​I have been writing and thinking a lot about power lately. And, one of the principles of power that has surfaced is the idea that we are often most powerful when we feel most powerless.
 
I explored this premise based on my own and my family’s experiences with my Dad’s suicide. It was the most broken, disorienting, unstable feeling time of my life. As I have written before, I don’t even remember a lot of what happened for a good year around that time. Yet, mostly thanks to my Mom and fully supported by my immediate family, we took the opportunity to tell our story, and to tell my Dad’s story.
 
We shared publicly that his death was suicide, that he suffered with Depression, that he had experienced sexual abuse by a neighbor when he was a child. We thought we were being transparent for our own purposes and healing. It turned out that our transparency was of a far greater purpose and broader healing.
 
We received literally hundreds of personal notes and letters (they continue occasionally over a decade later) of people sharing their own stories of suicide, Depression, and abuse. Some of these people were friends we had known for years but never knew shared these same experiences. Others were total strangers who had simply read the obituary and wanted to share their gratitude and their own story with people they knew would understand.
 
It was incredibly powerful. We were powerful. My Dad’s life remained powerful, and even took on new power after his death.
 
I share all of this again as I observe the Mayor of Nashville, Megan Barry, who recently lost her only son to an overdose, as she turns this most powerless feeling moment in her life into perhaps her most powerful. In fact, Mayor Barry’s being open and honest about her loss, her son’s struggle with addiction, and the frustrating and futile need and desire of a parent just to ask her son “what were you thinking” could be the most important work she has ever done.
 
I know there are parents all over the country, and even the world, who have already read her story, listened to her words, and feel just a little more whole because of it. I know there are parents right now who will lose their child in this sort of tragedy, who have yet to realize how important the Mayor’s example will be to them.
 
So, I guess this is in part at thank you to Mayor Barry, but also a note of encouragement to everyone else who feels alone, shamed about, or broken by their lives and the tragedies they have experienced. You are not alone.
 
The more we can all muster the courage to share our struggles openly the more lives we can save, the more families we can heal, and the stronger communities we will build.
 
We can and will be powerful in our most broken moments. 

In an era that has surfaced the gender, race, and economic biases implicit in our cultural definitions of powerful leadership, we have also exposed the self-serving and self-reinforcing nature of that powerful leadership. We can see how our examples and modifiers of powerful leadership have served the powerful and institutionalized powerlessness elsewhere.
 
Further, in our current climate of one upmanship, brashness, bravado, and the loudest-is-the-leader, we may have actually reached the logical conclusion of our old cultural notions of powerful leadership.
 
So, I would like to offer a different lens through which we can better see and understand and cultivate our power, as well as the power of those around us: Leaderful Powership.
 
I am nothing if not a language and grammar nerd, so understanding the concept starts there.
 
The idea of Leaderful Powership simply inverts the traditional and accepted concept of powerful leadership to make power the subject and leader the modifier.
 
Power is a condition of human existence (not the privilege of a select few). “Ship” as a suffix denotes that condition. Powership. We all have it, whether we know it, apply it, or leave it wholly untapped.
 
Being leaderful, then, is a modifier of our human condition of power. “Ful” as a suffix means to be “full of” or “characterized by.” To apply “–ful” to power in a description of the human condition (i.e. powerful) is redundant, or at least not very insightful. Again, we are all powerful.
 
So, applying “-ful” instead toward how we use that power (leaderful) could provide some clarity and insight to how we live and work with each other, leading, following, and the like.
 
How do we become leaderful, given that we already have power?
 
Perhaps in simply reorienting subject and modifier, core condition and qualifier, we can also reorient how we invest in our personal development and our abilities to support others’ development. Perhaps we can use our own power to help others grow theirs, leaderfully.
 
These basic reflections were the spark that ultimately led to my book: We Power: Building Powerful Relationships That Can Change Your Work and the World.
 
Check it out to see where the thinking led!

