 
Survey of HR for Projects

By Robert E. Perrine.

Smashwords Edition.

Copyright 2010 Robert E. Perrine.

Copyright

Copyright held by Robert Perrine and Marlene Weldon, Long Beach, California. You may not copy or distribute this document without advanced written permission from the document authors. Contact Robert E. Perrine at http://www.robertperrine.com.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank all of the friends I have worked with over the years who helped me learn about project management and about people. Special thanks go to Brian, Franklyn, Jim and Tom for their support and encouragement while I was working on this book.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Human Relationships Theory

The Science of Psychology

Organizational Psychology

Organizational Management

Recap

Chapter 2: Leadership

Introduction to Leadership

An Inspirational Leader

Transformational Leadership

Mathematical Models

Psychology of Motivation

A Few Dangerous Characteristics

Recap Again

Case Study on Leadership

Chapter 3: Workplace Ecology

Organizational Structures

Roles aligned with Motivations

Communications

Exercises

Recap on Workplace Ecology

Chapter 4: What Does It Mean?

Introduction to the Conclusion

A Simple Pattern

Psychology of Project Management

Forming

Storming

Norming

Performing

Conclusion

Footnotes

**Introduction**

My purpose for publishing this book is to provide project managers with a survey of the human relationships (HR) aspects of project management. I believe this will be useful to students studying for certification as well as to professionals seeking a bit more knowledge about this topic. The topic is massive – and thus this book is long and convoluted. It is not easy to read and it is not as well written as I would like for it to be. Basically these are study notes. I cover just about everything in the HR knowledge area, but the presentation is shallow.

This book came about because I was searching for an organizational framework for this material. At the time I was teaching project management classes and working as a program manager. I had studied much of this material over the years and I began to see how to connect these various theories into a unity.

This book fits between three of my other books.

_Summary of Best Practices for Information Technology_ (IT) is a survey of the organizational aspects of IT. It is a technical book, describing the basic how-to for project management based on the PMBOK, operational management based on ITIL, governance based on CobiT and metrics based on six sigma.

_Coping Styles: Dealing with Life on Life's Terms_ follows this book in sequence, even though it was published earlier. Coping Styles describes the integrated model of psychology that I found while working on this book. I wrote this book because the Summary of Best Practices did not have space to include HR. Out of the work that I did on this book I found the model that evolved into the theme for my book on Coping Styles.

This book also touches on developmental psychology. If you are interested in that topic, then my book _Growth Rings: How We Get Connected_ elaborates on the theory of developmental psychology.

In summary, this book is a stand-alone guide to the HR aspects of project management. It is also a bridge between books in this series.

This book is divided into four chapters. First there is a survey of some of the underlying theories of human psychology and organizational psychology. Chapter two is an exploration of the concept called leadership. The third chapter carries these parts together into the workplace. In the fourth chapter I explain the patterns that I found and finally try to make it all relevant to project management. If you want the details about how I came to my conclusions in that fourth chapter, then read the book in sequence. If, however, you already have a basic understanding of the HR component of project management, then you might want to start with the fourth chapter.

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**Chapter 1: Human Relationships Theory**

Best practices for most subjects can reference one specific book as the definitive guide. Project management has the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Prince2 and other similar standards. There are a few well recognized books that describe how to schedule a project, calculate earned value, or manage changes. There is no single core document that encompasses the best practices for human relationships management. Instead, it is necessary to blend multiple disciplines together beginning with the relevant material from the proximate fields of science.

The discipline of science responsible for studying the individual is psychology. The disciplines responsible for studying relationships between individuals are anthropology and sociology. And the discipline responsible for the study of the work environment is organizational management. In this chapter we will touch on psychology, social theory and organizational theory and then endeavor to integrate the whole. There is a huge amount of material to cover. My explanations of each of these numerous theories is going to be very shallow. I believe, however, that if we survey the breadth of this material we can find a pattern that aligns the whole.

The Science of Psychology

Psychology itself is a broad subject with many intricate disciplines. The following list illustrates some of the branching and specialization found in psychology today along with the names of one or two of the founders of that branch. The next portion of this chapter quickly describes these branches of psychology. Subsequent sections in this chapter will elaborate on how to apply this knowledge to the effective formation and management of organizational teams. And from there this chapter will lead into the art of human relationship (HR) management.

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Behaviorists: Watson and Skinner. 1 subject and 1 observer.

Analytic: Freud. 1 patient and 1 doctor.

Developmental: Erikson, Piaget, Kegan and others. Many subjects and 1 observer.

Relational: Lewin and Rogers. 1 patient or 1 group with 1 counselor.

Social: Bandura: Individuals in groups interacting with individuals in groups.

Ecological: Bronfenbrenner. Communities interacting with communities.

Statistical: Truax and Carkhuff. Populations observed.

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Whether we like it or not, the roots of psychology trace back to ancient religions. Simply put, ancient religions provided the answers to all questions. That was their role in society. Science has been replacing that role for several thousand years. Joseph Campbell, an anthropologist, illustrated this role in a series of books that documented the commonality of stories and legends in world religions. (1.1) Whether acknowledged or not, modern psychology rests upon the observations and chronicles recorded by the followers of ancient religions. Today many practitioners of psychology and many HR managers attempt to blend the longitudinal history contained in religion with new discoveries coming from science.

The science now known as psychology branched from religion several hundred years ago but it was disorganized and nearly indistinguishable from philosophy. Dr. Sigmund Freud deserves credit for the consolidation of thoughts about the human mind into the science now known as psychology. (1.2) Freud was not alone. Schools of thought also developed around the works of Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and others. (1.3) But Freud's pronouncements eclipsed all other thought on the subject.

Freud, Adler, Jung and nearly all practitioners of that time began with an analytic approach in which the patient is viewed as an object of interest and the psychologists is expected to act rather like Sherlock Holmes, the famous fictional detective from that same era. It is the psychologist's efforts that reveal the solution. This same approach is used today when management attempts to delve into the psyche of the work force without resorting to the expedient solution of asking the workers' opinion.

Not all of Freud's theories were universally appealing. Two key alternatives to the Freudian theories were derived by Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. Jung deserves credit for formalizing the concepts of developmental psychology. The concept of developmental psychology is that individuals grow in a predictable pattern. Erik Erikson elaborated on this model and described stages of development. (1.4) Jean Piaget and Robert Kegan studied children to substantiate the concepts of developmentalism. (1.5) The core concept is that people continue to develop increasingly complex views of the world as they mature. The following table is an adaptation from the influences of those psychologists.

When I bring these concepts together into a model, I envision the diagram shown below. This model begins with the individual as a complex of genetic and behavioristic influences. With time the infant develops core beliefs about the world and realizes that the world is external from his or herself. Cognition of the world is filtered by our perspectives and our predefined psychology.

One of the key differentiators between Jung and Freud is that Jung redefined the roles of the patient and the doctor. Analytic psychology treats the patient and accepts the premise that the patient is stuck and cannot move forward without outside assistance. Jung realized that the psychologist is merely one of many influences acting on the individual.

During the twentieth century two opposing schools of thought coalesced around descriptions of those external influences. The behaviorist and the relational therapists diverged. B. F. Skinner is the best known spokesperson for the behaviorist approach but his work built upon earlier works by John Watson and Edward Thorndike who are relatively unknown to the general public. (1.6) While Freud viewed the analytic relationship as being vital to the patient's ability to change, Skinner looked on the process as a detached observer. Behaviorists believe that the application of appropriate stimuli will result in predictable reactions including changes in behavior. While fiction often portrays the analytic psychologists as bored and indifferent, fiction tends to portray the behaviorists as manipulative and malevolent.

Such portrayals are stereotypes that do not do justice to the professionals that use these therapeutic techniques. Consider, for example, one behavioristic concept that Adler put to practical use. Adler developed the theory that people need to compensate for perceived deficiencies. Short people, for example, feel at a disadvantage to taller people. Adler recommended compensating for that disadvantage by wearing shoes with taller heals. Removing the perception of the cause reduced the undesirable effect. Cause and effect were directly linked.

Behaviorism is evidenced in management practices that presume that changes in policy will produce predicable changes in behavior. The stimulus of compensation, for example, is presumed to create a reaction in the individual that will motivate that person to increase their output. Empirical studies prove that stimulus-response is an accurate predictor of simple behaviors over a short period of time. Thus, this theoretical framework is "deterministic". A given cause will produce a predictable effect. More complex studies, however, reveal that stimulus-response is a poor predictor of the complex interactions of people over time. (1.7) Offering more money, for example, will likely produce a short term improvement but the long term effect might be positive, neutral or even negative depending upon complexities external to the individual. The behaviorist response to the gap between cause and effect is to tighten the controls on the individual.

Within the realm of psychology there was a counter movement away from the deterministic view of the behaviorists. Carl Rogers is one of the best known psychologists who chose to focus on the relationship between the patient and the counselor. (1.8) Rogers experimented with different approaches and documented the influence a group of peers could have on an individual. He followed the direction set by Kurt Lewin and explored the complex interactions that occur once the simple one-to-one relationship of a patient with a counselor is expanded to embrace the community of a group. (1.9) This was an important development as it brought psychology closer to the realities of the work environment. Additionally Rogers was among the first to realize that psychology was not always effective. He distinguished himself from many of his peers when he attributed some treatment failures to the counselor rather than blaming all on the patient. Rogers pointed to the statistical study by Truax and Carkhuff as documentation of instances where psychotherapy appeared to have a detrimental effect on the patient. (1.10)

From counseling individuals in groups it is only a small step to the study of the psychology of the group. The most prominent name in this field today is Albert Bandera. (1.11) Bandura blended the deterministic behaviorist approach with systems and cognitive theories to explain the obliqueness of the effects that a cause can trigger in a social setting. We will come back to the social cognitive theory later in this chapter because this is the psychological theory that comes the closest to dealing with the work place. In brief, a simple cause, such as giving one employee a pay raise will have an effect on the group. And the group will process this information and react in a way that is complex and difficult to predict. The group reaction might be positive, neutral or even negative.

If we continue to enlarge the size of the group, we find a field of study sometimes referred to as ecological psychology. I cite Urie Bronfenbrenner as an author who expressed the concept that the psychology of the individual is heavily influenced by their community. (1.12) While social psychology recognizes the influence of peers, ecological psychology seeks to include the influences that the surrounding crowd of strangers have on an individual. For example, if a neighborhood is covered by graffiti, this will impact the psychology of those who observe the graffiti. If a school is poorly funded the impact from that choice will be felt by society for several decades. If a factory is dirty the workers will feel less motivation to strive for quality. Your surroundings impact your outlook on life.

Ecological psychology is non-deterministic. Removing graffiti will not change your attitude towards your manager but it might influence your disposition. That subtle change might result in fewer curt replies which could over time produce better working relationships. Ecological psychology thus builds on the concept from systems theory that causes will produce effects that in turn appear as a cause in some other part of the system.

Chaos theory touches on the same indirect relationships and coined the phrase the "Butterfly Effect". (1.13) Briefly, the butterfly effect postulates that the complexity of weather is so dependent on external influences that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in South America will eventually influence the weather in New York City (NYC). The interactions of one behaviorist on one patient might be deterministic under the right circumstances but the influence of one counselor on one patient in a group setting is complex and unpredictable. On the other hand, measuring the impact of psychological techniques across hundreds of practitioners with thousands of patients leads to statistical probabilities and thus yields more predictability. A similar simplification through statistical techniques can also resolve our butterfly problem. We might not be able to predict when the flight of butterflies in Brazil will trigger rainfall in NYC, but we can safely measure long term trends and safely predict that rain will continue to fall in some vague yearly cycle.

There is a relationship between complexity, probability, domain and theory. Gerald Weinberg's textbook on systems theory outlines the domain gradient from the mechanistic (deterministic) approach through systems theory and on to statistical probability. (1.14) It is important to understand the limits of each domain.

Deterministic mechanisms are highly predictable and can be described by formulas. Inject a known amount of gasoline; mix with air and your internal combustion engine will produce a predictable output. Apply current to an electrical motor and the motor will turn at a predictable rate. Assign one task to one worker, add the appropriate incentives and it would seem that you should get a predictable result. Skinner proved that this works with pigeons and sometimes with people.

But he also found that predicting the behavior of one individual is very difficult. No matter how well you know the psychology of your closest friend you still might not accurately predict how they will react when management announces pending layoffs. The precise impact on one individual is only predictable when that one individual is fully transparent to the observer and that never happens. To verify this ask any couple that have been married for more than fifty years if they are still surprised by their partner and the answer will be yes. Predicting individuals is very difficult.

Predicting group behavior is even more complex. Consider, again, the situation where management has announced pending layoffs. Your co-workers might feel immune and thus increase their productivity to prove their value. Your co-workers might feel threatened and lose interest in productivity. More likely the individuals in your team will have a mixture of reactions and the net effect of the influence on the team will depend upon which view becomes dominate. Predicting group behavior is complex. To verify this ask anyone who has survived a recent round of layoffs if their team behaved in a predictable manner. The answer will be no. Group behavior is highly complex. Systems theory covers the complexity of the intertwined cause-and-effect relationships within a group.

But the most common reaction that a group will have to the announcement of pending layoffs is negative. Most groups are negatively impacted by adverse management announcements. Statistics thus attempts to predict the likely effect that the announcement of pending layoffs will have on a statistically average group of workers in a statistically average company. The statistical approach intentionally ignores the difficulty in predicting the behavior of any one individual. It also ignores the variety of responses that a specific group will exhibit. Instead, statistical analysis works with populations that are large enough to trend towards a statistical mean. The extreme negative responses are offset by extreme positive responses and the mild negative responses balance the mild positive responses in a predictable manner. One of the most commonly known uses of statistical probability on group psychology is the simple political poll. Statistical studies rely upon the offsetting effects from individuals and assume there is a natural clustering around a probability curve.

This is core to the relationship between theory, complexity and predictability. Deterministic relationships are simpler to study and yield less complexity. If you give one person a pay raise you will get an increase in productivity -- this is predictable because it is deterministic. Statistically, if you give all workers a pay raise you will get an increase in productivity -- and this is predictable because it is statistically valid. But once you ask how long this increase in productivity will last you enter into the complexity of systems theory. Sustained behavior requires social support and predicting the reaction of a group is much more difficult than is predicting the reaction of an individual or a population.

The work group will react as soon as news of a pay raise leaks out. And the group reaction depends upon the individual psychology of all the members as well as the relational psychology of the group. Giving one person a pay raise can cause that person to be ostracized by the group and thus lower the productivity rate of the individual and the group. Giving one person a pay raise can brighten the hopes of others that they too might soon get a pay raise and thus group productivity might spike upward.

And then the dampening effects will begin. One butterfly in Brazil or one worker in India might hesitate for a few seconds, which will lead to a minor task being delayed which could cause the project schedule to slip and suddenly your highly motivated team thinks that those anticipated pay raises have slipped out of reach. Suddenly your team is demoralized because they think the bonus checks that were bound to accompany those imaginary pay raises have also been taken away from them. And so, one extra cup of tea in India now means that your best worker's child will never get a chance to go to Harvard and it is all your fault. You started this whole thing. You gave one worker a two-percent pay increase to accompany a change in responsibilities and now your entire group is threatening to go out on strike. And you have no idea how the one triggered the other. You either need to blame the butterflies or we need to delve deeper into group psychology.

