Dear Me,

Dear Me,

It's been a long journey from where you were 4 years ago to where you are today. You've overcome a great deal and learned much about yourself in the process. Not all of those lessons were easy lessons were they? The sheer effort into self-improvement has been exhausting but I like to think you are a different man than when you started this whole thing. You still have far to go and hopefully that journey takes you back to where you knew you were happy but for now you still have things to accomplish!

The vision you hold of a better world and leaving the world a better place than how you found it has been tempered by the reality of change. Now you know that the world will continue to be what the world is so long as the people within it find reasons to keep themselves at odds with one another. Therefore you've decided that staying pragmatic, generous, kind, patient, and with an open heart are better ways to affect change than simply wishing it so. It takes action and maybe you don't change the whole world but you're just as happy knowing you've changed the whole world in the eyes of just one person. To do this you are going to need to learn more about staying centered, defeat your inner demons (or at least learn to not listen to them), and keep increasing your knowledge base about the world around you, and most importantly, yourself.

Staying centered isn't easy with so many conflicting demands on your time. Grad school is coming to an end with a final course and while you are wanting your PhD you should also take a moment to rest on your accomplishments. Learning to be proud of what you have done will go a long way towards not only staying centered but also keeping those aforementioned demons from getting too restless. I see that since you know graduate school is winding down you've added new additional duties at work. Are you burying yourself to avoid having to think or are you driven to just make yourself the best you can be in your role? When you have the answer to that you may find that you are also finding a center. There isn't anything wrong with wanting to excel just make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. And while I know there isn't anything else to do with your time at the moment that isn't an excuse to avoid reflection.

As mentioned, keeping the demons of anxiety, depression, and the darkness they bring at arm's length is something that will also need to be done. However, typing that into a letter to you is much easier than you actually being able to do so. If it were easy to defeat inner demons you'd probably have to find a different line of work but that also means you know you have the tools at hand to use and some training in how to use them. Also, take time to be proud of yourself, many don't make it as far as you have in life and while you are busy telling yourself that a great deal of your success was just luck keep in mind how much actual work you've put in. You are also telling asking yourself, "but at what cost?" and that is a legitimate question but keep your hope alive. If you know that your job is to offer some ray of hope to others understand that hope also exists for you. While setting a milestone for this level of personal improvement is difficult as it is a life long process I think that but just not giving up you are already succeeding.

The last thing you'll need to do is keep learning! This MS is one big milestone that is 3 credit hours away from being completed. Find a PhD that works for you such as ethical leadership or bioethics and go for it. But first you'll have to figure out how to pay for it since your GI Bill ended with your MS. You will want to lessen what debt you have first and then move forward. Patience with others is one of your strengths but patience with yourself is something at which you struggle. You've managed to not accrue any additional debt over the past year! Keep it up! Year by year that burden will ease and you'll be able to move forward with either more school or another house of your own. Stay positive with regards to your finances and keep in mind the harsh reality of compound interest.

You've isolated so much the past year that finding people to help in these endeavors isn't going to be easy but you've also managed to accomplish much on your own. You know your family is supportive in their own weird way so keep that in mind. You've also learned much from practicing what you preach by talking with professionals regarding your problems. They help provide tools to keep you balanced and also provide a good sounding board for ideas. If you move back from whence you came you would be moving into a large void that may be more painful than staying where you are. Then again it may not be and you've taken leaps of faith before. Just because this last leap wasn't the best leap doesn't mean they all have been poor decisions. Take heart in the bonds that keep you driven. Keep faith in yourself. And just be proud of what you have done.

Alright Patrick, that's enough lecturing from me to me. You know what you need to do and you have the tools to make it happen. Keep your head up and know that you are worth it.


Love Always,


Me

A Look at Me

One of the more difficult and worthwhile learning experiences I have had, academically speaking, is being forced to look at myself. It is one thing to learn different theories and how to apply them or discuss ethics and philosophy and all of those things are very important. However to lead others one must first know one's self and all the theory in the world won't matter if you don't understand yourself. Personally, I think understanding one's self should be a lifelong process as is learning to filter out what we are told we should be and rather accepting what is good in our lives and building upon them. It shouldn't be a process that stops when the textbook closes. Below is my look at myself as guided by this exercise and while it is less leadership and more personal the two are parts of a greater whole and in keeping with the theme of discussing me here are my responses:

Discuss your assets:
1. My distinctive strengths (Things I know I do well and strengths that others see in me).

 I never really know how to answer this question. My anxiety and self-esteem issues often cloud the good things about me like my sense of humor, my patience, and my capacity to give. People tell me I'm intelligent or some other compliment and I tend to brush them off. I may intellectually know something but feeling it about myself is something different.


2. My potential Strengths (things I could do better or more often if I focused, or things I do well in some situations and could begin to apply more broadly). 

 It would be nice I applied whatever gifts I have to better time management. I don't know that I am insightful into others but I by actually caring about what others think and feel I find that I can learn a great deal about them. I haven't always evenly applied that skill and I'd like to do so. Like most things in life, this takes practice. For the longest time I wasn't the best at communicating my feelings to loved ones and I've worked long and hard to better that skill and I've succeeded to a certain degree. Where I need to work is when I am interacting with others that aren't communicating. I am working on thinking, "maybe they are communicating in a way I am not understanding." I find that gives me pause to consider things I may be missing. However I am not as successful at this as I would like to be. It's a work in progress.


3. My Enduring Dispositions that support me (traits, habits, behaviors that I do not want to change and that help me to be successful). 

Persistence, patience, kindness, generosity, love. While these may look a little sappy I find that if I focus on these traits I am more successful in life. I keep moving forward even when I'm struggling in darkness. I practice patience with others and with myself and thereby am able to be kind and compassionate. Of course I get angry and I've let that anger lead to me say things that I have regretted but by and large I never want to let go of patience and kindness. The ability to love has also kept me going. I know that the capacity to give myself over to that feeling means that I have something with which to center my life. Be it a love for humanity (even while large portions of it make me question humanity) or a love for another person that center feeling guides other actions. I think love is misrepresented a great deal and I think it is less a fairy tale than it is a deep, un-moving connection. Loving humanity means accepting its flaws and working to make them better, just as a loving relationship. My patience is tested daily by patients and even people writing checks at the grocery store but underneath all the flaws is a person and that person is connected to all other people in some fashion. While love for humanity and love for a person may manifest themselves in different ways they both come down to wanting to contribute to the betterment or happiness of either.



Discuss your liabilities:
1. My weaknesses (things I know I don’t do well and I want to do better). 

Despite all of the above statements regarding love for other things I often don't love myself or I allow myself to become dark and morose. A co-worker of mine, who is nearing retirement and who's judgement I have come to trust, told me that throughout his career he has noticed that those who feel deeply often feel rarely. As if each feeling is a monumental effort and takes something away from the person. I don't know if I am one of those people but I have learned that I can go "all in" with a feeling and this can work for both the good and the bad. As I mentioned above I am often wracked with self-doubt and feelings of not being good enough and those feelings, if I indulge them, can lead me to very dark places. Likewise if I give myself over to a positive feeling I become a better person for it. I think this is just part of who I am and I am not sure there is a way to "do it better."


2. Weaknesses I want to Change (things I know I don’t do well and want to change). 

Time management; I am simply awful at time management. I used to be pretty awful at managing my funds as well but I've learned some hard lessons there and do much better. That being said, I always seem to be finding myself, at work anyway, behind on tasks. I always get them done and I'm not late but I do sometimes have to scramble and I think this is due to to an overall sense of disorganization. I have learned to keep my car and home far less cluttered but I am not going to be on HGTV anytime soon. Even now my textbooks are spread on my desk along with tax information that I need to file. Just having those two things cluttered about is an improvement for me but even so I know that if I am not diligent the clutter will take over and I'll be right back where I started.


3. My enduring dispositions that sometimes get in my way (traits, habits, behaviors that I do not want to change and that sometimes cause me to be less effective). 

