checked off, but not a labor dispute.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
And so here I am sitting in my Chicago office where the rest of my team is in Houston, working on this labor dispute. Our boss, who was the Vice President of Human Resources was out of the country. And so I think I’m helping them solve some of these problems in this dispute, by sitting in my office. The Vice President of the Business Unit, who I knew from working there previously called me. And I tell you if he didn’t read me out, he did. And he said, “You know, what are you doing in Chicago? You should, you should be in Houston. I’m really disappointed in you. I thought better of you.”

Dr. Valerie Parker:
And I thought, Oh my God, what is the matter with him? But when my boss came back, she explained to me the importance of being in a community with people that you’re working with explained to me that they hired me because they knew that I have the capacity, the technical ability, and the skillset to do this role. And so she took that time to sit with me in what was a place where I felt humiliated. I felt devalued. And so ultimately I got on with that Business Unit Vice President, but it took me a long time. And so while she may have had the same feelings, she sat with it long enough to allow me to allow my feelings to be unpacked and then gave me some critical feedback and some direction and continue to journey with me throughout my career.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
When an opening for Vice President of HR role came open, it wasn’t with that organization. It was with another organization and she emailed me the job spec and said, “You are now ready.” That opportunity was the readiness that I needed in my career. And I can attribute that to the reason why I’m here right now. And so that’s the importance of sitting with people and giving some measure of trust, even in their failings.

Eileen:
Wow. That’s a great story. Really great story. Thank you so much for sharing that. So the one item that I heard also is about listening. And as you said, coming from Booth, going to where you are now, and through the divinity school, listening is so important today, more than ever. And as a skill that myself and others I view can always grow, can always grow. So tell us a little bit about how you practice that skill because it’s of utmost importance for building trust, vulnerability. And as you say, grace.

Alicia :
Yeah.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
It is a hard skill. You have to be intentional about why you’re listening. I have a mantra, I stole it from Hamilton. I’m not going to lie. There’s a line that says, “Talk less, smile more. Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you are for.” Now the second half of that, I would, I would set over here, but the talk less smile, more piece I think is really important because as you practice talking less, people by their very nature, talk more and you begin to learn things about people that you otherwise wouldn’t know. And so they begin to give you the blueprint or the pathway on how to engage them, or what their problems are, what their fears are, their concerns or their hopes and their dreams. If we just stopped talking, just stop talking, they’ll tell you they’ll eventually tell you. I also learned that in sports.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
When you play basketball, there’s not a lot of talking. You do the talking on the sidelines, you get your instructions. And there’s one person usually out there talking. So you have to listen. It is the, it’s the point guard. The point guard is running the place. So if you’re out there doing all this talking, you are not where you’re supposed to be. And then you talked to by the coach, right? If you’re out there talking, you’re not, you’re not listening to the direction of the point guard. You’re not listening. And if you’re not looking and listening, you’re not hearing what the other players on the D the, on the opposing side are doing. So for me, sport is a great place to practice listening. Whether you’re listening to your coach, whether you’re listening to your teammates, and then you implement that, which they, which they suggest, or which they coach you to do. And then there’s time to come back later on to have a discussion about it.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
But I promise you while you’re playing. I mean, yeah, there is talking during the game. That’s usually just kind of like chopping it up with the players, kind of trying to get in their heads, but there’s not a lot of conversational discussions, right? There’s not a lot of conversational discussion happening, on the court. There’s at heard it, I understand it in the huddle. I’m going to ask my questions. I’m going to listen to the coach. I’m going to listen to the point guard. Now I’m going to go out and execute. And if I have an additional question, I’m not talking to the point guard, whether they’re trying to run the place, “Hey, Hey, look you know, we were over the-.” No, that’s not happening. Right. So, so sports is also a good avenue for discipline, right?

Alicia :
Yes.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Discipline in your work life. When people ask me, “Hey, can I meet with you?” I ask them, “Okay, what’s the topic?” And especially if it’s their meeting when they come, they go and they’re sitting with me again, sitting with the discomfort though. So they’re sitting with me as if I’m supposed to start the meeting. And so I look at them, “I go, this is your meeting.” And I don’t do any talking. And they go, “Ah, am I talking too much?” Do you know what I say? “Nope. You’re not.” Because sometimes when somebody says, am I talking too much? Oh, that’s my time to get in because they feel like they’re talking too much, but no, you’re not. And then when I get to the end, I go, so let me make sure I understand this. And I walked back through them and they go, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.” “Well, can I ask a few questions?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Because now I have enough information I’m in, I’ve built a little bit of trust because I’ve listened to them. I’ve replayed play back what I’ve heard, which says I am listening to them.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
So there’s a couple of different ways, you know? And if people who don’t maybe work from home or people who may not be in sports, you can do it. Even with your family. If you have people in the household, my son says I cut them off too much. And I go, no, I don’t, but I do. So listen to the feedback that they give you if your partner or your children or any other relative is living in the house. And they say, “You’re not listening.” That is now the moment for you to say, “I’m going to practice intentional listening.” It’ll throw them off their square for a minute because they’ll be like.

