Leadosophy

Episode 36 Bernard Lonergan died in 1984. He was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian. In 1957 we wrote a book titled “Insight: A Study of Human Understanding.” There’s a passage that struck me where he said, “we don’t just wonder, we wonder about something” and further, “. . . the process of learning is marked by an initial period of darkness in which one gropes about insecurely, in which one cannot see where one is going, in which one cannot grasp what all the fuss is about; and only gradually, as one begins to catch on, does the initial darkness yield to a subsequent period of increasing light, confidence, interest, absorption” (Lonergan, p. 31).

I’ve pondered how Lonergan’s thoughts apply to leadership, the realm of leadership? Do we ever “catch on?” I’m not so sure. I’ve been in multiple leadership positions where I’ve felt that I “grope about insecurely on the regular” In reflection, that insecurity—it was perpetual—kept me from falling into the trap of “I’m a great leader; I have discovered the elixir of leadership greatness.” Humility in leadership is the Sword of Damocles. Leading others is a precarious business, and by precarious I mean: highly unpredictable.

Leadoosphy examines the strange world of leadership in all its complexities and simpleness. What can we truly hope to learn from reading books or taking leadership seminars? Or, are our experiences enough?

References

Lonergan, B. J. (1988). Collected works of Bernard Lonergan: Insight. University of Toronto Press for Lonergan Research Institute of Regis College.

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

In this interview, Dr. Harris provides an analysis of what it took for her to become a Doctor of Pharmacy. She discusses her passion for science and math, how that led her into the field of pharmacy, as well as juggling and sharing her academics with Purdue Rowing.

We talk about the transition from working at the tactical level and "in the trenches" within the hospital system, to the transition to management and leadership. Also, we discuss intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the value of technical competence and when it's secondary to solid leadership, and the difference between pursuing a leadership and management career in pharmaceutical work via the administrative track or the clinical track.

There's way more to unpack in this interview. Check it out!

Episode 35 Leaders, followers, technical specialists, significant others, and friends are all groups of humans with blindspots.

A few questions initially: how do blindspots develop, or what is their origin? Are blindspots simply what we do not know? Can we classify all blindspots under a lack of information or data, or should it be relevant information data? And, how do we determine relevancy? Is there another category outside of information and data? Maybe knowledge, but is not knowledge an accumulation of information and data? If I do not know something, but I do not need to know something, is it a blindspot?

What can we do to increase the chances that we seek or catch blindspots? By "catch," I mean that there may come a time when a blindspot is exposed for only a brief moment. Some windows open then shut very quickly.

We don’t like criticism, naturally. It stings and scares us. We recoil from the idea of learning about our weaknesses. The more we work to overcome this fear, this anxiety, the more we will embrace the exposure of blindspots. I think everyone should develop this idea, deliberately, in a way that is unique to each individual. That is my only prescriptive thought on the matter.

References:

Johari Window video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aF-olRMuoQ

Visit Gabriel's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCObvJJ1Htg4PsytT3nbdZsA

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

Episode 34 What I discuss in this video has been discussed for thousands of years. How do our minds make sense of the world we see?

Imposter bias is real. Some people think that they may not be good enough for a certain task, while others see them as overqualified. Research shows that we tend to overvalue our decisions or actions while devaluing the decisions or actions of others. We believe we would have acted with moral strength in a situation where someone else did not, in our view.

Our minds are a movie. Is my mind’s movie real? Is yours? Is there a universal reality that exists independent of our own thoughts and feelings and judgments and assumptions?

Can the movie in our minds misrepresent what we see in the world?

What does any of this have to do with Leadership?

Hopefully, some of these questions serve as good dinner or watercooler or video conferencing talk over the coming days. Just kidding.

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

Episode 33 Time for some self-reflection. Leadosophy goes to great lengths trying to avoid telling others how to lead or prescribing leadership commandments ad nauseam. Leadosophy thinks that the prescriptive leadership market is saturated. "Thou shalt not do this or that!" is not what Leadosophy is about. Admittedly, we wade into the prescriptive waters from time to time, but we try to remain mindful of prescriptive talk. Leadosophy likes to focus on describing leadership from Tim's unique experiences and Tim's understanding of other's unique experiences. This episode briefly touches on the distinction between finding our way in leadership and life vice telling others how to find their way.

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

Dylan is a Senior at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, or technically a 1/c, which is short for 1st Class Cadet. I think I have the right. Soon, Dylan and his classmates will graduate, and they will admix with the rest of the Coasties in the fleet. They will join a long line of heroes who have and continue to honorably serve and protect the Homeland and save life and property at sea.

In this Leadosophy interview, Dylan discusses his life journey towards acceptance into the U.S Coast Guard Academy. This journey was not devoid of tough obstacles. Dylan opens up about some of these obstacles, how he overcame some difficult circumstances, and the life lessons he continues to amass and take advantage of. Dylan also talks about life at the C.G. Academy, formal and informal leadership and followership training, and even his leadership framework, TEACH, which he initially crafted and penned two years ago. Dylan also discusses his short-term and long-term goals; Leadosophy also asks Dylan to talk about the blend or balance of leadership and followership that he will need as he enters the Coast Guard as a new Ensign.

