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
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!
I have to share a recent Bozeman Chronicle article on the MSU leadership students with whom I have worked over the past semester.
11 students presented how they hope to make a difference in their homes and communities. And the audience was transfixed.
Why?
I posit it was because each student had found the magic balance of conveying both a plan and passion. They had done their research AND shared what makes them excited to get up in the morning. Again, it makes me a believer in the magic formula of leadership being equal parts head and heart. Draw me in with your enthusiasm, then keep me on your team with clear communication, mutual respect and scholarship. These students reminded me why this is my new end-of-the-semester addiction!
I want to add a related example on the power of passion before closing. Here’s the introductory paragraph I sent the Chronicle detailing my impressions of the MSU Leadership Foundations program before this event:
“Our Leadership Foundations students inspire me to have sincere hope in the future. As the instructors, Dave Meldahl and I challenge these students at the beginning of the semester to consider how they want to help, which is our broadest definition of leadership. How they rise to our challenge! In the past year, I have watched our Leadership Fellows start a non-profit to help at risk kids, volunteer as our Montana Student Regent, take the helms of two fraternities and expand a school in Tanzania. During these presentations the students commit to action and I have been consistently impressed with how they are then following through. It is an honor to be part of the Leadership Fellows program and to support these students’ success.”
Now…check out which of my quotes was chosen for the article!
I wish you all a wonderful and heart-filled holiday season.
At 21, I was given a gift. Calling to make plane reservation for my then-fiancé and me, I gave the ticket agent our names.
She began laughing and replied, “That’s so funny. Do you two travel together often?”
Punch line – my maiden name is Barber.
So, twenty-five years later, thanks to Northwest Airlines, I am Deidre B. Combs. The agent taught me that I clearly couldn’t hyphenate my name…that would not only be silly, but distracting. But, she also helped me realize that keeping my maiden name in my married mix would be a great symbolic gesture.
Not only, as one of four girls, was there no one to carry on my primary family name, but also, how can you take yourself too seriously when you have a last name like “Barber Combs”? The “B.” reminds me that our children could easily garner nicknames like “Scissors” and “Perm” and that I am a victim of the same game of Life that everyone else is playing. Honestly, just think about the likelihood of falling in love with someone whose name does that to yours? Like the Northwest agent, my name makes me giggle.
I adore the intricate connection between humor and humility. They come from the same root word of humus, or “earth.” Both humor and humility ground us; connect us to the planet and to each other. I find humor and sincere humility magnetizing. I like myself most when I am employing these two well; thus I wanted to keep that “B.” close at hand.
Watch in the attached TED video how really funny and humble connect.
Our son Cameron is a master in the sport of humble humor — he’ll appropriately deny it. To prove my point, Exhibit A is a recent blog post from his travels in Brazil entitled “Bonbon Disaster.” Click here to read!
Observing my leadership students employing humility this week, I noticed that humor is usually always close by. For example, one young man on the MSU track team remarked how he is trying to make sense of why he gets scholarships for throwing hammers and weights in the air. “I can’t believe they give me money for that,” he explained with a wry smile. He had us all giggling as he thoughtfully considered the relevance of this pursuit and his future athletic goals. His humble assessment and humorous descriptions of his daily practices had us all captivated. By the end we were trying to convince him that his focus on excellence and discipline was leadership in action. He had us all cheering him on, although that didn’t appear to remotely be his intent.
Humility exposes our vulnerability, mostly to ourselves. We might think that we somehow need to have it all together, but our community usually sees through that façade. They know that we are flawed. We all were born, we are all clumsily trying to figure out how this world works, and we are all going to die. That you can’t overcome. Our community seems more interested in when we realize this truth.
Personally, I’m not as interested in following a leader who is perfect, but one who despite imperfections wants to give. Isn’t it strange, when our “ugly” bumps and bruises are exposed that others often find us at our most beautiful?
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!
During July, I happily worked with Mongolian and Bhutanese monks, Middle Eastern business leaders, North African and Middle Eastern university student leaders and last but absolutely not least, 5 Iraqi high school students along with American peers. It was an incredible treat as I could soak up one of Montana’s best months while continually enriched by extraordinary conversation.
As foreign visitors visited Bozeman for leadership, civic engagement and conflict resolution training, I asked many of the participants some of my favorite closing questions before sending them on their way:
Not easy questions for participants who have been drinking from a fire hose of lectures, field trips and project development skills for 8 to 10 hours a day. For example, the Tributary Fund’s Mongolian and Bhutanese delegation not only attended multiple leadership and environmental courses in Bozeman, but also traveled south to the Teton Science School in Jackson, WY and then to northern Montana to the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas in Arlee, over less than two weeks. It can be a challenge to integrate so much data in such a short period, especially through the filter of your second or third language.
