The Legacy of a Proverbs 31 Woman

I think it’s interesting that we tend to bookend a person's life with the dates of birth and death. Yet it’s the dash between the dates that determines our Legacy.

We gathered together last Thursday to celebrate the life of Laura's mother - Betty Jo Marsh, our Meme. Meme’s life – the dash between the dates that she lived among us was long and full. 

In fact, her dash was a legacy life: Her life was a blessing to all of us while she was with us, and it will continue to be a blessing for generations to come.

In the bulletin for her service we printed Proverbs 31:10-31. All too often we read that description and it seems rather abstract and removed. But for those of us who knew Betty we saw a Proverbs 31 woman up close and personal.

An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future.
She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Her children rise up and bless her;
her husband also, and he praises her, saying:

“Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.”

 Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the product of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.

MeMe lived a Legacy Life: a life that was a blessing to all of us while she was with us and that we will be a blessing for generations to come.

And because of the life she lived,

Her children – and their spouses - rise up and bless her;

And her 11 Grandchildren - and their spouses - rise up and bless her;

And her 21 Great Grandchildren rise up and bless her;

Her husband also, and he praises her.

Lord thank you for Meme. Thank you for the life she led and the example she set for all of us.

Her finger prints are all over our homes and our hearts.

Let us walk in the Light of Meme’s Legacy!

 

 

Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership - Part 4

In his book, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It, Robert Quinn identifies eight practices for entering the fundamental state of leadership. The final two are described below:

Responsible Freedom     

• The person who practices responsible freedom is spontaneous and expressive while also self disciplined and responsible.
• Rather than fleeing purpose, discipline, or structure, this person is self-structuring and tends to be ever elevated to a higher levels of awareness and capacity.
• In obtaining this higher state, the person becomes more complex and capable, more empowered and empowering to others.

Tough Love

• This person is assertive and bold, yet compassionate and concerned.
• This person calls others to higher objectives and standards while also showing empathic, relational support.
• Others are lifted by the loving recognition of their potential and the challenging call to enact it in a more creative state of purpose.

Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership - Part 3

In his book, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It, Robert Quinn identifies eight practices for entering the fundamental state of leadership. The next two are described below:

Adaptive Confidence     

• This person is adaptable and flexible while also confident and secure.
• The person has the confidence to learn from experience, moving forward into uncertain situations knowing that self and others can adapt and learn in real time.
• He or she maintains a focus on purpose while experimenting and remaining open to feedback about failure as well as success.

Detached Interdependence

• This person combines independence and strength with humility and openness.
• The person has a strong sense of purpose and belief that provides an inner strength.
• He or she is thus open, but not determined by the relationship.
• Such detached interdependence allows for rich relationships in which people enable each other in co-creating a future that is best for both.

Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership - Part 2

In his book, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It, Robert Quinn identifies eight practices for entering the fundamental state of leadership. The next two are described below:

Appreciative Inquiry     

• This person is optimistic and constructive while also being realistic and questioning.
• The person seeks to find the most enabling and constructive aspects of the current reality.
• Appreciative questions tap into the issues people care about most deeply and surface possibilities that have been outside their consciousness.
• In this way, they unleash energy and move self and others to a more creative state.

Grounded Vision

• This person is grounded and factual while also hopeful and visionary.
• The person conceptualizes and communicates a future that emerges from the realities of the existing system.
• The integration of reality and possibility creates an image that attracts self and others outside the comfort zone and into a state of active creation.

Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership - Part 1

In his book, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It, Robert Quinn identifies eight practices for entering the fundamental state of leadership. In the next several posts I will be providing an overview of the eight practices. The first two are described below:

Reflective Action

• This person is active and energetic while also being mindful and reflective.
• While deeply engaged in the world, the person also spends time in reflective contemplation.
• Contemplation when away from a task increases the capacity for mindfulness this during the task.
• The person acts and learns simultaneously and is both mindful and energized while actively creating. 