Complicit with the unbearable lightness of privilege (see previous blog), oppression is a constant burden. Like privilege, when unacknowledged by the oppressed, it becomes a fact of life unquestioned and unchallenged as it is unknown. Instead of manifesting in lightness, oppression is weight. As I think I have made clear, I fall in the privileged category. I do not know oppression first-hand in any way, shape, or form. I have merely observed it through my upbringing and my work and I have read and learned about it as a way of deepening my understanding of my own privilege.
 
I fought against it every day when I worked with youth. The depth and breadth of assumptions and judgments they had about their own poverty, blackness, age, and even neighborhood were stunning and troubling – even to someone who thought himself enlightened. In fact, their internalized negative assumptions were the ultimate barrier not only to achieving the dreams they still had individually (their oppression yet only partially internalized) but also to the improvement of our schools and community. Their oppression was both individual and structural, implicit in their schools and community and fueling their early process of internalization. We had to start our work with every young person by helping them think critically about what they had internalized and how that impacted the choices they made and the opportunities they sought. Internalized oppression changes the way we dream. I recall one simple and brief conversation with a young woman who lived in public housing in a rather chaotic family situation who had told me she wanted to be a dental hygienist. I told her I thought that was great and asked her why she wanted to do that. As she talked, she expressed a broad interest in dentistry, the science, the business, the people. So, I asked without thinking why she didn’t want to become a dentist rather than a dental hygienist. It left her somewhat dumbfounded, which left me dumbfounded. It had never crossed her mind. It was the first thing that crossed mine.
 
Aside from this rather simple example, our work trying to liberate each other of our oppressions (and privilege for me) was often brutal work and had to be done in a safe way and in a manner in which we had time and space to deal with anger and confusion and more questions that it spurred for them about themselves, about the adults in their lives, the systems that were supposedly there to support them. As they became more critical and more liberated, they also began to feel that burden of oppression more fully. We were externalizing it. They went from living but never seeing it to seeing it everywhere they turned, while still living it. This was powerful work, but it was dangerous work. These youth needed to see their oppression so they could begin to liberate themselves from it, reclaim power from it, but it wasn’t something we could immediately just go out and change. We had to start small and individual and work from there.
 
While all of my youth and most of my community could point at and name experiences where they were treated differently because of their race, or their age, or their perceived income or whatever, they mostly processed those at the level of the interaction, focusing on the individual experience. They never saw the system that was supporting their marginalization; the structures that consistently and persistently delivered the same type of negative message for everyone like them. One of the stories we used to help process this growing awareness of systemic and institutional forces was the Parable of the Boiling Frog. While simple and fairly grotesque, the Parable of the Boiling Frog illustrates the fact that a frog that is dropped into boiling water will scramble for its life to get out. This obviously makes sense to most of us and is how we would react to such pain or danger. On the other hand, if that frog is dropped into room temperature water that slowly rises to a boil, it will never even try to escape. The frog will make incremental adaptations to survive the environment that ultimately leads to its death.
 
This is the story of internalized oppression. We adapt to messages about our worth, about our possibility, about the quality of our character or our family or community one message at a time. And, when those messages all align in a way that consistently and persistently tells us we are lesser then we begin to believe we are lesser. At some point, we accept the fact that we are lesser. We accept our slow death without ever even recognizing it.
 
So, how do we get out of that slowly boiling pot? Even as personal enlightenment and liberation unfold, the systems and structures of oppression are generations in the making and will be generations in the dismantling. Just because we liberate our minds doesn’t mean the systems are ready to change. We have to transform our personal liberation into something that impacts the world around us. Lest we become overwhelmed by this responsibility, we must remind ourselves that we have the chance to impact the world not just through grand social actions but through every interaction. We have the power to open hearts with every conversation, liberate minds by modeling our own liberation, by putting our own challenges and development out there for others to see, to find solace and motivation in.


image from: https://www.shapeways.com/product/J5WVPUPLB/triple-gear

Anderson William’s book Creating Matters is gaining traction.  We are using Creating Matters as a guide in the development of the Seton Catholic Schools Academic Team.

