Feature

Nurturing character

A self-professed contrarian, Bobby Fong defied stereotypes to follow an uncharted path to the presidency of Butler University. There, he led the school on a rediscovery of its roots and, like Kiwanis, installed leadership and character development at the core of its strategic plan. Kiwanis International CEO Rob Parker recently met with Bobby, a fellow member of the Indianapolis Kiwanis club, to discuss leadership, education, Kiwanis. And contrarian saints.

Bobby Fong, President, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana

Rob Parker (RP): As I recall, you grew up on the west coast of the United States. That had to be an interesting culture clash for your parents who were both born in China.

Bobby Fong (BF): I was born and raised in Chinatown in Oakland, California, and didn’t learn to speak English until I was in kindergarten. Chinese really was my first language even though I was born in the US. There was always this counterbalance of Chinese culture and values in equipoise with what I was learning in school and what I was encountering. I have a great admiration for individualism, for the idea of initiative, for the free market both in East and West. Even though the basis of laws may be different, the idea of justice is still important, and fair dealing was a constant. But I find myself trying to think about what it means to be an individual versus what my part is in a community.

I’m a contrarian. I went into (the study of) English when most people think Asians should be better at math and science. I’m a university president, and right now, there are very few Asian presidents at colleges and universities in the US. So, this has been an unexpected life even for me. But it has been a combination of both West and East, offering opportunities and shaping my values.

RP: Do you think your background as a Chinese-American has shaped your view of leadership?

BF: I think so. I’m enough of an Oriental to know that however inefficient a system is, it can always be worse. A classic question in comparative cultures is to ask what would be a greater fear for you: tyranny or anarchy? If you ask a Westerner, the answer more likely will be tyranny. They don’t want somebody telling them what to do. If you ask an Asian, the answer would be anarchy, because we have experienced that when there’s nobody in control, life can be nasty, brutish, and short. Thomas Hobbes knew that three centuries ago.

RP: We just did a survey of our clubs in Asia, where 78 percent of the Asian respondents said leadership development was really important to them. Does that surprise you?

BF: There is a great sense of community in Asian culture. In the Confucius context, you always are responsible to and for someone. You cannot be a person for yourself. In general, Asians feel there are bonds that connect you to communities of work, of family, of town, ultimately of country, and those connections mean you have to acknowledge those bonds and, if possible, aspire to be part of the leadership that strengthens all those institutions.

RP: I was intrigued when I saw you still meet with your students once a week.

BF: I believe it’s not only what happens in the classroom; it’s those life-changing conversations that potentially makes the difference.

RP: Talk to me about that.

BF: When one is dealing with 18- to 22-year-olds, this is a time when their imagination for what is possible for themselves is changing. Some of them are hitting walls, and some of them are just having a love for a subject unexpectedly blossom.

We are here not only to teach skills for a job. We’re here to enable students to have a sense of themselves and how they want to behave in the world. That gets into character formation and leadership, but it has to begin with the individual students doing the self examination of which Socrates spoke: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” We’re here to help our students examine their lives. And the process may be something they learned in their classroom, but the processing takes place in these conversations.

At Berea College, we were driving a young nursing student to church when my wife just said to her: “You’re such a bright kid. Why didn’t you want to be a doctor? It stumped her cold. She said, “I never thought about that before.” Today, she’s a physician. By the same token, I once said to another nursing student: “Why don’t you take up med school?” And I got my ears torn off in a 10-minute lecture. She said: “I’m going to be the best nurse I know how.” And a few years ago, she was voted the nurse of the year in the state of Kentucky.

It is not the same dream for everybody. … But in both cases, those were conversations that indicated to me how a sense of vocation—of just frank  talking—can come out of those conversations.

RP: Susan Scott wrote a book called Fierce Conversations with the idea of having direct and bold conversations. I remember her quoting that while no single conversation will necessarily change a life or a marriage or whatever, it can. It sounds like those are the kind of conversations you’re talking about.

