Archive for April, 2010

Clarity of Purpose

April 30th, 2010, 8:35 am

Are you skillful at running your organization? Are you able to be clear about your intended purpose? If so, then you draw from the best resources you have – yours and your employees’ years of experience. However, do you exercise clarity of purpose in your application of these resources?

Clarity of Purpose can be thought of as prudence, as defined by David Brooks in his article questioning the leadership capacity of Sarah Palin: “It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events – the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight. How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.”

Clarity of Purpose, from this perspective, is not simply based on your personal intention. It emerges from a dynamic involvement with your years of experience and the reciprocal understanding that evolves from the experience of the people you trust and work with.

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Recognize Your Worth

April 27th, 2010, 12:17 pm

“Some people go through life with [an] unerring sense of direction. . . . When we meet people like this, we say they are grounded. They know who they are and where they’re going. We feel secure around them. . . . What all of these role models have in common is an exquisite sense of who they are, which translates into perfect pitch about how they come across to others.” (Goldsmith, 2007, p. 3)

One of the best ways to recognize your worth is to have a clear understanding of how your behaviors come across to other people; your employees, colleagues, clients or friends and family. – I am just off the phone with a friend of mine. She consults with individuals and companies to help them understand who they are, what they do, and how to take this understanding into their personal and professional lives. I consistently find that when I am speaking with her, I clearly recognize myself as she formulates and expresses how she perceives me and my work. She becomes a mirror and steadies our connection so that I can see myself in her understanding of me. I recognize the value, not so much because I see and accept myself, but because of how she expresses her experience of how she perceives me.

This relationally activated recognition of self and worth, refreshes and supports my experience to such a degree that I literally recover a deeper – felt sense of who I am and of how I am being perceived. It is as though my “worth” is market driven; it is based on how value is determined by those who are invested in having a relationship with me.

Recognition of self and worth becomes the currency with which we learn to more deeply value who we are. And it has value to the degree that we value our relationships with one another. Take a look at one of your relationships today and greet with curiosity that person you are as perceived by that person you are with.

Ref: Goldsmith, Marshall. 2007. What got you here won’t get you there. New York: Hyperion 

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Organizational Alignment

April 7th, 2010, 3:27 am

Sometimes, when an organization is out of  alignment, all that is necessary are a few adjustments; with the right people, in the right place, at the right time, by someone who knows what they are doing.

“I remember the time, as a boy, when I had this bicycle with a wobbly wheel. Everywhere I went my journey was difficult. The front wheel of my bicycle rotated seemingly with a will of its own. First to the right and then to the left I would careen down the road.

When I finally earned enough money to take care of the problem, twenty-five cents as I recall, I zigged and zagged across the boulevard to the garage of old Mr. Oberwagner. As I approached his driveway, there he sat smoking his cigar; open from 2 to 5pm each day in time to catch the after school traffic of kids just like me, in need of an adjustment, a repair, a replacement or an over-hall.

I remember this as though it were happening today. After surveying the problem he grunts and says “there is a solution!” To my amazement and surprise, he states that a simple adjustment is all that is required to address this seemingly incomprehensible problem.

He walks over to his bright red tool box. He lifts the lid and takes in hand the tiniest of tools. His “spoke adjuster,” as he calls it. With two, three, perhaps four simple turns of the spokes, right at the hub of the wheel, the outer rim groans into alignment. Then one more tap, a little bit of oil, and he sends me on my way.

The wheel now turns true. And I am heading home.”

©Timothy Dukes January 2005

  Above Image: www.hopscotchtechnology.com/…/boy_on_bike.jpg

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Presence

April 4th, 2010, 3:54 pm

“This morning when my boy woke up he called for his mother; a few minutes later, while she was preparing a bottle, I walked quietly into the room. He waved to me, as I lay across the end of his bed. He muttered “good morning” in his sleepy voice. His hand was extended to me and I held it for awhile, massaging the fingers gently. No words were spoken. The action seemed to be pulling him from his not-yet-awake consciousness, into the world. He withdrew his hand and said “Go.” That was all he said, “Go!” I smiled and said “ok.” As I left the room I added that I would see him in awhile. He smiled and nuzzled deep into the bedding. (Fathering Journal, 12/19/93)

Commentary
In the above vignette there appears to be no agenda, no method, and no intention on the father’s part but to be with his boy. Perhaps nothing was gained, yet certainly nothing was lost in this gentle interaction.

This interchange was influenced by the context and the state of the father’s psyche. In that moment the father appears free of conflicting demands which could have predetermined his psychological, emotional, and behavioral posturing. What took place in the father’s psyche, both conscious and unconscious, is of interest. How he entered the room could have been conditioned by numerous potential influences. He could have been carrying a judgement of how long he feels his boy should sleep and of how he should wake up. When told to “go,” there was fertile ground for intrapsychic intrusion on the part of the father. He could have allowed dozens of alternative responses (i.e., his feelings could have been hurt). Yet, quite simply, he got up and walked out of the room. How did he do that? In addition, what message did he leave with his son as communicated by his body posture, breathing pattern, words, and gestures? These actions are also grounds for choice or subject to defensive responses. Could these responses have been determined by the degree of awareness brought to the situation?” – Dukes, Timothy P. (1995). Father Mindfulness: The psychodynamics of loving attention. Ph.D. dissertation.

Above Image: www.sydney-australien.de/…/DSC01937_xl.jpg

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