Per your many requests, please find my March 23rd Tedx Talk below! It is also available on YouTube under the Tedx Channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEAzWD3038Y .
Thank you for your kind and enduring support, Deidre
I was asked to speak on the subject of kindness this week. To do so, I realized I had to first wrestle with the meaning of kindness. How can it be applied not just to those easy moments when a friend calls in need of compassion, but when you are maneuvering through a working day? 
I used to see kindness as simple and fun. It was bringing soup to the neighbor with the cold or buying lottery tickets from the 8th grader raising money for a school trip. As I dig deeper, I realize that kindness requires courage and often a ferocity that feels antithetical to a trait that seems soft and sweet.
Here’s a common example, a business colleague makes continued interpersonal errors. What’s the kindest action? By keeping noble silence, am I being kind? Or, telling him what I am witnessing, would that be kinder? Kindness in this instance is not simple and it may not be remotely fun especially if there can be negative repercussions for whatever action you take.
To ferret out an answer to this polemic question, I look to the practices of full-court empathy, looking for the bigger picture and how to tell the truth.
Finding the kindest action is clearer when I can drop into another’s shoes while standing at the same time in my own. An act of kindness needs to support both the other person and me. If I forget either of us in the equation, I am being unkind. Kindness is the resolution of what appears to be irreconcilable opposites of competing needs. What will truly support us both…not to make everyone smile, but truly improve our situations?
Focusing on the bigger picture also creates clarity. I see this with parenting. Teaching our children to be responsible citizens may involve some tough feedback as they grow. Is it kind to discipline a child after she have been caught trying to steal candy? For the whole, the tears and internal struggles are ultimately compassionate as the child learns how to navigate society’s rules. So, to find the answer to “what’s the kindest action?” also involves thinking of our larger context.
Last, counsel on how to tell the truth cuts a path through my brain thicket. Cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien says to “tell the truth without blame or judgment.” Another cross-cultural rule of thumb is to tell the truth from a place of “I.” So, “You are offensive and cause problems with your peers,” in the above example is not fully true nor very kind. That’s just my opinion. Using a non-judgmental I statement like “I am picking up discord in our interactions and am not sure how to proceed,” could be kinder and more truthful.
Kindness is not easy, yet when it comes my way it is a balm for the soul. How can we each bring more kindness into the weeks ahead?
As a continuing theme of this blog, I want to share the work of two artists who bring both beauty from and insight about our oceans’ treasures. Richard and Judy Lang have collected plastic debris since 1999 from 1000 yards of Kehoe Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore and create museum-worthy art.
In one year they easily gather 4000 pounds of plastic. Meanwhile, as Judith says, “We are not cleaning the beach, we are curating the beach,” as they select only plastic in the colors and shapes for which they are searching. What could be a depressing or overwhelming issue to face, the Langs appear to address it with interest and careful observation. ”The opposite of beauty is really not ugliness,” says Richard, “The opposite of beauty is indifference. We are trying not to be indifferent about this and about the world.”
Please enjoy another example of artists as leaders:
My mother-in-law Jinny Combs taught me many things. 
As one of my most formative bosses, I probably model my leadership style off of hers more than I recognize. I know that I rely on two pieces of constant Jinny advice, “Look for people with good attitudes, you can teach them everything else,” and “You gotta be flexible!”
After running a guest ranch in southwestern Montana for fifty years, Jinny could have easily written a long book on leadership, but instead she penned three cookbooks and a collection of funny stories about life at the Diamond J.
Jinny taught that you could use writing to foster flexibility. When we would lose a pet or a person, my mother-in-law would write a poem. Sometimes a haiku composed at 4 am fit the bill and in other cases, a prose poem was right. Really anytime life surprised her, Jinny took pen to paper and reframed the situation into one that had value and, most often, a whole lot of humor.
These poems were never just for her. Once the story was captured in verse, it was typed, copied and sent out to a large distribution list of friends and family. An envelope with Jinny’s distinctive writing was a harbinger of news that although it may contains some sadness would always have us giggling.
Each piece would also end with an “ole!” Since my in laws spent their winters in Mexico that felt fitting, but this now feels like a constant call to get back on your feet and cheer that you are still here. Jinny was never one for focusing on loss or grieving, at least around us. There were guests to meet in the summer, or to correspond with off season, and more fun to be found.