Eileen:
That is a great line.

Alicia :
Yes, it is. Yes. You know, and this is great because one of the things in my meditation time and talking, and I, and the scripture came to mind this week, or last week is be slow to speak quickly to listen. And so I’m smiling, listen to like, I want to practice that more and just, just be in tune it’s, it’s, Hey, it’s hard. I love talking and for my nephews and stuff, cause I’m always mentoring them and I’m, I’m so fast to talk and you know, I’m like, let me start listening more to this young man, even though it’s a little challenge there, but.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Or ask them a question about something that they know they love to talk about. So when I really want to get my younger son who doesn’t talk a lot to talk, I’ll go, “Hey,” he, he played professional basketball in Germany. I’ll go, “Hey, tell me about this aspect of the German culture.” And he’ll start talking and I don’t want to interrupt because he’s talking about something that he’s enjoying. So, that gives me the time to practice that skill of listening.

Alicia :
Amazing.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Dr. Alicia, you’re right. Because sometimes, you know, but be careful what you ask for because cause sometimes they’ll go on and on and on. You’re like, oh my God, stop talking. But you can’t, you can’t jump in and tell him, stop talking, right?

Alicia :
Right. Right.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
So make sure you’re ready to listen.

Alicia :
Exactly. So time flies so fast when you are having fun. What would be some words of wisdom that you will leave with our listeners? You have said a lot of great information. I mean, I’ve been taking notes, but what are some words of wisdom you’d like to leave with everyone?

Dr. Valerie Parker:
I think if people understand and that this is going to sound odd, that you will fail, but it’s really important what you do with it and who you surround yourself with, who can help pick you up from that, as we say, in the black church, the muck and the mire of your failure to ensure that you surround yourselves with people who will not affirm your failings in terms of marginalizing you or minimizing you. But people who will listen to your failures, maybe agree that there’s an opportunity here, but then it’s those same folks who will say, but I’ll journey with you. That’s important because you cannot get up from out of the muck and the mire by yourself. Sometimes, sometimes we’re so far down in our own disappointment with ourselves that we need people who are willing to sit with us. So if you cannot identify anybody in your life who is willing to sit with the discomfort with you, find that person, because you’re going to have some discomfort in life.

Eileen:
Yeah. I agree. It’s like sometimes people if they don’t have anybody that can do that, their light is dimmed. They need to find somebody, there is someone out there to connect to, to do that.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Eileen:
So I can’t, I can’t thank you enough.

Alicia :
Yes.

Eileen:
For all this conversation we had today. It was so enlightening, the stories, the analogies, you know.

Alicia :
I love the part with the sports connection.

Eileen:
Me too.

Alicia :
It’s just, you know and we work out a lot. So yes, I love it.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
Everything is sports. You know, there’s a shirt we wear called a ball is life. Cause we’re basketball players. But I think sports are life. I think he is. ESPN has something or commercial that talks about sports or life. There are so many life lessons in it.

Alicia :
Yes. Yes. Working in a team. Leadership just, yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. A lot.

Dr. Valerie Parker:
And I’ll leave you with this. I’m taking up tennis now because the stupid gyms are closed. And I was on the tennis court with my coach and the tennis ball from it, the court overcame rolling into my thing. And the young lady said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She goes, I’m such a bad player.” And I was like, “Oh no no, you don’t get to talk about yourself like that.” Right. So even taking the gun to tell somebody else, no, no, no. That’s why you’re out here practicing. So you’re not a skilled player yet, but you’re not a bad player. Do you know? So even listening, right. Listening to what people say. So that even in just that moment of opportunity, you have an opportunity quickly to reaffirm their humanity when otherwise they would walk off that court and think I don’t, I’m not, I’m a bad player. Nope. You’re all. We’re all out here practicing.

Alicia :
Yes.

Eileen:
Thank you for joining us on the Soul of a Leader Podcast. We are uniting 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 souofaleader.com. Thank you for listening.