Creating Matters is helping us to think differently about our work as educators: our priorities, relationships, and what we are creating – in this case high performing schools and effective leaders.

The world has always belonged to learners. Creating, building creative relationships, and purposefully reflecting can generate continuous learning and help us think differently about transforming a school, a business or one’s life.

We have to think differently or we won’t grow and understand the changing world around us.  Lifelong learning opens our minds exposes us to new vantage points, more things to see, to touch, to explore.  Lifelong learning is hard work.  It is not for everyone, but for those who commit, the joy and engagement makes one’s life better.

To sustain lifelong learning, we must depend on our creativity.  Creativity defines the nature of our relationships. It puts our learning into action. It is a philosophy of how we see the world and our role in it. Creativity will determine whether our efforts will ultimately create impact, whether we transform schools and build new leaders, and pass that work to a new generation.

Creating anything new starts with asking questions: questioning the perceptions of the others, the sources of accepted fact; the thinking that verified it; and how we rethink the work of transforming schools from scratch. Too many schools and districts are great examples of organizations that have failed over time to recreate themselves while convincing themselves they are better than the facts show.  In the case of Seton Catholic Schools, Creating Matters guides us in creating with a focus on what kids should be learning and becoming: creative, lifelong learners who are ready to change and engage in their community.  Isn’t that what schools are charged with doing?

Schools in transformation must ask this question: If we are starting from scratch and wanted the kids to become lifelong learners, is what we are doing now what we would design from scratch? Answering this question and wrestling with its implications require us to be more creative, to have stronger relationships that survive the necessary arguments and conflicts, and to build our work on a model of creating rather than constantly fixing.

At Seton, we are seeing some bright spots in teaching and learning along with better student engagement with faculty who are starting from scratch.  We are collectively creating and questioning our own assumptions, learning new skills and creating lifelong learning across our school community.  When we bring this shared purpose and focus to our classrooms and students, the transformation is palpable. We are building a community of students, faculty and staff who are committing to lifelong learning and to creating the kinds of schools where that commitment is put into practice.

Read Creating Matters and then put it into practice.  This isn’t about “seven easy steps to a better you” or some other seemingly simple approach to creativity or leadership. It’s about renewing your awareness of who you are and what you can do when you commit to creating what matters in school, business, or most importantly, life.

​Years ago, while commiserating about limited access to higher education for low-wealth students, a colleague offered a thought: “Every system is perfectly designed to deliver the outcomes it delivers.”
 
If you think on that for just a moment…(go ahead, do it!)…it’s both painfully obvious and painfully…well…painful. But, for anyone working to change the outcomes that are important to them in education, politics, justice, or otherwise, this simple statement tells us where our efforts must be directed: the systems that we have, advertently or inadvertently, designed to underperform (or to perform exceptionally toward outcomes we never intended).
 
Under this premise, the school system that is struggling with dropouts is perfectly designed to generate those dropouts.
 
The justice system that incarcerates men of color at dramatically higher rates than anyone else is perfectly designed to incarcerate men of color.
 
The political system that generates corruption, gridlock, and weak candidates is perfectly designed to do just that.
 
System performance is not the sum of its individual elements. It is the interrelated (systemic) performance of its elements. Systems get misaligned because we build and invest (or disinvest) in them element by element often over long periods of time, and amidst shifting values and visions. And, the more we address individual elements in isolation the more likely we are to create systemic dissonance (the type of boiling-frog dissonance we actually grow to accept).
 
Within an organizational system, for example, perhaps we have rewritten our values statement, but our organizational structure is out-of-date or even arbitrary. We revisit our investments (budget, people, etc.), but align them with our organizational structure rather than our strategy (this is my new definition of bureaucracy, by the way). We clarify and document our desired outcomes, but we maintain old strategies that have lost relevance in a changing environment. We improve our product or service delivery, but never invest in our human capital pipeline to support and sustain it.
 
