A641.9.3.RB_LeeDarrell - Becoming A Resonant Leader

This is my final blog for my Resonant Leadership course. Over the past nine weeks, we have learned to really look inward and to reflect on who we want to become, what we want to achieve, who we currently are, and how to engage in an intentional transition. When taking a course like this, there are two ways to go about it. We can either go through the motions and “fake it until we make it” (let’s face it – nobody in the class knows me so I could have easily made up everything on the fly) or we can truly engage in the material. I chose the Master of Science in Leadership because I truly want to be an effective leader. Therefore, I have spent a considerable amount of time engaging in the exercises and meditating on the material. Because of that, many of my thoughts have changed from week to week. Some of them have even changed mid-assignment. I am sure that my thoughts will continue to evolve as time progresses.

For this final assignment, we have been asked to take things in a slightly different direction. As you are well aware, I speak freely in my blogs and I write in the same style in which I speak. However, I am always addressing you, the reader. Today, I am going to address an entirely different audience – me. I have been asked to compose a letter to myself. I speak to myself on a daily basis. Hey, this is New York City. That’s how I scare off the tourists! Just kidding. But full disclosure – I don’t know how to do this. I don’t keep a diary or a journal but perhaps it isn’t such a bad idea. This first experience may be just a bit awkward until I get used to it, though.

I am genuinely excited about what you have learned about yourself over the past several weeks. One of the most poignant self-discoveries is that your values are maybe not exactly what you thought they were. You always take such great pride in your integrity. I still remember that morning on the subway when it finally hit you that you are willing to bend the rules to accomplish a greater good. Congratulations, you old stickler! Remember how Mom and Becky always make fun of you for driving so slow because you refuse to violate the speed limit? I guess you now have my permission to bend or even break a few rules here and there to get to where you need to be.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about were you need to be heading. Darrell, you are destined for something great. You may never be wealthy. You may never have a high position of leadership. You may never change the world, but you are called to make wherever you are a better place. You are destined to serve the greater good by showing others how to experience true joy. I don’t know what your future career may hold for you but right now we are going to work toward you starting a firm specializing in veteran job placement but what you do is secondary to who you are and who you will become.

There are a few things that you are going to need to learn to reach your vision. Also, remember that your vision is not fixed. It can and will change. Hey, it has even changed since you started this course. Why would you not expect it to change as you change? For each of the things that you need to learn, you need to have reasonable and realistic milestones. You are also going to need some support along the way. You can’t do this on your own. I know that you lament losing the deep bond with your father. I hope that time will continue to heal those wounds and that your relationship will be fully restored. If not, keep leaning a little on Rick Calero. Also remember that the rest of your family supports you. They want to see you succeed. Lean on them.

Darrell, the first thing that you have to learn is to control your frustration. I think you know what I mean by this. You’re a very logical person and are amazing at working through problems. You think in ways that most others don’t. You see emerging patterns and make connections that few others can see without being shown. However, not everybody’s mind works like yours and you kind of let it show when others can’t follow your logic. I know you clench your jaw and have fluctuations in your tone. So here is what you are going to do. When you are explaining something, show a little maturity by pausing before attempting to explain again. But don’t just pause. Learn to love that brief moment. During that time, I want you to feel what others around you are feeling. Seek to see the problem from their angle. Now you’re about to retire from the Army so it may be hard to measure this because you don’t have much time but I want you to focus on that action for these final few months then have a sensing session with your team as you leave. Ask them how they would rate you now then again in six months. See what the difference is. I bet that will become habit.

Next, you need to learn to say “no”. I know that you struggle so much with this but how are you going to reach your vision if you are constantly giving of yourself to the point that you can’t function? You’re going to burn yourself out. I know that you want to please everybody and I even know that your vision is to help everybody else learn to be joyful. What better way than by sacrificing of yourself, right? Wrong. Darrell, sometimes others need to hear “no” and learn to be content with what they have to experience true joy. Right now, I can say that you have not denied a single subordinate any time off for which they have asked. You haven’t said “no” to accepting any assignments or duties from your commander. But why have you not? I want you to put your foot down. Set limits. Let’s start with something easy. When you get home from work, turn off your work cell phone. Do not check e-mail on the weekend. Again, I wish that you had more time to see the results of this. There is no telling where you will be after the next year. I wish that we had a few years to see the change but we don’t. However, a good milestone will be to see what people are asking of you in your final couple of months in the Army. If you learn to tactfully say “no” now, it will reflect when you are trying to clear. You know how these people are. They would ask you to come into work on the day of your funeral if you let them. See what they are demanding in your final month.