Authentic Engagement

• This person is principled and ethical while also involved and engaged.
• The person thus brings a more integrated, whole, or authentic self to his or her activity.
• When this happens, he or she experiences increased awareness and accesses resources not available in a less integrated state.
• The person loves what he or she does, which becomes a calling or labor of love.

Are you reflective and active?

Are you authentically engaged?

 

The Fundamental State of Leadership

In his book, Building the Bridge as You Walk On It, University of Michigan professor, Robert Quinn makes the distinction between the "normal state" and what he calls the Fundamental State of Leadership.

I have summarized the distinctions between these two approaches to leadership in this table.

As you read through the characteristics of the normal and fundamental states, ask yourself which one characterizes your leadership. Better, evaluate what percentage of your time you believe you are operating in each state.

Fundamental State of Leadership vs. The Normal State
Normal State	Fundamental State
Self-Focused: I tend to be ego driven, putting my interests ahead of the collective interests in a given relationship or set of relationships.	Other-Focused: I am transcending my ego, putting the common good and welfare of others first, increasing in authenticity and transparency, nurturing trust, and enriching the levels of connectivity in my networks.
Internally Closed: I tend to stay in my comfort zone, denying external signals for change.	Externally Open: I am moving outside my comfort zone, experimenting, seeking real feedback, adapting, and reaching exponentially higher levels of discovery, awareness, competence, and vision.
Externally Directed: I tend to define myself by how I think I am seen and how well I am able to obtain external resources.	Internally Directed: I am continually examining my hypocrisy and closing the gaps between my values and behavior. I am reaching higher levels of personal security and confidence.
Comfort-Centered: I tend to engage in problem-solving activities, thus living in a reactive state.	Purpose-Centered: I am clarifying what result I want to create. I am committed and engaged, full of energy and holding an unwavering standard as I pursue a meaningful task.

While we may strive to operate in the Fundamental State of Leadership as an ideal, we must admit that most of the time we operate in the normal state.

In our best leadership moments we are there. But we are only there for a moment.

The key is that we must be intentional - there's that word again - about entering the Fundamental State of  Leadership.

We must choose to be other-focused, externally open, internally directed, and purpose-centered.

A Confrontation

As you know by now I love to read. As my lawyer friend Mark once told me, "I read for a living." I have this strange compulsion about reading: if I start a book I feel guilty if I don't finish it. I can only remember 2 books I haven't finished. The most recent one is Infinite Jest - not sure I will ever get that one done.

The other one was The Seasons of a Man's Life. I never finished it. But, I have never forgotten when I stopped reading it either. I stopped when I read this sentence:

"If we are to be men of integrity, we must constantly confront our lack of integrity."

I never finished the book. But I haven't forgotten that lesson. It hit me between the eyes and became a lesson that I have taught frequently over the years. A lesson that I taught others over the years.

I have been thinking about this statement a lot lately and I decided that I needed to confront something in my own life.

What does it mean to confront? I found this definition particularly helpful: "to bring together for comparison."

What I am bringing together for comparison is this: For several years I have had an espoused mission statement of Intentionally Investing in the Lives of Others. Yet, if I am honest with myself, I haven't been living that out with the intensity that it deserves.

When I allow myself the discomfort of engaging these thoughts, I hear Coach Carter's voice telling me: "I can't hear what your saying because I am so distracted by what your doing."

(Have I ever told you that I think God's audible voice probably sounds like Coach Carter's? That thought does nothing to ease my discomfort.)

Given this gap between my espoused mission and my slacking effort to enact that mission, I am going to do something to reduce the gap in 2014. I am confronting my own hypocrisy and seeking to close the gap by launching The First Tuesday Project.

I cannot say that The First Tuesday Project is not about me. It is about me; but, its not just about me or only about me. With the help and encouragement of my friend Marc, we are launching The First Tuesday Project and inviting other men to join us in a process of discovering and living a life of intentional impact based on a new definition of leadership.

I am looking forward to what we will learn as we walk through this process together. And, I am confronting my own hypocrisy.

