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Kanina Blanchard, Assistant Professor of Management Communications and General Management at the Ivey Business School, discusses her Sophia Tannis case series. The case series offers students real world prompts to learn about women in leadership, gender, and cultural issues related to leadership, decision making during change and transition, and more.
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Hey, I'm at Quinn. Thanks for joining us for decision point from Ivy Publishing at the Ivy Business School. Today we sit down with Canina Blanchard, assistant professor of Management and Communications and general management at the Ivy Business School. She takes us through her Sophia Tannis K series in this episode. The cases offer students real world prompts to learn about women and leadership, gender and cultural issues related to leadership, decisionmaking during change and transition and more. Professor Blanchard has extensive experience working with international business, the Public Service, nonprofit and consulting. Having lived and worked in for continents, she is recognized for her ability to adapt, lead teams and projects and navigate complexities across various sectors, geographies and cultures. Enjoy CANINA. Thanks so much for joining us today. I'm looking forward to this conversation, as we've had many conversations about, you know, how classrooms are changing, how cases are changing, so I'm looking forward to this. Maybe start with a little bit about yourself, the your background, what brought you to Ivy and what you're currently up to at the Ivy Business School. Well, why didn't I take that in reverse order? Just to just to have fun. So I am thrilled I'm in the classroom, although it's a virtual classroom right now, focusing on our HBA's and really trying to create a fantastic environment for them as students, kind of in the one thousand nine hundred and twenty one age group, tailoring this experience so it's as dynamic and interactive and helpful for them as they go out into the world of work, which today is a virtual world of work. So helping them get comfortable with the space that is virtual, themselves on camera, which is unnerving even for some of us who went through journalism school. I came off of a summer of being able to work with the NBA students. So again, a very different world they are. They are the ones who kind of transitioned in both from an education and a work perspective to this new dynamic and looking forward to teaching some new classes, new courses on responsibility and global management come January. As always, also looking at writing cases and engaging with colleagues. Particularly Proud of working with Alison Conrad and Karen McMillan on the breaking the silence case. So no shortage of things to do, but happy and excited to be able to do them. With all that going on, cases in the works. So there's a very busy, busy time for you. And what was your role before joining IV? Well, you know I'm going to date myself, but now most of my background has been spent in the industry. So I spent twenty years with a Dow Chemical Company, having left as the global director of issues prices management. So really looking and working on both dealing with significant legacy issues, from dioxin to Asian Orange and napalm to emerging issues around BPA. And another challenge is from an environmental and human health standpoint. I then really for personal reasons, we moved to London and, although an opportunity to move again, decided to stay in London and put roots down here. So really engaged much more heavily since about two thousand and nine in consulting, having worked in a leadership role in the Ministry of the environment on various environmental and human health issues, cancer cluster issues in the region, as well as on the regulatory side, working with greenhouses and other major initiatives, and in agriculture as well as as the environment, and then over time recognizing as my husband has said to me. As said to me back around two thousand and thirteen, two thousand and fourteen, he said he's never seen me happier than when I'm in a in a class. True. So actually began as a mature student to do my masters in two thousand and fourteen and then in two thousand and sixteen started my PhD. Always Fun to freak out other students when you walk in and they think you're the professor and you're actually a student. It's actually been a great experience. Teaching and being a student is eye opening and really valuables, though, have sort of come over time to Ivy, having started guest lecturing in around two thousand and ten, working with the Ivy Institute for leadership around the same time, mentoring and coaching students, and then slowly more and more into teaching since about two thousand and fifteen, and I think all those experiences really lead to some interesting perspectives and also different skills, in the case writing. So let's let's talk a little bit about that, because I know you've got cases in the works and of published a number of cases. But let's talk about Sophia Tannis for a second. If you don't mind, could you talk about the dilemma that is woven throughout this two part case series? Sure so. I've written actually three cases that focus on Sophia Tannis. So I think the one that you're referring to is around life choices. That's right, which is actually the the last Sophia Tannis case that I wrote, or maybe it's the second last. I can't even remember. Now you can get all that out. But in terms of the life, the life choices case, you know, the inspiration for these cases really came from year's guest lecturing at Ivy, where students would be asking questions around you know, what is it like to how was it to be a woman in the oil and gas industry? How did you manage moving? How did you manage being a parent and a partner and moving? And so life choices really stands out of many of the the questions I was asked by students about what was it like to be a dual career working internationally, moving every every eighteen months to three years. So that's the genesis of that particular case. was really the interest of students and even more today, with dual careers being very much a reality and so that's the genesis of that particular case series. And what was your goal or what was the thing that you thought this is so important for students to think about when reflecting back, about this intersection of personal and professional decisionmaking, because so often we hear all yours are work matt or home mat but that's not really the reality. Talk, talk to us a little bit about how you thought about this interst section and what we are hoping the students walk through. Yeah, for sure. Well, what I heard from the students was a deep interest in terms of how how did I as one individual, how do professionals balance professional