When we see systemic failure, we cannot blame the system without owning our role in it. We cannot claim that our part of the system is working, and it’s everyone else’s that’s broken. We cannot do fragmented and narrow work and believe it will add up to a healthy system. It won’t.
 
If we are going to create the system that is perfectly designed to deliver the outcomes we actually want, we need to design, invest, and lead systemically.



image: http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/

​And, I promise I will stop trying to convince you.
 
Convincing doesn’t work, and it never has. And, it’s making us dumber.
 
Convincing is a form of coercion. Power imposed. It seeks conquest of the others’ perspective (action), which usually only retrenches the others’ perspective (reaction). Think about a time when you knew someone was trying to convince you of something counter to your beliefs. How did you respond? I know my initial response is usually to defend and challenge, if for nothing else, the sport of it.
 
In fact, I have never been convinced of anything, and, I bet, you haven't either.
 
When it seems like we have been convinced, what has actually happened is that we have learned. Someone has shared a new perspective in a way that we could understand. They have provided new information that we were able to consume. They have posed a question that gave us a safe space to rethink our assumptions. They have done something that has enabled us to reflect on our positions in a way that alters them. Something has happened within us. They haven’t imposed it, forced it, or made it so.  They haven’t convinced us. They have provided a prompt and/or an environment in which we could convince ourselves.
 
This is teaching/learning. This is the open exchange of power.
 
In a post-truth America, understanding this dynamic is even more critical. There will always be facts, “facts”, and “alternate facts” that will make any case on anything. We can always find someone on the Internet who agrees with us, or we can say it enough times in enough places that it appears so. This emboldens those who want to convince and bolsters the defense of those who won’t be convinced. The logical conclusion of this dynamic then is a stalemate, the end of teaching and learning, a perpetual confirmation bias arms race with the chilling effect of an intellectual Cold War.
 
Stop convincing. Start teaching. Stop being convinced. Start learning. It’s critical to our relationships and fundamental to our democracy.
 
You’ll never convince me otherwise.

​Those of us who are privileged wear our privilege like a feather; not like a feather in a cap or some showy accessory, but like a tiny feather left on our shoulder after we take off a down-filled winter coat. A feather we don’t notice, we didn’t put there, we don’t feel. A white feather.
 
For us even to notice its presence requires a good look in the mirror (a mere glance typically won’t do it), or for someone to point it out for us. When we see it, this white feather, this privilege, we wonder who else noticed it. How long has it been there? Where did it come from? Why haven’t we noticed it before?
 
Privilege is weightless for the privileged. Or, at least, privilege unnoticed, unnamed, or unaccepted is weightless for the privileged. Weightlessness is implicit to privilege because the weight of our privilege is being borne by those who aren’t. For them, our small, white, weightless feather carries the burdens of history, oppression, exclusion, and so much more. For them, the weight of our feather is often unbearable.
 
So, what happens when we privileged start to understand this weight, even as we haven’t previously felt it or carried it for ourselves? When someone exposes our privilege, the weightlessness of that feather begins to change. When the social and cultural systems that have upheld our privilege and distributed its weight to others begin to evolve, that feather becomes a symbol of things we never knew or understood about ourselves.
 
We feel embarrassed. Shamed. Confused. Indignant. Humbled. Angry. Lost. Defensive.
 
The shifting of what was previously weightless can rattle the core identity of the white male who believes he is supposed to dominate politics, the boardroom, the factory floor, or household, but no longer feels so dominant. This shifting antagonizes and undermines the singularity of one religious narrative, creating space for other beliefs, valuing dialogue over dogma. It surfaces and challenges our judgment and pity of those less fortunate, those with disabilities, those with mental illness. Suddenly, this soft, feathery lightness of privilege rips violently at the meaning and history of our whiteness, maleness, faith, socio-economic status, gender identity, mental and physical abilities.
 
