Thirteen Short Conversations About Nothing

Hastily assembled, somewhat plagiarized, poorly constructed........

1) On being liberal or conservative - I am fortunate to have been formed by conservatives and forgiven by liberals. Embarrassed to vote Democrat, ashamed to vote Republican.

2) On being Catholic once (sort of) - I remember fighting with priests as a boy, convincing myself I was an atheist. Later, after meeting Father Bill Talentino in Virginia who was doing social just work, and a dozen or so other priests working in poor missions in third world countries, I lamented my diversion from spirituality and began to build the real foundation of my faith. I am not Catholic, but I am connected.

3) On leadership - It is all about the separation of my ego. Divorcing what is in my interest from that which benefits others, then leveraging the residual grit, stubbornness, and courage to fight the right battles. 

4) On friends - Few and far between, forever forgiven, forever familiar.

5) On alcohol and drugs - The epitome of our collective selfishness. The distillation of evil deemed disease to ease our guilt and to look past crime, child abuse, and despair. 

6) On change - There are two kinds of new people who "cause" trouble in a system: Those who bring it in and those who expose it once they arrive. 

7) On wisdom - The ability to recognize the value in things.

8) On serendipity - Like looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer's daughter (Penthouse Magazine, circa 1970's).

9) On Misters Rauner and Trump - Bullies and sissy boys.

10) On Hillary Clinton - I once thought the evil press only published pictures of her frowning. Now I don't think I like that which lies underneath the frown.

11) On honesty - Too often confused with solipsistic convenience.

12) On aging - Ear hair grows faster than my IRA; I wake up with pains with no recollected attributable causes; I care far less for money and I find less things I want to waste said money on; and the notion of passing away before I change the world scares the heck out of me.

13) On love - I pray for reincarnation.............

Leadership Axiom # 5

Avoid Being a Solipsistic Supervisor
Solipsism in its true sense, is the doctrine that only the individual exists, and all other things, entities, worlds are merely creations of that individual's mind. As a matter of fact, the individual might be a manufactured element stemming from a mind only. No, no reference to the Matrix is coming......and no, I don't believe most people subscribe to a solipsistic sense of reality. Deep down, most of know we aren't the center of the universe.

Although we scoff at such notions, we very likely proceed through our day as if we did. When an employee comes into your office, and your first response is something like "oh no, how long will this take?" or "I really am not in the mood for this now", you are being solipsistic. When your first thoughts go to your own concerns, even when the issue isn't generated from you or your efforts, you are being solipsistic. When you fail to "see" the others around you outside the immediate context of your existence, you are being solipsistic. Think about it, how often do you imagine what your employees, students, even friends are doing with no reference to your personal needs or interests? Is as if they don't exist outside of your presence and attention.

Of course we have thought about these things before, possibly not with the big fancy word tied them. "Walk a mile in my moccasins before you judge me" is a perfect example. At the risk of adding even more awful argot, when we strive to really examine something as it is, we venture into the field of Phenomenology. Once there, we employ the epoche, or more specifically, the eidetic reduction.
Phenomenology is the study of phenomena in their true, real sense. To approach this type of analysis, we have to suspend judgement, biases, and expectations. This disciplined process is the epoche, accomplished though an eidetic reduction which works to filter distortions of perception so that we see the true object, the true element. Enough philosophy, you may have the basic idea - we need to apprehend things, issues, situations as they are, not as we want them to be, what we mistakenly perceive to be, what we may even need them to be. This would seem to be a priority of a supervisor, an honest and effective one anyway.

The first step toward this type of super-vision is the awareness that we are moving about in concentric circles with each other, each a sun (sol) in our own overlapping universes. We have to be the first to step out of our ellipses into those of others. Once there, our next task is to help them step out of theirs, temporarily at least, into the worlds of others. Eventually, as we learn to take other perspectives, we learn how to rip circumstances from the distorting gravity of their solar systems and examine them fairly and equitably. Once we do look at them in this bracketed sense (eidetic reduction), we can then bring them back to peripheral interests (our biases, needs, concerns, etc.), and find a balance.

An argument for instance, can be examined first for its disruption to the environment, its impact on productivity. From there, the interests of those involved can be dealt with as secondary concerns, not trivial, but not primary. And it certainly shouldn't be dealt with from the concerns of the supervisor either, e.g. quickly, efficiently with as little effort or trouble as possible.
When people learn to look at their interactions first from the perspectives of others, then as a more complicated intersection of many perspectives, they can better appreciate the efficacy of their own perspective. But when all is said and done, if a supervisor can keep the issue free of his or her own biases, selfish needs, and artificial concerns, situations will improve. It is that simple, don't look at things as if they relate primarily to you. Don't act as the center of your own universe, no matter how central or high you are on the organizational chart.