What causes me to me to persist is what also gets in my way; I know that being stubborn can cut both ways. I know that it can lead to a short temper and sense of being under assault. While it drives me to complete things such as this degree or work on my career it is also causing me to give up things in pursuit of those goals. I am learning that somethings may not be worth the cost. I think that what are our strengths can also be our greatest weaknesses. As I noted I also think that finding a love for others or for humanity is part of what sits at the core of me. However that can come with its own set of pitfalls as once hurt it is easy to protect myself from getting close to others even to the point where I am not sure that I am not happier with isolation. If I allow myself to get discouraged by the negativity on the news or even in the patient's with whom I work I will lose what makes me good at my job and that is the desire to help make the world just a slightly better place.


I have focused a great deal on my core traits that drive me and I think that unless I know both the pros and cons of these traits I will never be an effective leader. As I believe strongly in theories such as transformational leadership, servant-leadership, and complexity theory and these all require a personal investment in the leadership role beyond just giving orders and that requires knowing "me" as a person. It requires that a leader put some small part of themselves into the role. Granted, my loved ones deserve the best that I can give them and they will always have it but being better as a partner or loved one also makes me better as a leader.

The Real Self

This week is a bit of a journey into the self. Readings from this week and excercises were all designed to give me a picture of me.  The first thing we were asked to do was find an actual picture of ourselves that show the "real me." Of the close to 1,000 pictures I've saved either on my phone or in some sort of social media account I can count the pictures of just me on one hand.  I found this more telling than any one picture. I go out of my way to avoid having picture taken. I am not shy by any means but I just don't like how I look in pictures and I don't even know why. I always find fault in something, be it bad hair or maybe I just looked overweight even though I am not obese and I'm thinner now than I was when many of the most recent pictures were taken. From what I can tell others at least think I am easy on the eyes but I never see it. A lifetime of feeling not good enough will do that to you I think.

Speaking of lifetimes, the next exercise was a lifeline that starts at birth (May 28th, 1979) and goes until today. Listing transition points, regrets, accomplishments, deaths of loved ones, or anything significant was difficult. I tend to look at my life in terms of constant transition. I've gone from being someone that I didn't like to being someone that I probably should like but still don't. I learned a great deal about my intellect and reasoning capability by doing very demanding work. I learned even more about myself during my divorce and the insecurities that it brought out which carried over far too long. Recently those are back as it does seem that for many nothing is ever quite good enough but I have learned in those dark moments that I do have limits of what I can bear and I've learned to ask for help. Two surgeries and a brush with a deadly infection gave me an appreciation of how I handle physical adversity, maybe I can thank basic training for that. I also change jobs with increasing frequency. Six years is the longest I've worked anywhere and 7 years is the longest I've lived anywhere since birth. Lately I've changed three jobs in less than four and half years though some of those changes were promotions. In many ways I took my latest promotion as a way to prove to myself I could still achieve and to take my attention away from other events in my life. In hindsight this may have been one of the bigger mistakes I've made even though I earn substantially more money (just received a raise too). Money, as they say, cannot buy happiness. Looking at my timeline I can say that at one point (the seven year stretch) that I would have settled down but obviously didn't happen.

The next section was transitions however I feel that I've been on one long transition for the past three years and the others I've covered above. I am not sure where this current metamorphosis will take me. I've internalized a great deal of change and I constantly struggle with not feeling good enough and that past year, since my move and the regrets it has brought me, have me questioning my judgement. Our text indicates that successful people are often hard on themselves and downplay their strengths. I would go further and say that successful people probably don't feel all that successful even if an objective observer may say differently. By many metrics such as income, career status, higher education, stable housing, a dog, and the ability to do most of what I wish I would appear successful but I don't feel successful and that drives me to the next challenge.

Social identity was an interesting section. I'm an atheist, a democrat, upper middle class, straight, white guy. And that is all I want many people to know, if even that really. Only my closer friends, of which there are few, know my religious stance and social class. This was a tough section and looking back over what I have written I see where I am not sure what my identity really is. I know that certain things like academic and professional achievement bring me a sense of satisfaction so being known as a student and professional is important to me. As noted I am not close to many people and that number has shrank in the past year. I tend to isolate and if I'm brutally honest it's because I don't want to be hurt anymore than I already have. However, I have found that focusing inward has made me more aware of these negative emotional attractors. It may be that I have reached a tipping point of sorts, but as noted above I feel that my last move wasn't the best move for me but I have no idea how to rectify it. Make the best of where I am is one option and I do perform well at work but socially and personally I am not as successful. This is my own doing and it may be that I need to embrace where I am but I am held back but not wanting to be here in the first place. It's a bit of a catch-22 and feeling trapped is limiting my social structure and role.

Moving from the social web I have been asked to write a letter to someone that has had a large effect on my life and this blog posting is partly that letter. A great deal of who I want to be as a person was brought about by being truly in love. I think that many people love the idea of a storybook love but real love is a bit messier than that. It forces you to look at yourself and see your strengths and weaknesses and, despite what Hollywood has told us, it is work. But labors for love are the labors that make us better people. I know that I have patience, compassion, self-sacrifice, generosity, and a supportive nature because I loved and then lived it. I also know that I have poor financial management skills, insecurities, and I'm about as organized as the aftermath of a hurricane and I know this because love forced to me examine these things and work to improve upon them. I'll never be extra organized but I've learned to better manage time. I've not used a credit card in close to a year even though I have a small one open for emergency; cash and carry and small savings a month are what I strive for. The insecurity is something that I will always struggle with and I know that covering myself in degrees and job promotions won't fix that problem. Love taught me that as well. However, what keeps me going is knowing that if someone wonderful loves or loved me than I must not be as bad of a person as I sometimes feel I am.

This hasn't been the most uplifting post I've written and it's the most personal thing I have ever written to achieve a grade. Answering the question of my "real self" isn't something that is going to be done with a chapter in a textbook but I do know that I have a great capacity for love and an endless spirit for the same. I know that I am kind, patient, intelligent, capable, and driven. However, knowing something about yourself and feeling something about yourself are not the same thing. Perhaps my Philosophical Orientation Questionnaire scored as it did because now I know things about myself but don't feel them?

Sports and Intentional Change Theory

This week the discussion revolves around the success of US Women's Soccer and the Dream Team failures of US Basketball in the Olympics. Naturally these two sports are the sports that I have the least amount of interest in researching. Baseball wasn't an option? All grousing aside there are some lessons to be learned from the success and failures of these two teams.


Starting with failures: The 2004 US Men's Basketball Olympic team was, on paper, supposed to dominate the field...and they didn't. This article applies a bit of statistics to the team but the overall point is that the quality of the players changed. I tend to disagree, the players sent to the Olympics in 2004 were comparable to any other player in the world. However they were relatively new to international play and they were new "stars" in the US. I would argue that, according to Intentional Change Theory, their ideal self and real self were not the same "self." As the linked article above notes, scoring in basketball is dependent on having the ball in the first place. A given "star" on an NBA team can count on his teammates feeding the ball to him in order to score. This can lead to a self that appears to the player as "I am the man with the ball." However, when these "stars" get together the cohesive goal of giving the ball to the "star" begins to change. There are five "stars" on the court and the image of "being the man with the ball" crashes into the reality of "all these players want the ball and can use it." The court, during the game, is not the time to apply a learning program, evaluate mistakes or success, and find a support system as those steps take time, so they failed. Learning from those success the US Men's Team went on win gold in 2008 with the Redeem Team.