Mongolian Delegation at the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas in Arlee
After an intense month with all these visitors, I got a taste of my own medicine. Last Tuesday, I posed these queries to 17 extraordinary university student leaders from the State Department Middle Eastern Partnership Initiative (MEPI) program. A bright young woman from Bahrain gently responded, “May we also ask, what you have learned from us?”
Running from meeting to workshop all month, I hadn’t been able to think about much other than lesson plans, preparing and did we have any milk left in the fridge! I could suddenly relate to the blank stares I had received from some after hearing my closing queries. Hmmm, great question, what had I learned?
My favorite teachers remind that after major experiences, we are best served by giving ourselves time to integrate our experience. Systems theorists stress the importance of iterative learning – gathering new information, testing it out and then reflecting on what we have learned. Angeles Arrien posits that the seminal Taoist text on managing change, The Tao Te Ching, teaches that we must continually
So, lots of new information came in this month. I have tried to be open to receiving. Now, what needs to be better integrated? With some initial thought, four themes are emerging to be considered from this summer’s work:
Today I’ll tackle technology…
For a bit of background, I began my career at IBM as a programmer. In 1985, many on our team coded only in machine language (that’s ugly stuff). I would knit waiting for my programs to compile and my compatriots at IBM and I were some of the first to have email in the country which IBM called VNET. By 1989, I was the project manager for one of the first electronic medical record systems in the country. We used optical disks the size of large dinner platters, $3,000 scanners heavy as boat anchors and computers that required cooled raised floor rooms to house them – all with less capability that you now have with a decent flash drive, a $200 home scanner and a steady PC server.
In those days, computer technology appeared in our everyday lives through clunky PCs and printers that we would use to write letters and attempt to budget the family finances and do our taxes. Working with computers daily at IBM had me swimming in very different waters than my friends and siblings. This is not striking or very interesting until I contrast this with Asian students with whom I have worked over the past year who literally risk their lives daily to post their names and photos on Facebook. Where technology used to be nerdy, it’s now deemed a critical necessity.
The next generation, whether you come from a rural region of our south east, the Middle East, Latin America or a monastery in Bhutan wield external drives, digital cameras and cloud computing like our foreparents managed hammers and shears to complete their respective tasks. Those I see in the classroom are usually armed better I to cross the digital landscape.
I witnessed students dialogue for hours on how to introduce those in their group of Kurdish descent (“should we call them Iraqis, Kurdish or from Kurdistan?”) all the while deftly creating a PowerPoint presentation. While grappling with big issues, I notice that there is no discussion on how they might want to add a short video or animate a slide. On that they have equal awareness and agreement.
Computers can become more important than sustenance. Visitors with whom we work will forego meals and any entertainment to funnel their per diem money to a laptop fund. Host families and the program assistants consistently make midnight runs to Walmart during the last days of a participant’s visit so he or she can buy electronic equipment. It is not only cheaper here than around the globe, that I am told again and again, but also buying a computer for some is one of their top trip desires.
Through their yearnings and savvy, the students consistently demonstrate that computer and digital skills are key for our next generation of leaders…and, probably for all of us currently working to effectively implement change. This is not new news, but after this month of visitors, I realize I need to consider information systems technology as a critical leadership competency. 
Last night in Washington, DC, I attended a final celebration dinner to send off our bright MEPI students after 5 action-packed weeks. Each of the 5 MEPI student groups from around the country were asked to create a 5 minute video or presentation on their time in the US. Our students selected a graphic design student, from Kuwait and a marketing major who also holds a corporate job in Lebanon to lead the charge. Knowing what was possible, most of the students provided photos and ideas and our two video leaders worked through 2 or 3 nights to create this final program deliverable. It was stellar and included cartoon renderings of each student created by their team graphic artist, meaningful music and a carefully selected (and refined, refined, refined) photomontage to portray their unique Montana highlights. I was impressed.
Although their video was truly unique, the Montana MEPI students’ professionalism and quality level wasn’t. The friendly competition included tough opponents! For example, when I was a bit awestruck by very polished video with fades, a story line and slow motion created at the University of Delaware. At the table, our students whispered, “It’s not a surprise, one of their students is a film student and works on action movies.”