BF: In the world of higher education, we have to be ready to speak from our expertise, because part of why we’re teaching them is because we’re more experienced and we know more. By the same token, we’ll atrophy if we don’t allow ourselves opportunities to be surprised and taught by our students. I find myself constantly taught by both students and my own boys.

My younger son has just been accepted to Bolton College. We’re very proud of him. But I’m also proud of the way he got in. He’s a state-level runner, and the Bolton coach said, “If you come and run for me, I’ll put you on my short list of preferred candidates.” My son said, “Mom and Dad, I know I’m a good runner, but I want to play soccer.” He’s an OK soccer player, but he’s not at the level to ensure admittance. Immediately we, his parents, began talking about throwing away advantages. And he said, “Dad, you always talk to me about integrity and to be true to my word. I don’t want to run in college, and I don’t want to mislead the coach by telling him I will.”

I had to learn to back off, because my own son was coming to a sense of who he was and where his boundaries were. He did it all on his own terms, and I’m proud of that.

RP: After 93 years of service, Kiwanis is trying to make the leap from good to great. How do you make that leap into future greatness and still respect the past?

BF: It’s a matter of being able to understand or enunciate a mission that is intricately rooted to the history of your organization. Many people don’t know that Butler University was started by abolitionists and was interracial and coeducational before the (US) Civil War.

RP: That’s amazing.

BF: But it was all played down. It wasn’t part of the enduring values that animated the day-to-day functions of this place. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to help our school re-discover some of our founding values that have currency for today. People want to believe they can make a world better for their children than they found it for themselves. And I think that's a very basic desire of people with good intentions.

RP: We have more than 50,000 volunteer leaders in the Kiwanis family. What kind of leadership advice would you offer these men and women?

BF: Butler’s strategic plan speaks to the idea of daring to lead. I believe great leadership takes courage. Good managers work with the system, but leadership is changing the system for the better. The courage to change the system and the desire to make it better are parts of the necessary makeup for a leader. It means having a great imagination and knowing that people will resist your vision. Unfortunately, the courage to create something that doesn’t exist means many of our decisions will be contingent on knowing only some of the facts and relying on equal parts of hope, good luck, and a sense of values that this idea will be worth all the trouble.

RP: We have embraced a new brand promise at Kiwanis related to leadership and character development that leads to life-changing service. It is based on a servant leadership model we call service leadership. Is serving others a value you are working to instill at Butler?

BF: Servant leadership is the model that is so important both at Butler and throughout higher education. At a teaching institution, you measure yourself not simply by the number of books you publish, the number of awards you receive, but by what your students end up doing. I describe the vocation of teaching as being footnotes in the autobiographies of our students' lives. And my wish for new faculty members is that they have lots of footnotes, lots of citations of what they have done.

Leadership is not about self-aggrandizement; it’s about creating the conditions for people to flourish. That’s where servant leadership or leadership for service is integral to the process of education. And I find that Kiwanis’ current emphasis on leadership for service is quite consummate with what we do.

RP: I recently spoke with National Football League coach Tony Dungy, and he intrigued me with this idea that he just happens to be a football coach but that is not who he is. He said he has much more important roles: as a father, as a husband, and a spiritual leader. How would you define yourself?

BF: I think I define myself by my family, as a husband and as a father. I wouldn't put what I do in work and make it equivalent or put it on a priority with what I do as a father and as a husband. They are two different things. Vocationally, I'm still defined as a teacher/scholar. I am a president, because I have found this is one way to expedite teaching and learning.

RP: In another interview, you identified people you’d love to have dinner with, and you mentioned the Apostle Paul. Tell me about that.

BF: I love this idea of what it would be like to interface with important historical characters. I am fascinated by people, like Paul, who say: “What I have been called to is more important than life itself.” Another person I would want at the dinner is Catherine of Sienna, the saint who. …

RP: …Shook her fist at God? (smiling)

BF: Yes, she is credited with saying: “God, you shouldn’t treat your friends like this; no wonder you don’t have very many.” I like contrarian saints, people who are able to see God in the world but realize that God’s ideas and one’s own expectations of what God should do are two different things.