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Allow me to summarize to this point.

Group psychology is very complex. Systems theory is much more complex than is the simple deterministic theory of cause and effect. Statistical theory simplifies the psychology of the group by using large populations to minimize the effects from one individual. (1.15) But people work in groups. And groups add layers of complexity that neither individuals nor populations exhibit. Thus the specific topic we most need to understand is the one that is the most difficult to master.

There are many branches in psychology. The behavioristic and statistical approaches look at one patient or one population while attempting to mask the effects of the observer. Other branches of psychology place the therapist into relationship with the patient and differ from each other in the breadth of external influences that are included in the study. The behavioristic school is the most deterministic and believes the most strongly that a cause can lead to a predictable effect. The statistical approach is the furthest from the behavioristic approach in order of magnitude of the number of subjects studied and yet the key concept of the statistical simplifications implies that the effect from a cause can be measured and assessed. The other schools of psychology are focused on the complexity of the systems that influence each person and the complexity of the group, team and society. Social psychology is probably the most complex subject of all as it is focused on groups and the effects that groups have on other groups.

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These fields of psychology are distinct and yet they overlap. Consider, for example, the simple case of one worker with one task. Clearly a worker in an office or factory is dependent upon numerous other workers. But how dependent is a solo athlete on anyone else? For the purpose of this illustration, consider the simple case of one runner seeking to run at a faster pace than has been previously recorded. The definition of this task is simple. We have as deterministic a situation as we can find. One worker. One task. The goal is precisely defined. In theory, if the athlete follows a specific training program then the athlete will achieve the desired results. The cause is the training program and the effect is an improved running speed.

Neal Bascomb, in his book The Perfect Mile, describes how three stellar athletes entered the race to break the four-minute mile. (1.16) Each athlete began his pursuit of this elusive goal with the belief that finding the right training approach would produce the desired results. Each began with a deterministic approach. Each acted in isolation and felt no need for other workers to assist in this endeavor.

But soon each athlete realized their need for a coach and thus left the behavioristic model and entered into the relational model. For John Landry the relationship provided an incentive to distance himself from an analytic coach. For Wes Santee the coach became his support group and a substitute for his family. For Roger Bannister, the coach was a social link to a team of peers.

Roger Bannister relied upon peer runners to help set his pace, to encourage and support him and to push him towards that elusive goal. Landry and Santee lacked the close support group that Bannister built and instead relied upon competitors to provide peer pressure. All three watched the news headlines and felt the ecological pressure of national pride as each tried to break the four-minute mile. Landry was from Australia, Santee from the United States and Bannister was from Britain and each sought to bring recognition to their respective home country. Thus the sustaining efforts were social with ecological influences providing increasing pressure in advance of each race. And those pressures changed each of those athletes. They developed new outlooks on how to live their lives, work with their peers and strive for their goal.

When Roger Bannister crossed the finish line in less than four-minutes he became a world-famous celebrity. His coach and peers were quickly forgotten. But Bannister understood the social context of his effort. Even such an individualistic effort as running a race requires the support of a large number of people. No matter how isolated the individual appears, no matter how deterministic the task seems to be, no human endeavor is performed in isolation. We are not just behavioristically predictable. We are not just relationally dependent. People are social creatures. And thus, the branches of psychology of most interest to an organization are the branches that most effectively deal with the social context of the individual -- social and ecological.

To understand the work place we need to blend these approaches to psychology into a coherent model. In the next section of this chapter I will build upon what we have already covered and then propose one such model. But first we need to finish this survey of the schools of psychology.

The next entry on the list that began this chapter is Albert Bandura. Albert Bandura is one of the best known authors on social psychology. Bandura formalized this aspect of psychology with the name "Social Cognitive Theory". (1.17) In essence, Bandura blends the deterministic concept of cause-and-effect with the social influence of community and the cognitive influence of perception and reasoning. Bandura's theory is highly valuable as we try to understand the work place.

Bronfenbrenner enlarges the social concept of community with an ecological influence and then adds a developmental aspect. Developmentalism is the concept that individuals grow and their concept of the world becomes more complex with maturity. Erikson, Piaget, Kegan and many others describe these stages of growth. (1.18) The focus of developmental psychology, however, is the individual. The focus of ecological psychology is much broader. Consider, for example, the following quote from Albert Einstein.

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." (1.19)

Our view of the world is reinforced and challenged by relational pressures from family, peers and associates. Our world view is altered by ecological pressures and preserved by ecological filters. Periodically we experience an upheaval in our world view and our core beliefs are updated. When we evolve developmentally we spiral outward further in our understanding of family, peers and community. For example, consider the following explanation of the concept of family.

"Then his mother and brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, 'Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.' And he replied, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking at those who sat around him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." (1.20)

And thus we find that the science of psychology is quite broad. The psychology of an individual is complex enough. Then when we put people together in groups and try to accomplish a specific task we are dealing with layer upon layer of complexity. The social approach to psychology is the theory most focused on the type of problems we encounter in the work environment. All of the theories of psychology offer tools that are useful in dealing with human relationships. Religion, throughout history has captured thoughts about this subject and a valid modern approach must integrate the best from science with the best from the historic records of prior thinking on this subject. The science of psychology includes a spectrum of approaches delineated by ranking each theory against the size of the community each seeks to examine. It is thus possible to plot these theories as an axis on a grid.

Organizational Psychology

In the next section of this chapter I will outline the key concepts of organizational theory with linkages to the underlying psychological theories. The goal is to go from a one-dimensional array of psychological theories to a two-dimensional grid with psychological theories on one axis and organizational approaches on the other axis. Much of this material is dependent upon Saul W. Gellerman's classic book on organizational management Motivation and Productivity. (1.21)

My approach is to proceed in an approximately chronological order from the oldest to the newest. Please refer to the list below for an overview of this sequence. The concept I try to express in this list is that there is an interaction between the evolution of human psychology and improvements in organizational psychology. In this next part of this chapter I will quickly survey the major contribution from each of these experts. Following this survey I will endeavor to complete the linkage from psychological theory to organizational theory.

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Scientific management - Frederick Winslow Taylor

Population: 1

Behaviorist: Cause-and-effect

Analytic: Problem solving expert

Relational: Manager-worker relationships influence productivity

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Human relations - Elton Mayo

Population: Groups

Relational: Relationships form even when unplanned

Social: Informal work groups define the rules

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Social research - Rensis Likert and Daniel Katz

Population: Groups

Relational: Supervisor's personality impacts productivity

Social: Work groups are self-regulating and want to be responsible for results

Ecological: Chain of command impacts the individual worker

Statistical: Blind studies to test assumptions

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Expectancy theory - Victor Vroom

Population: 1 or group

Behaviorist: People tend to fulfill expectations

Relational: Participative democratic supervision allows workers to be productive

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Hierarchy of needs - Abraham Maslow

Population: 1

Behaviorist: Higher needs are suppressed until base needs are met

Analytic: People desire self-actualization

Developmental: People evolve and grow

Relational: Self-esteem and self-actualization are relational needs

Social: Social needs are important

Ecological: Importance of shared vision

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Hygiene theory - Frederick Herzberg

Population: 1

Behaviorist: Motivators work when de-motivators are removed

Relational: Favorable relationships allow productivity

Ecological: Hygiene factors are prerequisites

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Frozen groups - Abraham Zaleznik

Population: 1 with group

Behaviorist: Fear de-motivates

Developmental: Individuals out-perform cliques for revenge

Relational: Groups offer protection or isolation

Social: Work group protects individual from supervisor

Ecological: Work group protects group from management

Statistical: Blind studies to test assumptions

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Money motivation - William F. Whyte

Population: Populations

Relational: 10% of USA work force can be motivated by money

Social: 90% of USA work force favors group security over money

Statistical: Blind studies to test assumptions

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Scanlon plan - John Scanlon

Population: Organizations

Behaviorist: Each worker can generate improvements

Relational: Employees must be empowered to act

Social: Collaborative groups devise improvement plans

Ecological: The entire organization works towards common goals

Statistical: External studies to validate results

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Management by objectives - Peter F. Drucker

Population: Organizations

Behaviorist: Focus on efficiency

Analytic: Problem solving expert

Developmental: Businesses need to evolve

Relational: Mutually agreed objectives to achieve business goals

Ecological: Top executive should not be paid more than 20-times lowest wage

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Theory X - Douglas McGregor

Population: Groups

Behaviorist: Individual does not want to work in a negative environment

Analytic: People learn to be unresponsive as a defense mechanism

Developmental: Natural tendency to grow is thwarted by oppressive environments

Relational: Supervisors tend to suppress their workers abilities

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Theory Y - Douglas McGregor

Population: Groups

Behaviorist: Work is a natural activity that humans desire

Analytic: People have suppressed desires

Developmental: People desire to use their full capabilities

Relational: Supervisors empower their workers

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Theory Z - William G. Ouchi

Population: Organizations

Behaviorist: Individual motivations are linked to society

Developmental: People desire predictable growth

Relational: Caring relationships will improve productivity

Social: Lifetime employment and growth will bind the organization

Ecological: The company should care for the worker's families

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Affiliation motive - Stanley Schachter

Population: Groups

Relational: Individuals seek relationships for assurance

Social: Confusion to congregating to consensus

Ecological: Threats cause people to seek reassurance

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Achievement motive - David C. McClelland

Population: 1

Behaviorist: Many people need achievement more than affiliation

Relational: Manager needs to recognize individual's motivations

Social: Other people need affiliation more than achievement

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Managerial Grid - Blake and Mouton

Population: Groups

Social: People form groups within organizations

Ecological: People respond to their perception of the environment

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Team formation - Bruce Tuckman

Population: Groups

Developmental: Teams grow and mature

Relational: People work in teams

Social: Teams evolve through forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning

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Organizational learning - Chris Argyris

Population: All

Analytic: People tend to behave defensively

Developmental: Single-loop and Model I stifle development

Relational: Model II communication

Social: Double-loop learning facilitates change

Ecological: Truthfulness is essential to growth

Statistical: Strong advocate of empirical studies

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Learning organization - Peter M. Senge

Population: Organizations

Developmental: Personal mastery

Relational: Dialogue and Mental models

Social: Team learning systems thinking

Ecological: Shared vision

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In the same way that Freud is known as the founder of psychology, Frederick Winslow Taylor is the founder of organizational management. Hundreds of people over thousands of years had studied worker efficiency. Taylor refined the practice and gave it rules. (1.22) In a rather analytic manner, Taylor and those that followed him strived to reduce the pain and injuries workers suffered by carefully documenting their ailments and studying the patient. Causes were identified and advice was offered that would produce a more desirable effect. For example, Taylor once changed the design of the shovel used by workers to compensate for the difficulty of the work. Like psychology, organizational theory began with an analytic background and soon became known for deterministic solutions. Within a few decades Taylor's work was interpreted as efforts by management to extract more labor from the employees.

Assigning motives to Taylor is difficult. Taylor's focus on organizations, however, meant that his scope quickly broadened to include the relationships between management and the work force. Note in the prior list that every organizational theory touches on relationships. While some theories are more focused on the individual and others are focused on community all include a relational component. Thus, I am content to leave the question about whether Taylor was pro-labor or pro-management unresolved and instead prefer to think of Taylor as one of the first to touch that delicate subject in a manner that evoked strong reactions.

The phrase "Human Relations" was popularized by Elton Mayo. Mayo studied individuals only to discover a network of informal work groups in every organization. Workers form cliques in response to the oppressive environment of industrial specialization. And those cliques set the rules on productivity. (1.23)

Rensis Likert and Daniel Katz continued along the path set by Mayo and documented the impact that supervisory relationships have on worker productivity. (1.24) One of their most profound observations was that supervisors that focused on caring for their team obtained greater productivity than did supervisors that focused on productivity itself.

Victor Vroom formalized those observations and developed the "Expectancy Theory". (1.25) Vroom noted that workers are motivated to behave in the manner that the relationship with their supervisor defines. If workers are included in the planning and goal setting, then those workers will tend to fulfill those expectations. If workers are treated as if their opinion does not matter, then they will respond by working as if their opinion does not matter. Later this approach to inclusiveness re-appeared in the quality circle movement.

At about this time Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" appeared. (1.26) Combining Maslow with the prior theories leads to the conclusion that most workers are largely de-motivated by their work environments. People need their pay check to meet their survival and safety needs. If the work environment does not provide for their social needs then people will form cliques to meet that need. But self-esteem is one level beyond their reach. Maslow noted that workers are happier when they are part of a shared vision, when they are included in the decision making process and when their contribution has appreciated value. (1.27)

Frederick Herzberg searched for ways to motivate workers and stumbled upon de-motivators. Herzberg labeled de-motivators "Hygiene Factors". (1.28) When fundamentals are missing, such as a consistent pay check, job security and minimal social needs, workers are de-motivated. Providing those basics does not motivate. People expect their survival, safety and social needs to be met as a prerequisite. People can be motivated to unleash their creativity and add intellectual value only when their hygiene prerequisites are secure.

Abraham Zaleznik coined the term "frozen groups" to describe cliques of de-motivated workers. (1.29) His research showed the influence that social needs have on the work force. When the work environment does not provide for social needs then workers form cliques and set the rules for productivity. Those cliques set themselves in opposition to what is viewed as a hostile management environment represented by the team supervisor. Motivators, such as incentive programs, are insufficient to lead the clique to change behavior. But a few people seem aloof from those social pressures. Zaleznik suggests that those individualists are frustrated through failure to be adopted by a clique and seek revenge on the clique by becoming "rate busters".

Have you worked in an environment where you seem to be running a four-minute mile while everyone around you is walking at a four-hour per mile pace? If so, then you were a rate buster bypassing a frozen group. Look around. Do you have one or two highly motivated workers that you can always count on to do the "impossible"? Is the rest of your team complacent and content to do the minimum and go home? Then your team has formed a frozen group. Your work environment is de-motivating your people. The goal, then, is to find ways to remove the de-motivators, enlist the cliques into a common cause, unify the team and ask the team how to best move forward.

William F. Whyte studied the most obvious route towards those goals and assessed the effectiveness of money as a motivator. (1.30) In the environments he assessed, Whyte found that about ten-percent of the workers could be enticed to produce more when offered monetary incentives. But about ninety-percent of the workers looked upon incentive programs as cheap bribes -- an insult to their integrity and sense of community.

This is why we run into problems when one person gets a pay raise. If that person is a rate buster then they are personally immune from the social pressure of the frozen group. The organization, however, is dependent upon that frozen group to continue to do as they do. The clique knows they can retaliate through work slowdowns. Assuming the hygiene factors of survival and safety have already been met, money is either a social instrument or a tool used to measure self-esteem. For the clique, payment must be made in such a way as to recognize the power of the clique. For the rate buster, getting more is a way of getting revenge on the clique. Note that we are dealing with relational, social and ecological psychology. Money is not translated into deterministic cause and effect linearity. The cause and effect response to money is non-linear and non-deterministic because of group dynamics.

Our goal, then, is to leverage group dynamics to achieve our vision.

