My blog stats tell me that my most viewed post, by an extraordinary amount, is Power = force + distance/time. Don’t remember it? I barely do either. It’s a little “back soon” post I wrote during a busy period, feeling guilty for not having written much.
It’s ironic (and humbling) that the most read post isn’t anything related to my ideas. It’s popularity is due to the key words – power, force, distance – which comprise the physics formula for power and also the key to elite fitness, according to Crossfit, a strength and conditioning program whose popularity is exploding.
But it tempts me to try again and this time, make it meaningful to the topic of leadership and power. Jude Morton, a regular commenter here voiced what I too have been thinking since that post:
Outside of physics, all of these formulas seem applicable to psychological processes.
So let’s consider that. In physics, work is the transfer of energy to an object, and power is the rate at which work is done, so the faster you can transfer energy to an object, the more power you have. In sociology, there is no one formula for power or work, but a classic definition might be: the ability to influence your environment and get things done, often through others.
Interesting, because using these formulas it becomes evident just how much power is dependent on others. If we talk about objects, it sounds simple enough. But when objects are people, with free will, minds of their own, feelings and reactions, it’s more complex. Read more »
I don’t believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models…. It’s not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn’t like it, they said, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.” Parents have to take better control.
This past winter, Portland’s honeymoon phase with its first openly gay mayor came to a trainwreck of an ending when the news broke (on Inauguration Day) that Adams lied about his sexual relationship with an 18 year old legislative intern.
Today it’s Edwards and his affairs. it seems each month, even week, there is another fallen angel, a politician, athlete, actor, celebrity, CEO, or person in a leadership position tumbling from a great height.
And usually at some point in the endless discussion, someone raises the point that he or she was a role model, and has greatly disappointed people.
I don’buy into this role model business. Whether or not you’re a role model is in the eye of the beholder. In which case, anyone can be a role model and not know it. if someone looks up to you, whether you are aware of it or not, you’re a role model for someone. Does that then stand to reason that you have a responsibility to uphold that person’s s image of you? Definitely not.
Maybe it’s my background in psychology but I don’t see it as the role model’s responsibility for not disappointing the one who looks up to him or her. Maturity, in my mind, requires the ability to be able to love or admire someone in their humanness, not in their super-humanness. We will inevitably be disappointed by our parents, our loved ones, a mentor. Are they at fault for not being perfect, or is it our responsibility to grapple with the fact of human complexity?
I started a Kids City Club for a group of fourth graders, as part of my work with the I Have a Dream Foundation in Oregon. Seven kids were chosen to participate in a series of activities to help them learn about government and how the city works. In one activity, we met with a city planner to learn about the redevelopment proposal for their local neighborhood, an economically disadvantaged slice of Northeast Portland with unpaved roads, no sewers or public parks, and numerous other problems.
They even made a presentation to the Portland city council on their ideas for improving their neighborhood. The kids did a great job, and the city council – the Mayor and City Commissioners (yes, Portland still has a commissioner style of city government) – was terrific. Council members really made an effort to make the kids feel at home. They asked lots of questions, gave them an extended photo op and a tour of the Mayor’s offices. (You can watch the presentation online thanks to Portland cable access).
Having just read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers a few weeks before, I was keenly aware of what was being modeled for these kids – the ease of interacting with authority figures. Gladwell shows how class intersects with intelligence; people who have little experience interacting with authority, or who don’t feel entitled to speak up or ask for things can’t operate as well in the world, no matter what their intelligence. He gives a terrific example in the difference between Robert Oppenheimer, who talked his way back into graduate school after poisoning his teacher, and Christopher Langan, with the highest IQ in America. Langan ended up dropping out of school because his mother hadn’t completed his scholarship form correctly. And he didn’t believe he could challenge the school authority. Read more »
I just saw Frost/Nixon. It’s a brilliant, chilling insight into power and ambition. What struck me was the degree of self-awareness Nixon had. Albeit, this is a fictionalized account; who knows exactly what went on in Nixon’s mind. But in the film, he’s portrayed as a worthy opponent, a crafty guy who is keenly aware of his own ambition and thirst for power and knows what he needs to do to win. And yet he’s trumped by Frost, an unlikely winner, a breezy, somewhat superficial talk show host. But what Frost has going for him is his likeability. He’s affable, charming, and easy going. At first, it appears he’s easy prey for the cunning Nixon, but in the end, we have the ultimate story of a nice guy finishing first.