and personal life? And so, you know, for me it was I came at writing the case not in terms of a binary of right or wrong or giving anybody answers, but more from sharing the story of, you know, experiences had and allowing that to be a space where conversation could be opened up. And so the intention was this. This isn't a this isn't a dynamic that only happens on gray's anatomy or some television show. This is what people navigate every yeah in their own lives. And it's so happened that my husband and I navigated these challenges, and so it was sharing part of that story in one particular time in our professional career and development, and putting that story out there with the intention that it would open the door for students to interrogate their own lived histories to consider the dynamics of both personal ambition and goals. We live in such a neoliberal world today, right. There's so much that we focus on the individual, especially when we're young, and then we develop partnerships and we develop partners in our life and how do we sort of juxtapose different interests and needs? And so put the story out there and hoping that students would engage enthusiastically, and I think that's really what's happened, based on the feedback I get from people who continue to use this case. And so, of course, in this particular situation, gender is affecting that the choices in the decisionmaking producess. How do you have students consider this? How do you prep them for this discussion? How do you walk them through it in the classroom? Well, I think that there are so many dimensions that we face and and for sure in the Sofia Tannis theories there is the issue of gender because the protagonist is a biracial woman. But there are so many other dimensions to it. There's lived experience, there's nationality, there's, you know, there's the history of, you know, having a partner and actually, in this case, being the woman who is the the lead in the family for a period of time in terms of following career. So there's just lots of dimensions in the Sofia can at tennis series and I think the students themselves they recognize it, they pick up because they're living it. You know, there are young women men who are in relationships that have hopes and dreams. There are young men who have their own and each trying to determine when do I put the foot my foot forward, when do you push? When do you say, you know, whose career is is more important? There there are partners whose, you know, careers could be taking one person in one part of the country and another and another. It could be across departments or functions within a company themselves right being dual careers in the same company in the same city, and so I think it's very relevant to them and what I hope is the students, the students identify the dimensions that are most important to them and once they relate to those dimensions, they take it up with enthusiasm. I'm trying to put myself in seat in the class and you've there's many different challenges, opportunities, things that are presented in the case. You mentioned gender just being one. When you're in front of a classroom of say, thirty to forty students and you're asking them to walk through their own personal experience, how do you do that in the classroom? Is it pre work that happens? Is it a reading that you get get the juices flying? Because I'm just I'm trying to see how for those that are picking up the case and wanting to use it, or the best way for them to get the students engaged, to get them thinking about some of these challenging topics. So I think we start with, you know, what are the challenges that we're trying to cover in class right? What are the issues? What are the dynamics were trying to cover? So I think that there is so much happening in the world. I love to try to connect a case to something that's happening in the real world, topics that are that are currently underway and there are so many topics, some contentious, some not, but you know we see down South discussion about Rowe versus weight. You know that is something that is real, that is back in the news media. Then to bring the case in, as you know, here is a topic of women in business and you know these debates are going to continue. So let's unpack this a little bit in the context of perhaps laws changing or regulations changing or, you know, within the stories that are covered in in the popular media, or perhaps research that's just come out about women at work. I think what's really interesting in today's world is we see the disproportionate impact that covid has had on women in the workforce. There is a perfect tie and a place to start with. You know this is not a new issue, so let's look at some lived experiences and try to tie both the story in the case with the story in the media, with the story of students that are trying to unpack and figure out how they might want to approach these topics. And that's so relevant for this case. But I could see that working with so many cases in it is a really great tip and advice for the listeners to think how do I bring this rate to the home of the student. Well, how do I make it relevant for for their personal experience? I love that idea of looking in the news and finding something and starting the conversation, conversation that way. So CANINA. I know that this is a series of cases and what I think is really cool is that it follows the protagonist through a number of situations that in before hopping on here, we were talking about how these were born out of discussions that you had in the classroom. Can you walk us through each one of these titles and talk a little bit about the situation that protagonist is in? Absolutely, so that you know the first case, the and what ended up being a series. That was not the intent going into it, but the first case really developed out of quite students asking questions about, Oh, you, you were a woman in oil and gas and you moved around and you you went cross you know, you went to Europe and you took on these rules, and so the first case really developed out of guest lectures where students would ask me these questions. So the first case, European transfer, really focuses on the realities of moving cultures, moving countries, moving businesses, moving geography, moving and recognizing different hierarchies, languages, business norms and different geography. So that's really where the first case developed, out of a protagonist who was doing well in an organization that got the opportunity for taking a job which was risky, and I think that you know, in hindsight, as a as the protagonist took these jobs, didn't realize what was happening in their own career, because what was happening is is authors such as Ryan and Haslam wrote about this idea of the glass cliff and how women often get these opportunities to take these jobs that, perhaps you