John Scanlon did just that. He assessed the behavior of group dynamics and found an effective solution. (1.31) A Scanlon Plan links corporate goals to group incentives. If a rate buster does something extraordinary, the clique gets a bonus. If the clique drops productivity, the clique loses income. Scanlon Plans work. (1.32)

Basically, Scanlon looked at the chain of cause and effect and found it insufficient. He realized that workers can be creative and found that some of the best product design changes came from factory workers rather than from engineers. He analyzed the situation and found that the relationship between management and workers hindered the flow of information. He looked at the rate buster phenomenon and realized that change could only occur if he could tap into the social networks that already existed outside the management chain. Scanlon spanned the psychological spectrum from behaviorist to ecologist with this approach.

A Scanlon Plan changes the ecology of the work place while simultaneously changing the economic equations and the power structure. It has been highly successful where it has been implemented. It succeeds at aligning the work efforts under a shared vision. But industry tends to look at this as an all or nothing proposition and has generally chosen to ignore the beauty of this plan. Management, it seems, has an inherent resistance to changes that are imposed from outside their control. Resistance to change is a key theme that we will come back to later. For now we need to quickly look at the alternative scheme that many companies adopted as an attempt to get the benefits from group dynamics without relinquishing power to the employees.

When asked to tell management how to do better Peter F. Drucker challenged those leaders to find their own plans. One of his most famous books The Effective Executive took Taylor's behavioristic approach from the realm of the manual laborer to that of the "Knowledge Worker" -- a phrase coined by Drucker. (1.33) At the other end of the spectrum, Drucker questioned the ecology of the work place by challenging organizations to cap executive compensation so that no executive would earn more than twenty-times the wage of the lowest paid worker. But his most sweeping innovation is "Management By Objectives" (MBO).

The goal for an MBO program is to cascade down from top management to the bottom ranks of the work force a series of vision statements with defined measurements. An executive MBO might call for a vice president to increase throughput by twenty-percent. That could translate into an MBO for the sales team to increase sales by fifteen-percent and an MBO for the engineering team to trim materials costs by ten-percent. The MBOs must be interlocked and supportive of each other. But then it is up to the individual to unleash their creativity in finding ways to accomplish those objectives. Thus, MBOs offer more flexibility than a Scanlon plan seems to offer.

Properly implemented MBOs are as powerful as a Scanlon plan or as Goldratt's focus on throughput. Badly implemented MBOs are a de-motivating bureaucracy. It very much depends upon the attitudes and relationships within your organization. Remember, relationships are the one theme that each of these organizational theories has in common. MBOs offer organizational alignment to a vision. MBOs can be governed, planned, measured and repeated. But the effectiveness of an MBO program depends upon the attitudes and relationships expressed by management.

Douglas McGregor focused on the attitudes and relationship between managers and workers. (1.34) His intent was to contrast existing inferior practices with process improvements. To do this he formulated two theories about organizational management known as Theory X and Theory Y.

Theory X is based on the following assumptions.

\--

The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can.

Because of this human characteristic of dislike of work, most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives.

The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, wants security above all.

\--

McGregor proposed this theory to show the inadequacy of current management practices. His intention was for managers to stop acting on these assumptions and begin to act upon better assumptions. His assumptions for Theory Y are:

\--

The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.

External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort toward organizational objectives. Man will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed.

Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement. The most significant of such rewards, e.g., the satisfaction of ego and self-actualization needs, can be direct products of effort directed toward organizational objectives.

The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility.

The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.

Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average human being are only partially utilized.

\--

I believe that Chris Argyris' "Theories of Action" convey the same concept that McGregor was preaching. (1.35) Theories of action are our fundamental beliefs. Theories of action shape our behavior. McGregor and Argyris ask us to change our beliefs and thereby change our behaviors. This is a deterministic concept carried into a systems setting. If you act like you expect your employees to think for themselves, then they will be encouraged to try. If, however, they suspect you are merely luring them into a trap, they will resist. (1.36) Rogers used the phrase "congruence" to describe the alignment of beliefs and actions into a consistent pattern. (1.37) Argyris uses the phrase "Theories in Use" to differentiate between our plans (Theories of Action) and our implementation (Theories in Use). (1.38)

The point is that our beliefs reflect in our personalities and actions in numerous ways that others detect. We may say that we are pleased, but our body language tells our friend that we are not. We may smile when we open the present, but failing to wear that article tells others that it was not what we wanted after all.

We have traversed a lot of material in only a few pages, so allow me to recap. Taylor formalized organizational management and focused on cause and effect to improve the work life for those he studied. Mayo stretched the concepts of organizational management to include "human relationships" and groups. Likert, Katz, Vroom and McGregor stressed the importance of the relationship between the supervisor and the worker. Maslow arranged motivational drivers into a hierarchy and Herzberg found de-motivators. Zaleznik distinguished between formally defined groups and the informal groups that actually wield power. Whyte clarified the complex psychological nature of money. And Scanlon and Drucker called for organizational changes expecting that those changes would change the groups, relationships and individuals.

The next name in the list of organizational theories is William G. Ouchi. Ouchi was the first to aim directly at the ecology of the work environment. He extended McGregor's work and created Theory Z to explain the all encompassing care that a Japanese company expresses for their workers and the families of the workers. (1.39) This is an ecological theory. It assumes that if you change the environment, then you will change the results.

I have been privileged to work inside the USA facilities of two Japanese companies. My experiences with each were brief and thus limited. But I have talked with others who work inside similar environments and their experiences seem to correlate.

In brief, I observed people of Japanese culture working within the USA offices of Japanese companies. Those people displayed extreme loyalty, worked excessive hours, accepted humble positions and never raised their voice. Putting people with a Japanese culture inside a company with a Japanese ecology works very well.

I also observed people with a competitive USA culture working in those same locations. Many of the people I observed worked the minimum of hours, strove for advancements and bickered amongst themselves.

My relationship with the Japanese people was always polite, always equitable. My relationship with the American people in those Japanese companies was consistently abrasive. The ecology of lifetime employment shields those employees from personal accountability. While the Japanese workers did their work and volunteered to help everyone else, the Americans tended to shift much of their work onto contractors. As deadlines loomed, the treatment of the contractors would degenerate. The American employees could not afford to miss a deadline, but the American employees were not willing to contribute by doing the work. Soon their anxiety about the deadline would become strident.

Now think about what we have learned from Likert, Katz, Vroom and others, Will productivity increase or decrease when the relationship between a supervisor and a worker is strained? Consider the following trivial illustration. I was once contracted to work four hours per week to assist with a small project. Towards the end of our first meeting I said, "We need to meet again tomorrow to ensure we have agreement on the schedule. I have another meeting first thing in the morning but I can be here by 10:30."

"Then we will meet at 10:00."

"I need to juggle several projects at the same time. I can be here by 10:30, but I cannot be here at 10:00."

"We will meet at 10:00."

"Would the afternoon work better for you instead?"

"Look, you have no personal life any longer. I heard you say that you cannot be here until 10:30 and that is why I said we are meeting at 10:00. We will meet at 10:00."

We met at 10:00. Conversations throughout the rest of that project were very similar. We observed a consistent pattern of trivial displays of power. I ask you, how motivational was that behavior? Are displays of power worth the damage they do to the moral of the team? Weeks afterwards people still remembered this exchange and the numerous similar exchanges that followed.

Stanley Schachter looked at similar behavioral patterns and described the "Affiliation Motive". (1.40) What Schachter found is that people under stress seek others who are also feeling stress. Soon they form a social group. And together that group strives to explain their stress. Schachter described this as "confusion to congregating to consensus." My team looked at the discussion regarding the 10:30 meeting time and all realized stress. Every one of us had families, outside activities and multiple projects to juggle.

As Gellerman notes: "...having power over others is too often a seductive experience for those who wield it: It takes a remarkably self-controlled person to relinquish any of it deliberately." (1.41) Perhaps the wisdom of human relationship management has seeped into the labor laws in the USA. Perhaps, today, abuses of power between employees are rarer than before. But the abuse of power is a human characteristic. And if it is denied in one place, it will simply reappear elsewhere. Today one of the most attractive opportunities for those who love power is a position where they manage contractors.

Now, consider the material already presented in this chapter. Does the use of power encourage or discourage the formation of trusting relationships? Does a display of power encourage or discourage the social group to align with the business goals? And what does the abuse of power do to the ecology of the environment? If, as Ouchi suggests, it is the ecology of a Japanese company that gives it strength, then what strength does a company have when that ecology is broken?

I am not suggesting this is a problem with Japanese companies working in the USA. I have sat through meetings in North America and Europe that were filled with vulgarities and insults. On more than one occasion people have threatened me with physical violence for disagreeing with them during a meeting. The problem is not linked to a specific culture but to the inequitable distribution of power that allows one person to take advantage of another. Changing the ecology of a company will change the way you expect to be treated, but that change does not necessarily translate into a change in the way you treat others. The reverse, however, holds surprising possibilities.

For example, consider the possible reactions that people have to a de-motivating environment. Many people become overwhelmed by the situation. Turnover is a major problem in the knowledge industry. Others withdraw and avoid the situation. Occasionally, however, taunts and torments result in an unexpected surge in productivity. Some people are pre-wired to over achieve when stressed. Those people react in a way that almost contradicts the way they are treated. They reverse the roles and take control away from their managers by out-running their managers -- by always staying one step ahead.

David McClelland describes this type of motivation as the "Achievement Motive". (1.42) In response to stress people tend to band together as described by the "affiliation motive". And then some people take the stress as a challenge and strive to outperform anything that is thrown at them. Per Gellerman, the ecology of most cultures tends to indoctrinate people with a balance of affiliation and achievement. Certain people tend to feel one influence more strongly than the other but most of us can alternate between the two. People might affiliate for comfort and then use their achievement motivation to become rate busters. They lash out at the bullies by doing more than the bullies ask for. They seek revenge through over achievement.

In an oppressive situation some people over achieve. In other situations entire teams fall into a depressed cycle and only grudgingly met the most minimal of requirements. Those extremes of behavior mean that the results from coercive management are unpredictable. Companies cannot thrive when results are unpredictable.

And yet, the practice continues. It continues because some companies are so profitable that they can suffer through multiple project failures, deal with despondent workers and still show a profit. Inequity continues because people have always "pulled rank" on those below them. And incompetent management practices continue because we have not yet challenged them as such. We have not yet squarely looked at the inequitable and inappropriate use of power and denounced it.

Robert W. Fuller describes the abuse of power in his book Somebodies and Nobodies. (1.43) His point is that society has eliminated many of the most flagrant examples of abuse and now is the time to give a name to the one that remains. Fuller calls this type of abuse "Rankism". The rank of a manager is higher than the rank of an employee. The rank of an employee is higher than the rank of a contractor. Such has always been the imbalance of power between management and workers. Since it has always been this way, why expect it to change now?

Gellerman responded to critics of human relationship management very simply. (1.44) First, discontent will reduce motivation which reduces productivity which reduces throughput and that impacts profitability. Second, our world culture is chaotic and requires continual adjustment to respond to changing circumstances. An enlisted, enthusiastic team will respond to change more readily than will an alienated team. And third, the reason people are given power is to get results. Any abuse of power makes it more difficult to get results and thus works against the justification for delegating the power in the first place.

The response to an imbalance of power will be the formation of social groups as people seek protection. The choice is whether the group will be a formally recognized group striving to achieve corporate objectives, or an informal group competing with management. In the USA these power imbalances led to the unionization of the automotive industry. With Japanese people in a Japanese company, power is held lightly. Would you rather be part of an environment where power separates the workers from the company or would you prefer an ecology where management and workers strive for common goals? Work groups will form regardless of any action taken by management to block their formation. The real question is whether those groups will be aligned with management or opposed.

Blake and Mouton looked at typical groups in typical organizations and found a pattern. The "Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid", shown below, suggests there are two telling factors that assess a group and that those factors can be plotted on a grid. (1.45) The one axis should identify the social emphasis of the group. For example, is the primary focus of the group on social activities or does this group only exists in the context of a work environment? The other axis ranks the task orientation of the group. Is the group primarily focused on completing work or is work just a burden? Other names for these two dimensions are: relationships and focus.

The behaviors of the individuals, their relationships with their managers and peers, the justification for forming the group, the ecology of the work place and community all tend to shape the group. Abusive supervisors will motivate stronger social cohesion and reduced task orientation. Abusive ecologies will de-motivate both the social and task orientations. Tightly run groups can achieve high task orientation with virtually no social cohesion, but at a price that may not allow the group to sustain the effort. Groups that have high social cohesion and high task orientation offer both productivity and longevity. But this is rare.

Bruce Tuckman studied the patterns that groups go through and described the flow from forming, to storming, to norming, to performing and on to adjourning. (1.46) The goal is to help each group reach the stage of "performing". Performing is the stage that best exhibits the characteristics described by the high social, high task quadrant in this managerial grid.

Groups begin by "forming". During this phase people explore their relationships and treat each other formally. When you hear people address each other by their formal names then your group is "forming". "Mr. Jones, will you please explain to Ms. Chen why you would prefer to use that programming technique." From forming your group can adjourn (disband), stagnate in forming, or you can move forward through storming.

Storming is all about controversy. During the storming stage the team members try to define their boundaries. If you suppress the controversy then your team will return to forming and go no further. It is only by working out the details of the relationships between the team members that your team will finally be able to exit this stage. All too often these controversies broil underneath and remain unresolved. Chris Argyris describes a five year improvement effort he facilitated at a consulting company. (1.47) One of the key themes in the interventions he describes is the definition of boundaries. The more complex the relationships the more time it takes to fully resolve all of the difficulties. In the mean time, however, your group may tentatively plant one foot in norming while leaving the other foot in storming. Like an individual, groups do not always resolve all of their issues.

Once most of the boundaries are defined the group will begin to behave in a normal manner. This stage is called "norming", because that helps the mnemonic rhyme (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning). This is the best it gets for most groups. People tend to only trip over the unresolved baggage occasionally and generally everyone knows what each is capable of doing. The real choice here is whether this group came into existence to facilitate the organizational goals or to protect the members from the organization. Is the person with the title running the group or is there an informal group leader who actually sets the rules? And then the next question is how to go from norming to performing?

Performing is a rare and exhilarating experience. No one can lead a group to there. Maybe, however, you might be fortunate enough to be the person in charge when the group reaches that stage. If so, then congratulate the group because few groups manage to achieve this ideal. Getting there requires trust, respect for others and lots of open, honest communication.

Chris Argyris has built a career as a facilitator focusing on open, honest communication. (1.48) I mentioned him earlier when I described the concept of theories in action. Basically, we form patterns of behavior and then act on those patterns. If you believe that one of your workers is performing better than other workers you tend to treat that worker more favorably. If you act with congruence then you must be prepared to defend your actions. Instead, many managers act with favoritism towards some, abuse others, and act as if there is no inequity. If you do not act congruently, then your actions will betray your intentions. If you do not say what your intentions are, then people will read your behaviors and make their own assumptions.

Mayo encountered this phenomenon when he assessed worker performance at the Hawthorne factory. (1.49) In the Hawthorne experiments researchers attempted to find the optimal lighting level for a group of factory workers. They discovered that using brighter light bulbs increased productivity. They then put in dimmer bulbs expecting to corroborate their theory that increased lighting levels will increase productivity and decreased lighting levels will decrease productivity. Instead, productivity increased again. After a few cycles the researchers realized that it was the act of communicating with the workers that caused the productivity changes. Communication bridged the gap from management to worker and led the workers to believe that management now valued their input.