It shakes our foundation, and we don’t typically like our foundation being shaken. After all, we are standing on it.
 
And, when this happens, we privileged choose one of two paths forward: we grow and evolve given this enlightenment, rebuilding a broader and stronger foundation, or we retrench and defend our pre-enlightenment state and cling to our past, now fractured, foundation.
 
The struggle between these two paths is real and is on display every day. Just watch the news. Listen to the political and economic discourse. Watch the rallies. Observe the angst in our own communities and schools.
 
But, here’s the deal: denial of privilege is just that. It doesn’t make it not true. The feather is there. Most of us see it. And, yes, it is moving.
 
The question is: will we privileged begin to shoulder its weight or use our privilege to continue to push that burden onto others?
 

Many years ago, while drinking coffee and riffing in deep disillusionment on the state of the world, or our community, or our schools, or who-knows-what, my brother and I started satirically plotting a new leadership book on how to achieve truly soul-less leadership. Perhaps this exposes a bit about both our geekiness and our intensity!
 
I ran across the notes from that conversation just the other day. As I read them, I didn’t laugh nearly as much as when we were talking. I didn’t laugh at all. Instead, I found them shockingly relevant, even more so than back then, perhaps tonight more than ever.
 
Here are a few of our snarky and seemingly outlandish thoughts that were funny back then but more grounded in leadership, and specifically political, reality today; and thus terrifying:
 
Attributes of Soul-less Leadership

• Mindlessness is the critical first step to soul-lessness.  To seek and find true mindlessness, the soul-less leader must resist the temptations of critical thought and self-reflection. 

• Soul-lessness is about eliminating one’s inner dialogue, uncertainty, and general consciousness to project singularity and certainty.

• Having successfully nullified internal consciousness and struggle, the soul-less leader can focus his attention on what really matters in leadership: protecting the social, economic, and cultural constructs that created and define his successful leadership (see the soul-less loop below).

• The soul-less leader does not change the system, but merely seeks to bend it toward himself.

 
Skills of Soul-less Leadership
Externalization
Blame
Obfuscation
Powerful communication of a powerless message
Avoidance
 
The Soul-less Leadership Loop
The soul-less leader seeks a path to the self that is self-affirming.
 
The soul-less leader seeks to lead to justify his own leadership.
 
The soul-less leader seeks only insights that confirm the correctness of his own insights
 
Today, I don’t want to be cynical or disillusioned. I try every day not to be. But, anyone paying attention, I assume, sees many, if not all, of these attributes on display every day in our local and national politics.
 
So, for tonight, for this Presidential Debate, rather than make a cynical or disillusioned assumption, I will leave it as a question for each of us to ponder and observe: as the two people vying to lead our country debate and discuss their ideas, who will have the courage to show us their soul?

Many years ago, I learned a training/facilitation protocol we simply call Comfort/Risk/Danger.

When working with a team, the protocol helps them, based loosely around whatever it is they are trying to accomplish and what kind of work it entails, to share what things put them as individuals in the comfort zone, the risk zone, or the danger zone.

For instance, some team members will be totally comfortable with public speaking; for others, it feels dangerous. For some, crunching numbers is comfortable; for others, it would be a risk. Some find conflict dangerous; some find it risky. And, we all know those who are a little too comfortable with it.

But, we need speakers; we need numbers people; we need people who create, manage, and support effective conflict. And, we cannot afford for those skill sets to reside with one person or in one department. It’s too easy for them to get marginalized, or to go away completely. Some element of each has to be part of a broader culture.

So, as the protocol helps demonstrate, building an effective team cannot just be about capitalizing on what everyone is already good at (i.e. what puts them in the comfort zone). Creating a team is about learning how to support a pervasive element of risk.