Comparing that the US Women's Soccer team has been dominate for nearly 30 years on the world stage. This fivethirtyeight article also breaks down some statistical data for women's soccer but I find this passage very telling, "So how did we get here? Basically, it boils down to two things: 1) Women’s soccer has been on a great run for the past 30-plus years in the U.S., to the point where it’s poised to become our most popular women’s sport, and 2) the rest of the world has been relatively apathetic and/or hostile to the women’s game." Additionally, US players make up over half the world's registered players. In the US women's soccer is very popular for young women and thus from an early age they begin to merge their ideal selves and real selves as soccer players. The same could be said for basketball players but I argue that the lesser spotlight cast on women's sports, while shameful, also allows for the players to develop themselves free from trying to be what others see them as. Whereas Carmelo Anthony has an image to protect many folks may have to look up the name Brandi Chastain. It may be that Brandi's ideal self and real self are very close to the same person.


The same could be said for Ronda Rousey's loss to Holly Holms. If one looks at her loss and reasons for taking the fight a case could be made that Rousey was trying to reconcile her ideal self with her real self. While it was physically painful for her to learn that merging the two is no easy task the lesson can apply to all of us. The ideal self may not be a bad "self" and neither may be the real self. However, when they aren't the same a state of dissonance can occur. Applying the ICT steps can take a person closer to making the two the same though I argue that a complete merger is impossible. Anyone thinking that they no longer have a need to grow is missing the point of growth.

Tipping Points and Attractors

Tipping points in relation to emotional intelligence or knowing one's self can also be looked at as a type of epiphany. They can also be seen, when viewed quantitatively,  as a point where behavior either increases or decreases in a sharp manner. I've been studying leadership for several years, I've been a leader and a follower and I've begun to lean more towards qualitative rather than quantitative studies. That being said, data gathered is often critical to crystallizing behavior and providing data upon which to build theories. Qualitative and quantitative studies of leadership are, in my opinion, symbiotic.

Where this relates to tipping points can be seen in these two examples: In the first example Dr. Boyatzis outlines the data behind tipping points and performance and in the second, while he uses quantitative data his overall statement is on the qualitative aspects of tipping points. In both the result of the discussion is the same, the tipping point serves to either reset the emotional states or drive a different behavior.

I've had my own tipping point though due to my stubborn nature it took some hardship to get there. At one point in my early 20's I lost a job as a company I worked for downsized dramatically. At the time I thought I still had everything under control despite not being able to pay rent or adequately feed myself. Job searching was difficult as it wasn't easy finding a job that would have paid as much as the one I just left and therefore be able to cover rent. I worked two jobs, temp jobs, or wherever I could find work in order to stay afloat yet in the end I was evicted. From there it wasn't long before I lost my car as well. Being pretty much on my own and homeless I decided that I needed to make a change in my life.

My stubborn nature led me to believe that I could have made things work by sheer force of will. Life, however, had different plans. What this tipping point changed was my attitude. I very quickly learned that people can do all the right things and still come up short. Success or failure isn't always directly related to the effort put into things. Life is much more complicated than binary attitudes like "work had and you will succeed" or "if you aren't succeeding it's because you aren't trying." Such simplistic views went by the wayside and over the next decade and change I've developed a much broader sense of compassion and, at times, empathy. I joined the Air Force to get out my rut, and even then needed substantial financial assistance from my family. I was fortunate that my family had the resources to assist me in paying some old debts as well as assisting me while I was awaiting my basic training start date.

Looking back now I wish I had given up my stubborn belief system that failed to see the nuance in situations. However, had it not been so harshly confronted it is likely that I would still cling to it. In the end, we can learn as much from our failures as we do our success; if not more so. Failure forces change and when properly analyzed and reflected upon is a great teacher. Success, though to be sought after and appreciated, carries a danger of complacency. Of course, I much prefer success to failure! Still, they both have their roles in life and like most things, as I learned, that relationship can be complex.

Emotional Intelligence in Four Dimensions

Psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman lists four dimensions of emotional intelligence they can best be summed up in the following:

I find this a good illustration of these four attributes as they are interconnected and also specific unto the themselves. A person can have a great self management attribute but lack a certain amount of social awareness. That being said, having a strong affinity in each category makes for a higher level of emotional intelligence and, it is hoped, a better leader. Two of Goleman's talks can be found here and here and they are well worth the watch.

For me, I find that my strengths lean more towards social skills and social awareness. Both of the fields are important to my work and thus I "practice" them more than I do self awareness. Often by the end of the day I am too tired for much introspection as it can be exhaustive to attempt to stay connected to others eight or more hours a day. Staying practiced in social skills and social awareness does keep them sharp but at a price; they tend to burn out. More on that later.

The two areas where I am less successful are self awareness and self management.  Self-awareness feeds a great deal in my work as I have to know what triggers certain emotional responses in myself. My clients can be sex-offenders, murderers, or the parts of society that exist on the fringes that, in my opinion, most of society is trying to ignore. But knowing a trigger is different than examining the "why" of a trigger and I reflect enough to get through the day but it helps that I am professionally obligated to keep my personal emotions out of treatment planning. I can't decide to avoid helping someone because they were convicted of child molestation. That being said, much like schoolwork, being forced to do something can make someone better at it by benefit of repetition. I do think that I could use more self-directed practice in self-awareness but it isn't far behind the social side of the paradigm.

However, self management is where I suffer. I am impulsive by nature and run more in instinct than I do introspection. That isn't to say I act without reason because I value reason so much more than I do most anything else. Where I struggle is that I forge ahead with projects or ideas and forget some of the details that would make those ideas or projects work. I then have to go back and tidy up those details before I get things back on track. I'm getting better at it but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a blind spot at times.

Emotional Intelligence is more complex than a simple blog post can really encapsulate and this post is limited to strengths and weaknesses and mostly regarding my work. One final point is that emotional intelligence can be tiring. I am forced to apply a certain amount of emotional intelligence on a daily basis as I am sure many are. The constant introspection and internal checks and balances that emotional intelligence can demand is tiring if a person does not practice some form of self-renewal. The resonant leader concept stresses self-renewal right up front as it is demanding and effective leaders will take time for themselves as well. In some ways it is acceptable to "turn off" the emotional intelligence in the quiet moments and "just be" even though, with practice, emotional intelligence becomes less of a skill and more of a state of being and thus less tiring.

Resonant? Maybe

This week's blog post is an excercise taken from McKee et al's Becoming a Resonant Leader (McKee, Boyatzis, & Johnston, 2008). The idea of resonant leadership seems to be the next step after acquiring a mastery of emotional intelligence. After all, how can one hope to inspire others and create a positive tone for others if one does not know themselves? Additionally, a given leader must understand how they are reacting to stress and take steps to renew themselves so that positive environments can be maintained.

Thus far, in my readings into resonant leadership haven't reached a firm conclusion on the following but it seems that resonant leadership places the onus of creating a positive environment on the leader and less on the follower. However, these relationships are symbiotic and often draw from each other so it is important that a leader understand that followers will also need the same steps for self-renewal as well as possible sharing leadership roles. There is a danger in a leader thinking of themselves as some sort of guru and becoming unaware of how resonance means that all parts work together.

Below are the questions asked of me in the excercise along with my insights.

1. Am I inspirational? Do I inspire people?

I don't know that I am or am not inspirational. I don't exactly pass out surveys and most people in my life are unaware of the struggles I've overcome to get to where I am. Nor do I feel inclined to share the more distasteful episodes of my past and while there is nothing overtly scandalous in my past it is mine and I don't enjoy being vulnerable. Additionally, I move far too often for deep relationships to form. Perhaps one can be inspirational without sharing a great deal of themselves but if so I am not seeing the path.

All of that being said, I do try to lead by example. I've never asked someone I've supervised to do something that I was unwilling to do. In my current work-group I make myself available for roles that others might not want simply because it's good practice and the patients need the help. Others may draw inspiration from seeing someone going about their job with ethics, standards, and an eye for providing the best service to patients that is possible. They did nominate me for a small award for such. So perhaps it is a form of inspiration.