Argyris formalized his observations on communication into a theory. His theory is that most communication takes on a pattern known as Model I. Model I communication "...has four governing values:"

\--

Achieve your intended purpose.

Maximize winning and minimize losing.

Suppress negative feelings.

Behave according to what you consider rational. (1.50)

\--

All of this seems perfectly reasonable. As a manager you want to increase throughput. If one worker is more productive then you want to focus more effort there so as to "maximize winning". And if one of your less productive workers asks why he or she is being ignored then you need to suppress that perception so as not to hurt that person's feelings, risk losing their productivity contribution or expose yourself to a lawsuit. Argyris would say this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you expect one worker to perform better you communicate more clearly with that worker. Because you expect other workers to perform below your expectations you mask your feelings and then make it clear that you do not want to talk about your reasoning. But people know how to read people. (1.51) Those workers that you expect less from know that you treat them like you expect less. Without your reassurance, your communication and your support they are working at a disadvantage. Hence we return to Vroom's "Expectancy Theory". Our actions, both overt and covert are known by those around us. And they respond to fulfill our expectations.

Argyris says that the way to break this cycle is through Model II communication. The governing values for Model II communication are:

\--

Valid information.

Free and informed choice.

Internal commitment.

\--

If you act like you expect less from someone then you will get less. If you want to change this then you need to communicate. People prioritize their life. Family commitments or other outside activities might truly be one person's priority. But, if management theories are correct, people want to be of value. People want to contribute to their company. People will respond to valid communication in unexpected ways.

If you consistently tell a worker that you are content with their work efforts while internalizing despondency over their failure to live up to your expectations then he or she will see the inconsistency in you and distrust what you say. If you clearly communicate that you would like to see better results then you open the opportunity for learning. Argyris calls such learning "Double Loop Learning" and illustrates it as follows. (1.52)

A manager needs documentation on a problem. The key team players are already working on a critical business need so this manager turns to the one person usually kept on secondary projects. Following Model I, this manager asks for this documentation to be finished on Wednesday, hopes to get it on Thursday and truly needs it on Friday. This manager expects inadequate results from this worker, so the plan is to get their version of the report on Thursday and then spend that night fixing it. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you see the strategy elements in this action plan? Ask for the report earlier than needed. Expect to do the hard work yourself. Do you see the values built into this action plan? Expect poor quality. Expect late delivery. Whether you say it or not your actions communicate those values and that strategy to the other person.

The way to change this broken pattern is to explain your reasoning to the other person. Explain that you need this report on Friday but you are asking for it earlier to build in a safety margin. Explain that you want this report on Wednesday because you need a safety margin in case their work does not match your requirements.

The problem is that Model I communication has already been established. Why should people believe or trust this manager when he or she switches from a disingenuous style to an honest style? If someone suddenly switches from a style of avoidance to honesty people will quite possibly react as if they have been assaulted. Making a change from Model I to Model II will take effort from both sides of each conversation.

Argyris, in Knowledge for Action, describes a five year effort to change the behavior of the directors in a company. Without that effort the company would have remained locked into the types of strategies I described earlier with premature deadlines and expectations of substandard work. After five years of effort most of the directors were finally able to communicate honestly with each other. The results were significant. The key to that change was lots of open, honest, congruent communication. Communication is the key.

Actually communication is the key to nearly all of these theories. Freud communicated and helped people. Erikson described the natural tendency of people to want to grow and mature. Communication can nurture this growth or stifle it.

Rogers used relational communication to help people work towards self-esteem and self-actualization. Bandura and Bronfenbrenner described the impact culture has on people. People are social creatures. We need social groups to support us and we will form those groups with or without management's consent. But the social relationship that has the most impact is the relationship between the person and their supervisor. Thus, we need to make a decision. Will those relationships be built upon hard and sometimes painful truth or will deception be used in the name of kindness?

Social relationships built upon deception create what are called "double-binds". If this worker fulfills your expectations by delivering low quality work then you have confirmed your prejudice. But if this worker asks the questions that need to be asked in order to know what is expected, then this worker confirms your doubts about his or her abilities to work independently. The worker is guilty: guilty of inadequacy by doing without asking and guilty of inadequacy if they do ask.

We need double-loop learning to break this double-bind. Communicate honestly. Expect skepticism and expect hostility. People are not used to honest communication. With time, however, you will be able to define relationships that work. And those relationships will help you, your co-workers and your organization develop, learn and grow.

Are you skeptical? Taylor noted nearly one-hundred years ago that if you give a worker a better tool, they will use it and produce better results. Taylor designed improved shovels for manual laborers. Argyris is pointing the direction towards improved communication, and communication is the tool used by knowledge workers.

Mayo described work groups and left us with the choice to either enlist the work group into the organizational cause or isolate the work group and allow it to focus on self-preservation. Likert found that it was the relationship between the supervisor and the worker that defined the behavior of the work group. Vroom created the Expectancy Theory to describe our tendency to fulfill the role that has been created for us by the prejudices of those around us. Congruent communication will accurately convey our expectations. Double-loop learning will help us reset those expectations to align with reality.

Maslow identified a hierarchy of needs. Herzberg found that failing to fulfill the basic needs within an organization would de-motivate people from striving to improve. Zaleznik, Whyte, Scanlon, McClelland, Drucker and many others then sought ways to bring people into alignment with the goals of the organization. All found that communication was essential. McGregor emphasized the effect attitude has on the relationships between a manager and workers. Ouchi went further by noting that the corporate culture also influences workers. Open, honest, congruent communication helps the individual express their needs, facilitates alignment and brings the culture into the open for examination.

Schachter formulated the concept of "confusion to congregating to consensus" to describe the behavior of people dealing with stress. Consensus will form. The work group will attribute explanations to each management announcement, to the lack of management announcements and to the behavior of those around them. Double-loop learning allows people to correct their misconceptions. Blocked communication never allows that process to begin. Double-bind communication only increases the confusion and drives the work group further away from the organizational goals. Honest communication opens the pathways to dissolve invalid concepts and build better strategies.

Tuckman studied the prior research and described the growth pattern for a group. Moving from forming to storming requires communication so that people get to know each other. Moving beyond storming requires honest communication to define boundaries. If communication is blocked then the group will always have one foot in storming while trying to run forward through norming. And performing only happens when people know and trust each other. Knowing comes through communication. And the type of communication that allows people to grow is open, honest, congruent communication. Argyris calls that Model II communication. Model II communication will allow your organization to learn.

There is only one name left on the list of organizational management theorists I inserted a few pages earlier. Peter M. Senge improved upon organizational learning and described a technique for creating a "Learning Organization". (1.53) His premise is that the current rate of change requires organizations to continually adapt and learn. Senge's model builds upon five disciplines.

\--

Systems Thinking

Personal Mastery

Mental Models

Shared Vision

Team Learning

\--

The concept of "personal mastery" is ancient. Consider the continuing popularity of Miyamoto Musashi's A Book of Five Rings. (1.54) Musashi consolidated the best of the Samurai tradition into a book on self-actualization. Consider, for example, the "four oaths": "Never be late with respect to the Way of the warrior. Be useful to the Lord. Be respectful to your parents. Get beyond love and grief: exist for the good of man (humanity)". (1.55) Or consider the allegory that Paul the Apostle wrote in 1 Corinthians. "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one". (1.56) Personal-mastery is an ancient concept that must be periodically renewed.

Today the desire for personal mastery seems lacking in the work place. The assembly line took away the craftsmanship that people expressed in their work. The assembly line mentality continues today in the realm of the knowledge workers. Senge follows in the tradition of the samurai by challenging the individual to realize their inner potential.

Senge's concept of "mental models" is an update to Argyris's "theory in action". Both are linked to scientific explanations for conceptual thinking. (1.57) Senge, Argyris and others point to conceptual thinking, but the name each uses reflects the scientific phrase in vogue as of the time they wrote. Argyris, like Freud, Skinner, Lewin and others notes that our thinking patterns anticipate our actions. To change our actions, we must change our concepts. And that, as Argyris notes, requires double-loop learning.

Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline, provides a good introduction to "thinking". From there I recommend you next turn to Weinberg's An Introduction to General Systems Thinking and to Gleick's Chaos. Systems thinking is essential to an understanding of the non-linearity of cause-and-effect in an organization.

Senge notes that "shared vision" is vital when you seek to unify a team. Senge quotes a Japanese saying: "When there is no break, not even the thickness of a hair comes between a man's (person's) vision and his (or her) action." (1.58) This vision must be shared in order to motivate the organization. "Increase sales by 10%" is not an organizationally inspiring vision. "Achieve six-sigma quality on all products within five years" is an example of a vision that will impact the entire organization and challenge every individual.

Today many corporate leaders give the speech and then walk away from the vision. Today inspired dedicated leaders give the speech and burn out trying to change a stagnant corporation. As Argyris notes, teams are highly proficient at "skilled incompetence" -- the ability to resist learning. (1.59) "The organizational defensive pattern is indeed composed of individual, interpersonal, group, intergroup, and organizational variables." (1.60) A vision that is going to inspire the individual, group and organization needs to be powerful.

The fifth discipline in Senge's model is "team learning". "When teams are truly learning, not only are they producing extraordinary results, but the individual members are growing more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise." (1.61) Mastery of this discipline requires changing the underlying concepts and behaviors. The system must be re-oriented towards this goal. And the ecology of the organization must learn to value the creativity that each individual and group brings to the whole.

Again, this is nothing new, but this is a reminder of what was old and has been forgotten. Consider the following advice on organizational management given by Paul the Apostle.

"For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us." (1.62)

Translated into our culture, Paul is saying that managers must not inflate their own worth. The organization cannot function without the individual. The individual cannot survive without the group. Those groups are diverse just like people are diverse. We need that diversity and must respect the individual and the group. Groups will form. Those groups can work to achieve an aligned vision or to preserve and protect themselves.

Choose which you prefer. Learn from the best of the new, from the best of the old or from a combination of both. But the point that Senge makes is that you must either learn or you and your organization will be obsolete. The psychological theories identify growth patterns for individuals. The organizational theories describe management styles that can be used to improve an organization. And Senge brings these together by describing personal mastery, systems theory and team learning in one book. Beyond that Senge also provides the justification for action by reminding us that the rate of change is still accelerating. We must improve.

Yet, in spite of the popularity of Senge's book, it has not had the impact you would expect. (1.63) The problem is that changing from your current structure to this new and better structure is a risk. The organization takes a major risk in trying to be different. The individual takes a life-threatening risk in unlearning old ways and assimilating new concepts. Consider the following evaporating cloud.

Organizational Management

Change imposed onto an organization will be resisted. The resistance is sometimes called an immune response, or simply "resistance to change". (1.64) And the problem is that the resistance will be camouflaged and the existence of the resistance will be un-discussable. To evaporate this cloud we need to help the organization grow. And to grow an organization you need to free the people to grow and to learn. I know of only three ways to coordinate an organizational change of that magnitude.

\--

Hire only perfect people.

Allow evolutionary trends to reshape your organization naturally.

Lead the change.

\--

Before you laugh off the first alternative, remember that this technique has been tried over and over again throughout history. Consider the vast number of colonies started by people who expressed their contempt for society by leaving. The European colonists that came to the Americas were frequently driven by religions ideals. Throughout the history of the USA settlers have moved to new locations to start ideal communities that would remain uncontaminated by the evils of society. (1.65) Or consider the hippie communes of the 1960's. All were idealistic endeavors to rid society of evil by starting over again. All, however, soon found that greater and lesser evils are actually expressions of human nature. They go with the territory. Start over again with only handpicked idealists and within a few years your elitist enclave will resemble those you left behind. You cannot hire perfect people. And yet over and over again I hear "if only we had hired the right person." You did. But you, that person and your organization failed to realize what could have been.

Alternative number two follows the bottom path through our evaporating cloud. If we just keep doing what we are doing then things will probably get better. I agree. But will your competition wait for you to make that transition before they take your best people and most of your customers? The reason Senge's book sells so well is that managers realize we need to do something different and we need to do it quickly.

And thus we come to alternative number three \-- leadership. Before we delve into the dynamics of leadership allow me to recap once more. The theories of psychology can be arranged along a continuum. The measure of that continuum is the size of the population that is studied. The behavioristic approach essentially treats the situation with minimal interaction with the person. The analytic approach focuses on one person. The relational approach can work with one person or with a small group. Social cognitive theory explores the interaction of people with groups and groups with groups. Groups that are too large to be studied in detail are studied in generalities either through ecological studies or through statistical means.

People mature with time and become better capable of dealing with larger social issues. The branch of psychology that studies this maturing process is called developmentalism. There are stages of maturity represented by an increasing awareness of the breadth of society. Infants absorb care from a small circle of care givers. Youth love to associate with their peers and can be easily swayed by those around them. Adults are better capable of bonding with multiple overlapping or even conflicting social networks. Einstein and others suggest that people should continue to mature until their circle of compassion encompasses all of nature. Note that when we plot the branches of psychology on a continuum we are expressing a developmental concept. Thus, there is no need to specifically list developmentalism on this psychological continuum as the axis itself represents the concept of developmentalism.

Have you noticed that cabinet makers, auto repair shops and restaurant kitchens pull together a variety of people and large numbers of tools? Some of those shops have the tools scattered about. Other shops keep their tools very neatly arranged. The list shown below is an attempt to merge the science of psychology with the practice of organizational management – using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as an organizing framework.

\--

Self-Actualization

People as objects: McClelland Achievement

People as individuals: Piaget Development

People as groups: Rogers Congruence

People as systems: Argyris Double-loop Learning

People as organizations: Scanlon Plan

People as ecologies: Senge Learning Organization

People as universal: Einstein Circles of Compassion

\--

Self-Esteem

People as objects: McGregor Theory X

People as individuals: McGregor Theory Y

People as groups: Argyris Model II

People as systems: Schachter Affiliation

People as organizations: Drucker MBO

People as ecologies: Ouchi Theory Z

\--

Social

People as individuals: Tuckman Group Stages

People as groups: Mayo Work Groups

People as systems: Bandura Social Cognitive

People as organizations: Goldratt Throughput Accounting

People as ecologies: Bronfenbrenner Ecological

\--

Safety

People as objects: Taylor Efficiency

People as individuals: Freud Analytic

People as groups: Zaleznik Frozen Groups

People as universal: Truax and Carkhuff

\--

Physical

People as objects: Skinner Behaviorism

\--

This list is an arrangement of tools. The purpose for this list is to help you quickly identify the right tool for the job. It might not be an optimal arrangement, but I believe that any arrangement is better than none at all.

The choice of tools varies with the span-of-control you are trying to impact. Note that this does not need to correlate with the scope of your responsibility. Instead, this ranks the breadth of the impact that your choice will have. I favor arrangements in which the most lowly employee has the freedom to express thoughts that may very well impact the ecology of the entire organization. Anything less stifles creativity and oppresses people.

The choice of tools varies with the impact you strive for in your relationships. I hope you understand that I think that all relationships that threaten survival, safety or social needs are counter-productive. Respect for the person requires that we deal with self-esteem in our relationships. The Japanese concept of "saving face" is an excellent expression of the concern I must have for those I converse with. Treating another person in a way that threatens their self-esteem does harm to both of us. (1.66)

Recap

The history of organizational management began with a focus on survival and safety needs. Taylor organized the best thinking of the time into a discipline. Mayo discovered the social needs of workers and found that those needs would either be met by the company or in spite of the company. Likert, Katz and Vroom found that their supervisory relationships impact a workers self-esteem and productivity. Maslow organized the immediacy of needs into a hierarchy.