Gone are the days when leading a project could be done without electronic savvy. To sell your idea, to portray that your team was the best, or to present anything well, today you are going to want a plug, or perhaps a solar panel, attached.
Harnessing new technology, whatever the form, has always boosted leadership power. The train and then effective use of the car “drove” the results of political races when they were introduced. We can use the additional power for a variety of ends. And so, if I arm you with a set of powerful tools, be it today computer expertise or how to turn conflict into opportunity, for what will you use them?
I’m a bit fixated on the above question when I am training young leaders. I was reminded again why it feels alright to keep pushing for clear and hopefully positive intentions while I passed through the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) . I stopped in front of a full-wall placard entitled, “Technology and Race,” The exhibit explained that by 1938, Hitler’s team had effectively employed the newest data gathering and storage technology available to create a country-wide national registry of Jews during that year’s census. By the following year, systematic killing began.
Then, down the hall, I strolled through the new USHMM Take Action interactive exhibit where you can access their website and track progress on ending genocide in Darfur, support relief and awareness efforts and create a pledge to make the world a better place. Knowledge is power. For good or ill, you must decide.
It gives me hope that every one of our Montana State University MEPI students chose to use their last Saturday afternoon in the US to thoughtfully tour the USHMM exhibits as well. Each made a conscious choice; Best Buy, Target and more work on the QuickTime video needed to wait until another day.
I experienced an urban “food desert” first hand last week. As I wrote in my earlier post, this term describes locations where it is difficult to find healthy sustenance. In rural America, “food deserts” arise where it is not financially viable to have a grocery store. In inner cities, these locations appear where it doesn’t seem safe to set up shop.
Instead of wandering out into the sands of the Sahara, I walked out the front door of the Dayton, Ohio Crowne Plaza around 9:30 pm in search of toothpaste. The young woman at the front desk said it would be easy to find, just walk down a block or two to the BP gas station. Relying on the encouragement of the smiling receptionist, I went out into a harsh ecosystem for this Montana dweller.
My upbringing in downtown Minneapolis should have alerted me quicker, but I was out of my native environment. All concrete and stoplights, there were no evening diners passing by – within a block I realized I was in a tough part of town. I was kicking myself for a momentarily lack of street smarts when a young heavy set woman in a blue scrub shirt and black pants walked up to me and asked if I needed help. I explained my toothpaste dilemma and she said she was going that way and would walk with me.
Why did I go with her? To prepare for a conference on dialogue and neuroscience I was attending in Dayton, I had been avidly reading about how the brain parses information. Reviewing what I learned, I suspect I followed her was because she appeared unthreatening and felt like an appropriate ally; she appeared authentically kind, she was Caucasian and carried no bag. She, I found out quickly, knew the streets of Dayton. She was big and thus her heft and height somehow made me feel safer. I could have read the auditory and visual signals wrong — “Don’t try this at home,” should be subtitle to this word painting — thankfully, I didn’t.
We were on a busy street, yet, throughout our walk, we were clearly the only white folks in the area. Did that make it more dangerous? Debatable. Yet, brain research describes how our senses heighten whenever we encounter difference from our usual setting. Thus, my fight/flight reflex with in full swing by the time I made it to the BP as, “Toto, we surely weren’t in homogeneous Bozeman, Montana anymore.”
Again, the gas station was a busy place with a young woman and her four friends trying to put air in a tire and a few drivers getting gas. The station’s front doors were locked and everyone had to request items through a glass teller window from an elderly Asian man. What would have been buck-fifty tube of toothpaste at Target was $2.99.
If you were hungry, this is looked to be your only option in this neighborhood. Without a car, there were chips and pop for dinner shoved through a teller window. Walking back with my volunteer bodyguard I learned that she was homeless and that she often slept in a tiny room at a friend’s house. She had lost her fiancé a few blocks before she met me — he and a friend had taken off when she was in the bathroom. My twenty-something friend was also pregnant and had earlier been raped and robbed on these same streets. I struggled to take in all that news not only because of its potential personal safety implications, but also, because here she still was walking up and down those corridors.
As my tour guide, she pointed out what looked to be a quick drug deal in the middle of the street, some heavily pierced once-friends (“We don’t hang out with them anymore. They are so immature”) and, eventually, her fiancé and his buddy. Before leaving her to duck back into indoor safety, I slipped $10 for something to eat. Recounting her history, she explained that she was hungry and had missed the meal at the local church. True or not, she had provided safe passage and I wanted to give her something in return. I told her fiancé to make sure she ate soon, but now wonder, where that might have been possible in that strange, dark world outside my hotel window.