Finally, learn to relax. I know that this is the hardest thing for you. You are always go-go-go. Right now, you are preparing for retirement, finishing grad school, and networking for your next job. I get it. That is a lot. The thing is that even when it isn’t a lot, you make it a lot. You are used to working 50+ hours a week and your last real vacation was, what, five years ago? You are setting yourself up for dissonance. This may be the easiest learning objection to action but the hardest to embrace. Fortunately, it is easy to measure. I want you to plan a vacation next summer. Plan it six months out and stick to it. Every year for the next five years, you need to plan two vacations every year. By 2023, you need to have visited at least four foreign countries. Of course, relaxation is more than just travel but let’s start there. You’re a wanderlust at heart. Embrace it!

Once you learn these three measurable learning goals – controlling frustration, saying no, and learning to relax – I think that you will find that you are close to becoming the man that you want to be. Just remember, you’re a direction focused kind of guy. That means that you don’t need to worry about specific goals. Just be the man that you know you need to be! And revisit this from time to time. See where you are. When it seems that you are still so far from your goal, don’t be afraid to look back and see how far you have come! 

A641.8.3.RB_LeeDarrell - Personal Balance Sheet

Over the past several weeks, I have participated in a myriad of exercises designed to help with introspect and to help me better understand myself. Each exercise had a specific purpose. They were used find my values, identify my social status, to find some of my strengths and weaknesses, develop my personal vision, identify my passions, and even help me realize some of my fears. Now it is time to zoom out and look at myself holistically. This is kind of like when I used to do theatre. I remember once several years ago when I was doing “South Pacific” with the Lubbock Community Theatre. We would rehearse each section of a play until we could perform it in our sleep. However, we only had one rehearsal where we did the play in its entirety before the show opened. We still did fine but it was a nerve-wracking experience. We should have practiced putting it all together to make it a fluid event. That is what we are trying to accomplish this week. We are just zooming out and looking how everything fits together. This is my full dress rehearsal.

To truly look at myself holistically, I have to accept that I am not a superhuman that has achieved resonance just because I took a class on it as some of the exercises made me feel at the time. In fact, what I have learned is that resonance is a constant process and it is very easy to slip out of it. It is near impossible to maintain. I understand that I have my strengths that don’t need to change and I have my weaknesses that I do need to change. I also understand that I have perceived strengths and weaknesses that don’t necessarily exist but others see them as such. Some of the exercises made me feel as if I had identified all of these traits and that change would be easy. The truth is, though, that change is a difficult process. If it wasn’t, why would dissonance be the default instead of resonance?

Let me start with what I think is my strongest point – I am a peacemaker. A lot of this has to do with my values. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, I am a consequentialist so I seek to do what is in the best interest of the collective. I am willing to make sacrifices if the benefit outweighs the cost. Because of that, I am able to guide others through doing the same. As an example, when I took over my current position earlier this year, the friction in my office was palpable. It was pretty evident that my new team was in the storming phase. Everybody seemed to be working to outdo the others and nobody was really working together. It was an “us versus them” (or a “me versus you”) mentality. It took time but I was able to use positive reinforcement through empathy to get my team to find common ground and start working together as a single unit. The results of this are very clear. Just yesterday, during my morning meeting, I sat everybody down and went over our production reports with them and pointed out that just in the first quarter of this year we have already achieved 50% of the volume that we achieved for the entire fiscal year last year. That isn’t because of me, though. It is because the team has realized their own potential by working together. There is a downside to this, though. I don’t think this is an actual weakness of mine but it is a perceived weakness. Often, people will try to take advantage of peacemakers by pushing the limits as far as possible. There are two in particular on my team that try to take advantage of that and try to play on my empathy to get me to force more compromises to give them an advantage, particularly with time off. Where I have difficulty with that is balancing when to be compassionate and when to be forceful. Again, though, by zooming out and looking at both of these together – my strength and weakness – I can see how they fit together. It isn’t as easy as saying, “Well, I just will be firm but fair”. The big picture shows that being firm may affect my ability to make peace. To take it a step farther, how does that fit in with my personal vision and my goals? How does this factor in to becoming the person I want to be? What I can see a little more clearly now is that it is more important for me to be the peacemaker so being firm (non-empathetic, for lack of a better term), may not actually be the best approach. Now I am asking myself – is there a way that I can help the two team members that continue to ask for more? Can I connect with them to maybe help with their underlying needs? Perhaps asking for more is not a personality trait for them but rather a solution to a deeper problem.

