Thursday: Notes On Education
School of wrong
All drama in leadership and life is caused by the need to be right.
That’s from a book called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
One of the arguments in the book is that content does not matter, context does. That is, a management team will argue about whose fault it is that the sales goals have not been met such that everyone begins to defend their position. Blame and shame become operative. At that point—a point that happens automatically when people feel themselves or their ego under threat—the content of what anyone is saying no longer matters. The best answer in the world won’t be heard and when you are reacting and defensive and insisting on how right you are you you won’t have any great ideas anyway.
If you like, think of how left and right talk to (or at) one another. Everyone Repuplican is absolutely sure they are right. Democrats too.
This got time thinking that our schools do not just punish failure and make “getting it right” the chief capital of what every student does, they do nothing to help kids name and identify their feelings, which is the essence of conscious leadership. If I know I am triggered by what you say I can take a breath and say, “what can we learn about what’s happening here?” Rather than “let me tell you how I am right and you are to blame.”
Everything about our education system prepares people to “be right” and so be sick with defensiveness and the need to be right.
Maybe it is time for school to teach what’s wrong and to forget about getting anything right.
Friday: Today, Or Some Day Like It
Trump The Stupid
Mr. Trump has said so many stupid things that it would take a lifetime to chart them all. A well-known favorite, his jab at Mr. McCain that he (Trump) likes soldiers who don’t get captured did not get the interpretation it deserved in that it implies more than that Mr. McCain is “a loser.” It also suggests that soldiers who “win” get killed. Lovely.
Anyway, a few days ago Mr. Trump defended his not returning the boxes of secrets this way: “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things, golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things.”
So let me get this right. You can’t obey the law you swore to uphold because you—a billionaire, supposedly—need to make sure you get your old laundry back?
Saturday: muntrem, er
From a friend more eloquent than I could be:
I had a fantasy today, and it’s this: The world, all of us, exists in darkness Stygian as on the Atlantic bed, except for cell phones. Then Shazam! The world returns in its wonder and color; and everyone is addicted to nature!