However, I don't draw inspiration from flowery speeches and I don't expect anyone to draw inspiration from anything I say. I am much more impressed by action and so I try to lead by example. That isn't to say motivational speaking isn't a great tool and I do use motivational interviewing and positive encouragement in my line of work. So in essence, for me I try to inspire but what inspires me and that is more doing and less talking when working with peers and switch to different type of motivation when working with patients. Part of that may very well be that behavioral health specialists have seen and heard so many horror stories and so many excuses that words are often not enough.

2. Do I create an overall positive emotional tone that is characterized by hope? How?

Seeing as how this my job I certainly hope so! Many of the patients with which my office works are struggling in more than one area of their lives. Some of them are happy that way. While others are wanting to work on improving themselves but they've been so beat down by life and poor choices that they can't see the light at the end of tunnel. It's our job to provide that light and the route to take to get there. That can't be done without hope and a positive tone. Also, this type of work is emotionally draining and so we often maintain positive tones among ourselves and provide mutual support.

3. Am I in touch with others? Do I really know what is in others' hearts and on their minds? How do I show this?

I try to be. One can never really know what goes on in the hearts of others but we can evaluate their actions. This is an extension of my approach to inspiration in that I am much more impressed by seeing actions rather than hearing words and I live my life this way. I have never been one to use ten words when five will do. But I will seek to understand others and to demonstrate that I will work as hard towards their goals as they are if not more so if they are in place where they need the support. I ask questions, I actively listen, and I try very, very hard to remain non-judgmental. Understanding that we don't always know the struggles of others, we don't know their pasts, we don't know their barriers, their health, their multitude of stories that make up a life means that we meet others with open minds. I believe that by meeting people on the level that feel comfortable helps place them at ease and begins to lay the foundation for healthy relationship.

4. Do I regularly experience and demonstrate compassion? How?

Working with people who have addictions, mental health disorders, and usually physical health impairments means that the term compassion fatigue applies to myself and most of my co-workers. Treating compassion fatigue requires mindfulness and some sort of self-renewal process; much as with resonant leadership. If I am honest I am sometimes faking compassion until I can find a way to feel it. Opening one's self to an endless litany of horror stories drains the compassion from a person. I'd like to have a better answer for this question but the truth is that while I am compassionate if I don 't take time for myself whatever compassion I have will ebb away. Resonant leadership stresses self-renewal and speaking from personal experience, self renewal is vital.

5. Am I authentic and in tune with myself, others, and the environment? How can people see this in me? 

If I am not authentic with myself how can I be authentic with anyone or anything? I try to not allow the darker parts of my psyche (which we all have) go unaddressed. We all suffer from our pasts and we all have learned and grown from our pasts in some way or another. Being authentic isn't just about being honest with one's self but it is taking the step to accepting one's self and using the whole of you to reach the whole of others. I endeavor to be as authentic as I am able in my dealings with others. My co-workers and I are very authentic with each other and that is probably why our team works as well as it does. It's refreshing to know that others see you for who you are and accept you and I give the same in return.


McKee, A., Boyatzis, R. E., & Johnston, F. (2008). Becoming a resonant leader: develop your emotional intelligence, renew your relationships, sustain your effectiveness. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Pub.

Contrasting Leaders

It isn't a great academic leap to state that not all leaders are created equally. Many of us can point to leaders that either inspired us or made us dread going into work. For the most part most of the managers with whom I've worked fell between these two extremes. I've been fortunate in that I've not experience too many toxic leaders. Even completing this exercise I struggled to think of a leader that was the polar opposite of what I considered to be a great leader.

In the end I settled on a former Chief Controller from my time in the Air Force. In all fairness this leader was stuck with a senior leadership structure that appeared to be dysfunctional in its pettiness but that doesn't excuse this leaders responsibility to filter that for his followers. Filtering some of that pettiness is one way  a leader gains trust. This Chief failed in that regard and his interpersonal relationships were based on favoritism. It didn't help that this particular posting was frustrating for me in a great many ways and he didn't seem interested in forming the type of relationship where I could speak with him regarding these things.

What is particularly toxic regarding the above situation is that this leader wasn't overtly a bad person. He wasn't prone to fits of anger, he didn't demean people, nor did he micromanage or abuse authority. In some ways the almost gentle negativity and behind the scenes favoritism was worse. At least with an in-your-face horrible manager you know where you stand and you can plan accordingly. That doesn't make them good leaders but it does make them easy to read. Instead the constant sense of unease and uncertainty meant that it was a slow death of morale. I left work drained nearly every day and dreaded the thought of another moment in that place.

Contrasting that manager was my first manager in post-military life. She was the manager for the South Dakota Department of Labor and while to this day I am not sure what I said in the interview that impressed her I am glad I did. Postings in government jobs are political even when they aren't supposed to be. There is a constant worry over appearances and what the tax payers will think and this can lead to directives that can be frustrating at times. Additionally, funding is always a constant worry. Yet despite this this manager took time to get to know the people that worked for her. She was a good judge of character and seemed to know when you were "off" or struggling.

While she could be directive (which is sometimes needed) if there was an opportunity to modify a process or figure how best to implement whatever brilliant scheme the Governor's office had cooked up she would ask the people it would affect how best to get it done. She also did an excellent job of keeping the staff informed of what changes were coming or what current issue was on the radar of someone at the capitol.

That being said, what really set her apart was the genuine concern for the people in her office. I always got the impression that she would fight tooth and nail for us and was far more interested in developing people rather than keeping them in line. It made a huge difference in the way I felt getting up and going to work in the morning.

In some ways comparing military leadership and civilian leadership isn't totally accurate. Military leaders have a captive audience and more absolute authority. Civilian leaders may like to think they have those things and for some jobs (entry-level or areas where employment is scarce) that may be true but at certain level people have options. Civilian leaders therefore have a vested interest in developing loyal workers. However none of that excuses military leaders from their negative traits. I left after my enlistment was up largely because of the leadership failings I saw. I only left the job at the State as I needed more career development and advancement potential. Additionally the State of South Dakota isn't big on wages. While wages are not the primary reason people leave jobs they can play a part. Those variables were out of the State Manager's control though if they were I may have stuck around.

I am not sure that she would have considered herself "resonant" even if she did or did now know the term as it applies to leadership. Part of me thinks that applying labels to one's self as a leader defeats the point of resonant leadership. If one is only being relationship minded in order to make one's self feel like they are resonant than they are doing it for the wrong reasons. What made her unique was that it was a natural part of her personality. She didn't be a good leader to earn the title of "good leader" she just was. That doesn't take away from the importance of learning about leadership skills and taking a good look within but I posit that if a leader is trying to be resonant simply to earn the title they will fail. A leader must first seek to improve themselves simply because they want to be a better person. The rest tends to fall in line.

                                                                              

Positive Leader	Not so Positive Leader
Delegated	Favoritism
Trusted her people	Petty
Solicited opinions	Interested in appearance
Interested in personal struggles	Didn’t want to learn about people

Emotional Decision Making

It seems rather intuitive that emotions can affect decision making but confidence has a specific affect on how others see your decisions. In a prior career, air traffic control, we were taught to project confidence in our voices. A great deal of air traffic control is making decisions, often quickly, in rather congested air space. At busy times, such as when the base's fighters were recovering, a controller makes choices on determining how aircraft will be sequenced, what parts of the airspace to use, and even deciding between different types of approaches a pilot can be cleared for in order to expedite traffic. Not every request a pilot makes is granted. Confidence in these choices is gained through a rigorous training  process.