know, blend both competencies but also lots of expectations in terms of being able to handle conflict and handle challenges in the workplace, and so this case sort of brought the idea of the glass cliff to life. Here is this tremendous into opportunity. You just now have to work across a matrix to organization, ballads business needs with geographic needs, with cultural needs, and so that case was really taken up by a lot of students who are interested in so excited about working internationally and hopefully shed light on both the opportunities the enthusiasm that challenges but also the risks and also some of the challenges that go with that. And then what spawned out of that in classroom discussions. Wow, when I was asked a guest lecture as a surprise guest who is actually the writer of the case, students started saying, oh my Gosh, you were married when that happened, you had kids when that happened. How does that how do you manage or how does this happen that you deal with the personal and the professional? And that really spawned this second case, which was the life choices a and B case, which was really as a response to what students were asking. And what I never want to do in writing these cases or teaching these cases is day to students there is an answer. What it is is bringing forward a lived reality, a lived experience in the hopes that grounded and giving students both theory and materials to consider how to analyze the case, that they can bring themselves in to the case, have some tools to help them make sense of it and then ask questions, because I don't think there is a binary it's not a question of is this right or wrong, or what the right way it is understanding the complexities that you face. How can you work through this, both with the help of mentors and having the value of a network, as well as having some grounded academic research and work to help you realize that there are ways that you can think through it and, quite honestly, do a better job then I did as a woman in business at the time trying to mock my way through, because I truly believe when you give students the opportunity to think through and the tools to analyze in terms of how they might make decisions, they're going to do a better job and I'm amazed at what the students come up with in the classroom. And what about the what about the third, the third in the series that we've got, because it was really cool listening to how this came up in this kind of idea of a zero checklist? Yeah, absolutely, so, after writing the life choices. I'd love to tell you a quick story, though, about the life choices, if I can. I had some students come to me and sort of shockingly say that, can you know we did this case and the the professor had is the final part of this case, a decision. So what decision? And they said well, they asked us to decide whether you or your spouse was the better partner, and I sort of sad there and I realized, you know, that was never the intent of writing the case that someone would actually vote on who was the better spouse. To be honest, without a question, they voted that my spouse was the better partner and they and they told me that and and actually I agree with that wholeheartedly. But I think that what I learned from that was how important the teaching note is and also realizing that when you put a case out there and you share lived experience, you're never too sure what's going to happen with that when it's in the public realm. So that was sort of a fun story, but it also has made me a lot more conscious about the importance of the of the teaching notes and not only offering ideas about what can be in a teaching note for perhaps also, you know, what we might want to avoid and what I think happens a lot with cases that deal with topics that you know, fall into the EDI space. There is this desire to have buyinaries, good and bad, right or wrong, and so I think I've learned in writing cases to be as explicit and clear and at least and even share what your hopes are and aren't where the case and the discussion doesn't go. So that would be a learning that came out of that case. And then to move forward. How did we get to number three? Well, in that in talking about life choices, students started asking about well, I must have gotten really good at dealing with these situations, and they started asking about checklists. Okay, well, what would you do when you accept a foreign assignment? And that really led to Lennimia and I writing about you know that there is no such thing as business as usual when we're working in a dynamic, disruptive, a global environment. What we have are our experiences that we can draw upon. But one of the biggest mistakes we make is thinking that we can reduce the crucial role of working in a diverse world with with some myth that we could have a checklist, if we click off these five things, that we will get it right, because I think what the protagonist in not business as usual learns is that the greatest chance to fail and fall down a trap or a rabbit hole is to think that there is some checklist or that just because you've been successful and the past that you will be successful in the future, and that's where that case really came from. I love that you walked us through this. There's this so many learnings there. I want to repeat a couple. First of all, there's no right answer and I think that is so important for case authors and and you know, and students as they are going into the classroom, to to to tackle these challenges that sometimes we fall into the habit of there's got to be a right answer. Well, in life and in business, the nuance and and the rigor and the process really is the learning. So I love that you mentioned that. I also like that you didn't try to jam all of these separate situations and questions into one case. I really like that you that you left each as independent cases that would stand on their own and walk the reader through it. I think that's a great learning because you know, as you know, attention span shrank and it's up time and the ways that cases are being used differ so, so greatly. You know, that would be such a huge case and it wouldn't do justice to the to the issues that you're trying to tackle. I love that you've made those separate. And finally, you know your source of inspiration for where you came up with these ideas. We're often asked, how do you think about where? How do I know what to write about? How do I find this topic for a case? We've heard people say is from a story in the newspaper. I had somebody send me today one about a story in the newspaper that would make a great case. But I love that it's come from your lived experience and from your classroom, from the students questions, because you know, if you can do a great job of that case, you know that's going to be so valuable for the students. So I just love that that