Herzberg, Zaleznik and Whyte explored the impact survival, safety and social needs had on productivity and uncovered the complexity of the social responses within an organization. Scanlon, Drucker, McGregor, Ouchi, Schachter and McClelland outlined proposals for enhancing self-esteem and awakening self-actualization in order to improve the ecology, organization, group and thus impact the life of the individual workers.

Tuckman, Argyris and Senge describe organizational processes. Argyris recommends changing the social relationship through communication and thereby changing the organization. Senge's approach is even more holistic. Efforts to improve personal mastery are focused on the individual. Mental models will change relationships and impact the group. Team learning must begin with the group and span across the organization. Systems thinking is an organizational concept that describes the indirect relationships between causes and effects. A shared vision is an ecological approach to reshape the culture.

McGregor's Theory Y provides a nurturing relationship that can facilitate growth. We act upon this knowledge when we communicate with respect to those that work for us and insist upon the same from those for whom we do work.

Work groups are transformed when their relationships are based on personal congruence conveyed through the Model II style of communication. Congruence requires that we be open and honest about whom we are. In this chapter I revealed information about my work relationships, my love for running, my personal religious beliefs, my faith in science and my efforts to continue to learn and grow. At the same time, I have an "internal commitment" to the concepts of Model II communication. I have worked on this book and this chapter to provide "valid information", while leaving open the probability that your life experiences may lead you to different conclusions. My goals are to present information while leaving it open for you to make your own "free and informed choice".

Double-loop learning allows individuals to learn and grow, transforms groups and allows groups to communicate effectively with each other. Communication between cultures is vital in our multi-ethnic work group, our multi-cultural organizations and our multi-national corporations. Developmentally we exhibit maturity when we can honestly express who we are while valuing the diversity that others bring to the conversation. In this chapter I have tried to express my admiration for what I understand of the Japanese culture and the culture of India. I have briefly touched on other cultures in earlier chapters. We express stage five developmentalism when we can simultaneously value multiple cultures as equals.

Thoughtfully defined MBOs based upon open, honest, congruent communication will allow groups to reach the performing stage by minimizing the friction between the group and the goals for the organization.

A holistic synthesis, like that proposed by Senge, will transform individuals, groups, organizations and the culture of their ecology. You express developmental stage six when you work for what is best for the whole and not just for you, your family, your group or your culture. We cannot break out of the cycle of greed that we see today in corporations until we focus on holistic solutions that reach beyond our immediate gratification.

But the broadest change of all comes about when the individual achieves sufficient self-actualization to develop a universal concept of community. Einstein used the phrase "circles of compassion" to describe this outwardly spiraling sense of awareness. (1.67) His concern was for each of us to learn to care for all of creation before we so alter it that we extinguish our own species. I believe this is the same level of awareness towards which Gandhi and others tried to guide us. (1.68) Perhaps the best expression I have ever encountered for this approach to organizational management is stated simply as:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (1.69)

*****

**Chapter 2: Leadership**

Introduction to Leadership

Leadership is a difficult topic to define. We study past leaders and learn from them. At times we sense great leadership. It can be so tangible that we feel like we can use a gauge to measure it. But most importantly, we want to know that it will be there in the future. This final challenge is the most difficult. We want to be able to predict that if certain conditions exist today then behaviors tomorrow will suit our needs.

If things go badly wrong we want assurances that our anticipatory actions will protect us from harm, or at least not expose us to accusations of mismanagement. The traditional defensive strategy used by management is that of the "prudent person". What would a wise, but not brilliant, cautious, but not timid, person be reasonably expected to do. For example, a prudent person is expected to ensure there is an off-site backup of all vital information. If your data center is physically destroyed, then a prudent person should be able to resume essential operations in a timely manner. Of course the meaning of the words "vital", "essential" and "timely" are subjective. But everyone responsible for managing computer systems knows that you must anticipate these types of catastrophes and take action to minimize the risk. If you have a documented business continuity plan and you have diligently implemented and tested that plan, then you have a legal defense against charges of mismanagement. And if you can show that the actions you took follow the recommended best practices, then you can feel comfortable that you did what a prudent person was expected to do.

The promise implied in other industry best practices is that implementing those best practices provides protection against future crises. You follow the guidelines from the Project Management Institute because a prudent person knows that those guidelines are more likely to protect your projects from catastrophic failures than is a home-grown framework. You implement ITIL best practices because they reflect the best thinking from hundreds of experts and are thus more likely to work than is something your newly hired system administrator created. CobiT outlines the criteria for auditing a data center. Six Sigma describes how to use mathematics to measure performance. All of those standards exist and a prudent person should follow them. But what guide does a prudent person follow when trying to assess leadership and pick future leaders?

Today there is no agreed upon best practice guide for leadership. We can turn to the historic records and see the advice offered by the Vedas, Torah, Bible, Koran or other collections of wisdom, and there we find illumination but no formula. We can look at the lives of past great leaders, but the more we study their lives the more we realize that while they lived as leaders they could not explain how they did it. We can turn to psychology and organizational management and find reams of data. You could spend the rest of your life reading all that has been published on leadership and still not be able to live it.

What then do I expect to accomplish with this chapter? I intend to describe a framework that can be used to assess current and future leaders. And why do I think I can do this? Because I have a vision for how this works, I have skill in integrating diverse concepts into a unified framework and I have experience at opening those thoughts for discussion. How can we integrate such a diverse collection of information? By studying the examples of past leaders, by picking and choosing scientific explanations and scientific tools, and by carefully assessing the fit between what we discover in this chapter with all that we bring with us to this task. This is going to be a collective effort. I will describe pieces of this puzzle. You then need to fit those pieces into the mosaic of your life experiences. And until these pieces fit, I will not be successful at communicating. I need your assistance in this chapter even more than in the prior chapter.

An Inspirational Leader

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a powerful leader during a troubled time in the United States of America. Like all great leaders, his leadership changed lives. Like many of the great leaders throughout history Rev. King chose highly visible, tangible goals to measure the success of his movement. But, unlike many other great leaders Rev. King never commanded those who followed. Muhammad commanded an army. Abraham Lincoln commanded a union of states. But Rev. King, like his name sake, Martin Luther, led without portfolio. He held no office. Aside from a small staff, he managed no employees. And yet he changed organizations and held people accountable to metrics. He counted the number of registered voters. He counted the number of people hired, fired and promoted by corporations. He counted the number of children attending integrated schools. Then he led by example and by inspiration.

One of his most powerful tools was the spoken word. Over the next few pages I will quote from Rev. King's speeches and then examine the developmental levels referenced in each speech fragment. Basically, we are going to look at the "span of control" described in each block of text. Who was he talking to? Who did he desire to change?

"The separation of Negroes, with its inevitable discrimination, has thrived on elements of inferiority present in the masses of both white and Negro people." (2.1)

"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom." (2.2)

Notice that in both of these clips Rev. King talks about the group of people called Negroes and the group called whites. Rev. King is a member of the group called Negro and is not a member of the group called white. This is an us-them type of relationship. Notice that there is no antagonism, he is simply stating facts. I belong to a specific subset of humanity and other subsets of humanity can be identified and classified. In the previous chapter I described stages of development and introduced a chart. A duplicate of that chart is included below. Please reference it.

In that chart I state that stage 4 relationships are based on one group at a time. Now since the groups that Rev. King has described are not groups that he could join, then I believe that these clips of speech are directed towards people in stage 3 - the interpersonal stage - the stage that most of us enter at about the time we become teenagers. And this is a technique used by leaders everywhere - they speak to us where we are.

Nearly fifty years before this speech Lev Vygotsky guided research into social development. One of the results from that work was a study that documented a situation where people grew to the level that was required by their environment and then stopped growing. (2.3) Many people today stop their developmental growth at an early level and proceed through life with this limited view of the world. To reach those people you need to speak at the level where they live. You can only challenge them to grow if you first connect.

"Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout 'White Power!' - when nobody will shout 'Black Power!' - but everybody will talk about God's power and human power."

Groups exist and will exist forever, but they will be irrelevant. Black and white will no longer matter. System administrators and network administrators will learn to talk to each other without shouting. It is the same process. People form groups. Groups become the center of their existence and their role in life is defined by membership in that group. A great leader needs to challenge people to think beyond their own needs and begin to think about greater causes.

"It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity." (2.4)

Here Rev. King takes those groups we belong to and merges them into a larger whole. Stage 4 is where most of us spend our adult lives. We belong to one group at a time. I spend my weekdays being a project manager and often teach project management classes on the weekend. When I teach I do not tell people how to run their projects. When I run a project status meeting I minimize my digressions into teaching. My role during the week is to be a project manager. My role on the weekends is to be a teacher. And this is life in Stage 4.

Occasionally I mix the roles. I enjoy teaching my project team new skills. When I act as a mentor, I am both a member of the subset of people who are project managers and a member of the subset of people that are teachers. When you blend aspects from multiple groups and multiple roles into a more cohesive self, you are working on the skills required for Stage 5.

Have you ever had a friend stop by your office? Do you feel the confusion as the "you" that people know in the office is not the right "you" to address your friend? The role you play in the office is not the role you play after hours. Most people live their lives in compartments and are uncomfortable mixing multiple separate identities at the same time.

Have you ever heard the expression "going native"? Consultants enter a company as representatives of their consultancy group. Occasionally one consultant switches roles and becomes embedded into the customer culture. When called back to their consultancy office they change behaviors and become one with that group. When they go back to their customer location they switch again and become a native of that work environment. That is stage 4 behavior. Picking one identity and presenting one congruent self in both locations is a talent that evolves with stage 5. Most of use practice at this, but few adults master that skill.

"I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of 'outsides coming in.' I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South - one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights." (2.5)

Belonging to multiple groups is not enough to demonstrate stage 5. Stage 5 is about integrating diversity. I have been acquainted with several politicians. I am thinking now about one in particular when I say that he demonstrates a willingness to participate in any group he encounters. He is kind. He listens well. He loves to meet people. And yet, there is a core personality that only feels comfortable with a few specific groups of people. He is on the borderline. He is growing from stage 4 into stage 5. He is comfortable with his role in a specific group. He can adapt and vary his role when he meets with other groups. But he is not yet comfortable with congruency. But is that asking too much from a leader?

Consider the automobile industry, the mining industry, and so many other industries where there is a division between management and labor. Managers are not welcome at the union meetings. Union representatives are not welcome at the management retreats. There is a split between these groups that cannot be easily bridged. Why?

Living in stage 5 means that we belong to multiple conflicting groups simultaneously. We play multiple roles while remaining one congruent self. If the manager of the database administrators refused to talk with the manager of the network administrators would you thank that person for blocking a project that could double your sales? Today people live with their compartmental views of life and feel no need to grow. A leader needs to be comfortable bringing together multiple groups and while remaining a coherent self that is always the same. It is hard work. But if our leaders can set the example then we can encourage others to face that same challenge.

"What I am saying to you this morning is that communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis." (2.6)

"Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men - for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the 'Vietcong' or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?" (2.7)

Pulling people together across cultures is illustrative of stage 6. Of course the effort will fail unless all of the participants are also in stage 6. But the meaning is in the effort. Jean D'arc failed to unite the divided people of France in her lifetime. She failed, but hundreds of years later her life became the symbol of French resistance to Nazi occupation. Rev. King also had a vision of what could be.

"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!" (2.8)

Rev. King led by inspiring others. He created a vision of what could be and lived as if that vision was within reach. People will always divide into us-them relationships because that is part of our developmental cycle. But we do not need to be content with that as an end-goal. Children push each other on the playground and we ask them to play nice. Management and labor push each other to the brink and we praise them for not backing down. Politicians push each other into war and we thank them for the opportunity. Stage 3 belongs to the children. Stage 4 is for young adults. Leaders need to strive for more. Dream of what could be. What if agreement could be reached without first going on strike? What if all the managers in your company could see the big picture and pull together for a common cause. Developmentalism does not deny the existence of groups nor does it deny our innate need for a group identity. But it shows us that there can be more. And it is the responsibility of leaders to create that vision.

"I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him." (2.9)

"Through our scientific genius we have made of the world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual genius we must make of it a brotherhood." (2.10)

It can be. The vision you have for making a better organization can be. The vision for a better world can become. Multiple groups and multiple cultures can work together. It is possible for all of the people in your organization to cooperate. They need a vision. They need a leader to embody that vision. And they need an ecology that makes it possible.

"They are never honest enough to admit that the academic and cultural lags in the Negro community are themselves the result of segregation and discrimination." (2.11)

"Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." (2.12)

As Thomas Jefferson once wrote:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (2.13)

While we do not have democratically elected management, workers today vote anyway. They vote when they call for a strike. They vote when they bargain for pay and benefits. They vote when they leave. But most importantly, they vote by staying, by working diligently, and by contributing to the common cause.

Inspirational leadership gives workers a vision, a common cause and a reason to reach beyond their own narrow view. An inspirational leader can transform an organization.

Transformational Leadership

The concept of transformational leadership is currently quite popular. Bass and Avolio have documented four techniques for creating a transformational environment. (2.14)

\--

Idealized Influence - embody the vision.

Inspirational Motivation - motivate the team to participate in shaping the vision.

Intellectual Stimulation - challenge people to think and grow.

Individualized Consideration - sincerely care about each person.

\--

Bass and Avolio contrast "transformational leadership" with "transactional leadership". They describe transactional leadership as bargaining. "I pay you a lot so you need to get this done." "I decide what, you just do as your are told." Transactional leadership is the most common style used today but it has significant limitations.

I previously introduced Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A copy of the diagram I introduced earlier is shown below. Where does transactional leadership connect with personal needs? In my opinion, transactional leadership is bargaining with survival and safety while ignoring higher needs. Transformational leadership connects with the person at the levels that impact social needs, self-esteem and self-actualization. Instead of telling the worker "what", you tell the team "why". Then through tools like a Scanlon plan, or Management By Objectives (MBO), the group, the social unit, decides how to implement the vision.

Would Rev. King have been an inspirational leader if he had bargained by trading violence in return for violence? His non-violent tactics were specifically designed to remove the threat to survival and safety. Non-violence works by creating peer pressure. Given a choice, would you prefer that your workers found motivation through their connections with their peers or from fear of losing their job?

How do you really feel about that?

Are you aligned with McGregor's Theory X - workers should be distrusted? Or do you align with Theory Y - the workers want to excel, but management gets in their way? Transformational leadership works. Theory Y can work. But before we dig any deeper, allow me to summarize to this point.

First, inspirational leadership requires a vision. The vision needs to be big and it needs someone to live that vision and show the way. Would Rev. King's dream of a color-blind society have been as compelling if he had simply called for quotas? In order to inspire, Rev. King created a vision of a future that is too big even for today. By doing that he challenges us to grow to the point where that vision can be achieved. Bass and Avolio call this an "Idealized Influence".