I recall working a wing recovery in poor weather when a KC-135 took a lightening strike. Lightening strikes on aircraft aren't typically fatal but they can damage aircraft. The pilot declared an emergency and requested clearance to land. Aircraft declare emergencies for many reasons and they are common enough in military aviation that controllers see enough of them not to panic. That being said, they can cause a great deal of disruption to an otherwise orderly pattern. Also the pilots are looking for the best vectors they can get in order to get to an airfield without delay. Not every emergency is the same but the procedure for handling them in air traffic control is the same and that is to expedite the aircraft's safe return and to make every effort to not delay the aircraft. There are other things we need to do but they aren't germane to the choice I had to make. In this case I had to vector the aircraft away from the airfield for a few miles as a second aircraft had failed to make radio contact with the tower. The second aircraft could not have picked a worse time to fiddle with his radio and he was taking his time getting down final. In order to ensure the KC-135 was safe I had to build a few extra miles of separation between the second aircraft and the emergency aircraft. Vectoring away from final during an emergency is something that is not ordinarily a good idea but when I issued the vector I explained, in my best controller voice, why and the pilot accepted this information and took the turn. It was the best way to ensure every aircraft was safe, the slow-poke on final who forgot radio was a thing, and the emergency aircraft. The delay was only a few miles but that can make a great deal of difference to an aircraft  in distress. I was confident it was the safest move and the pilot accepted the vector without question.


I could have let my anxiety creep into my voice and that could have raised concerns in the pilot's mind that I wasn't keeping things safe, especially with a rather unorthodox procedure. To be sure I had a great deal of anxiety over the situation but in the end I trusted that what I was doing was correct. The pilot on final suddenly remembered he had a radio by the final approach fix  (in fairness he likely keyed up an incorrect frequency by accident but at the time I wasn't feeling charitable) and I had built the extra few miles of separation I needed. Both aircraft landed safely. Anger at the aircraft that wasn't in radio contact also enters your mind but there isn't much you can do about it except try to contact the aircraft on emergency channels. While that may have been an option it takes time and there is no guarantee the pilot will answer their either, although they are supposed to. All the while the KC-135 would have been getting closer. I am still not 100 sure that I couldn't have used "guard" as we called the distress frequencies but I had to trust myself. Had the pilot had a more severe emergency such as cabin decompression or an onboard fire I may have used the emergency frequencies. So, a certain amount of subjective reasoning on my part was undertaken, and while that isn't an emotion it plays a part in assigning value to a decision.


Lately I have been working with  a few cases that are increasingly difficult. These are particularly trying emotionally as one can get very frustrated and begin to let negative emotions affect decision making. I will never say that I am perfect but I do try very hard to remind myself that I cannot let those emotions change how I approach things. But it has happened.


Without dabbling into politics it should come as no surprise to anyone that reads my work that I tend to lean left. I say that so that I can say I also freely admit that people do game the system. It doesn't happen as often as portrayed on some media sources but it does occur. Thankfully sooner or later it catches up with people.


I had a patient that I was working with who was like this and I became so frustrated that I started finding myself giving this patient incomplete advice. This patient was one that Dr. Shiv was referring to in this video; he took up all my time.  I wouldn't not see the patient or attempt to do my job but it is fair to say that this person wasn't getting my best work. Knowing that I did that, affected my confidence with other patients. A bit of shame creeps in and my own personal demons of extra self-doubt started their chorus. In times like this it is good to take a small break and come back refreshed and this is what I did. But during that time where I was experiencing what is called "compassion fatigue" the other patients noticed that I wasn't at my best. Or in the words of one patient, "what's wrong with you?" This wasn't a moment of personal epiphany but I did take stock of how my emotions were affecting how I was doing my job and consequently the decisions I was making; patients were getting less than they needed to make their own decisions. Guilt, shame, and some self-directed anger were all going through my head. Thankfully a day off and some rest allowed me to get out of the funk. Many of my co-workers have similar experiences and it's nice knowing that others "get it."

In many ways I find what I do now more intellectually draining than air traffic control. ATC could leave you exhausted and stressed out but it was also something that is dynamic and quite simply...fun. Working with people takes something out of you every day. This is important for leaders to understand. People will push your emotional buttons and knowing how to manage and work with those emotions is a critical skill.

Transformers...No Not That Kind

Being prior military listening to Stanley McChrystal's give a Ted Talk was an interesting experience. When you are in the military your perspective is limited; typically just the job in front of you. As you gain a bit of rank that perspective changes and broadens a bit. However, very few ever make it to the rank of General. Though looking back on my time in the service part of why I left was a loss of faith in leadership and a focus on image rather than substance. It's anecdotal but certain career fields such as McChrystal's have a much more focused mission and as such less time is spent devising ways to politic among themselves.

McChrystal's understanding that he is leading a group of people with vastly different life experiences was refreshing to hear and it's part of what makes transformational leadership so effective. Transformational leadership understands that an individual brings more to the group than just their skills and talents. They also bring synrgey and what happens to that person also affects the group as a whole. A focus on developing the subordinate's overall ability to be a better person is much more important than just developing skills.

Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale also makes some valid points regarding leadership and changing how he employees viewed their roles. Jim invested a great deal of time and money into improving his workers skillset. What I found most interesting was teaching employees how to use iPads and electronic devices. This is a skill that goes beyond work into making a worker a more flexible citizen, able to adapt to a changing economy, and is certainly a function of transformational leadership.

When a company moves to a transformational leadership model a culture change typically takes place. Mattress Mack's team building was a great example of how company understood the need for change and then began to manage the change itself. It appears from his answers that the workforce was resistant to changes at first and I wonder how it was finally sold to them though if I had to guess once the state of company was made clear there buy-in began to increase. This would place the company near the line of quadrants three and four on a Strategy-Culture Matrix. They knew they needed to make a change quickly but still had the time to properly implement a transformational process throughout the company. 

McChrystal's leadership was more a change within himself and Mattress Mack changed external processes, though likely by learning new things. Both are important for transformational leadership. This form of leadership isn't particularly new and it's taught in many leadership courses but the component that I feel is left out is the transformation is a two-way activity. Leaders need to also be aware of how they themselves may need to change and grow in order to proper grow those they lead.  

Contexts and Decisions

The past few weeks have been spent on decision making and when you stop and think about it, decision making is something that can easily be taken for granted. I would argue that for most people decisions are constantly occurring. From the manager deciding on bonus or strategic planning, to the homemaker deciding on dinner, or the professor deciding just how close the rubric a student's assignment really is. For some of these the decisions may not be overly complex or at least on the surface. Even a homemaker will need to weigh several variables from budget to individual tastes when deciding dinner. Yet those cause and effects are linear. Add in the potential mood of whomever is returning home and things become slightly more complex and a homemaker may have to do some guesswork or asking of questions to get to a result.


Recently I had a good decision to make. In April of 2016 I was offered jobs concurrently on two different sides of the country. One in California and one in New York. There were some known variables such as the position descriptions, climate of the area,  and pay scales but there were quite a few unknowns as well. I had to research housing costs in each area as both areas are expensive enough to be of concern. I also had to use some intuition to determine which supervisor I would best get along with. I know that I am fairly irreverent at times and that doesn't sit well with everyone. To go along with this, I also had to pack, move, budget, apply for school again, arrange storage, and so on and so forth. In some ways that was a bit of chaos.  Anyone who has ever moved for a job can understand just how much of a pain it is. However, the actual choosing of the jobs was decided in two contexts. The simple was New York was slightly cheaper on housing and my pay would go just a tad further. However, the more complex context was determined by chatting with the two supervisors on opposite ends of the country. I informed them both of my conundrum and chatted with them about the "average day" of the office. In the end I made my choice. What's funny about making decisions in the void is that I find myself constantly wondering if I made the correct choice. I will never really know what the other office was like and that bothers me to a certain extent.


Most of my day to day decision making in the professional sense tends to stay in the complex or complicated quadrants of the Cynefin Framework. I struggle to actually think of specifics as lately I've had more than one at a time to worry about. In that sense I do have to decide what cases will get my priority. In the simple context I can look at the severity of their cases and decide from there, however it sometimes turns out that the less severe case will need the most attention. Levels of severity in terms of addiction can mean how ready the person is to make a change. So while it may be easy to divert resources to a severe case that may mean wasting those resources that could have been used for someone that is further along in treatment. This gets into a great many unknowns but I wouldn't qualify it as being in the chaos quadrant but rather in the complicated quadrant. We have to use some intuition and "sense" to make a choice on where we focus efforts; though sometimes we reverse courses midstream.