Jinny read whatever I wrote loyally, including this blog. The videos were her favorite and, before she got sick last spring, they always engendered calls and emails. It should be no surprise to me that I have been putting off composing a post after losing her last August. I would like to chalk it up to too much work, but if I am honest, I have been avoiding the pain of writing without her reading.
But, you gotta be flexible — is not following our mentors’ advice is one of the ways that we can honor them? Jinny often said that her mother-in-law created the most brilliant sunsets. Following her tradition, maybe it’s time to believe that Jinny is out there watching in the vast worldwide web. She’s sending along her favorite emails full of animal photos and waiting for me to get back on my feet. And so, I send this far and wide, just as she would have, and end this post with a rousing, but I must admit teary “OLE!”
A few months ago, I was asked to write an essay for www.lifebyme.com and today it is being featured on their home page! I hope you check out “Paradox” and find it of interest.
As always, thank you for your support. Today, I get to practice being seen…
A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to share leadership skills with nineteen international English teachers who are visiting on a State Department fellowship. Part of the program includes internships in our area schools. In my workshop we were uncovering the culture of a local high school.
Teacher after teacher shared surprises the school had held in their first visit. “The hallways are so quiet,” “Do you know that everyone chews gum, even the teachers?” and “Your students eat in during class!”
Some of this was news to this mother of past and present high school students, and it begged a brief tutorial on the D.I.E. cultural model as we all grappled with what all this information meant. Tracking the history of D.I.E., or the Describe, Interpret and Evaluate model, it appears that it was originally posited as an approach to art criticism. Briefly this is a 3 to 4-staged strategy where you notice:
Recently, this model has been applied to foster intercultural sensitivity. Example, A man is eating lunch using his fingers instead of cutlery, chewing with his mouth open and belching loudly (Describing the scene). I might think, “I wonder if he is American?” or “Does he know that this behavior is culturally off here?” or “That is definitely not attractive by American standards.” I might then start making assumptions about the individual and his cultural competencies.
Checking my work while I then evaluate my assumptions and interpretation of the situation wakes me up to where I am overlaying my own cultural frameworks and stereotypes and where I might be completely wrong.
So, returning to the international teacher cohort, after describing their visits, we then noticed assumptions were we each making on chewing gum or eating in the classrooms. Could we draw the conclusion that these unique activities created quieter hallways? Did it make better or worse students? The exercise drove home for me once more how quickly I zip from description right into interpretation and forget to evaluate too often.
Case in point. I sat down to dinner near Valentine’s day with friends and posed a timely icebreaking question, “What is something that you love?” A reply included a description of how fortunate one of us felt to be supporting his organization through bankruptcy and negotiations with creditors. “I feel really lucky to get to engage in this level of problem solving,” he added. If I had described to you all on his plate, I wonder if your interpretation might be closer to my “wow, that sure sounds miserable.” Meanwhile, his interpretation of the situation has a highlight of my evening. I loved seeing another modeling the possibility in seeing challenges or conflicts as gifts. I also loved how he proved my lack of “die” reasoning “dead” wrong.
A practice session for breaking down my thought processes into 3 distinct stages came in the form of taking my daughter on some eastern college visits over Presidents’ Day weekend. We’d arrive at a school and how quickly I noticed that I wanted to decide if it would be good/bad for her! Maybe it was because I was woefully underdressed for the humid cold, but I was a hindrance to my daughter’s experience anytime I started to jump to conclusions. So instead, I tried to use the hour-long tours around campus to notice details instead. What was fascinating is, when I was paying attention, how much description would be devoted not to faculty capabilities or dorm room dimensions, but to my own emotional landscape as I practiced visualizing our youngest daughter off at university.
So, I pass along this as a leadership exercise for us all to practice this week. Pick an attention grabbing situation and:
Just as we couldn’t determine the influence of gum chewing or I couldn’t suss out if a college was truly right for my daughter, we have some room to also choose our interpretations. Watching the inspirational effects of my friend choosing to see turmoil at work as a fascinating opportunity, perhaps since we don’t know, shall we add the brave assumption of “this is great,” while breaking down our experience? As I interpret all of this, it seems worth a try!
Over the holiday break, a contingent of our family stood on a hill overlooking Panama City. As we took in the view, our son Cameron remarked, “It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? I might suffer a terrible death. From a personal perspective that would be catastrophic. In this city, that might make news. Yet, from a historical perspective, that is nothing. How many millions have suffered the same? It becomes nothing.”