Second, inspirational leadership requires maturity. I will continue to reference a social definition of psychological development as a way to assess maturity. Bass and Avolio reference psychological developmentalism, and then offer a simple assessment of styles. (2.15) At the bottom of their scale they describe transactional leadership as a direct exchange of payment for work with little or no buy-in from the worker. In the middle they describe management through relationships and call this the "team player" model. The "team player" style is often used by project managers and young managers who try to leverage their friendships and relationships in order to get work completed. At the third level, Bass and Avolio describe transformational leadership. I believe we can relate these leadership models with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Thus, leadership is assessed by the breadth of the impact on the organization and by the depth of the impact on personal needs. Bass and Avolio use the term Inspirational Motivation to cover aspects of participation. We will come back to "participation" later in this chapter.

The third requirement for effective inspirational leadership is training. Bass and Avolio describe this as the need for Intellectual Stimulation. Vygotsky links developmentalism and education with the term "proximal development". (2.16) The behavior Vygotsky described is that exposure to a way of thinking is necessary to prepare the brain for the development of more complex ways of thinking. But the more complex thought patterns can only be congruent after the developmental change is effected. Basically, today our workers might act as if their social work group was more important than are the needs of the organization. If those people are living in stage-three then this should be expected. In order for people to learn how to think about stage-four they need to see stage-four demonstrated. Next they need to be led through the actions that are expected from stage-four. Later, stage-four will become a natural thought process and the workers will realize the impact their group has on the organization and on other groups.

Thomas Kuhn described a similar pattern with the phrase Paradigm Shift. (2.17) Before Copernicus and Galileo the sun orbited the earth. Thereafter people realized that the earth orbited the sun. Relativistically it makes little difference. Conceptually, however, such a shift can trigger a global revolution in thought. Vygotsky takes that a step further and says "...that the only good learning is that which is in advance of development." (2.18) But, he also cautions us that people respond to needs. (2.19) Offering all of your employees advanced training in landing a space craft on Mars could be an interesting team building exercise. But it is not likely that skill will be put to use. And offering training tomorrow on multi-cultural communication might not foster much enthusiasm unless the people invited to the training are already or soon will be putting that skill to use. People are motivated to act when they see a connection to their needs.

An inspirational leader needs to explain the vision, enlist the team and then demonstrate the expected actions. Repeated demonstrations of the desired behaviors will help people realize the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. Rev. King described non-violent demonstrations. Rev. King led non-violent demonstrations. Students then saw the benefit and enlisted by the thousands. Later, many of those students absorbed what they had learned into their own concepts. And yet, at any point in time we are all still subject to all of the same thinking patterns we have ever held. Occasionally a non-violent protest became violent. Occasionally even the best leader reverts back to earlier, more primitive ways of thinking.

Vygotsky reminds us that developmentalism is a spiral that passes back across the earlier patterns even as it advances. (2.20) Refer back to the spiral diagram that I introduced in the prior chapter and copied below.

When you demonstrate the behavior required to simultaneous affiliate with multiple groups, your actions are viewed by people at earlier stages of development. People still living in stage-two are going to think you are manipulating others to get your way. People in stage-three are going to think you belong to one group, but play nice with others. People in stage-four will believe that you actually favor one group while pretending to be neutral.

You will be pulled into those expectations and may find yourself acting in ways that belong to an earlier behavioral pattern. Vygotsky calls this "fossilized behavior". (2.21) It is important to remember that the purpose for acting on your vision is to demonstrate your commitment and to train others in a more complex way of thinking. Somehow you need to keep your perspective. You need to be able to watch yourself and ensure that your actions are taking you in the right direction.

The fourth item in Bass and Avolio's list of actions for transformational leadership is "Individualized Consideration". Today that leadership style is often described as "Situational Leadership". (2.22) The person best known for his emphasis on situational leadership is Ken Blanchard. (2.23) Blanchard's model derives from earlier work he did with Paul Hersey. Their original model was one-dimensional. The list shown below describes the alternative management styles one should adopt as a worker becomes more competent in the required work. (2.24)

\--

Telling

Selling

Participating

Delegating

\--

Note, however, that while the title of this chapter is "Leadership", we are now drifting away from that theme and sliding over towards a parallel topic called "Management". They are different. Any one can be a leader. Only people with authority are managers. Some managers lead, others do not. And some leaders manage, while many delegate that activity to others.

In the Hersey-Blanchard model, the manager begins by telling or directing the employee. As a parent you might tell your child to pick up their toys. As a child, this works tolerably well for a short time and then self-will begins to compete against parental will. New employees will appreciate advice on what is expected, but after a few days they will begin to resent being treated like a child. Sadly, many managers continue using this style and never evolve.

Selling is a more participative style. The analogy here is that of a team coach. The coach for a youth soccer team cannot go out onto the field and play for the team. Instead, a coach needs to persuade the team to follow his or her advice. Coaching is one step removed from doing. Many employees seem content with this arrangement. Professional sports teams, for example, follow the coaching model. During a good year, the coach takes much of the credit. During a bad year, the coach is the one most at risk of replacement. Many employees tolerate this relationship because their manager does the thinking and takes the risks. Consider the balance of power in a political environment. Candidates need to sell their ideas. We vote for one of them. If things go well, then we elect them again. If things go badly we are absolved of all blame. And as long as we follow this representative model we have no responsibility for the outcome. Have you experienced this with teenagers? "You told me to go to the store and buy some milk!" "Yes, but that was three hours ago." "Well, it is not my fault that I ran into some of my friends. You told me to go. What was I supposed to do, just ignore my friends?" Fortunately, most workers, just like most teenagers, want responsibility for their own lives. Managers need to move beyond "selling" and give people the ability to take responsibility. We need to build a relationship and then trust that the right actions will result.

"Participating" is a management style where the manager shares power. Quality Circles were designed to pull employees together to find improvement opportunities. Those employees met as teams and documented their recommendations. Then management would meet with the employees, assess the merits of the recommendations, and participate in acting on those recommendations. Watch the manager in your local fast food restaurant. He will begin by telling a new hire exactly what to do. She then uses incentives to persuade the employees to work more efficiently. And, when the lines get long, he or she becomes a worker and opens another cash register, helps stuff the food into bags, or fills the drink orders. Would you rather have a manager that stands back and tells you that the lines are getting long or one that sets their title aside, becomes a worker just like you, and helps solve the problem? The difficulty many managers have with this style is that they want to hold onto all of their power while simultaneously holding the employees fully responsible. Quality Circles failed when the employees realized that their recommendations would never be enacted.

The fourth style is called "delegating". The word "delegating" is often associated with distance. The board of directors delegate day-to-day management to the CEO and learn to give that CEO enough leeway to do their job. A CEO gives local managers responsibility for hiring new employees and may have little interest in the selection as long as you stay within budget. But how many managers delegate responsibility for day-to-day activities to their trusted staff? When I ask that question, many managers respond that they tried it once and it failed. Bad things happened and they did not know about it until it was too late. That, however, is not an indictment against "delegating". Rather, it is an indication of the misperception that delegating can be done without communication.

Blanchard's most famous book is The One Minute Manager. (2.25) The key concept in that book is that of communication. Consider the following diagram. (2.26) Properly setting goals requires two-way communication. The manager and the employee must pool their knowledge to decide what is realistic and useful. This is the place where many MBO programs fail. Too often the goals set are un-achievable or irrelevant.

Next, the manager and the employee share responsibility for evaluating the results. The goal should be stated so clearly that there is no question about the results. But the goal should be so large that it might not always be achievable. Communication keeps the manager and the employee synchronized. There should be no surprises. And, if it seems that the likely outcome is bad, then there is no need to wait until failure can be documented. The purpose for this arrangement is to deliver results for the company. Failing implies a lack of communication and cooperation. For example, you agree to complete a project within six-months but instead take seven-months. Now, if the project was to open a new store in time to capitalize on the holiday sales traffic, then being one month late is going to impact revenue. But, if the goal was simply to set a record because all of the previous store opening project took eight months, then finishing in seven months is still a major accomplishment. Communication and expectations define the meaning.

"One Minute Praisings" and "One Minute Reprimands" are communications. The goal of the one minute manager is to communicate often and communicate with purpose. Management by exception is highlighted as a bad policy. People need communication to know how they are doing. Managers need communication to know status.

In the prior chapter I introduced the Blake and Mouton managerial grid. A copy of that grid is shown below.

This is a two-dimensional grid. The horizontal axis is a measure of concern for people. The vertical axis is a measure of the concern for productivity. (2.27) Blanchard refined the one-dimensional diagram he had created with Hersey into a two-dimensional grid of management styles. The essential concepts from that grid are shown below. This grid is elongated to highlight the transitions. A manager should begin by telling, which is high in direction and low in support. Next a manager should build upon the relationship, decrease the amount of direction and gradually transition to selling. The transition from selling to participating requires continual high levels of support with decreasing levels of direction. And finally, the level of direction decreases to where the employee is executing with only the minimal guidance that a one minute manager would need to provide to a proficient member of the management team.

If we compress the grid and update the labels we arrive at the grid shown below. The labels I applied to this grid reflect leadership styles. First, a leader needs to teach. Rev. King taught people how to act non-violently while asserting themselves. Next, the leader acts as an authority and offers consultation and advice while retaining responsibility for the results. Rev. King would ask community leaders what actions they needed, gave them the credit for accomplishments while accepting responsibility for adverse consequences. As the team progresses, the leader sheds some of his or her power and acts as a senior member of the team. Rev. King led many of the protests and spent many days and nights in jail as a result. Finally, the leader acts as a senior advisor - a wise and elder statesman. I think the word "mentor" describes this better than the word "delegate". I believe we see this in Rev. King's decision to work through affiliations of groups where he advised rather than managed.

You begin a new project. You have a new team. The first action you should take is to assess the skill level of each of the people that report to you. If you are new to this company and they have all been there for five or more years, should you begin the project by "telling" them what to do and how to do it? Probably not. As long as the people you are working with are competent at what they do you should probably begin by "participating" as a member of the team.

I once worked on a business re-engineering project. I had some prior experience working for another division of this company, but I did not know this division. I began that effort by consulting with people to sell them on process improvements. Occasionally someone asked for advice on how to document their current processes and I taught that person by telling her or him how I approached those types of problems. I then returned to the role of consultant to give reinforcing feedback.

On occasion we held review sessions. My goal in those sessions was to be a peer, not an outsider. I participated in those session and only switched back to a consulting role when the process floundered. Out of these sessions I picked the people who got it - the one's that could continue this work after I moved to my next project. I spent time mentoring those selected few. I delegated ownership to them. And when they asked for advice I responded in the role that seemed most appropriate to their question. Teach or tell, consult or sell, participate and contribute to the team. My goal was to play that part and then return to the role of mentor supporting the people delegated to do the work. The key to this process was to be flexible. I had to step out of the ego-centric role of being an authority and be a participant. I had to resist the urge to always be teaching and instead only teach when asked.

Have you ever watched the making of a movie or the rehearsal for a performance? Both are created by building up small blocks of time into a coherent whole. When I rehearse for a concert, we sing the songs in what seems like a random order. We stop and rework one phrase or one movement over and over. Hersey and Blanchard's approach to leadership is called "situational" because they ask that you react to the specifics of each "scene". In one scene the hero might be running through the streets. In the next scene the hero stops to talk with someone. In a movie those two scenes are juxtaposed and the whole seems continuous. But the filming might have taken place on different days often separated by weeks of effort on other scenes. The actor focuses on doing what is required for that scene while retaining a sense of who the character is throughout the movie.

Managers need to pivot and change roles based upon the requirements of the "situation". Sometimes they need to be more supportive. Sometimes they need to be more directive. This two-dimensional model is easy to work with. I suggest you memorize Blanchard's model and study his deceptively simple One Minute Manager books.

Mathematical Models

The diagram show below is an illustration of the model created by Victor Vroom. Vroom delved deeper into mathematical aspects of decision making and identified additional criteria. (2.28) Vroom labels the Hersey and Blanchard model a "contingency" model and notes that the key input is the maturity of the employee "defined in terms of their 'readiness to tackle the task facing the group'". (2.29) Rather than focus on the employee, Vroom focused on the manager and assessed their behaviors. He was among the first to recognize the managerial competency is based upon flexibility rather than consistency. (2.30) He and his associates then sought to identify the vital information that triggered changes in managerial behavior. Out of their work they identified eight decision criteria and seven typical managerial styles. One of their decision models is illustrated below. (2.31)

On this diagram the ellipses represent outcomes, or styles of management. The squares represent decision points. The diagram is a decision tree. The list of management styles they observed is summarized in the following list. (2.32) The questions used in the decision points are summarized in the list after that. (2.33)

\--

Vroom, Yetton and Jago's list of managerial styles

AI: "You solve the problem or make the decision yourself..."

AII: "You obtain any necessary information from subordinates, then decide on a solution to the problem yourself."

CI: "You share the problem with the relevant subordinates individually, getting their ideas and suggestions without bringing them together as a group. Then you make the decision."

CII: "You share the problem with your subordinates in a group meeting... Then you make the decision..."

GI: "You share the problem with one of your subordinates, and together you analyze the problem and arrive at a mutually satisfactory solution in an atmosphere of free and open exchange of information and ideas."

GII: "You share the problem with your subordinates as a group. Together you generate and evaluate alternatives and attempt to reach agreement (consensus) on a solution."

DI: "You delegate the problem to one of your subordinates, providing the person with any relevant information that you possess, but giving the person full responsibility for solving the problem alone. Any solution that the person reaches will receive your support."

\--

Vroom, Yetton and Jago's decision point questions

QR: "How important is the technical quality of this decision."

CR: "How important is the subordinate commitment to the decision."

LI: Does the leader have "...sufficient information to make a high-quality decision".

PS: "Is the problem well structured." Can you leverage prior processes and procedures when working on this problem? Is the solution repeatable?

CP: "If you were to make the decision by yourself, is..." commitment probable? Will the subordinates be committed to this solution?

GC: Do the subordinates have goal congruence? "Do subordinates share the organizational goals to be attained in solving this problem?"

SC: Is there likely to be subordinate conflict following this decision?

SI: "Do subordinates have sufficient information to make a high-quality decision?"

\--

Using this tree is rather straight forward. You begin at the left and work towards the right. Let's start with a simple problem and then try one that is more complex.

Situation 1: We need to hire a new project manager.

QR: The right project manager will positively impact the quality of the effort, so the quality requirement is high. Branch upward on the tree to the box labeled "CR".

CR: If the functional managers do not cooperate with this project manager then the project will fail. This means that the commitment requirement is high so follow the tree upward to the box labeled "LI".

LI: How good are you at predicting whether or not two people will get along? If you have observed interactions for a while you have probably been surprised quite a few times by conflict between people that seemed compatible. Most of us will agree we do not have enough information to accurately predict compatibility when we hire someone new. So we answer this question "no" and branch to the box labeled "PS".

PS: Is this problem structured? Yes, hiring and placing people is something that most managers do frequently. Therefore we branch downward to the box labeled "CP".

CP: If you hire this project manager without consulting the other managers are they likely to accept your decision? On the surface this is a political question. Will your team support you if you make the wrong choice? Will your team support you if you make the right choice? In a large number of organizations there is so much jostling for position that "support" is very difficult to get or retain. Other companies thrive on cooperation. For the purpose of this illustration, let us assume the commitment probability is low. Therefore we branch horizontally on this tree and go to the box labeled "GC".

