My writings - and those of others.
An important anniversary
50 years ago an iconic picture from space gave us a real sense of the planet when the image Earth Rising was taken by one of the Astronats. The wonderful writer Bill McKibben has reflected on this recently in the Huffington Post and also outlined how the world has changed.
The image brought a sense of hope then., he says. It was the inspiration for the first Earth Day. The Silent Spring had been published. The Grand Canyon had been saved. Here’s what McKibben quotes Margaret Mead saying about that era:
“Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space,”
There was a brief period when the idea of limits to growth had traction - but McKibben notes that it didn’t last and quotes Margaret Thatcher’s contrasting “There is no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women and their families.” Decades later this is an all too common prevailing view where we live off the earth instead of on it. In watching a show on Netflix recently, I was disheartened to hear a cosmologist join the voices of the Silicon Valley mega-millionaires who looked forward to space travel so that we can “colonize” some other planet. That’s madness. Read the full article from the link above. The scientists warn us - but it may have to be the poets that move us:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.Maya Angelou
There is no one but us.
A remarkable performance
I’ve heard some wonderful musicians in my time but a recent performance was remarkable. In the complex where I used to live we started a small concert series for the neighborhood and it has lasted several years with a variety of performers. This one was special because we were introduced to something totally new to us.
When a five year old starts to play the accordion look out. Michael Bridge has not only mastered the traditional one but introduced us to the digital one. The following performance is done entirely on this single instrument. It appears on his most recent recording.
Leading
The orchestral conductor, Benjamin Zander, is a frequent business speaker and famous for his TED talk. now viewed by more than eight million people. Conductors are sometimes viewed as the last of the great dictators. Zander is different. He had an epiphany some years ago when he realized that the conductor of an orchestra plays a different role.
The insight transformed his conducting and his orchestral musicians immediately noticed the difference. Now he’s a leader who asks for input in the form of written comments at every rehearsal. He understands that the musicians’ skills and experience enhance his own.
His gifts as a teacher are remarkable too and they are now shared through masterclasses for all of us on YouTube. The students perform with technical brilliance before he enters in with a consistent message – it is time to relax and let go of the kind of competitive excellence their preparatory training has provided and instead relate to their audience. Transformation happens before our own shining eyes. You can watch several of his master classes on YouTube and see him actively engaged in making the music come alive - even resorting to hair pulling - not a conventional teaching technique – but see how effectively it works in creating a totally different kind of performer).
Zander’s passion is for introducing classical music to those unfamiliar with it and he does so with incredible skill and experience in making audiences and performers connect. It’s a worthwhile example of how a leader inspires and transforms performance.
Originally published on another site in 2017
A Different Take on Leadership
Some time ago I attended a meeting relating to the roll out of a strategic plan. The agenda was to review the requirements for leadership and leadership training. The context was for a mainline church denomination but some of the discussion could apply more broadly.
Several participants had been asked to research and bring leadership concepts and common key words emerged for leadership roles. Words like “mediating”, “perfecting”, offering” and “blessing” appeared in one report. In another the author had been fond of the letter “C” – and used nouns like “character”, “calling”, “competence” and “community”. “Servant” leadership was also on the table.
My own contribution came from a longer paper I wrote some years earlier and I focused first on changes in world view, vision and mission, structural change, personal characteristics and personal development. My key words echoed some of the others – “discipline”, “humility” and “learner”. I was also strong on “collaboration” rather than “hierarchy” even though we are still working within a hierarchical structure. But leader still assumes followers and someone has to take the first step.
The most interesting submission was a summary of a work by Ed Friedman entitled A Failure of Nerve. The writer of the summary had limited himself to 500 words and boiled down the role of the leader to a non-anxious presence. We spent little time on Friedman’s idea in the meeting, but I had read his book some years before and its mention whetted my appetite to return to it.
A Failure of Nerve was compiled after Friedman’s death in 1996 by his daughter and students and has been recently reissued. It is timely. Friedman was a rabbi and psychotherapist by training and as well as founding a successful congregation he served as adviser to six US presidents as well as to many senior church leaders and individual clients. Even before his death he saw that America in the nineties had become a frightened society, fearing change and seeking safety as opposed to the spirit of adventure of its early explorers and founders. He’s strongly critical of this stance and challenges us to change our mental models.
Friedman is often caustic and witty – and several readers have collected maxims that represent the substance of his thinking. Here are some that apply to leadership:
Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.
‘no good deed goes unpunished; chronic criticism is, if anything, often a sign that the leader is functioning better! Vision is not enough.
Leaders need “… to focus first on their own integrity and on the nature of their own presence rather than through techniques for manipulating or motivating others.”
Leadership through self-differentiation is not easy; learning techniques and imbibing data are far easier. Nor is striving or achieving success as a leader without pain: there is the pain of isolation, the pain of loneliness, the pain of personal attacks, the pain of losing friends. That’s what leadership is all about.here
Much of where Friedman is coming from is defining church congregations and enterprise units as family systems, a concept developed fully by therapist Murray Bowen. It posits that we call rational in congregations and enterprises is always framed by the emotional responses learned in our personal birth and extended families. Those families and tribes, like all systems, seek equilibrium. When things get tense, it’s likely that learned behavior in earlier systems are in play. When things are going well, Friedman says, expect sabotage.
The remedy is for the leader to develop self-differentiation rather than to try to persuade or motivate others to change.If a non-anxious presence is required it assumes there is already anxiety and conflict in the room. But it is working on one’s own development that allows others to learn by example – and take responsibility for their own development.
There is much more to learn in Friedman’s approach – and that will be a feature of future posts.
First published on anther site in June 2017
Summer Reading
This isn’t an exhaustive list - l read whodunits and lighthearted novels in the summer in addition to the endless newspapers and magazines - but some time ago I decided that hard cover and paperback books still count. Those pictured above are important and life changing.
With the Harari trio I started in the middle with Homo Deus as a Christmas present from family members who know I like this kind of thing. The second earlier one, Sapiens, was inspired by reading the first - and the last, 21 Lessons, was immediately on my must read list. I note that within days of publication it is already second on Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller List with its release only this September.
Harari can be described as a cultural historian and these three books deal with the the future, the past, and the present. He is insightful, opinionated and always provocative. Critical of both religion and politics for their insularity and selfcenterdness, he repeatedly says we need a new story for a global world. Journey of the Universe just might fill that role and I am curious whether he has read it. The authors are not cited in the index in any of them.
Journey of the Universe is a book, a movie - available via a website with that name - and also a conference at Yale in which the last book in the image is a Christian reflection on the story. It’s focused not solely on the planet but on an even bigger story. Author Brain Swimme is quoted on the back cover of Living Cosmology saying that mulling over the contents could be life changing. I agree. I don’t know whether all faith groups have responded to this - but they should. More on this in coming posts.