USA

Open Letter to Women Who Rule the World

~ americanjulie ~ Leave a comment

Jennifer Palmieri

Looking for a last minute gift for that graduate in your life? Consider Jennifer Palmieri’s Dear Madam President. While the audience is ostensibly the next woman who will run for President of the United States, the advice is useful to all leaders. It will especially resonate with women

Each chapter begins with a maxim that is worth remembering, for example:

When the unimaginable happens, imagine what else may be possible.

Brace yourself. Nothing draws fire like a woman moving forward.

Show us what you’ve been through. It tells us what we can survive.

You can read this book in an evening or a summer afternoon in your hammock. I gave away my first copy and immediately ordered 2 more.

 

What’s in a Name?

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment
Resized-20170731-124024
Gwen Amos, “Dark Angel”

I’ve recently reread Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series. In the second book, A Wind at the Door, the young heroine Meg teams up with a cherubim to pass three tests. He explains to Meg that she is a Namer. In fact, all of us who are on the side of good in the world are Namers. Those who are on the side of the Echthroi, or the chaos, evil and war in the world are “un-namers.” In this story they can X creation out, including stars, thus creating tears in the universe.

Meg’s plight resonated with me because I love naming things–pets, children, artwork–and yet there is a big responsibility that goes along with it. In naming something or someone we are calling out what something truly is or who they are meant to be (except the Jack Russell Terrorizer down the block whose name is Angel). In the Genesis story (Chapter 2) God brings his creation to mankind for him to name them. This story tells us that this is our first “job” on earth.

Recently in the USA we’ve all been roiled by the specter of American nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups openly demonstrating their dark beliefs. Some are trying to normalize them by calling them Alt-right groups and making them parallel to so-called “Alt Left” groups. There is one group that sometimes uses violence called Antifa and this stands for “Anti-fascists,” which is not on the same moral plane as someone who is racist and is comfortable celebrating political ideologies that lead to genocide.

Alas our skill at naming things to be what they truly are is getting so out of practice that many people are confused. As Marilyn Chandler McIntyre points out in her book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, “the deceptions we particularly seem to want are those that comfort, insulate, legitimate and provide ready excuses for inaction.” (p 57) Because if your electoral power depends on those who view the other as less than fully human, then you need some way to justify not standing up to #45 and others who give them credibility.

These are perilous times. This morning Pastor Frank preached on Matthew 16: 13-20 when Jesus asks the disciples, “who do you say I am?” He began by calling our community of faith to be clear that there are white supremacists and nazis mobilizing in our country today. It does no good to equivocate and call them something else. Just as it does no good as a person of faith to call Jesus “Elijah” or “John the Baptist.” We must recognize the power of the living God to have the Spirit’s help in discerning what is real and what is comfortable deceit.

What strikes me as particularly confounding is the evangelical “Christian” churches belief that they are persecuted for their faith in the USA. This fear that someone is about to keep them from saying “Merry Christmas” must keep them from examining what real persecution looks like. Just listen to this story on NPR.org about Esther who was kidnapped by the Boko Haram and enslaved for sex and hard housework. (The Lament of the Boko Haram ‘Brides’ August 27, 2017) When she was caught worshipping Jesus, she was beaten and her life threatened. When we call having to live alongside people of other faiths as “persecution” we cheapen what it really means to people of faith around the world.

Let’s be impeccable with our words. And give no allowances to those who are not.

Is there a “Right Size” for Cooperation?

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment
IMG_1146
Libraries, like this massive one in Copenhagen, are a sign of a healthy, collaborative society.

While I’ve been in Europe I am following what is happening nationally in the USA via Vox news, the Atlantic and New Yorker social media, and FiveThirtyEight and other podcasts. They are bearing witness to extreme democratic dysfunction. Clowns appointed as judges, bills written in secret, a President tweeting his id. Meanwhile in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries they are quietly inventing ways to turn household waste into energy without pollution and cooperating with one another to ensure everyone has enough.

I mention this to my friend UK Sarah on our walks and she says what she said in New Zealand, “Yes, but how many people are there?” Denmark has 5.5 million, New Zealand 4.5 million. It is a bit of a conversation ender. However, this morning I woke up wondering if those who predicted the USA would break into regions were in fact prescient. Perhaps democracy works best on a small scale. Not the scale of the town hall meeting alone, which frankly I’ve experienced as both a tyranny of petty-crats and a glorious thing. Maybe something on the scale of a region like the Pacific Coast states. We share a coastline and I-5.  In Denmark, they maintain their social democracy, in part, through a strong consensus on what Danishness is and is not. The Pacific Coast states share a pioneering history, plus an orientation to the Pacific and a majority of the populations are post-modern. It would be easy to also include Hawaii, and harder to include Alaska.

IMG_1522
Public Transportation is another sign of collaboration. (Waterloo Station in London)

I remember in the 80s there were a number of intellectuals writing articles about the demise of California. One that sticks in my memory compared it to ancient Alexandria and proposed that with so many languages spoken in the schools and so much conflict over the environment and resources that surely the ship of democracy will sink. Actually, thanks to the creative and technology economies, California is thriving in many ways that many parts of the USA are not.