I also have to look at the opposite end of the spectrum. What is my biggest weakness that makes me slip into dissonance and stands in the way of achieving my ideal self? Several months ago, I had a professional coaching session and we made an interesting discovering based off of my personality profile. My profile was based on three separate iterations of The Attentional Interpersonal Style Inventory (TAIS). Over the course of three years, there was very little change in my results so it was easy enough to identify some of my prominent personality and leadership traits. What stuck out is that I a highly logical decision maker and I arrive at those decisions quickly. The problem is that I may become easily frustrated when others aren’t able to understand the logic in what I am saying. Just the other day, I was giving a tutoring session to a coworker taking a math class and experienced a similar thing. I swear, I explained 10 times how to find the solution but he just wasn’t understanding the concepts. I know he could see on my face that I was getting frustrated so he became even more nervous and frustrated himself. This ties into another weakness that I have. Since I am very logical, I don’t focus as much on emotions. That isn’t to say that I don’t feel anything as I absolutely do but I tend to forgive and forget. When other people aren’t able to do that and resolve their emotions as quickly as I am, I may visibly show my frustration with that which, just like with the math tutoring, leads to increased frustration on their part. I believe this is my primary obstacle at this time. Unfortunately, I am not sure how to correct it but at least I know what it is and how I want to be. And knowing is half the battle.

A641.7.3.RB_LeeDarrell - Appreciating Your “Real Self”

Living in New York City is very unlike living anywhere else. We do life just a little differently than the rest of the world. We don’t drive. We don’t live in houses. We party on the weeknights and go to be early on the weekends. We NEVER go to Times Square. And we conform. Therefore, it is very easy to spot the tourists. They are usually the ones blocking the doors on express train with their big maps and backpacks during rush hour. God bless them. We love them and are glad they are here. We just want them to get out of our way, especially during rush hour. The other day, I was heading to a charity event in Hell’s Kitchen and was walking through the Columbus Circle station on the SW corner of Central Park. Like most of us, I was wearing my headphones (I usually don’t even have music going but by wearing them I can ignore people without anybody thinking anything of it) and was in a rush but there was a group of tourists from some youth group in Texas. They were all wearing the same t-shirt and looked very lost. Being a native Texan, I took pity on them and stopped to ask what they needed. They said they were trying to get to Union Square. I said, “No problem. Just take the A, C, or E to 14^th Street then transfer to the L and it will be your 2^nd stop.” I figured if I told the entire group, one of them would understand but they still looked so confused. The chaperone of the group said, “Ok, so where are we now then?” They knew where they wanted to be. They just couldn’t understand how to get there because they didn’t know where they were. They were lost.

Over the past seven weeks of this course, Resonant Leadership, we have been studying concepts such as identifying our “ideal self” (Boyatzis & McKee, 2005), developing our personal vision (McKee, Boyatzis, & Johnston, 2008), and the intentional change required to help us become the leader/person that we want to be (Boyatzis & McKee, 2005). In other words, we have identified our destination. But without understanding where we truly currently are, we are like those tourists from Texas and we will never get there. Therefore, today I am focusing a little more on appreciating my real self – not who I strive to be but who I am in this present moment. The bottom line is that “effective change involves mindful awareness of who you currently are. We each have unique characteristics that form as a result of our biology, life experiences, and current situation. We are always evolving and adapting as we encounter new situations in life” (McKee, Boyatzis, & Johnston, 2008, p. 111).