you shared that with us. In hindsight, having walked through this and built you know, you had the idea for one case and it built out. What advice would you offered a case writers that are looking at, you know, a number of different issues or situations and, moreover, what advice do you have for a case writer that's maybe trying to cover some similarly challenging situations? How did you go about right at? You already mentioned not coming up with one, you know, binary type of an answer to the challenge. Anything else? So I really believe, and having had my graduate work in the Faculty of Education and I am in a true believer in inactive learning and in education, in adult education that's driven by the needs in the interests of the students. And I think that where we need to start is recognize the challenges our audiences having and then draw from the multiplicity of places where that we can pull together learning. And some of that might be from research, it could be from work that's being done, books, articles, and it does come from lived experience. So I think that one of our opportunities is to recognize some people say right that every human issue Shakespeare wrote about. Right. So, if you just read Shakespeare, you've read every story that's ever been told, because I think some things are just very, very you know that they're shared, their shared challenges. You know, in today's world, when we talk about so for example in the Sofia tennis case in life choices, it's a female protagonist with a male partner. But in today's world, you know we can change that protagonist. The THEEA Tannis can be Sam tennis. The challenges of balancing work and home life is not only about a female in a male partner and when we look at and we bring these diverse lenses into our cases, we have the opportunity to consider. Boy, how much more richness there is because we've got students engaging with these cases that may also have other layers of intersectionality. All right, there could be able as and there could be agesm there could be ends. So I think these are the challenges people have. And how can we bring crass the life and then buttress it with research and theory and knowledge. So what students realize is they're not alone in facing these challenges. Number One, too, that if we can create safe spaces where we can address an openly engage in conversation about these very human challenges. Three, that we can look at these challenges in a variety of different ways that span the lenses of Edi, that we don't have to just have female and male we don't just have to be looking at going to Europe or anyone geography and and try to broaden how we look at these challenges and encourage our students to bring these to life within their own contexts. So what would happen if Sophia Tannis in this situation and not been in Brussels but had been in Beijing and give the students the opportunity to think about and share with their class well these would you know, this might never have happened in this Chinese context, or it would have happened so differently if this had happened in Kuwait. And so open up the engagement. So it's not just so about about getting through a case in a classroom, it is about opening up the space in this case to be able to explore the knowledge of the students in the classroom. To me, that is so exciting and I feel like every time we're teaching a case we can learn as much from one another and from the students as we do as the professor sitting in the front of that class. And this a case can be the start of the conversation, which is which is really cool to think about. Canina, I can't couldn't have said it any better than what you just said and I want to thank you for the you know, the efforts that you're making with the cases that you have written in. There's a number that we've released, but I do have to ask you mentioned that you've got a couple cases in the works. What what's what's on the side of your desk right now. What are you what are you working on? Well, I guess I'm most excited about recently working with Alison Conrad and Karen McMillan on breaking the silence, because it is at the core of what I believe as a professional, as an academic, as a researcher, that it all starts with our ability to to talk, talk about these topics, and so I'm thrilled to see that being used and I want to thank I've you publishing. I Know Alison and Karen Field Same Way. Making this making that case available for free is a way I think of US sharing our passion. So thank you for that. Also have a couple of cases on the on the go with female leaders, female protagonists in the COVID era and how they have navigated some challenges and bringing out various dimensions of their lived experience over the last eight months of trying to move and change organizations in the midst of the kind of disruption and unprecedented times we've had. So there's a couple in the works, but that's the general direction and and the theme very much is around women and Leadership Edi as well as responsible leadership, which is my own passion and working on some publications that will focus on that and finally, some work around leadership communication competencies and how do we help leaders bring their best self forward by again buttressing the work of leader character, which is a hallmark of the Ivy Institute for leadership, and thrilled to be working with the institute, as well as other colleeagues like Mary wheel in bringing some articles on that topic and I've had a little sneak peek into some of these. I know we've chatted briefly about them. Where can people go to follow you to find out more information on on the work that you're doing? As at Linkedin, and do you have instagram? But where we're to direct people to to go to find out more and to follow along with the great work you're doing? Well, I guess I would say Linkedin. I'm definitely accessible, available and and visible on Linkedin and also through the Ivy, Ivy website and the we're wonderful work that Ivy's doing and then, of course, for those listeners that want to know more, also check out the leadership institute at I because there's a lot of really great work they've brought into many great speakers to the Ivy Community, which is furthering the conversation, which is really important. Knina, thank you very much for joining us today and for your continued work. And, on a personal note, you've helped me out in a lot of ways as we've gone through coronavirus and just bouncing ideas off of each other. So I want to thank you very much for for being available and helping as much as you had. Thank thanks so much. Question. If you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe to Decision Point on spotify or wherever you listen. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to cases, resources and more. have any feedback, send us an email at cases at IV DOT SA.