Therein lies part of the problem as well as serve the underlying point of complexity theory in leadership. It both works and it doesn't. Just as the quantum particles that complexity theory is derived from are both there and they aren't. Many decisions do occur in a fog or are based on intuition and a certain level of subjective-ness. The interconnecting relationships that form between people add to these layers of psychological push and pull. A leader may not have time to sit down and analyze what quadrant something is in before making a choice. Many choices are time-sensitive. The Cynefin Framework is best described a tool to change thinking. It forces the learner to understand that forces both seen and un-seen are at play with decisions and that simple cause and effect relationships are actually quite rare. When you dig into most decisions, like our homemaker up there, you can add many layers of  complexity. The trap is that a leader can drive his or herself crazy by trying to answer layer upon layer. At some point a choice has to be made, what is hoped is that the Framework has trained the decision maker to think around SOME of those corners and take into account that other relationships (un-intended) may be affected.

Cynefin Framework and Decision Making

The Cynefin Framework is a tool designed to help a person start to sort complexity theory into an overall decision making process and it looks like this though sometimes the labels are slightly different for each quadrant (Unknown for Complicated and Known for Best Practice):

At first glance this isn't overly helpful but once you start to sort incoming information or lack of information into one of these sectors you can start to see the relationship between the quadrants. Each quadrant can also help in decision making.


Complex: Here is where many things cannot be immediately determined. Negotiations related to a sales pitch or a contract may start here. A car buyer may not know all the faults of a model or in business an agent may not understand the motives of those with whom the agent is negotiating. Meeting new friends can even start here. Understanding that many variables are dark means that a person can begin to lessen anxiety over said variables and try to move them into the best practice or "Simple" quadrant. Complex is the normal starting point for most any relationship or decision. Here one needs to seek information and begin to understand relationships.


Complicated: Here the causes and effects are separated over time. Things here may not always be straightforward but they can understood with investigation. Part of this quadrant is related to Complex as when things in Complex are being sorted out they can be moved into Complicated (or even other quadrants as we will see). Here people can respond based on knowledge and factual information. Of course all actions based on information are only as good as the information itself so this area is still not the best for decision making. I see this area a great deal with established patients. While they may not be telling us everything we generally know enough to make reasoned responses. I would think long term business relationships can exist here, especially between competitors. Coca-Cola and Pepsi may be fierce in regards to competition but they also understand one another.


Simple: This is where all variables are known and cause and effect is obvious to all involved. Interpersonal relationships may not always be in this quadrant as people are not always logical creatures though I think they can rent space in it for some time. This isn't a bad thing but more a reflection on the complexity of the human nature. However, some things are much more simple. When dealing with accurate information a manager can see a clear cause and effect with some actions. Engineers can "do the math" and see how something can play out when building a structure. Knowing to pay debts and when payments are due to your company are all examples of simple areas where decision making can be straightforward. Pilots understand the physics that keep them aloft and know that control inputs will result in a planned change in the aircraft.  However, keep in mind that the saying "there are exceptions to every rule" means that even simple things may not stay that way for long. Simple is great so long as everything is working and the concepts involved aren't vague themselves.


Chaotic: It can be easy to confuse chaotic with complex but with chaos the agent tends to act first and then see how things play out rather than seek information first. With me this area occurs with crisis situations when patients either go missing or act out in dangerous ways. Some police and military interventions may be chaotic and with drastic and unfortunate consequences. Thankfully, in the business world this quadrant may emerge in times of stumbling stock prices or a breach of safety has occurred. I've seen meetings where people let their emotions take over and things head into this quadrant for a short period. However from chaos emerges order. Complexity theory in leadership is dependent on that order emerging. Less dramatic areas where chaos is useful would be in brainstorming sessions or research and development.


What is apparent when studying this framework is that things can move between quadrants or hover over the line of quadrants. While it might be great to have everything in the Simple category there is a danger in removing all ambiguity. Removing all ambiguity can remove possible options. Allowing ideas to move into complexity or even chaotic can generate possible outcomes that may not have been there if a desire to move in the Simple quadrant was so strong it drowned out information. All in all the framework is a handy tool to remind managers and leaders that these states exist and have relationships with one another.

Collaboration

Decisions hardly ever effect just the person making them. Anyone that has been in the military can attest to either enjoying or suffering under the decisions of others. That being said, you don't see too many generals asking privates their opinions on how the war should be ran, though there may be some validity in doing so!

All of us are tasked with decisions on a daily basis and these run from the mundane to the sometimes serious. Do I go to the grocery or make do with cereal for dinner? Do I respect the wishes of my spouse and remove life support or do I respect the wishes of her family? Thankfully most of my day to day decisions have more to do with the grocery side of the scale than anything else though I have had to make choices regarding my health that were serious in nature. 

Decisions are funny things in times of serious crisis. I had to decide, at one point, if I was going to undergo surgery for an infection in my intestines that had created a rupture and an abscess. The condition is a common one called diverticulitis but in may case the rupture was causing some serious problems. The resulting infection, if left untreated, could have led to death. The treatment is straightforward though not much fun as the antibotics can be very high powered and it seeemed that my infection was also a superbug which required extra heavy duty drugs to knock out. Where the decision came in was afterwards, did I have a portion of my intestines removed to lessen the chance of further infection or do I leave it alone and treat subsequent infections with antibiotics? The surgery was laparoscopic but the recovery was sure to be painful. All I really wanted was a better quality of life. At the time I was also in school and knew that the surgery would likely mean that I failed a class. 

When it comes to health there are a great many stakeholders. My mother, father, and all my other family are one. My loved ones that are not family are another, then my friends. Moving down the list were my co-workers. I suppose if I really wanted to get exact with stakeholders the bank that held my mortgage are another. That being said, had things not worked out I wasn't too concerned with the bank. They seem to be doing ok. 

I mostly conferred with family and loved ones. Stakeholders perform an invaluable service in the form of perspective. In a great deal of pain mu judgement was clouded and seeing as how I was in the hospital for just under 30 days my family and friends took care of my dogs, my house, and even had my car washed. Towards the end I was thinking of refusing services and just going home. I was emotionally and physically exhausted but my family and friends kept me focused and I persevered. The effects of that choice are still being felt today as this degree has taken much longer than I had anticipated and my poor digestive system still isn't at %100 but it is far better than it would be had I not gone through with surgery. 

Stakeholders force one to look beyond the immediate and that larger scope is also invaluable. Going along with that larger view comes more information. And for someone that has a sense of duty, stakeholders can bring boundaries that restrict negative actions. In many ways I feel my surgery serves a metaphor for how I view my life. Some things are just bigger than the individual and I feel this is at the heart of stakeholder viewpoints. It seems odd to use stakeholders as a term for my loved ones but they do have an investment in my well-being. 

Since then I know that given that there are things bigger than me I try always seek that bigger picture. I want to make sure that I have as much information as possible and that my judgement isn't being clouded by my own bias. I make sure that my friends are diverse and from as many walks of life as possible in order that I don't become stuck in my own ways of thinking...and I can be rather stubborn. 

While my story above isn't exactly in the letter of leadership or management I do feel that leaders are shaped by what happens to them. A person can take a personal experience and expand it to other parts of their life. Could I have been a good leader without surgery? Maybe. But I do know that having had it and understanding both myself and how I affect more than just me...I certainly am a better person. And since leadership is about first knowing yourself, I shall be a better leader for it. 

Self-Managed Teams

Self-managed teams are exactly what they sound like: teams that manage themselves to accomplish a certain task. In the course of both my undergrad and now my masters, self-managed teams have been addressed on a number of occasions. The linked video will offer some insight into the benefits of such teams but as for me, I don't need much more convincing.