We read a story this week about a woman named Jill that accepted a new promotion/position but was unsure if she was truly up to the challenge of it (McKee, Boyatzis, & Johnston, 2008). She knew that she had strengths but had a tendency to dwell on her weaknesses and shortcomings. This story really hit home for me because I am about to retire from the Army in just about a year and will be forced to accept a new position. Considering I’ll have a master’s degree, I don’t intend to stay at an entry level position for a moment longer than needed. However, there is always that doubt about being up for the challenge. I know that I want to market my strengths but I am concerned that my shortcomings may hinder me. The thought of being fired from a job absolutely terrifies me. However, to overcome this, Jill received feedback from her team and was surprised to hear that they didn’t focus on her shortcomings at all. She was focused on things that they barely even noticed. I was with a couple of my friends last night and asked what they thought of me professionally. Like Jill, I was encouraged to hear the strengths that they saw and to not hear my weaknesses. This has helped me to see a clear picture – a holistic picture – of myself.

As a part of this holistic view of me, I had to begin with how I got to where I am today. I completed a little exercise where I drew out my lifeline. I started when I was born in 1980 and marked all of the major life events from then to now. Some of them are very personal so I won’t be sharing them here but this helped me see how those events shaped my views, attitudes, values, and overall personality. I conducted a similar exercise with my career except in reverse order. I started with where I am now as a station commander and documented the feelings that I had and the highlights of the experience and went back to the beginning of my work experience. It’s funny because when I did that I remembered that I actually was once fired from a part time job when I was 17. Remember, I said that is one of my great fears of the future but it wasn’t a very traumatic event when it happened the first time. (That wasn’t a typo. It was NOT traumatic. It caught me by surprise but I now remember thinking that if they were firing me then I would just take myself elsewhere. And I was fired for something that I didn’t do, by the way.) I then compared my lifeline and career line and found some connections. For example, my first deployment to Iraq was a major life experience that helped me learn to remain calm under pressure which set me up for success in my next position which was my first team leadership role.

The next exercise that I conducted helped me to analyze my social identities and roles and how that helps shape who I am. When I say social roles, what I mean are social positions such as son, friend, brother, uncle, etc. I recently watched a movie – I don’t remember what it was called but it was a comedy – where a man was engaged but realized that he had no friends so sought out to court a new best friend. Sometimes I feel like that. I am very well connected through my social club and American Legion post. However, I don’t have many friends where I just hang out with on a regular basis outside of the club. Sometimes this grates on me just a little but looking at my social roles helps it all make a little more sense. I am a Soldier in a non-Army town. I am 37 and have no children. The activities in which I participate are often solo activities. I have no family nearby. Therefore, it makes sense that my friends – the ones that I do see on a regular basis - are primarily veterans with no children. In fact, ALL of my friends that I see on a regular basis fall into that category. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It just helps to know why I am in the social circles where I am. These social circles are instrumental in developing my values and also are integral to my cycles of renewal (Boyatzis & McKee, 2015).

The final exercise led me to explore my current strengths. As previously stated, we often have a tendency to dwell on our shortcomings so it is nice to reflect on where we excel. There are three primary strengths that I know that I have. First, I have compassion. This moves me to action and helps me to break down barriers. Second, I am amazing at networking. It has been said that it’s all about who you know. I happen to know a lot of the right people from CEOs and hedge fund managers to marketing specialists and clergy members. (I actually still have a physical Rolodex full of business cards and I send Christmas/holiday cards.) My final strength (well, not my final one but the final one that I explored on the exercise) is my ability to focus on logic while still incorporating the emotional needs of others through empathy. This is a skill that I have just recently begun to develop over the last year and a half, really – since I have been enrolled in the Master of Leadership program – but it is one that I think I was able to embrace fairly quickly and has revolutionized the way that I interact with the world around me.

It is nice to know where I am right now. As I continue on my journey to my ideal self, I will continually have to reevaluate my position. However, if we don’t know where we are, how can we know how to get to where we are going?

Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School 

Press

McKee, A., Boyatzis, R. E., & Johnston, F. (2008). Becoming a Resonant Leader: Develop Your

Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sustain Your Effectiveness. Boston: Harvard Business Press.