We listened to the sounds of the city and watched women hanging laundry out of windows below. We surveyed the skyline, a building fashioned to look like a corkscrew, and the ocean etching a border.
Senya, Cameron’s sister, then encouraged us to contemplate that cities, or systems, like this were rocking and rolling, moving and shaking across this country, across Central America and beyond. She brought up the struggle of actually comprehending how interdependent actions were madly occurring all around us and that we were somehow affecting the melee, even as observers from above. How many people were hanging their laundry at that exact moment? How many were laughing, crying or walking to work? How many were watching like we were? How did each of those actions mess with another?
I appreciated this conversation and how it shifted my perspective in those moments. I was remembered a Jewish proverb that reminds us to place a piece of paper in each of our front pockets. On one we are counseled to write, “I am unique in all the universe,” and on the other, “I am nothing but dust.” The art is to know which piece of paper to fish out when.
I was brought back to Cameron’s initial statement four days later floating down a creek in a small fishing boat, or panga, near Bocas del Toro, Panama. Our captain and guide hailed from the local Nôbe-Buglé tribe. After pointing out caimans and sloths, he added, “and that tree over there is called a devil tree. Some people will go make offerings in front of trees like those to call out the devil to get things that they want — jobs, a girl or money. On Good Friday they wait to make their request and spirits will appear sometimes in the form of a monkey to answer them.”
He had my attention. I have been long fascinated by how trees play a role in cultural practices. In Thailand, you can pray to a tree to save your child from illness or to get a job. If rewarded, you return to the tree and give it gifts. Apparently, tree spirits are feminine as when traveling in the country, I witnessed a number of trees awarded very fancy dresses.
In Crow culture, trees might be adorned with prayer bundles or gifts if prayers are answered as you can see in the included photo. 
And, Deidre, how are you going to connect this to leadership?
Harkening back to Cameron’s statement, leadership is all about perspective. For example, how often does your average Westerner walk past a tree without notice? How many of you reading this knew about the potential importance of trees and tree spirits within these cultures? More importantly, how often do I remember that what is standard to some is sacred to others?
Leadership calls for humility. I know well that my personal perspective is not the only one on each situation, yet I need constant reminders. Too often I want to barrel ahead ignoring this fundamental fact.
Like the death example above, what might be a catastrophe for me could be interesting news to another, or have no significance at all. As simple examples, take the cutting down a tree or filling in a wetland. Therefore, as leaders some of our most critical tasks must become sharing, gathering and shifting perspectives.
And so, I am walking into this work week with the mantra, “It’s all about perspective.”
University of Michigan psychologist Oscar Ybarra brought me welcome news this week. As the lead author of a study reported in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Ybarra explains that brief (10 minute) social conversations like those you would use to make friends boosts our brain’s executive functions. Improvements in working memory, self-monitoring, and the ability to suppress external and internal distractions resulted from relaxed conversation.
International teachers visiting in Montana
In a study of 192 undergraduates, Ybarra showed that a daily chat enhances both our problem solving and social intelligence capabilities. As a computer programmer who fresh out of college would quickly finish programs so I could catch up with my colleagues, I appreciate some belated justification for my actions. Now as a consultant and instructor focused on getting people to work better together, this study lends credence to my consistent call to bring both your head and your heart to work.
In previous research, Ybarra found that social interaction provides a short-term boost to executive function that’s comparable to playing brain games, such as solving crossword puzzles. “We believe that performance boosts come about because some social interactions induce people to try to read others’ minds and take their perspectives on things,” Ybarra says.
“Taken together with earlier research, these findings highlight the connection between social intelligence and general intelligence,” Ybarra adds. “This fits with evolutionary perspectives that examine social pressures on the emergence of intelligence, and research showing a neural overlap between social-cognitive and executive brain functions.”
Getting to know and empathize with your peers and employees has just become even more worth your time.
Fall term has begun at Montana State University and I am once again teaching two sections of a leadership course I was lucky enough to design. So, Mondays and Wednesdays 30 students and I explore what is leadership and why it matters.
Since I designed the course, the overarching definition for a leader comes from one of my favorite quotes by Meg Wheatley — “A leader is anyone who wants to help at this time.”