This was an insightful and thought-provoking interview. Leadosophy believes that the Coast Guard has itself a fine Coast Guard Officer in the making. We look forward to seeing Dylan's career progress over the years to come.

You can find Dylan on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanwrobertscga/

Episode 32 The term leadership effectiveness (LE) is often used loosely and generally, but effectiveness can vary widely dependent upon both situational contexts and those responsible for judging effectiveness. Leadosophy examines literature from the Encyclopedia of Leadership written by James Cooper and John Nirenberg and titled, "Leadership Effectiveness." In this article, the authors posit a definition of leadership effectiveness, and this inspires Leadosophy to analyze the definition and see how it applies to practical application.

Some questions about LE and topics explored in this episode:

1. How do we define leadership Effectiveness (LE)?

2. What do we use to judge LE?

3. Can we judge our own LE, our self-concept of LE?

4. If LE is in the eye of the beholder, who's eyes matter more?

5. Does LE matter more from a mission-centric perspective or the human-centric perspective? If you channel more energy in one direction, will a loss of energy occur in the other direction?

Reference

Cooper, James Fenimore., and John Nirenberg. "Leadership Effectiveness." Encyclopedia of Leadership. Ed. . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2004. 845-54. SAGE Reference Online. Web. 30 Jan. 2012.

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

Episode 31 Leadosophy tackles the theoretical side of leadership, explaining how the blend of theory, practice, and reflection work in harmony or not in harmony. As leaders, we make decisions and predictions about the future based upon our best theories or hypotheses. Many of these predictions and decisions are based upon our views and assumptions of human performance, human emotion, human behavior, and human potential.

If you're looking for a geeked-out episode on leadership, this one's for you. Also, Leadosophy asks some deep questions that should help serve as a cognitive lubricant for your leadership style and your understanding of leadership. Here are a few of these questions:

Should leaders pay attention to leadership from a social science perspective?

Should leaders try to gain a better understanding of their habits, tendencies, traits, and decision-making strategies as a means to increase human performance and organizational performance? Is there time to do this? Is it worth your time? Should we understand our assumptions of human behavior prior to assuming a leadership role?

Is human behavior predictable? If I lead others with a certain leadership style, predictable results will follow. Authoritarian v Democratic v Laissez Fair

Should we understand what drives, motivates, or inspires members of our team?

Should we understand what improves happiness in the workplace, what detracts from happiness? Should we understand why this “happiness idea” matters in the first place?

Do we understand why the employees at the bottom of the hierarchal pyramid care less about the business than the business owner or owners? Is this natural? Can we force employees at the bottom to care more? What conditions can we create in the workplace that may increase the chances that all employees take ownership of their organization, become ambassadors for their organization?

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

Episode 30 In this episode, Tim provides some post-interview commentary about "effective leadership." Whatever that means we cannot always be 100% certain. Tim was interviewed; the interviewer was one of Tim's colleagues. She was working on a college project about leadership and management. She asked Tim a series of questions on some heavy leadership/followership topics and concepts.

Tim was asked and provided analysis on the following five questions:

1. How do you foster an emotional connection within your team?

2. How do you foster trust?

3. What are some strategies you use to ensure that your team maintains high levels of motivation to do good work?

4. How do you help your team become cognitively engaged with their work?

5. Are there steps you take to help ensure that the members of your team don’t get burned out?

Leadosophy does not believe that Tim provided the so-called "right" answers to these questions. Leadosophy does not necessarily disagree with Tim's answers as a whole. Leadosophy does want others to know that Tim answered the questions based upon his experiences leading and following and observing other leaders. If you watch this video, think about how you would answer these questions through the lens of your unique experiences. We're looking to co-create knowledge and not necessarily find some hard truths. The latter may be more difficult than we realize in the realm of leadership.

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

Episode 29 Leadosophy borrows some ideas and pithy quotes from Heraclitus, a pre-socratic Greek philosopher who lived over two millennia ago. Leadosophy uses an ebook titled, "Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus" which was translated by Brooks Haxton; with a foreword by James Hillman.

It's important to note that Heraclitus's only known work, "On Nature" never survived intact, so his translated words are second, third, and even fourth-hand accounts of his original written work.

Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy, and Tim is a philosopher so he likes to randomly discuss philosophical works, and he may be guilty of forcefully pressing philosophy ideas into leadership ideas, which works sometimes, and other times it does not—square peg in a round hole analogy works here. But that's ok, any philosophy exposure is good exposure in the eyes of Leadosophy. We'll give Tim a pass every once in a while. #everyonelovesphilosophy

Here's the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's introduction of Heraclitus: "A Greek philosopher of Ephesus (near modern Kuşadası, Turkey) who was active around 500 BCE, Heraclitus propounded a distinctive theory which he expressed in oracular language. He is best known for his doctrines that things are constantly changing (universal flux), that opposites coincide (unity of opposites), and that fire is the basic material of the world. The exact interpretation of these doctrines is controversial, as is the inference often drawn from this theory that in the world as Heraclitus conceives it contradictory propositions must be true."

Reference

Heraclitus. Fragments (Penguin Classics). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/

Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.