Likeability in my view is underestimated as a form of power, and yet, I think the ability to get along with people trumps just about every form of power. Friends, connections and being able to get along well with others is the ultimate affirmative action. In a Harvard Business Review article, (June 2005) called Competent Jerks, Loveable Fools and the Formation of Social Networks, a study found that likeability is so key, that people are more likely to ask for help from someone who may not know the answer but is likeable, than from someone who is more likely to know the answer but isn’t likeable. In Frost/Nixon the power of likeability is maginified by its contrast to the opposite: Nixon’s tragic flaw of not being able to manage social interaction, of creating conflict rather than smoothing ruffled feathers, as Frost did so brilliantly.
Last month, I spoke about the problem of transfer and ‘expert syndrome’ - over extending one’s sense of expertise to the point of enacting the expert role in fields in which one is not qualified. The deeper problem is one of self-reflection, really seeing who you are: on one hand, not confusing yourself with your role of expert, and on the other hand, understanding that you are, at the end of the day, just a role.
Barack Obama, for whatever reason, has got a grasp of this person-and-role truth. In a Newsweek interview with Daren Briscoe, Obama says:
I had become a symbol for the next thing. So some of it was undeserved, but what it told me was that people really were looking for something different. I joked with my team—and it wasn’t entirely a joke, it’s something I still think about—that the country was looking for a Barack Obama. Now, I’m not sure that I am Barack Obama, right? But they were looking for an idea like that.
Today both the idea and the man took office amid great pomp, circumstance and celebration. I’m curious, as I’m sure many of us are, how Obama will handle the role of POTUS, and the office, with its tendency to isolate, inflate and distort. Hanging onto his Blackberry is one problem; hanging onto this sense that he is, after all a role, and not just a person, is another. I look forward to the next four years and watching this unfold.
There’s a problem in learning theory called “transfer.’ How does a student learn something and then transfer that knowledge or set of skills to the appropriate context? In common sense terms, how does book learning become a real world skill? I’m still waiting for algebra transfer to happen. My 9th grade algebra teacher, Mr Eastman, really knew his algebra, but didn’t know much about transfer. I learned enough algebra to pass his Friday quizzes, but I still don’t have the foggiest idea what algebra is or the real life problems it’s meant to solve.
There’s also something called negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when previous knowledge is incorrectly applied to new areas. In language, when one’s mother tongue interferes with the speaking of a second language, that’s a case of negative transfer.
In my work as coach and trainers with leaders I see another version of negative transfer. The role of expert, and not just the knowledge, can be transferred too broadly. Entrepreneurs for instance are known for thinking, incorrectly, that their expertise as inventor or as founder makes them an expert in other areas of running the business. The ‘entrepreneur’s syndrome,’ thinking no one can do it as well as you can, is not just for entrepreneurs. Anyone who rises to a level of prominence or authority in a given field can fall prey to the tendency to transfer their sense of expertise across every field. Read more »
While it’s been quiet on the blog front, it’s been a storm of ideas, activities and projects in the back office, so to speak. I just arrived down in Yachats for my much anticipated and much needed end of year retreat, and I’ve got several projects I’m looking forward to spending time with. Here’s a little overview:
I’m fascinated by Scott Miller’s work, His research into what works in psychotherapy raises a lot of questions about change and growth, specifically why and how do people change? It seems that rather than any one modality, there are a few ‘meta-therapeutic’ factors that account for efficacy in psychotherapy. Part of what prompts me to look at this more closely is my interest in the future of psychotherapy. Will psychotherapy endure as a profession, or will its ideas and methods become absorbed into the larger discourse of change and learning?