Leadership Axiom #2

You Cannot be Better than the System You are in!
When I used to visit potential work sites, I focused on what would be "beneath" me (terrible choice of words), i.e., those I would supervise. Now I look above! I have learned that without the support of my supervisors, and more importantly, a logical system, I cannot achieve much. I don't need to have a great relationship with those I report to, but I do need to have an honest, consistent working relationship with these decision makers and decision supporters.
Too often, I think, we focus on our personal, idiographic relationships with our supervisors. Hindsight has shown me this is not a necessary antecedent to a good working relationship. I have had a supervisor that I did not respect personally, but she supported our mutual goals and decisions unilaterally. She didn't always make sure I got credit for what I had accomplished, but she never left me hanging in the wind, thrown under a bus (sorry, passive aggressive memories of my first graduate professor who worshipped Orwell and railed against the literary use of "prepackaged phrases"). We accomplished a lot together, and that was really all that mattered.
I have also worked in environments with a great deal of good people, but they were connected by capricious, self-serving systems. Virtue and valor acquiesced to the navigation of the labile vagaries of a corrupt enterprise. Many eventually retreated into their own spheres of efficacy, and removed themselves from much of the surrounding environment. Others battled hopelessly against a sea of ambiguity, eventually giving up, feeling beaten up and betrayed by nothing. I was one of these combatants - however, I would flee the battlefield (change jobs) before the inevitable surrender.
After contemplating these phenomena for several years, I have settled on a new concept, a new focus: Heroic Systems vs Heroic Individuals. I realized that the most productive periods in my life have been when I worked actively and enthusiastically within a healthy, consistent system. My efforts were magnified by those of other and vice versa. No matter how difficult things became, the unity of the group gave me solace that we would survive and eventually accomplish our goals (i.e., then can kill us but they can't eat us). I no longer want to be a hero or a martyr, just another caring, committed individual who improves the lives of other by creating the right system.
This system is demanding though - it loathes ego (especially my kind), often disdains personal recognition, and requires a great deal of acquiescence. Academic Freedom is often one of its first causalities, or I should say the self-serving perversion of Academic Freedom. In order to build a good system, a heroic one, individuals have to give up selfish, discordant, mercurial "rights." We all have to sit together and decide what is best for the system and act accordingly. I have learned from quality control concepts that a group of individuals reacting immediately to variation in a process actually create more variation than if they had let the process run unabated. It amazes me to this day that professionals who acknowledge the rigorous discipline of their own fields, ironically posit that they should be able to act independently in their classrooms, and that that course is best for students. Very incongruent, if not hypocritical.
This has been a hard lesson for me, as building and then imposing a communally developed system on myself is difficult. But I have seen the virtue of consistency and transparency, particularly when working with at-risk and underpresented students. Time and time again, they have told me they just want to "know the rules, and to have them consistently applied." I was shocked when I first heard these complaints, many aimed at more liberal colleagues. The students didn't respect or trust inconsistent treatment, even if it was temporarily favorable to them.
So, I am no longer longing to tilt at windmills, battling the evil empires I find myself in. I am no longer the lone hero, sacrificing for the benefit of my poor, downtrodden students. I am responsible to help build a consistent, equitable system that serves us all. And although this may not be as fun on a daily basis, I am sure it will be far more rewarding on graduation days when I see more familiar faces beaming broadly as they climb up the stage, reveling in their own achievement and loving the system that helped them achieve it.

Leadership Axiom #1

I hope it isn't too presumptuous to offer my insights into leadership, but I have been around the block as it were, supervising people since 1979 (my first gig was running an underground construction crew for a few years while in college). I have since studied leadership theories and philosophies, and have had the occasion to teach some classes. I will offer, in modest installments, some of the important lessons I have learned, if for nothing else, to keep them codified in my own constellation of tools. So, for this inaugural installment, I will begin with my first leadership lesson, at least in terms of starting a new position at a new place:
Beware Those Who Come to You First!
This has been an important lesson for me in that it is very counter intuitive, and I have started off a few assignments in a hole due to my ignorance of its effects. Often, the folks that get to you first have a reason for doing so. Some are just plain helpful, and in this case, there is little danger. Others however, have different motivations: some have exhausted all other avenues of communication and influence, others have negative and/or biased affiliations, and some want commitments or agendas satisfied. In better words, avoid engaging in any commitment, affiliation, or decision too soon in the relationship!
Over and over again, I have seen this dynamic play itself out, even to the extent that other employees would warn me that a "certain person" would be first in line to meet me. I have not become cynical at all about these approaches, I have simply become cautious about engaging in any type of obligation or promise, even if that offer appears to be helpful to me. On the flip side of this issue, I have also learned to seek out those who don't come forward, cautiously though. They too can have their reasons for avoiding a new leader.

An American Accident

I was walking out in the school playground of an Islamic School I worked at in London, checking on the girls playing there. They were running around frantically, having a wonderful time. I chatted with some of the teachers supervising the free-for-all, and was enjoying a few moments out of my office. I appreciated the fact that I was being ignored (one of my first great lessons - being ignored is not always bad) by most of the kids when a smiling second grader shyly approached me. She looked at me earnestly and I said hello, to which she replied "Are you an American Accident?" Now the instant she said it, I knew what she meant (do you have an American accent?), but the irony didn't escape me. I replied "Probably so" and smiled and walked off. She skipped away towards her friends who now considered her the bravest young woman on the planet, and I walked away with the title of my autobiography. Not a bad few seconds of interchange!
For the rest of the week, I thought about being an accident in an American society that is so diverse, so accommodating, and so eclectic that "accidents" are almost impossible. But I am an accident - I am not here where I am by any master plan, as a matter of fact, I am probably here against most reasonable odds. So, taking a page from Kierkegaard, "You live life forward and understand it backwards", I began to look back hoping desperately to gain some sense in order to direct my future. That was three years ago and I am still working on it. I am getting a better handle on my etiology, but the praxis (positive action through guided reflection) still often eludes me. The conclusion of my journey through time is that I have emerged from a pretty unique culture (code for highly dysfunctional childhood) with a good intelligence and other impressive skills, yet also with the stunning capacity to undermine myself, often dancing perilously close to to the precipice I thought I had escaped. But this is the year - 50 years old and candidate for Philosopher King. I am going to press on and learn and retain the lessons I have forgotten or failed to understand. I am going to be a leader who can change the world for the better.