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Leadership
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Reactive? Responsive? One usually hurts, one usually helps heal…
17 May 2009 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Reactivity in relationships (short-fuse living, attacking, failing to listening, assuming you know what others are saying anyway, harboring damages, gossiping, transmitting unhelpful or damaging information, being sarcastic) usually hurts others and our relationships.
Get out of the middle!
Responsiveness, on the other hand (embracing and listening to what others are saying before responding or acting, allowing the full story to be told without making judgments, holding onto ourselves in the face of trouble or anxiety and the anxieties of others, not falling when all the other dominoes are falling) usually helps heal others and our relationships.
Yet it is important to realize that responsive people or those persons whose behavior is usually characterized by being responsive, did not get there by sheer willfulness or determination. Becoming a “non-anxious presence” is the result of the long, and often very slow work of making peace with every possible relationship and human connection (past and present) a person has. Reactivity (anxiety) and Responsiveness (non-anxiety) are not willful choices but rather the product of individual journeys.
Finally, reactive behavior and responsive behavior are not “bad” and “good” respectively. A person can be display both. A parent can be viciously reactive if a child is threatened (appropriate) and yet warm, nurturing, and protective toward the same child all in an instant.
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Expectations of a wiser leader…
13 May 2009 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
Leadership of anything (school, church, business, sports team, newsroom) is fraught with possibility and with challenge. The wiser leader expects:
Call me for your Leadership workshop
1. Sabotage from areas where it is least predictable or expected.
2. Chaos in at least a few, or even in many, areas of the organization.
3. Trails that sometimes lead to no useful destination.
4. Trials that waste time, energy, and other resources.
5. Seduction into focusing on the irrelevant as the irrelevant stubbornly vies for recognition while giving the appearance of utmost importance.
6. Seduction into the illusion of total control.
7. Approximation of what is possible and viable in exchange for expecting perfection.
8. Power to be shared, offered, that true serendipity and creativity may occur.
9. Transmission of his or her personal, domestic, or moral struggles to emerge in the life of the people who serve the organization.
10. To resist the natural push from within the organization to be all consuming of the leader’s time, talent, and resources. -
Nine ways to know you are growing in your relationship skills:
05 May 2009 by Rod Smith / No Comments
1. You are less dependent on others yet have a growing awareness of how you fit into the bigger picture of your immediate family and community.
May you grow and grow...
2. You genuinely regret past errors and are vigilant not to repeat them.
3. You possess the foresight to know that moving on with your life is a necessary part of growth no matter how grievous your past mistakes may have been.
4. You want success in every area of your life but not at the cost of your integrity.
5. Within reason you resist saving, rescuing, or protecting others (even those whom you love) from the natural consequences of their own behaviors.
6. You are comfortable with your many and varied roles in life and are unafraid to play your part to the full.
7. As far as it is within your realm of influence and power, you are at peace with all people.
8. You forgive everyone, everything, all the time, even when it is not requested and when forgiveness is undeserved – and yet, despite this, you are not the proverbial doormat.
9. You know when and how to express your voice and when it is necessary to remain silent.
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Just when you thought there was hope….
21 Apr 2009 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
I love Friedman. I hope you will too.
I have reconstructed one of the late Rabbi Ed. Friedman’s parables which I first encountered as a footnote in his paper entitled “The Challenge of Change and the Spirit of Adventure.” (It’s essential reading, by the way):
A man was getting ready for heart bypass surgery when his organs called a (secret, of course) meeting. Lungs declared they would refuse to participate in the surgery saying the host had no business making them work harder after all they’d done for him for all these years.
Spleen agreed. Pancreas nudged in agreement. Actually Pancreas winked, but it is hard to tell with Pancreas.
Intestine mulled endlessly on the matter and felt (it was rather an emotional moment, actually) it should side, if he sided with anyone, with Spleen.
Intestine, who found it hard to have an opinion anyway, also did everything slowly.
The Kidney Twins, in unison and stony-faced, kidded a just little (they are not given to too much humor) that he had had the audacity to think they’d work any harder on his behalf, “Who does he think he is trying to get all well?” Their comment became a scoff.
Bowel, not given to small talk, churned the over the matter, repeatedly sighed a long conspiratorial, “Nooo. Nooo. Noooo!”
Liver, still seated, said he wasn’t about to change after all these years. Then, standing to address the meeting, said, “Who exactly is he to decide without due process anyway? New lease on life, a new Heart around here will mean new demands. Everyone’s been so worried about old Heart for all these years, no one gave a rip about us! We’ll show him who is boss! He’ll get all active – which means we’ll have to, too. No. No. No. What does he know about taking out the trash anyway? I do the REAL work around here!”
Round the table the organs voted and a decision was reached. “No! No to surgery for our ambitious, unreasonable, demanding, host.”
Just then Brain spoke up, “It’s none of your business. It is not your decision to make. Get back to work.”
(I highly recommend Friedman’s Fables and Failure of Nerve by the same author.)
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Valuable lessons to teach your child…
11 Mar 2009 by Rod Smith / No Comments
1. To work hard in groups and to work hard alone.
2. To identify the correlation between work and achievement.
3. To freely and regularly express gratitude.
4. To connect behavior and choices with consequences.
5. To save.
6. To find his or her voice and to use it appropriately.
7. To use his or her imagination.
8. To respect elders, teachers, and persons in authority.
9. To be able to apologize and to forgive.
10. To take full responsibility for his or her own future.
11. To value the past as a springboard to the future.
12. To know that fulfillment is an “inside job.”
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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