It should come as no surprise to my professors and maybe the one non-professor that reads this blog that I am fan of Complex Adaptive Leadership. At its core CAL seeks to minimize managerial input and states that teams with defined boundaries and goals will produce the best possible outcome though it may not be the result that was desired for. This video demonstrates complexity theory as it applies to leadership in a succinct manner. More on the concept can be found here as well. There is more to the concept than I have written here otherwise an entire course at Embry-Riddle would not have been devoted to it. I bring CAL as it is a type of self-managed team and does more to crystallize the dynamics that occur between people than simply saying that managers need to get out of the way because that isn't the case.

A self-managed team does well when it has defined goals and a boundary in which to work. A team sorting out the best widget doesn't need to be tinkering around in marketing though in some cases it may be useful for marketing to know what fantastic things the widget people are doing. So if our widgets aren't functioning in an appropriate widget fashion our widget team doesn't need a manager directing all their actions. Instead the manager says, "our widgets are not widgety enough and I need you guys to fix it" The manager then may set a few boundaries such as budgetary constraints or materials available and then the manager gets out of the way. Or, in some cases, the self-managed team has flexible leadership where leadership is shared depending on the task at hand. When the team is working on the flux capacitor portion of the widget the flux capacitor girl is a nominal lead, when the problem moves to ensuring the widget, with its functioning flux capacitor, can make tasty espresso the espresso guy takes over and provides some direction. These are not assigned leadership roles but more the team making the best use of its potential.

The benefits of such teams is that they are efficient and will often solve problems in creative ways. Where they can be difficult is if the personnel involved are not comfortable working in a team or if the team gets stuck in a state of development like storming. These are mostly personality conflicts and given time many can be overcome. Time-sensitive actions may not be best handled by a self-managed team that is not established. In essence, you have to develop the team as an entity and then worry about the problems it will solve. Such an approach is very difficult for managers as they often have their own set of pressures to which they need to attend. Also, managers must learn to manage less and provide more support. Lastly, a manager must learn to trust the team's results. All of these things are easier to type than they are to do.

My work unit is largely self-managed though we do get directed around a bit at times; mostly on time sensitive or crisis issues. For the most part though, we are free to accomplish task as we see fit. I sometimes go along on things that aren't in my assigned duties simply because we function better as a team and just by being there we can help each other. It also doesn't hurt that I may learn something new!

Self-managed teams are great at finding creative solutions to problems and managers should develop a healthy trust for these teams. All in all I enjoy working with the team with whom I work. I was hired as much for my personality as I was my skills and that is something that managers will need to develop in themselves...how to interview for personality and learn to trust that the skills can follow. To be sure a baseline knowledge must be there as well as education but a manager can throw a rock and find a human resources specialist or an accountant. For that matter, none of us are really irreplaceable. It may be more difficult to find a skilled surgeon or an astrophysicist but such specialized skills are a league of their own. For most of us it is more how we work with each other that determines the outcome of our work and that is something that successful leaders understand.

EcoSeagate and Team Development

Seagate is a software company that, ever year, sends 200 of its employees to New Zealand on a team building experience. During this experience the team undergoes physical, mental, and quite possibly emotional tests. For five days the 200 employees are forced to work together in order to accomplish goals and for high-performance teams, accomplishing tough goals is the order of the day.

There is a certain value in teaching people about themselves. EcoGate's challenges are designed to force people to look inward as well as form bonds with one another and I think that last item is the most important. Forming bonds is something that transcends loyalty to company. CEO Bill Watkins learned from his Army days that people will not sacrifice for some vague idea like patriotism and or "Army" and in my own experience with the military I have found that to be true. I typically did what I did because the guy or girl to the left or right of me was doing it too. I didn't want to let the team down; I could have cared less about what happened to the Air Force as a whole. I still feel this way, I'm loyal to the organization I work for only to a point. In the end, its the team that I work with that motivates me to go to work every day.

Forming bonds with co-workers also adds to an informal information network that can be tapped when encountering difficult situations. So in that sense, these retreats also bring value. Value is something more than a dollar amount though I wonder if the stockholders feel the same way. It is personal opinion but I tend to think that if less emphasis was placed on the stockholder and more on the stakeholder there would be less of the issues we see companies facing.

High-performance teams tend to be goal focused and learning how to accomplish a difficult goal without tearing into one another is of huge value. While some tension in attaining a difficult goal is unavoidable knowing one's self can make that tension easier to handle. That being said, having fun in New Zealand is far different than meeting a goal on a factory floor or while designing new hard drives. One does not always translate to the other so I am skeptical as to how much a high-performance team really gains from this sort of thing. For that matter, I shy away from the term high-performance as that really just seems to be a label that teams give themselves in order to sound better. Every team is a high-performance team if it is accomplishing its goals. A team of janitors that does an excellent job is no less high performing than a team of engineers designing a hard drive. We use the term high performance more as a way to set apart the end result of the team's efforts from lesser important goals. To be sure a full trash can isn't going to bankrupt a company but that doesn't mean that janitors should not be encouraged to take pride in their contributions and their efforts.

Soapbox aside, I am not sold on the idea that these retreats add to the cohesion of teams away from the retreat themselves. What they can do is provide better tools for people to use provided they have the insight to find them within themselves. A skilled practitioner can help people find those parts of themselves as insight isn't gained without feedback.

My organization could do with many things but I don't think they are to the point where they've mastered the basics of allowing a team to be a team. In my unit we are separated from the hospital geographically and we've held our own team building activities, usually in a bar as we aren't being funded for trips to New Zealand. Our team functions well but I do think that is because we allowed to do our own thing just so long as our goals are being met. In that regard senior leadership is comfortable leaving us to ourselves. However, some of that is because we are far enough away we can ignore some of is directed at everyone else.

Decision Making And Conflict

The bigger issue that I see with conflict in regards to decision making is that people view far too many decisions as some sort of zero sum game. To be sure there are areas where decision making is zero sum as there are only so many dollars to spend or widgets to be made. Leaders on a battlefield certainly face grave consequences where lives are on the line. However, for the most part, interpersonal conflict is something where the emotional investment in a given position can outweigh the practicalities of a situation.

Stewart Levine's 10 principles of new thinking offer ways to re-frame common conflict variables. These are such re-framings as abandoning scarcity and instead looking at the abundance. However scarcity of resources often happens so I tend to find this a less useful principle. Others are much more useful such as turning enemies into friends or leaving secrecy behind and disclosing feelings (important in relationships). What I don't like is that these principles assume that everyone is playing by the same rules. Anyone that has engaged in tense business negotiations or had to make very difficult command decisions can tell you that relying on logic can be more useful than relying on feelings. Intuition, however, can be very useful at times so learning to blend logic and intuition may be more useful than simply abandoning reason and feeling one's way through a situation. I don't think Levine argues for such extremes but there is a danger in attempting neatly classify modalities of thinking. If anything, I argue that flexibility of thought and an understand of how emotion clouds decision making is a more useful way of thinking. I like to think that is in the spirit of Levine's model.

Without baring all the details I can say that in my former marriage I allowed to many emotional responses to cloud my thinking. My wife would want us to do something that I may not have enjoyed and instead of working to find a common ground I would become stubborn. With a certain amount of age and perspective, as well as education oddly enough, I learned more of what drove my responses and through that insight was able to abandon negative reactions to emotions. I still have my moments of stubbornness but now I know to place myself in the other person's shoes and take a look at things from their perspective.

I think that does along with what Mr. Levine is attempting to say. Had I been less concerned with winning or my own bravado I would have had a healthier relationship with my ex-wife. The marriage may or may not have worked out but at least I wouldn't have been left with the feeling that I was not the best person I could have been.

Conflict exists in all manner of human interactions and it really isn't a good or bad thing; it just simply exists. That being said, not all conflict is something that can be handled with Levine's 10 Principles. There are times when real-world implications are such that someone will win and someone will lose.  That does not, however, mean that EVERY conflict need to be treated as such and I think that is where many people, including myself, have made mistakes.