How's that for a New Year's Resolution?

 

Are You a Giver or a Taker?

“Shouldn't have took more than you gave; Then we wouldn't be in this mess today”

In his recent book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success,  Wharton professor Adam Grant explores the implications of our reciprocity style on success at work and relationships in general.

Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?

People differ dramatically in their preferences for reciprocity – their desired mix of taking and giving.

Takers like to get more than they give. They tilt reciprocity in their own favor, putting their own interests ahead of others’ need. If you’re a taker you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs.

Givers are relatively rare. They tilt reciprocity in the other direction, preferring to give more than they get. Whereas takers tend to be self-focused, evaluating what other people can offer them, givers are other-focused, paying more attention to what others need from them. If you’re a giver you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs.

Matchers strive to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting. Matchers operate on the principle of fairness: when they help others, they protect themselves by seeking reciprocity. If you’re a matcher, you believe in tit for tat, and your relationships are governed be even exchanges of favors.

The vast majority of people develop a primary reciprocity style which captures how they approach most of the people most of the time. You can assess your reciprocity style by completing the self-assessment available on this site:

http://giveandtake.com/

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Transition

There are times when some of the values and mindsets of people are no longer useful in addressing the challenges that beset the group or organization. This could be due to a shift in the dynamics of the larger environment or the emergence of a new threat or opportunity. To ensure the group is able to adapt and thrive in a changed environment, deal with the threat, or take advantage of the opportunity, the leadership work is to transition the group to a new state of operating and refashion the values, loyalties, and mind-sets of the people.

Transition, according to the dictionary, means the passage from one form, state, style, or place to another. In the context of real leadership, it is the process of shifting the people to a new set of norms, mindsets, and attitudes that are more appropriate for succeeding in a changed context. It is not a process of completely replacing values but of refashioning values.

Generally, transition challenges emerge when those in authority have a good sense of the direction the group should take, but members of the group have various reasons for dragging their feet.

The condition of the people facing a transition challenge: People in a transition challenge might see a need to transition themselves from one system of value to another, but they are anxious and afraid, as the process of transitioning can be overwhelming and disorienting.

The barrier that impedes progress includes the people’s understandable reluctance to give up their routine habits, practices, and priorities and replace them with another set. This process of change can be threatening to their identity, loyalties, and sense of competence.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier: The promise of a transition challenge is that if the group can renegotiate their loyalties and can sift through their prevailing values and practices to determine what they can carry forward and what must be left behind, then their lives (or the organization’s overall condition) might get better.

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Maintenance

Not all leadership work is about change. Sometimes the challenge is to hold things together -to protect essential resources, maintain core values, and keep the enterprise from falling apart.

Maintenance leadership is needed to hold a group, community, organization, or country together when it is under threat.

The work for people in such a predicament is to face the reality that their survival is at stake and do what is required to reserve resources and maintain a level of energy that can allow the system to survive until the threat passes.

The condition of the people facing a Maintenance challenge: People in a maintenance challenge are generally in a state of trepidation and anxiety.

The barrier that impedes progress consists of the attitudes and practices of the people that lead them to further jeopardize the value and resources they have amassed.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier: The promise in a maintenance challenge is that the remaining value and resources of the people can be protected. The people will eventually weather the storm and survive if wise and prudent leadership can be provided.

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Development

There are times when the people’s advancement is dependent on their capacity to develop their latent capabilities take advantage of opportunities. The development of those capabilities will allow the people, or their organization, to prosper at a higher-level than they would be able to otherwise.

The leadership task faced with the development challenge is to orchestrate a learning process design that cultivates the group’s latent capabilities.

The development challenge is the core challenge of all human endeavors. Without the appropriate development that allows people to take advantage of the amazing array of opportunities that are available today, groups and organizations will stagnate. Stagnation inevitably leads to decay, and decay leads to death. Leaders therefore must be vigilant in diagnosing the shifting terrain to discover emerging threats and opportunities.