Another intellectual recently argued that the way forward in the USA will be led by our great cities. The Pacific Coast states have many excellent cities, but they are only sustained by the agricultural production and the watersheds of the associated rural places around them. So while there may be much innovation in cities for many things, a city cannot live behind a wall. Their survival depends on a dense network of connection to the outside world.

Do we need a federal government? Or a European Union? This is the open question that I am faced with in the U.K. and reading news from home. The righty-right leaning Republicans have been arguing the federal government is too expensive, too large, too meddlesome for many years. By electing an unqualified person to the chief executive they are perhaps forcing the question on the rest of the electorate. They may not like the answer that the collective comes up with.

Leaders Say I’m Sorry

~ americanjulie ~ Leave a comment

Or do they? Thinking about the “Leaders Say…” series, I brainstormed topics and wrote down “I’m sorry” without a second thought. There has been a fair amount of criticism of 45 because he seems incapable of admitting a mistake or giving a sincere apology. But do we really see an apology as a sign of leadership or as a sign of weakness?

IMG-20170315-WA0000

About once a year a Japanese CEO makes a very public apology on behalf of his organization’s failings. My friend Keiko Sakurai is an expert on cross-cultural business practices as a consultant for Aperian Global. I skyped with her to learn more about apologies from her experience.

She graduated from UC Berkeley’s Haas Management program after working in Japan. In her first role with a U.S. team her supervisor gave her feedback that she was apologizing too much. “In Japan saying you are sorry is a social lubricant; we say it all the time in social and business situations.” It is expected especially from people with less status to people with more status, consultants to clients, and peer to peer.

In Japan if an organization makes a mistake and does not publicly apologize, it is perceived they will pay a price in public opinion. This does prompt some superficial apologies and we agreed these probably do not restore much trust. And behind every apology is a desire to repair a relationship and to begin to restore trust. Apologies, in our experience, work most effectively when they are specific and sincere and are undermined when accompanied by justifications.

We were troubled that we could not think of more examples of a US leader effectively apologizing. Keiko related a story from a workshop she led with participants from several cultures. She posed a situation: Your boss and team are giving a presentation to potential clients when you realize the boss is presenting old pricing information. What would you do?

–Pause and think of your response.—Read on.

I thought of a team I work with where we share mutual respect and I replied, “I would say, excuse me, I am so sorry there is more recent pricing information and I did not update this slide. Please let me share the most up to date pricing.” Keiko shared this is what the participant from Korea said they would do. Whereas the participant from Japan said they would call for a break and then pull aside the boss to point out the mistake and then they could introduce the information after the break saying they just got a call or email from the Head Office.”

What did the participant from the USA say? He would interject and state the facts objectively, without apology or blaming anyone, “There is more recent pricing available.” And offer a new slide. Or, he qualified his response, if he was competing with his boss and gunning for his position, he would actually point out to the client that the Boss made the critical mistake, and he will stand up and take over the presentation with the correct information, causing the boss to lose face. .

All I could say was, “Wow!”

Keiko explained that in Asian culture there is much more interest in maintaining harmony and people are more willing to put the organization’s needs ahead of their individual aspirations than in the USA.

I wondered how research says about on apologies and in a recent Washington Post article journalist Jena McGregor assembled a nifty summary. She found that the research is not totally clear.

  • Harvard Business School professor Francisca Gino finds that apologizing is generally beneficial for leaders, with even superfluous, unnecessary apologies leading to greater trust. If an apology is botched or if the leaders isn’t trustworthy, then there may be downsides and may be seen as backing down from a dispute.
  • Researchers from Queen’s University in Canada tested whether apologizing was a sign of weakness. They surveyed hockey coaches and referees as well as other lab experiments, and they found generally, those who apologized were seen as more “transformational.” Rather than weak these leaders were perceived as having the ability to inspire, motivate and challenge their followers.
  • Research has also shown that apologizing is associated with better psychological well-being among a boss’s employees and for themselves.
  • In another study, CEOs who show expressions of sadness on their faces when they issued public apologies were viewed as more remorseful and their customers tended to be more willing to do business with them in the future.

On the flip-side, there are some who do perceive apologies as weak, an admission of responsibility, or accepting blame. And in the US litigious culture often leads to non-apology, apologies. “Writing in the Washington Post in late 2015, political scientist Richard Hanania said that people, particularly men, who don’t ‘back down in the face of controversy [show] confidence by not giving in to social pressure, and [take] a risk refusing to follow the conventional path. Some on the right openly suggest that part of Trump’s appeal lies in his refusal to apologize and his unwillingness to be ‘politically correct’.”

Keiko and I met through CTI Co-Active Leadership training where we learned how to “stay and recover” when we make mistakes as leaders, when we are attacked, or when events do not unfold as intended. Sometimes we need to “repair” with colleagues—a boss, a direct report or a customer. A repair is just what it sounds like—doing what is needed to restore the relationship. In our experience, apologies have strengthened trust in relationships and have served our leadership well.

In closing, let’s look at the McGregor’s checklist for an apology to be effective: “an expression of regret and an explanation of what went wrong to an acknowledgement of responsibility, a statement of repentance, and request for forgiveness.”