Humans learn better when there is some level of risk. In the risk zone, we are stretching, challenging ourselves, and actively asking questions and seeking solutions. When we are comfortable, on the other hand, we are surrounded by what we already know. We aren’t actively learning. When we are in danger, we aren’t learning either (social, emotional, and professional danger; not just physical). Fight or flight kicks in. We shut down, seek relief, and avoid (or project our danger onto others).

After starting in education, Zeumo has now pivoted to be a mobile solution for hospital communications. As we line up our new sites and support the teams who are rolling it out, Comfort/Risk/Danger are in play for all involved.

How do we launch a new product in a new market in a way that doesn’t put those of us at Zeumo in danger? How do we support each other’s risk in advancing the product, learning from our early clients, and lining up future sales?

How do we offer a new mobile communication technology for hospitals that doesn’t put physicians, nurses, or hospital administration in danger? How do we best support them as they address their own systemic communication challenges?

How do we help improve communications and communication workflows as risk, not as danger? How do we articulate, and present through our product, sufficient value and ease of use that adoption seems obvious and the learning curve is relatively flat?

The problem of communication in hospitals is clear and has been identified and acknowledged by every leader we have spoken with: too many channels; too much noise; too little strategy. The challenge of implementation, assuming the technology works (which it does), largely rests in the culture of learning in the hospital and facilitated by hospital leadership.

To create such a culture, to be such a leader, and to leverage new technologies – to be a learning organization – is just risky.
​

“If you don’t feel you fit in, then you’re not going to stay around.”

These were the simple words offered by Tim Shriver at a dropout prevention conference I attended earlier this year. And, while Tim is known for his work with Special Olympics more broadly and specifically with Project UNIFY as it relates to inclusive education, his statement captures something fundamentally human. It applies to teams, schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. It basically applies wherever more than one person is gathered.

So, what does it mean to fit in?

1. You understand the rules and norms and feel a part of them. Every group, community, or even ad hoc gathering of people has rules and norms that guide and inform its function and purpose. Some are stated. Some are not. Almost all are culturally informed and guided by experiences (or lack thereof) of race, class, gender, physical and intellectual ability, and many other variables. Unless you are explicitly part of creating norms (or at least have the opportunity to understand and accept them explicitly), there’s a good chance you won’t feel a part of them.

2. Your strengths are as present as your weaknesses. You can see and articulate both what value you add to a group and what things you know you need to work on. You receive (and learn how to process) feedback from others accordingly. Alternately, you can identify the strengths of others without jealousy and their weaknesses without judgment.

3. You feel accepted for who you are. You don’t have to be like others, but instead your differences are acknowledged, accepted, and celebrated. Our differences are our common connection. NOTE: Acceptance should not be confused with its committed-but-less-invested cousin tolerance.

4. Your opinions matter. Your opinion does not have to be acted upon or even accepted as correct all the time. You just need to know someone listens to you and shows you that they take what you say seriously, whether they agree with it or not.

5. You have the same opportunities as others around you – opportunities that match your interests and abilities. As I have written before, presenting an opportunity doesn’t make it an opportunity. We all need the support, tools, and pathways to claim opportunities for them to feel like real opportunities to us.

6. You can fail successfully. I really don’t want to pontificate here about how failure is required for success. But, you do need to know you can “fail forward” and understand, and know that others understand, that this is what it means to be human.

7. Your effort is respected even if your outcomes are not perfect. In honor of Tim Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver who coined it, I’ll share the motto of Special Olympics: “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

8. You can banter. Banter is something often not understood by someone outside of a group. So, the ability to talk nonsense, laugh at old jokes, verbally spar with others in good fun, and just riff on ideas and conversations can prove that the most meaningless content can generate the most meaningful connections.

So, as leaders, whether we want to retain students in our schools, talented employees in our office, or valued members in our communities, we need to start with processes, policies, and practices that help them fit in.