Week 4: Blog Post #4 - Comment on Rebecca Girard's Blog Post

URL Link for my comment on Rebecca Girard's Blog Post -
http://engageandmotivate.blogspot.com/2012/06/wk-4-reading-entry.html?showComment=1340337794778#c5612520779231375857

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Rebecca Girard - 

You definitely have a way with words.  :)  It's been an honor working with your this year.  I am lucky to have been one of the first members to work with you in our EMDT program.  As a fellow "Lovely Lady," I want to thank you for everything that you have done for me this year, both, as a classmate and as a friend.  Even though we are just an hour or so apart, we still haven't seemed to manage to meet up.  I'm sorry for that.  I can't make it to graduation, but I'm sure we will be seeing each other at some point. :)

It's crazy to know that each of us live in different parts of the world, teaching different student populations, and just as you said... we are all connected by this program.  All of our struggles and triumphs have brought us this far and we still continue to try to change the education worlds around us.  This was our spark... our possibility.  Now, we spread the word.

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Week 4: Blog Post #3 - Comment on Cherylee Gruber's Blog Post

URL Link for my comment on Cherylee Gruber's Blog Post -
http://reflectionsofthegruber.blogspot.com/2012/06/mac-week-4-leadership-project.html?showComment=1340335876904#c3084532648263281883

 

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Cherylee Gruber - 

When I saw this assignment, my first thought was Steve Jobs, but I went with people who were closer to me.

After reading your blog posting it got me thinking more about other types of leaders. I definitely feel that Steve Jobs was a leader of a great computer empire, but I know his leadership skills were definitely unconventional. He was known as a "high-maintenance co-worker" who demanded excellence from his staff and was known for his blunt delivery of criticism. However he did it, his success is still around to tell his tale.

Bill Gates is also a great name that is associated with leadership, as well as humanity. However, Gates stepped away from his technology empire and later devoted his efforts to solving the world’s biggest problems. As you mentioned, Gates and his wife are committed to eliminating diseases, increasing development standards, and generally fighting inequality.

Both Jobs and Gates had immeasurable impacts on the world. The world wouldn't be the same without them.

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Week 4: Blog Post #2 - Leadership post: Wk4 Leadership Role Model Reflection

There are many people who have come and gone throughout my life that I would consider to have been inspirations, as well as role-model leaders.  However, there have been two that have stuck around my whole life--my parents.  Both of my parents have influenced my life greatly, but in two different and distinct ways. 

My mother has always showed me how to be a great leader with larger group of people.  My whole life she has been a project manager.  I have watched her interact with people on a larger scale.  I have seen my mother on conference calls and on-site at an office.  She has a very easy-going personality, but demands greatness from her teams.

My father, on the other hand, has lead groups of people as a civil engineer on smaller types of projects.  I have seen my father interact with people in the field, as well as had the opportunity to work under my father in the drafting/maps division for the city of Novato when I was in high school.  I love the way keeps his cool when problems arise.

As I grow and begin to develop my own sense of leadership, I would love to encompass my mother's ability to work with (and manage) larger groups of people, but also have my father's knack of separating emotions and decisions when working with smaller groups.  Both are eager listeners and absorb knowledge and possess the ability to analyze all situations carefully.

Week 4: Blog Post #1 - Readings on "The Art of Possibility" (Chapters 9-12)

 

Chapter 9: Lighting A Spark
The message that "Certain things in life are better done in person" is a very power message.  It definitely makes a statement... a statement of responsibility... a statement of importance... a statement of respect.  This is the type of statement that can be passed down form generation to generation and the message will always be the same.  People will take you more seriously if they see you face-to-face.  The message is delivered with more passion and is communicated in a different way than over the phone or through words on a paper.  Plus, there is more desire to listen, or hear someone out, if there is a physical presence.  Overall, this practice is about enrollment, which is the art and practice of generating a spark of possibility for others to share.  You give yourself as a possibility to others and being ready, in turn, to catch their spark.

Chapter 10: Being the Board
When nothing seems to be going your way and even when enrollment doesn't seem to work... just call yourself "the board."  You have now become life's playing board, where the game is being played on you.

The first part of the practice is to declare: "I am the framework for everything that happens in my life" OR "If I cannot be present without resistance to the way things are and act effectively, if I feel myself to be wronged, a loser, or a victim, I will tell myself that some assumption I have made is the source of my difficulty."  The second part of this practice is to ask yourself in regard to the unwanted circumstances: "Well, how did this get on the board that I am?

This practice helps us to remain on track.  When things happen to us, we are able to take a graceful journey through life.   Zander says that "being the board is not about turning the blame on yourself."  It is about making a difference and designing conversations to repair breakdowns in relationship.  Zander continues on to say "You name yourself as the instrument to make all your relationships into effective partnerships... You open the channel by removing the barriers to tenderness within you."  Lastly, the rewards for being the board are"self-respect, connection at the deepest and most vital kind, and a straight road to making a difference."


Chapter 11: Creating Frameworks for Possibility
The practice of this chapter is to invent and sustain frameworks which bring forth possibility.

The steps to practicing framing the possibilities are:

1. Make a new distinction in the realm of possibility: One that is a powerful substitute for the current framework of meaning that is generating the downward spiral.
2. Enter the territory. Embody the new distinction in such a way that it becomes the framework for life around you.
3. Keep distinguishing what is "on the track" and what is "off the track" of your framework for possibility.

I can somewhat relate to this summary of Zander's story below in a small way.  As I enter my classroom wearing glasses, my students who are new to wearing glasses don't feel as shy, but A New Children's Story took things to a whole new level.  It had such a powerful impact on me.

The little girl has had chemotherapy and comes back to school with no hair.   The kids make fun of her and won't play with her.   The next morning the teacher comes to school with her head shaved.  All the students went home and begged their parents to let them shave their heads.

The framework the students had functioned in changed when the teacher removed the downward spiral.  The vision we have becomes our framework for possibility when it meets certain criteria that distinguish it from the objectives of the downward spiral.

Zander breaks it down....

• A vision articulates a possibility.
  A vision fulfills a desire fundamental to humankind, a desire with which any human being can resonate.
• A vision makes no reference to morality or ethics, it is not about a right way of doing anything.
• A vision is stated as a picture for all time, using no numbers, measures, or comparatives. It contains no specifics of time, place, audience, or product. 
• A vision is free-standing .
• A vision is a long line of possibility radiating outward. It invites infinite expression, development, and proliferation within its definitional framework. 
• Speaking a vision transforms the speaker.

For that moment the "real world" becomes the universe of possibility and the barriers to the realization of the vision disappear.  This practice of framing possibility calls upon us to use our minds in a manner that is counter-intuitive.

Chapter 12: Telling the WE Story
Zander explains that this practice points the way to a kind of leadership based on the courage to speak on behalf of all people and for the long line of human possibility.

1. Tell the WE story - the story of the unseen threads that connect us all, the story of possibility.
2. Listen and look for the emerging reality.
3. Ask: "what do WE want to have happen here?" What's best for US? What's OUR next step.

More often than not, history is about conflicts between an "us" and "them".  The WE Story defines a human being in a specific way.  It says we are central selves seeking to contribute, naturally engaged, forever in a dance with each other.  The WE appears when, for the moment, we set aside the story of fear, competition, and struggle and tell its story.  The goal of each of us is to remove those things that impede our progress forward as a great leader.

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SOURCES: 
Zander, B. & Zander, R. (2000). The art of possibility. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. 

All pictures are from me personal collection

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