A development challenge is when the group or organization must build new capabilities –competencies, practices, and processes –to ensure the survival and progress of the group or organization.

A development challenge requires complete dedication from the leadership team to support and steer the process.

It is a volatile activity as it involves willingness to experiment and considerable conflict and anxiety as people struggle to build new capacities, deal with threats, accommodate new realities, and take advantage of emerging opportunities. 

The condition of the people is that they are incompetent in regard to the requirements of responding to a changing context. The people must face their incompetence and develop what latent capabilities they have and grow new competencies to respond to the new context and deliver on the promise. The raw material is available in the people but needs to be developed.

The barrier that impedes progress is the lack of confidence of the people, their attachment to values and practices that have worked for them in the past, their unwillingness to take risks, and their reluctance to embrace new practices and priorities. The reality that people are avoiding is that the world around them is changing and adherence to old skills, habits, and practices will render them mediocre performers at best and obsolete at worse.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier:

If latent capabilities and new competencies can be developed, the group or organization will enjoy a more prosperous, satisfying, or rewarding future.

Leadership for development challenge is about orchestrating processes to enhance the capacity of the entire system in order to make it more resilient, responsive, and relevant. The process is much like evolution in the development consists of formulating new capacities through a lot of trial and error. These new capacities allow for a higher level of functioning in changing contexts such as dealing with the new predator competitors were taking advantage of a new terrain markets.

Unlike evolution, a development challenge is a more active, guided, and intentional process in which leadership tries to identify a new challenge early, and to intervene before the challenge becomes a threat of crisis.

A way to think about the function of leadership for development challenge is to think of it as a perturbing force. Borrowing from the idea of an ecosystem, it is helpful to consider an organization as a species that will generally remain stable until some drastic change in the environment challenges the ability of the species to cope. The drastic change exerts a perturbing force on the species, and unless it involves a successful adaptive response, it will die off. 

When the equilibrium of the system is punctuated by perturbing force, a new adaptive opportunity results. Whether or not the species adapts is dependent on many factors, but the opportunity is there. In response to the economic, social, and cultural pressures the, responsible leaders must themselves act as a perturbing force to energize a developmental process that enhances the health and performance of the people and the enterprise.

The point is that a healthy enterprise must think ahead to stock up on the resources it will need to survive, grow, and take advantage of the special opportunities that might emerge in the desert of hard times ahead.

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Crisis

A crisis challenge is a perilous predicament in which the group is under attack from forces within or without. It is a sudden unpredictable event that jeopardizes the accrued value and resources of the group or enterprise.
 

The condition of the people facing a Crisis challenge: People in a crisis challenge are anxious and afraid. They are under threat, so naturally they worry what will become of themselves, their group, or their enterprise.

The barrier that impedes progress is primarily the “forces” that have generated the crisis condition and the emotional and psychological state of the people.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier is that if the group can get beyond the “fog” of the situation, they will discover a deeper underlying issue that must be addressed.

The leadership work in a period of grave danger must be to restore calm; protect the people or the enterprise from further threat or attack, and assist the people channeling their fear, anxiety, and aggression toward creative and workable solutions.
 

This necessitates managing the groups emotions, illusions, fears, and interpretations so that the people face the reality of what lies beneath the crisis and attend to the real issue that must be engaged in order for the situation to be brought to resolution. Therefore, those who seek to exercise real leadership in such circumstances must keep their own heads clear and remain cool under pressure as they work to diagnose the reality of the predicament and figure out where and how they should intervene.

During a crisis challenge, usually two challenges must be addressed concurrently: the volatility of the situation and the unresolved issue below the surface that is actually the reason for the volatility.

Many would-be leaders in a crisis chase false solutions that may make some people feel better but avoid the real problem. Given the pressure on the leader to do something, leaders might feel compelled to come up with a simple but palatable solution that brings temporary relief, such as finding a scapegoat for the crisis are redirecting the people's attention to some other issue and thereby bypassing the real underlying issue altogether. The work of genuine resolution is then, irresponsibly, left to others-even future generations.