GC: Goal congruence means that all of the key participants want to achieve the goal and have a similar understanding of what it means. Based on our response to the "CP" question, this environment seems to have some contention. That implies that goal congruence is low. Therefore, the management style we should pick is "CII".

How well does that illustration align with your normal hiring practice? Personally, I like to have multiple people interview every candidate. Then I like to gather the group together and discuss each of the candidates and see if we reach consensus. That implies that my favored style is GII. But, in a contentious environment I tend to become more authoritarian. Thus, if group consensus does not appear, I will make the decision and then expect compliance. What would you do in this situation? Do you see the complexity of the logic that goes into such a simple decision?

Let's try another example.

Situation 2: We need to choose one programming language as the standard for future programming projects. Today there are forty programmers and they support applications written in ten different languages. We will be more efficient if we standardize.

QR: The quality requirement is high. If we get this wrong we could put the company out of business. QR is "high" and we branch upward to the box labeled "CR".

CR: Quite honestly, I expect some people will prefer to go to work elsewhere and I am willing to accept that loss. The computer industry is continually changing and any programmer that does not want to keep up with the newest language should find another career. I am so committed to this approach that I live it. I, and many of my friends have spent our time writing code and finally decided that the endless stream of updates creates a wave that can only be ridden for so long before you finally get swept under. But that is acceptable because there are hundreds of new, young programmers ready to take their turn at ridding this wave. Thus, when I answer this question I reply that I have a low expectation of commitment requirement. That means that I next follow the decision tree downward to the box labeled "LI".

LI: Does the leader have the information to make this choice? Personally I do not think that anyone does There are just too many choices and all of these languages have weaknesses. I know a lot of language bigots that think their favored language is the best at everything, but I have been around long enough to know that is never true. Therefore the answer to this question is "no" and we branch to the box labeled "PS".

PS: This is not a well structured problem. You can put together a nice matrix showing the advantages of each. You could build a presentation highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each choice. But ultimately this is going to be a guess. You take a guess at which vendor will stay in business and which tool will survive the next wave of innovation. But those are just guesses. Therefore, I answer this question "no" and I branch to the style labeled "CII".

Notice that I ended up adopting the same style for both of these illustrations. So much for flexibility. Or maybe not. Vroom and Yetton found difficulty in comparing managers because managers respond to their environments and to the types of problems they typically face. To work around this inconsistency they created sets of standardized scenarios and distributed those same scenarios to hundreds of managers. Then they rated those managers by giving points to each answer and averaging the results. The scale they used is shown below. (2.34)

Low scores indicate an authoritarian style. High scores indicate a participative style. Please note, however, that high and low are unfortunate choices of terms. Bigger is not better. Higher does not mean more skilled. The concept of contingency management is that your style should fit the situation. Thus the correct way to use this scale is to compare responses to the same situations. If you read through the prior two examples and chose solutions that are further to the AI end of the scale, then you tend towards a more authoritarian style than I do. If, you chose a route that led you to a solution closer to the GII end of the scale, then you tend towards a more participative style than I do. People are different. Environments are different. Some variation is expected. Vroom and Yetton note that an autocratic style is often favored in environments where managers are driven to achieve short-term results while a participative style if often favored by managers striving for long term results through team development. (2.35)

Some bias is to be expected. But it is a deficiency when a leader is not flexible enough to adjust to the situation. Vroom and Yetton illustrated this point with the following diagram. (2.36) Do you see the dual influences from situational variables? The situation influences both the leader and the organization.

Note however, that some of our terminology is becoming confused. Managers hire and fire employees. Employees follow direction. Leaders work through influence and might or might not have people "work" for them. The people that follow those leaders might look on this relationship as one of teacher-student, coach-player, teammates, or mentor-peer. This shift in relationships reflects the change in industry and a maturing of the concept.

A capitalist buys a piece of machinery and pays a worker to run the machine. An investor provides resources and persuades subject matter experts to join the team. The point that Henry Ford made about capitalism is that people are interchangeable. The concept that Peter Drucker tried to disseminate is that knowledge workers are valuable and companies are interchangeable. Frederick Taylor searched for scientific principles so that managers could tell workers how to use the machines effectively. Peter Senge describes the company now as a living, growing organism. The role of leader and the role of manager are no longer synonymous. The leader may be a peer worker. The manager may be an administrator with little involvement in the actual work.

We began this chapter with an extended examination of inspirational leadership as demonstrated through speeches from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Next we ran through an overview of transformational leadership as defined by Bass and Avolio. That led into the concept of situational leadership as expressed by Hersey and Blanchard. And now we are examining contingent leadership as defined by the Vroom, Yetton and Jago model.

Inspirational leadership assumes one individual stands out from the crowd and sets a direction. Transformational, situational and contingent leadership are more generally described as management tools. Vroom and Jago, for example, describe the purpose for their book as an effort to explore "...specific outcomes that are relevant to the organization in its efforts to attain its goals. These are: (1) job satisfaction, (2) quality of decisions, (3) commitment to decisions, (4) development, and (5) time." (2.36) Now I am going to broaden that focus.

Project managers have an opportunity to be leaders. The strategy they use in making a decision will impact job satisfaction, the quality of the decision, the commitment that the team expresses for the decision, the growth of the people and organization and the length of time that it takes to complete the project. Most project managers have no one reporting to them. Most project managers cannot hire or fire anyone. But, project managers are leaders. Consider the following example.

I began my career working in civil engineering and I was a project manager on the design phase of several construction projects. One project was controversial. We had been hired to prepare the infrastructure for a low-income housing tract. We were responsible for the installation of the sewer, water, gas, electricity and communications lines. We were responsible for the paving of the streets and sidewalks. Then low-income families would learn how to build their own homes so that they had a place to live and a marketable skill. I attended the city council meetings every week to persuade the city council to authorize construction. But every meeting ended with the council choosing to delay.

The decision to proceed was not politically savvy because this town was not ready for "those" people to be established land holders. The decision to block the project was not politically wise because more and more of 'those" people were voting and could oust this council. So the council angered neither side by refusing to vote

I led the council forward through a simple expedient. I read the rules that governed the council. In there I found a requirement that the council must vote either for or against any proposal that has been up for discussion for more than ninety-days. I advised the city manager that I would use this clause if action was not taken soon. In my opinion, he wisely assisted by not telling the council about "our" strategy.

In the weekly meeting that followed the ninety-day deadline I asked for a vote. Again the council decided to not vote. I then explained the section of their ordinance that requires that they vote. They voted against. The city manager then advised them that the same ordinance also requires that they publicly state their reason for voting against. The city council re-opened the issue and voted to approve the project. Together, the city manager and I led the council to make the right choice. Together we gave them a way to save face, while leading them forward. And yet neither of us had the authority to tell this elected body what to do.

Leadership is not management. Leadership is something that anyone can provide.

As we delve deeper into Vroom's approach we need to remember that what is presented as managerial concepts are tools for leadership. We also need to remember that leadership is not a solo act. Leadership is a role one adopts for a brief time. That being said, the key concept that you will derive from studying Vroom's concepts is an informed use of participation as a tool for making decisions and leading people.

Vroom is careful to point out that there are four valid styles of management: Authoritarian, Consultative, Group participation and Delegating. He highlights the importance of flexibility - the need for leaders to use each of the four styles for appropriate purposes. But it is the concept of participation that caught people's attention. Borrowing from their contemporaries, Vroom and Yetton describe the benefits and risks from participation.

"Kelley and Thibaut suggest that: (1) group decisions are likely to be above the level of the most proficient member when the problem has multiple parts and when group members have uncorrelated (complementary) deficiencies and talents; (2) groups are likely to perform at the level of the most proficient member when the problem is simple (very few steps are required for its solution) and the solution is highly verifiable by all persons in possession of the original facts; and (3) groups are likely to do less well than the best members when the solution requires thinking through a series of interrelated steps or stages, applying a number of rules at each point, and always keeping in mind conclusions reached at earlier points." (2.37)

Vroom associates the tendency to use an authoritarian style to an underlying view of people as resources. The alternative view is that people are defined through relationships. While the first view leans towards authoritarianism, the later view leans towards participation. (2.38) Thus, the key concept to derive from the decision tree shown earlier is that personal choices, relationships and the environment all influence the decision process. A wise leader learns how to read those signs and adjust styles to fit the need.

Studying Vroom's model and practicing will help a wise leader build habits. Those habits need to be continually re-examined, but habits determine our spontaneous response. Thus, it is important to develop a habit of using each of these managerial styles. (2.39) Urgent situations bias us towards an authoritarian style. Motivation to grow our team leads us to participative styles. We need to balance our views of people as resources and as relationships.

The Vroom decision trees are fantastic training tools. Thinking through your prior decisions and discussing the rational for those decisions will help you grow. Find opportunities to practice each of those styles. But, honestly, I find the tree too complex to keep in my head as I react to the crises of the moment. Instead, I return to Blanchard's simplification. And applying Vroom's four styles to Blanchard's grid I come up with the following set of grids.

\--

Blake and Moulton

Hersey and Blanchard

Vroom, Yetton and Jago

\--

All four of these grids have two dimensions. One dimension measures the relationships. The other dimension measures the amount of focus that is placed on the work effort. I believe that all of these grids can be expressed on one combined grid.

Psychology of Motivation

David McClelland focused on the underlying factors that lead us to certain preferred behavioral styles. (2.40) McClelland researched the "motivations" that cause us to behave in specific ways. According to current psychological theories, human behavior is determined by three underlying forces: motivations, traits and cognitive processes. (2.41) Inspirational, transformational, situational and contingent leadership are all behaviors. They are external manifestations of our mental processes. And here is where behavioral psychology intersects with analytic psychology - motivations are ascribed to unconscious (non-cognitive) processes. As you read through works on social cognitive and behavioral cognitive research you find a consistent theme. The goal is to externally measure processes that the person being studied used spontaneously. (2.42)

Behavioral psychology first focused on reflex actions in animals. Later the focus shifted to learned behaviors in animals. The concept was that animals act upon their motivations while people filter their desires and act in a socially acceptable way. The edge of behaviorism has since pushed further and further into human thoughts thanks to electronics, magnetic resonance and advanced mathematics. Researchers now have a cohesive explanation of some of the core thinking patterns within the human mind.

Among the most elemental of those patterns are expressions of emotion. McClelland notes that there appear to be at least six universal human emotions. (2.43) They are:

\--

Joy, happiness or pleasure,

Sadness or distress,

Anger or excitement,

Disgust,

Fear and

Interest or surprise.

\--

But, emotions are behaviors, not causes of behavior. Motivations are even deeper. McClelland references other works that have identified dozens of "motivations", where a motivation is an instigator of action. (2.44) Traits identify our habitual response when action is initiated. Cognitions shape our behaviors to fit the situation. Motivations are triggers - they act like the starting gun in a race. You see a friend walking towards you. You desire to be with that friend and anticipate sharing a pleasurable time together. Your mind has fired the motivation called "affiliation". Your mind is now primed for action. Your personality traits suggest that you should walk but not run, hug but not kiss, speak softly rather than shout. Those traits imply you are an introvert who does not desire a public audience. The motivation is the same in both introverts and extraverts, but those traits filter and shape your behavior. Your mind sees the reaction in your friends face and you smile to express the shared emotion of joy. Your cognitive processes kick in and you search for just the right thing to say. Your motivation for affiliation continues to push you forward. Your traits lead you down a well trod path. And your cognitions scramble at an accelerated pace to sustain this experience and ensure it continues.

McClelland illustrates the cognitive aspects of this sequence with the following diagram. (2.45)

The explanation for this diagram is:

\--

The situation creates cues through social and physiological channels.

Cognitions filter the cues and may block their activation.

Demands are used to assess the probability of success.

Incentives are cognitive representations of motivations.

Motivations are the unconscious expression of primitive desires.

The probability of success is a subjective assessment based upon prior experience and based on the perception of the situation.

The value of the goal is often linked to expectancy theory, meaning that the value we place on some action is related to the probability of success that we perceive.

The motivation multiplied by the probability of success multiplied by the value of the goal yields the probability that we will act.

But the impulse to act can only be realized if there is an opportunity to act.

Thereafter, we assess the results and that assessment influences how we value the goal, our perception of the probability of success, our arousal to this motivation the next time it occurs and our incentive to channel these cues towards this motivation.

\--

Note that my explanation of this diagram is greatly simplified. The point is that motivations are part of the chain of events that lead to actions. Behaviorists preferred studying animals because the linkage from motivation to action is much more direct. People unconsciously react based upon their motivations, but consciously act based upon the combination of motivations, traits and cognitions.

Motivations drive us to act. Values shape the decisions we make about which actions we prefer. Basically, a motive is a motive because we act on it spontaneously. (2.46) McClelland states it like this:

"A motive is a largely unconscious determinate of spontaneously generated behavior, and an intent is a largely conscious preference for doing something that should be determined jointly by motive strength, probability of success, and values associated with doing it. The conscious-unconscious aspect of this distinction is not essential to it: what is essential is the difference between choice of what to do... and the operant frequency with which people act in certain ways." (2.47)

There are dozens of motivations. Three, however, get the most attention: Achievement, Power and Affiliation.

Achievement is the motivation that McClelland focused on for most of his career. A synonym he suggests for "achievement" is "efficiency". (2.48) People who are strongly influenced by this motive want to do "better". This leads them to choose tasks that are moderately difficult. Easy tasks bore these people. Difficult tasks do not interest these people because they cannot learn from the outcome. If you want to assess someone's achievement motivation, ask them to do a new task just like one they recently finished. For example, ask a systems administrator to install the same set of software on five more systems. Someone low in achievement motivation will welcome the opportunity to do such easy work. Someone high in achievement motivation will either resist the assignment or twist that assignment into something totally unexpected. You might end up with the software installed, improved installations processes and a training guide on how to do it. Doing the same thing over again will be interpreted into the guise of doing better. On the other hand, ask someone high in achievement motivation to do an "impossible" task and they will resist. Achievement oriented people want feedback. What feedback can they get when everyone agrees that the task is impossible? For example, ask someone to create a 100-page report on process improvements, overnight. Someone low in achievement motivation will do what they can and disconnect from the project. Someone high in achievement will find a way to generate 100-pages of something and then expect you to provide feedback so they can improve on what they created. Achievement oriented people like work assignments that are a little bit challenging, but not overwhelming.

The power motivation is displayed through a competitive nature. Possible synonyms for power are influence or impact. People with a power orientation like activities with high risk. Ask a group of people to work all night to each create a 100-page report to explain why they need to hire more people and the power oriented person will take the challenge. The achievement oriented person looks at this as being impossible to complete and sees no reward from the activity. The power oriented person looks at this as being impossible for everyone else, and thus this is a chance to distinguish him or herself from the crowd. And the reward of hiring more people just adds to the inputs that activate the power motivation. On the other hand, ask a power oriented person to repeat a prior activity and that exercise will be adapted to suit their power needs. For example, ask a power oriented system administrator to install the same software on five additional systems and they are likely to come back to you with a new assistant system administrator following along behind so they can jointly report on the new process for training assistant system administrators. Power is demonstrated through impact. Doing the same thing over and over does not generate impact. Commanding people, however, now that has impact.