Desmond Tutu is a friend, and when he was here for our first commencement, he told a story of a farmer who was looking at his fields when a traveler came by and said to him, “It’s amazing what you and God have been able to accomplish with these fields.” And the farmer looked at him and said, “You should have seen these fields when God had them to himself.” His point was, God yearns for goodness in the world, but we are God’s hands and feet. And (Tutu) began pointing at some of the graduates and saying, “As God’s hands, what are you going to do? As God’s hands, what are you going to do?” He believed that apartheid in South Africa could be overthrown with prayer and love. Desmond Tutu is another contrarian saint.

RP: Some of our leaders are taking on the challenge—as contrarian Kiwanians—of making changes to their local Kiwanis clubs that will make them more relevant. What advice would you offer these change agents?

BF: I would begin with the question: What difference are you making in the lives of people, particularly those who cannot pay it back? Most people like being good Samaritans, and this idea of leadership for service is absolutely on point. What I love about Kiwanis is that it is not a question you answer in a cosmic way. … It is something we do in our own communities. The reason the Abe Lincoln scholarship program (for youth who succeed while overcoming hardships) is so important to us in Indianapolis is we see the students. Through the interview process, we see names, faces, and histories, and we know in some way by honoring them that we are paying tribute to the accomplishments these students represent. And if we are giving nothing but hope—a sense that somebody has noticed that I do things right—we are investing in that person’s future. It means a lot.

RP: As a Kiwanis member yourself, what inspires and encourages you about what we do?

BF: I know you are familiar with the essay by Robert Putman on Bowling Alone. We seem to be a society that is driven by special interest groups, where even while bowling, you've got to watch the television at the end of the lane rather than talk to the person next to you. One of the yearning needs is for people to fellowship and do good across ideological lines. Kiwanis represents that.

This is the only club I belong to where I’m touching people I normally would never see. At Butler I work with the chamber of commerce. I’m part of the independent colleges of Indiana. I’m active in my church.

RP: Those other groups are much more homogenous.

BF: That’s exactly right. They are organized by criteria that demand something in terms of profession or belief. Kiwanis simply says, “Would you like to be part of us? Would you simply like to help us serve? We get together. We fellowship with one another.” But then there’s a purpose beyond simply having a good time. That’s why it’s such a special organization.

RP: At Kiwanis we have had to make some difficult decisions to strengthen our financial position. I know you did that at Butler as well. How important is financial stability to being able to lead a change effort?

BF: Let me offer Butler as an example. I came to an institution that ran deficit budgets for at least 14 straight years before I came. We did a lot of painful things. We capped operational expenditures, no automatic escalators for cost of living. We essentially did salary freezes for almost two years running. … I told our staff, “We need to hang in there together as a community. … We’re going to get through this as a community.” We turned it around in a year and a half.

RP: What is the toughest obstacle you’ve had to overcome, either in your career or in your personal life?

BF: That’s a good question. Both of my parents were dead by the time I began college. It is not so much an obstacle. In some way, it’s maybe the reason why I’ve always had to push forward. The important question to ask is not whether what you have now is better or worse, but whether you’re making a difference, and I think I can say yes to that. Something from my basketball youth: If you concentrate on a missed basket, the odds of you making a mistake on the next play go up astronomically. You have to forget it and get on to the next play. I’m thinking of AJ Graves, our shooting guard on this year’s Butler basketball team. He’s had a rough season. His shooting percentage has been down. But in the game against Southern Illinois University, he got the ball with six seconds left and let go from 30 feet. The ball went in just as time ran out. I learned from the coach afterward AJ was always going to take the shot. He was going to take the shot as soon as they moved to defend against him. Well they moved on him at 30 feet, but if they had moved on him at half court, he would have let it fly from there.

RP: Sounds like that is the kind of confidence and courage we need to build into our leaders.

BF: You are absolutely right … at Butler University and at Kiwanis.