Brainstorming with Jobs

Shortly after Steve Jobs was removed from Apple, he and select few co-workers founded NeXt in order to market to schools. This video showcases Jobs and his team brainstorming how to get their product to market. It starts getting interesting when it gets to crunch time for the deadlines and with dwindling resources. You can also start to see Jobs' notoriety for being a less than pleasant person start to manifest itself. What can't be denied is that Jobs had a vision and while it is my opinion that Jobs' vision mostly was to take someone else's ideas and then, admittedly, improve on them his driving personality is very much on display in his younger years.

Throughout the video I noticed that the casual atmosphere and informal brainstorming didn't produce much and while we know that NeXt was bought by Apple in 1996 the success that NeXt would find isn't easy to see in the last bit of the video. Jobs saw his role as the grounding feature of a team of technicians that had belief but very little idea of how to make belief a reality. Founding a company is a tremendous undertaking and you can see how Jobs knew these hurdles but allowed the team to start to see them for themselves.

Earlier in the course we undertook a survey that was designed to showcase our managerial traits. For me, this was interesting but I don't place much faith in personality surveys, especially the Meyer-Briggs as much can depend on mood when answering the questions. That being said, it was consistent in much of my results that I tend to push boundaries. The debrief stated that I enjoy know what the rules are and that may be true but that is generally so I know which rules I can break and which rules I can merely bend. Additionally, I had high creativity scores and I do enjoy the arts and have great respect for anyone that creates; be it art or technology. Part of my disdain for Steve Jobs is that he didn't so much create as he stood on the shoulders of giants and improved their hats.

Brainstorming sessions like the one portrayed in this video are some of the most enjoyable aspects of problem solving for me. My debrief indicated that I tend to take process improvement seriously and in many ways I simply find it fun. I like nothing better than taking things apart to see how they work and with people-orientated processes you can often put the pieces back together in new and creative ways.

With regards to the video one can start to see the beginnings of group-think. That doesn't mean that it occurred but the seeds were there. One of the things needed for group-think to occur is that there is a strong leader that needs to be appeased. As the frustration builds you can see Jobs becoming much more task focused. This isn't a bad thing but if other group members start to see appeasing the leader as more important than delivering a good product the results can be less than satisfactory. We know from history that Steve Jobs went back to Apple and that Apple is one of the more successful companies in its field so something went correctly somewhere along the line. Bringing that back to what I know about myself is that I always make sure that someone is playing devil's advocate in any process improvement session that I am in. Sometimes that advocate is me and that suits me well as I sometimes learn more about a process by discussing the ways in which it can fail.

Overall, I don't think that I would have done well in the NeXt startup. I push against the rules a bit much for some leadership and I don't think that would have fit in well with Jobs. Additionally, the subject matter is not one in which I have a great passion.

Dan GIlbert Revisited

We discussed Dan Gilbert in week one and we are revisiting him again here in week five but also adding in protected values.  The previous post listed three protected values that I hold and ranked them in order of how likely I was to trade one of those values away for some other gain. What Dan Gilbert talks about is how people are conditioned to make bad choices. This seems particularly relevant when discussing protected values. 

Not everything in life is a zero sum game. If one group gains the right to vote, you haven't lost your right to vote. If one group gains the right to marry, your marriage isn't suddenly annulled. However, in leadership roles there are times that things might be zero sum. You can only have so much in the way of resources and finances. When choosing to allocate shipping you may run low on trucks. Or even deciding to whom to give the limited amount of money allocated to raises are all zero-sums. 

When someone holds a protected value so tightly that they cannot compromise it skews the equations that Gilbert uses to make his points. Some may find this worse than others. I may fire an excellent producer if he is racist. I can always train another to produce and the overall productivity of a department may increase if a toxic person is gone. So in essence, I don't feel that I lose anything by firing a racist. However, my third protected value is courtesy and if I fire someone simply because they are a little brusque I may dent productivity more than I gain anything in return.

In other words, and as Gilbert mentions, rational decision making can be adversely affected by emotions. Not that protected values are emotions but strong emotions can be brought to the surface when protected values are challenged. Managers and leaders should be aware of how far they are willing to bend in order to make the best decisions. It is unlikely that I would ever compromise equality but then again I don't need to do so. Diverse companies outperform norms by significant margins. It just so happens that my strongest protected value works well with successful leadership. 

Protected Values

This week I am asked to examine three protected values that I hold and, in short, how far I am willing to go to protect those values.

Protected values are values that a person holds that they adhere to and not trade away for something else. Core values could be another term for them. No matter what they are called, they hold a special place for those that hold them. For me the biggest protected value I hold is equality followed by compassion, and finally courtesy. I am not so sure that I hold much else in the way of a protected value as a great deal of what I consider a value like honesty is often subjective. I usually shade the truth every day when working with patients in order to present things in the best light. I might not shade the truth in other areas of my life but the fact that I know that it is relative seems, to me, to be something that is less a protected value and more a highly admired value.

Equality is the value that I hold most dear. I believe that all men and women are equal in value and that what affects the least of us is a direct reflection on the behavior and attitudes of the best of us. I am by no means suggesting that a utopia of peace and harmony is attainable but I do think find discrimination based on things such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and age to be particularly heinous.  To be sure there are certain jobs, such as a concrete finisher, that I might not hire someone in their 80s for but otherwise I think we should all be judged on our merits. I do not trade this value for much of anything and in fact will go quite far to avoid people, and places of work, that do discriminate. I've lost friends over it and I've distanced myself from some family over it. I don't know that I can describe how much of a blight I feel discrimination is upon human development. With such a strong feeling towards the matter I don't know that I would compromise this value. I certainly don't support policies of discrimination even if I know I may receive a tax break from an elected politician which seemed an odd thing to worry about until this last election.

Along with that is compassion. Compassion for others takes many forms and I believe that when we approach the world with compassion we become better humans as a result. All of that being said, I do trade-off compassion when it comes to protecting one group of people for another. I don't have a great deal of compassion when I know a terror cell leader has been killed even though that leader most likely had a family and was most likely loved by someone or seen as a freedom fighter by others. That isn't to say that I don't have compassion. I don't feel joy in the death of others. I may feel a sense that something needed to be done that was unpleasant but I am smart enough to know that others that seek to harm me may feel the same way. Compassion is born from insight into others. I don't hate ISIS even if they are evil and cannot be allowed to continue. I hate the conditions that allow something like ISIS to form and there is a large distinction there.

Courtesy may seem like an odd thing to hold as protected value but I think it goes back to my view of humans as a species. There isn't much that separates us from higher primates and some creatures such as dolphins. Primates can use tools, they communicate, they have emotions, and they have a social structure. It is my opinion that the ability to temper our base emotions and behavior with courtesy and politeness are a defining feature of humanity, or rather should be. What some cultures view as rude, others view as not rude. For some things like dining habits this is mostly non-consequential but for how people approach fundamental interactions being rude can have real consequences. I don't deal in a great deal of moral relativism, just because a country's culture says women can't drive doesn't make it correct as I view anything that subjugates another to be morally indefensible. This isn't to set up a larger argument of moral relativism as that is a whole different argument and one that is covered in my blog from prior classes. However, it is related to courtesy in that on some level I believe that politeness should be universal even though some aspects of it change from culture to culture. I placed this value last even though I don't really trade politeness very often. That being said, there are times I've smiled and been polite while behind the scenes orchestrating less than polite outcomes when I have felt that I needed to defend myself.

Protected values are something that I tend to shy away from in the larger sense. Dealing in absolutes is not always a desirable trait in a leader. What I find to be more accurate is that a protected value is only so good as it is morally defensible. People can say segregation is bases on a value of one race being better than the other but can it be morally defended? Perhaps it can through twisted readings of religion or even bad science but if you have to pervert a teaching to make it fit your biases you've already lost the moral ground upon which you decided to stand.