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Creative

A creative challenge necessitates doing something that has never been done before. It lies in bringing something into existence that can make a positive contribution to the organization. It is imaginative and inventive work requiring persistence, exploratory thinking, and constant experimentation.

A creative challenge emerges when a group faces a problem or opportunity that no current strategy or practice can successfully address, and an incremental approach based on developing latent values and resources appears to hold little promise.

In essence, the group must invent a solution; they must discover an answer to their predicament, or no progress will be possible. Unlike a development challenge, a creative challenge requires a significant break with the past and an unconstrained leap into the future.

The condition of the people facing a Creative challenge is that the people facing a creating challenge are stuck. They fill like they have hit a wall and are at a loss as to what they must do or how to proceed. The group does not possess in its current repertoire of knowledge a solution to their predicament.
 

The barriers that impede progress are the limitations and boundaries that contain and refrain the people’s thinking- their psychological state, the group culture, and the prevailing paradigm in which the problem occurs. Creative work stirs up an array of emotions in people: some get excited by the process, and some seek to squelch the process because it disrupts the world they know.

The promise or aspiration (vision ) on the other side of the barrier:

The promise available in a creative challenge is that if the people can accomplish something that has never been done before and produce a breakthrough in their thinking and collective efforts. They can function at a higher level of productivity or profitability, or have a better shot at success.

The leadership task is to generate a mood and orchestrate a process to get people to transcend their current thinking and discover a successful response or solution to their constraining predicament.

The essence of exercising leadership to address a creative challenge lies in helping foster the circumstances, attitudes, and processes that make such outcomes possible.

Leading the Adaptive Challenge: The Activist Challenge

Organizations get complacent just like we as individuals do. Routines become comfortable and the organization experiences inertia. You remember that concept from your high school science course: The tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force. The corollary is that a body/organization will continue along the same trajectory until some force changes that trajectory.

The force that changes the trajectory or overcomes the inertia is a catalyst. In the context of adaptive challenges the leader is the catalyst. And the first challenge of leadership is to get people to wake up to the fact that there is a problem. In his classic book, Leading Change, John Kotter says that the first step in any change initiative is to overcome the complacency - inertia - by creating a sense of urgency.  Bill Hybels says that we have to create a sense of "holy discontent" with the status quo.

Essentially, when an organization is facing an adaptive challenge, we have to shock the system to overcome the inertia of complacency to get the necessary change started.

When we do this we will encounter resistance. Often this comes in the form of a challenge about the costs or the risks associated with the change. Certainly there are risks associated with any change. But when we face an activist challenge the risk of not changing is greater than the risk of changing.

The key symptoms of an activist challenge are:

• Some endearing behaviors, values, and/or practices have become corrosive and dysfunctional-and serve to undermine the long-term integrity and survival of the group.
• An opportunity presents itself that can lead to great benefit in progress for the group, but no one is seriously considering it.
• Danger is looming due to an internal or external threat, and the group is not doing anything about it.

The condition of the people facing an activist challenge is:

• An unwillingness to change their values or thinking to accommodate some aspect of reality
• Denial, resistance, ignorance, or simply refuse to budge
• They are comfortable where they are. 

The barrier that impedes progress is the people’s resistance.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier:

• The promise in an activist challenge is that if people can face the problem and seriously consider the data they have neglected or denied, than a new opportunity for progress can open up.
• Fundamentally, the leader wants to get the people to learn about the problem, how their behavior contributes to the problem, and what can be done to solve the problem.

Leadership Intervention for an Activist Challenge

In an activist challenge, the person seeking to lead does not have the power or authority to make people listen and command change. Given the limitations of his or her power, the intervener must think of creative ways to get people's attention and highlight the contradiction and values. Fundamentally, the leader has to get the people to learn: to learn about the problem, how their own behavior contributes to the problem, and what can be done to solve the problem.