Kids and leadership! For my work with the Dreamers, the 4th graders I’m sponsoring as part of the I Have a Dream Foundation, I’m starting a “Kids City Club.” Field trips to city hall, the police, local TV station are all part of a project on helping kids understand how the government works, and how the city runs. Part of this will also include learning about the local city council;s proposal to revitalize their neighborhood, and then making a presentation to thye city council on what changes they’d like to see.
Happy to see one of my favorite authors, Doris Kearns Goodwin, get such great publicity of late. Also happy to see how much history is referred to in current events. Just before the election, while traveling overseas, I read her book on FDR, Eleanor and the home front during the war: No Ordinary Time. Tremendous book, and like Team of Rivals, eerily relevant for the current economic crisis.
Just one thing more onTeam of Rivals. When reporters asked Obama how he would avoid having a “clash of rivals” rather than a “team of rivals,” he said he wanted “vigorous debate” as he was “a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions.” He cited the dangers of groupthink, where all data confirm the theories and ideas already agreed upon. I’m happy to see such a discussion on the front page about the value of and necessity for conflict.
I just finished a seminar here in Auckland, the second in a series of three. Last week I was in Brisbane, and tomorrow I’m off to Tokyo for the last one (and to watch the US elections from abroad). This weekend’s seminar was called, The Unfinished Work of Ancestors. I wanted to explore how lineal issues, problems inherited from previous generations, determine, influence, and shape our current relationships and family life.
It struck me over the course of the weekend that not only are many of the issues and patterns we grapple with in relationship inherited habits of history, but also how relieving and liberating it is to view our chronic relationship challenges as ‘lineal’ problems – social, historical and political issues that our ancestors struggled with. We are positioned in history, shaped and influenced by social, historical and even natural forces – and the echoes of the great potato famine, World War II, the harsh lives of coal miners in Scotland, of itinerant workers, of Russian peasants reverberate in our intimate interactions, daily habits, and moods. Read more »
“Soft power,” a term coined by Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, Jr., is widely taken as the next natural step in leadership. Soft power is the ability to lead and influence using “tools of appeal,” – relationship, collaboration, inspiration, engagement, communication, and emotional appeal, In the November 2008 issue of HBR, Nye points to an interesting paradox about soft power women:
The United States makes it particularly difficult for women to use smart (soft) power in public life, in part because of the macho myths that dominate American culture and in part because of the climate of fear that followed September 11. Look at this year’s Democratic presidential primaries. … A woman seeking public office still has to play against the gender stereotype that women are soft. So Hillary Clinton spent a good deal of her campaign proving that she was tough and experienced. That meant that Obama was able to be the candidate who could use soft power. He could appeal to people with a message of hope, a new beginning, a new future.
To be sure, Obama was also criticized for not being “tough” enough.
I indirectly addressed this paradox in my post, Women, Leadership and Power – Leading form the Margins. In it, I point out that marginalized groups bring badly needed skills, knowledge and insight to the center. All too often, the pressure on marginalized groups is to move to the center, to appease the mainstream and reduce the fear of their “otherness.” This is for sure the fine line that Obama must walk and contend with in his campaign – to bring forth and utilize the special knowledge and experience he has gained by virtue of his marginality, while reassuring the public that he is in fact, like them. Affinity and not only policy sways the voters. Read more »
When I started this blog, I didn’t want it to focus on current events or politics. But it’s hard, in these recent days, not to focus on the issues dominating the headlines. Is anyone else like me? I dread election years. I watch the news and debates out of sense of duty, cringing through them, and finding excuses to leave to the room. I hate the feeling of my lowest instincts being appealed to, my fears, prejudice and hatred being played like a violin. I am insulted by politicians who seek to flatter me or who expect me to admire their wit and cleverness when they mock their opponent. I hate them but I hate myself more for being susceptible to it.
As the nation was riveted this past week on the financial crisis and bailout, a tiny feeling of optimism crept in. The financial crisis requires real understanding, an intellectual grasp of an arcane, highly complex and completely opaque system. While the financial outlook may be grim, one silver lining is the opportunity for learning and a real engagement with issues beyond the usual Punch and Judy show that the media would have us focus on. Read more »