So in my class, if you care, you are a leader. This broad definition keeps all of us on the hook to learn leadership skills over the semester. The students are then accountable to apply the techniques through service learning. I’m also constantly reminded that because I want to help the students, I am leading until December 15th when the semester closes out.
I also like this big definition since it keeps me on the look out for what I like to call, “every day leaders.” These aren’t folks who are holding formal management roles, but ones who are simply trying to help. Today, I’d want to pass along two such leaders that inspired me over the past week.
First, check out this story by Joyce Hackett from Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project website (click on the link). Here the small act of observation combined with storytelling could profoundly change lives. The just act of reading this essay touched mine. I’d call Joyce’s courage to act and honesty admirable leadership skills.
And second, I have to pass along how Amy Pankratz of Souix Falls, South Dakota impacts lives around the country while serving as a stay-at-home mother of three. This too is leadership in the highest degree. Notice how she:
Is this not what we are calling for from our board rooms and corner offices?
I hope you enjoy her story.
In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.~Thomas Jefferson
Leadership can feel like a juggling act. Competing priorities, competing team members, and competing needs call for our attention. Also, there is opposition between what our heartstrings sing out with what our head advises when we weigh what would be nice versus what would be prudent in a situation.
However, instead of seeing leadership as a juggling act, I am coming to believe that it is actually a daily call to integrate what might feel like irreconcilable opposites. I see leadership as turning apparent competition into collaborative partners, whether it is fighting priorities, or an internal battle between your head and your heart. Leadership is turning an “either/or” into a “both/and.”
For example, the world’s warrior traditions counsel us to fully engage both our heads (be smart, tactical and pay attention) and our hearts (be compassionate, honorable and see your opponent as a valuable teacher). Great warriors, or leaders for that matter, know how to strategically assess the situation for their benefit while deeply valuing their enemies.
This balance translated into management theory terms, is described as seeing both the tasks and relationships as equally important. Peter Northouse in Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice
After studying communication and conflict styles over the past 16 years, I have also noticed that our innate styles place a natural priority on either doing/action or being/connection. Those who gravitate to an intellectual or “air” based style in The Way of Conflict: Elemental Wisdom for Resolving Disputes and Transcending Differences
So, full employment of both head and heart is critical, yet I find it often a paradoxical experience. For example, if I combine a “heart” with a “head” term what does it look like to be truly “honorably strategic”, “compassionately clever” or “discerningly kind?”
Notice when you begin to think about those word pairs, to which word do you gravitate? “Ahhh, honorably strategic,” you might think, “She’s asking us to remember to be honorable so we can win…that’s a good plan.” Or, to resolve the paradox, you might try, “By always being honorable, that is the best strategy…” Sorry, it’s not that easy. For example, focusing just on being honorable leaves you vulnerable. As a wise martial artist once told me, “Don’t kid yourself, I have been hit while bowing.”
Instead, we want to be equally smart and tricky as embody full integrity. Warrior work, leadership or resolving the heart/head conflict can be tough stuff. Meanwhile, both are required and last month, I was reminded how groups will naturally create balance if some members are too task- or relationship-oriented.
To host 17 international students at Montana State University, it took twelve core program staff. Some of us managed the details of food, housing and transportation, others taught and worked on group dynamics and still others administered the program. Everyone was busy, some working 6 to 7 days a week. When we would run into disagreements, it seemed to often center using my filters around if someone was overly focused on tasks or on relationships. Not only did we need to assure all the students were getting along and the staff was working well together, but also we had a lot to get done on time and of the highest quality. Using this head/heart paradigm, for me at least, was a helpful framework to describe why folks were going crosswise.
For example, one very competent young woman watched all our backs by dealing with a myriad of details throughout the month. At the end of program, we were all appreciative of the quantity of work she accomplished; yet she was frustrated that she hadn’t gotten to form deep bonds with the international students and often felt like “the bad guy.”
Personally, I have been getting feedback in 2010 to show up as an even more authoritative teacher and to be more direct, even a bit harsher, in my communication. What is ironic, and paradoxically right, is that in trying to be kind or heart-centered, I sometimes achieve the opposite result. When I don’t call others to hold their end of a business or teaching relationship by succinctly sharing my expectations, I can be perceived as disrespectful and even patronizing. Going for “relationship,” instead of a full balanced integration of head and heart, I actually can compromise both. It reminds me of the song lyrics, “…cruel to be kind in the right measure.” Good “heady” advice that I am now taking to heart!