The affiliation motive drives people to want to be with other people. Extroverts like to be in physical proximity with other people. Introverts are content to be with other people virtually, through letters, emails, text messages and the like.

All of us have some achievement, some power and some affiliation motivation. Most of us balance those motivations. A few of us allow one motivation to dominate.

Achievement, when taken to an extreme is useful for people in innovative activities. For example, the image of the scientist devoting his or her life to the search for a breakthrough medicine is an image of achievement turned into an obsession. That behavior is useful to companies when it is properly channeled, but destructive when unchecked. I once worked with someone who took customer satisfaction very seriously. Whenever a customer complained about service this person would gather his team together and they would spend four, or maybe twelve, or maybe twenty-four hours working non-stop to create the perfect letter to send to that customer. Each letter had to be better than the previous letter. Each word was checked against a thesaurus to find the optimal synonym that could best express the desired meaning. Unfortunately, all the time that this team spent creating these wonderful apologies took away from their ability to actually deliver service to other customers. And thus this activity spiraled downward until this person was moved to another area. Better, better and always better can be excessive.

Power is the easiest motivation to characterize through displays of obsession. Wealth is a power symbol. Politics is a power tool. A typical political solution to a problem is to form a new governmental agency. Creating the new agency is an expression of power. There was a problem. The power motivation shaped the response. The new agency generates impact. But, where power differs from achievement is that achievement wants to measure results. Power is over once the deed is done. Years later achievement oriented reformers will conclude that the new agency accomplished nothing. This generates a crisis. And then those motivated by power create reforms and the cycle resumes. Power, without achievement is empty.

I once worked with a person who was obsessed with power. He came into our company and worked just hard enough to learn some of our technology. Then we started hearing the rumors. All the dark secrets he had uncovered. It was dreadful to learn that the manager in his department was selling our technology to a competitor. My boss shuffled that manager off to another area and the new person became the manager for that department. About one year later I started hearing new rumors. "I" was secretly planning to take this company's technology and start my own company. I could find no source for these rumors, but suddenly I found that my ability to get work done was dwindling. I moved to another department where they valued my services and got a promotion along the way. The power broker then took my job. I checked back about a year after that and discovered that my old boss had just been fired. Rumors were floating around but no one knew what happened. So I called him. Now he understood. Now he understood that this power broker had created lies and distortions to displace his manager, then me and then my old boss. So I then talked with the power broker and, off the record, he told me exactly how he did it. His father died when he was very young and he made up his mind to never be vulnerable again. He was going to be the youngest vice president this company had ever seen. "So what, you know what I did. You can't prove it. And no one would believe you anyway." Sadly, the motivation towards power can be very destructive.

Most managers have a stronger tendency towards power than towards achievement or affiliation. Partly this indicates they are willing to endure the pain that it takes to climb upward. And partly this indicates that we are all susceptible to power games. For the most part, however, this is just another example of an organization amplifying a personal obsession for the organization's benefit.

An obsession with achievement can be channeled into efficiency and discovery. An obsession with power can be channeled towards management. An obsession with affiliation, however, is harder to fit into modern industry. Certainly you want people who like people to be responsible for your human resources processes. And affiliation can be a useful motivator for people doing customer service work. But an affiliation orientation is tough to leverage in other parts of an organization.

I once worked with a manager who we called the "cheer leader". He was our coach. Always there to deliver a pat on the back when a task was completed. Always ready to organize another company picnic or luncheon or team building off-site activity. When new management came into the company our cheer leader was put in charge of a new department and asked to document our processes. He spent about six months working on this assignment. His team was awesome and he was enthusiastic about moving onto his next assignment. But he was low in achievement motivation. Remember, that those high in achievement motivation want feedback. Our cheer leader did not desire feedback. He worked hard to publicize the team spirit in his department. But he never asked his manager whether or not he was going in the right direction. He never asked people to review his documents and provide feedback. He wanted people to see the binder, not the contents. He was strong in affiliation but weak in achievement. And he was weak in power. He did not see how exposed his department was when it came time for cost cutting. Soon he was gone and his binder sat on a shelf for about a year until a power oriented vice president assigned an achievement oriented manager the task of turning that stack of documents into an efficiency tool.

Remember, however, that motivations are unconscious. All of the actions that I have described are behaviors. And behaviors are shaped by motivations, traits and decisions. We all have some level of affiliation, achievement and power motivation in us. We shape our actions to fit our environments. Thus, it is difficult to assess what part of a behavior stems from a motivation, a trait or a cognitive choice. Over a course of time, however, we tend to exhibit behaviors that align with our motivational balance. And, over time, we either find an environment conducive to our motivations or we feel the pain. (2.49)

McClelland describes a study conducted on a small island. (2.50) Most of the people on the island did difficult farm work. A few people ran fishing boats. The question was why people chose the career they chose. Why did so many people chose the painfully difficult life of hard manual labor over the less painful and more lucrative life of a fisherman? What the researchers found was a correlation between motivations and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People who felt their safety or survival needs were at risk capped out in the hierarchy at the social level. Those people then displayed a strong motivation for affiliation. Doing the farm work meant they could be with their family, relatives and friends. The fishermen, on the other hand, were much more interested in self-esteem or self-actualization. And they tested high in the achievement motivation. Now, which is cause and which is effect? Do those who are raised high in achievement motivation seek the more challenging career? Or do those who are blocked from the ability to gain self-esteem reprogram themselves to be higher in the affiliation motive?

The lesson for organizations is that allowing people greater access to self-esteem and self-actualization correlates well with achievement and achievement correlates with efficiency and efficiency correlates with profit. Giving people more opportunities for participation will create more opportunities for those people strong in achievement orientation and may well reorient others towards that same motivation.

Have you seen this happen? You start with a team of normal people with a normal distribution of motivations. Give them a challenging assignment and create an environment where they have enough freedom to act. In each case where I have been able to do this the results have been extraordinary. People that I thought had a strong affiliation bias learn to behave in line with achievement goals. People with a strong power motivation learn that they can have a larger impact through the team than they can on their own. Sometimes it works. But to make this work you need the right leadership.

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A leader should inspire the team with a vision.

A leader should transform the team through idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.

A leader should respond to the situation with a flexible management style.

A leader should study leadership, study management and contemplate their actions.

A leader should be strong in affiliation to build a team that cares for each person.

A leader should use the achievement motivation to set goals, obtain feedback and measure progress.

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The concept we should take away from McClelland is that each of us has all of these motivations. We just need to find the place where we balance our motives. Consider the diagram shown below. Where do you fit? Are you 100% power with little achievement or affiliation? Or do you score in the middle on power, middle on achievement and close to the middle on affiliation? Are you higher in one area and weaker in others?

McClelland read through the inaugural address given by fifteen previous presidents from the United States. He found that the presidents that history views as weak scored below the mid-point on all three motivations. The presidents that history views as strong scored at or above the mid-point on all three motivations. Gerald Ford, the president that followed Richard Nixon's resignation, scored the highest in affiliation and is best known for his efforts to reconcile a divided country. John Kennedy scored high in affiliation and was known for his charisma. He scored high in achievement and is known for the lofty goals he set for the nation. And he scored high in power which he displayed in his confrontations with the USSR. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan scored above average on affiliation and achievement. But, Carter's weakest score was on power, which was Reagan's highest score. Carter is today viewed as a weak and rather ineffective president best remembered for being unable to resolve the hostage crises in Iran. Reagan is remembered as the powerful individual that brought down the Berlin wall. You can see how their motivations are reflected in the choices they made. These three illustrations can help you when you assess potential managers. Think about Gerald Ford when you seek affiliation characteristics. Think about Jimmy Carter when you think about achievement oriented leaders. And think about Ronald Reagan when you want a power oriented leader.

Now, I am going to try to apply McClelland's approach to the analysis of text regarding motivations along with the approach I introduced earlier to analyzing text to identify developmental maturity. Consider the following quotation from Albert Einstein.

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people - first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of labor of my fellow-men. I regard class distinctions as unjustified and, in the last resort, based on force. I also believe that a simple and unassuming life is good for everybody, physically and mentally." (2.51)

There are clear allusions to affiliation through the description of circles of community beginning with a few close friends and extending out to people we have never met. Consider the developmental levels described here. There are numerous usages of the word "I", descriptions of close family, community and then the broad sweep of "fellow-men". I assume that if Einstein had lived a few years longer he would have stated that last comment with gender inclusive language. I hope you can read that into his intentions. Note that the theme of affiliation is also expressed as the existential concept of "being", which Einstein addresses in the final sentence from that quotation.

Much of Einstein's statement deals with the theme of power, but it is inverted. Einstein expresses his concept of power as serving, not commanding. Follow with me on a visualization. Have you seen the scene in the Star Wars movie where Luke Skywalker meets the evil emperor? The emperor cannot convert Luke to the dark side so he begins to exude power from his body to inflict pain. Power flows from the emperor. Then Darth Vadar steps between the emperor and Luke and absorbs that flow of energy. Darth Vadar over comes the emperor and tosses him into the power generator. The power from the emperor flowing into Darth Vadar implied that the emperor was more powerful than Darth Vadar, but Darth Vadar triumphed by absorbing that power. (2.52) This is an inversion of the expression of power. It is still very much about power, but it is power flowing in the reverse direction. Luke Skywalker triumphs because he was the least contaminated by the allure of power. Frugality is just the inversion of affluence. Each is an expression of one's ability to control money. Labor, whether received or extended is about power. Servant-hood, like domination, is an expression of power.

The motivation that I find the most difficult to tease out of this text is that of achievement. I believe that I see it in words like "reflection", "remind" and "aware". I believe that I see it in words that express feedback, such as "measurement", "distinctions" and "amount". I feel that achievement is there even if I cannot point to it.

One of the reasons I enjoy reading Einstein's writings is that he balances affiliation, achievement and power. He expresses developmental themes spanning from self to the universality of all. Also, consider his application of Maslow's hierarchy. Safety and survival are addressed in the reminders that we are all mortal, that our lives are "brief" and that we are often subjected to "force". His affiliation themes appeal to our social needs. The humility he exudes raises the self-esteem of everyone else. And then his achievement themes point towards self-actualization. This is an example of my ideal of leadership. This single block of text activates all three motivations. It appeals to a sense of community that spans the developmental spread from self to the universal. And it reaches us, individually, through the entire height of the hierarchy of needs. In contrast, consider the following:

"Nothing brings a prince more prestige than great campaigns and striking demonstrations of his personal abilities. In our own time we have Ferdinand of Aragon, the present king of Spain. He can be regarded as a new prince, because from being a weak king he has risen to being, for fame and glory, the first king of Christendom. If you study his achievements, you will find that they were all magnificent and some of them unparalleled." (2.53)

What is the primary motivation described by this writer? Power. Note that the theme of affiliation is present only in the implied intimacy between the writer and the reader. Note that the "achievements" are actually expressions of power. It is not as if this prince did personal combat to obtain his glory. This prince obtained glory by sacrificing the lives of thousands on both sides in a war fought for the purpose of increasing his personal power.

What expression of social development do you find here? This is a conversation between two people about how to increase their share of the pie at the expense of what is left for everyone else.

And for what gain? Is this an expression of self-actualization or is this just a strategy to bolster the safety of an endangered monarch? Will the loyal subjects of this prince value the glory he has achieved by sacrificing the lives of their sons? Will the loyal subjects of this prince esteem his personage, or will they plot how to overthrow him? The motivation that will drive the populace is fear for their safety and survival. And they will reciprocate that animosity until this monarch lies sleepless at night fearing the assassin. Fear begets fear.

Machiaveli's advice to his prince focused on power. His book was a collection of advice about behaviors that enhance power. It is still a classic because no one had ever summarized the description of power as effectively as he did.

Five hundred years later, however, French and Raven turned the study of power into a scientific endeavor. Out of that study the found five "sources" of power. (2.54)

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Coercive power is threat to use or the actual use of force.

Reward power is the power to give or to withhold rewards, such as money.

Legitimate power is social power defined through a role or position.

Referent power is envy or admiration.

Expert power is based on knowledge or skills.

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Machiavelli has been superseded by French and Raven. And today many authors still reference French and Raven when they describe the behavior of power. Since that time, however, research has identified numerous other types of power. One of the more comprehensive works on the subject was written by Gilbert W. Fairholm. (2.55) French and Raven's study was published in 1960. Fairholm published in 1993 and in that time span research had found seventeen additional types of power. Think about this for a moment. People had talked about power for many thousands of years before the invention of writing. For about three thousand years authors have written about power. Finally one author set out to describe techniques for acquiring power. Five hundred years later science identified five social relationships that display power. Thirty years later the number of power defining social relationships had increased from five to twenty-two. Knowledge is expanding exponentially. But, has wisdom increased at all? Have we transformed this vast body of data into information that you can process? Has all of this data helped you become a better informed decision maker? It is my hope that this book will help you sift through this data and find meaningful information. That effort, however, requires mental effort on your part.

Fairholm defines power as "...the individual capacity to gain your own aims in interrelationship with others, even in the face of their opposition." He elaborates:

"...Power is a special kind of social relationship characterized by the following ideas:  
Power is intentional.  
Power is instrumental.  
Power is finite.  
Power involves dependency.  
Power is an action idea.  
Power is situational.  
Power is based on opposition or difference." (2.56)

The twenty-two types of power identified in his book are (2.57): Controlling the agenda, Using ambiguity, Brinkmanship, Displaying charisma, Forming coalitions, Co-opting opposition members, Controlling decision criteria, Developing others, Using outside experts, Building a favorable image, Legitimizing control, Incurring obligation, Organizational placement, Proactivity, Quid pro quo (bartering), Rationalization, Allocating resources, Dispensing rewards, Ritualism, Using a surrogate, Using symbols, Training and orienting others.

In Machiavelli's era power was primarily acquired through force. By the twentieth century power was largely measured in monetary terms. Now it is common to hear the phrase "knowledge is power". Knowledge workers gain power as they acquire skills. They exercise their power by sharing or withholding that knowledge. (2.58) And yet, the results have changed very little. As Fairholm notes: "...using power empowers the power holder and devalues the target of power in the power holder's eye." (2.59) We still use power to conquer. Today the weapon of choice is knowledge. In Machiavelli's era the weapon of choice was a few thousand expendable mercenaries. In Machiavelli's time the belief was that power was unidirectional: a prince held power and his subjects obeyed. Now we recognize that power is bi-directional. Those subjects also hold power and exercise it on a regular basis. (2.60)

One of the first to recognize this bidirectional flow was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (2.61) His classic book The Social Contract contributed to the thinking that led to the American revolution. The key theme in his book is that the governed have the power to accept or reject their rulers. This was a radical concept. It took the American revolution, the French revolution and the Russian revolution to define how far this concept could be pushed. What we can learn from those experiences is that there are limits. Most revolutions just exchange one set of power-centric rules for another set. The colors on the flags change and there is progress, but we are creatures of habit. We soon return to complacency and allow power to resume a largely unidirectional flow. Perhaps, however, we have been successful in shifting the type of power from the more coercive styles to a more participative style. That, after all, was the primary justification for each of those revolutions.

Monarchs, whether elected, appointed or inherited, are authoritarian. Authoritarian management is coercive. Participative management, as described by Vroom, is a consensual use of power. Vroom notes that the secondary benefit from participative uses of power is the growth and development of the governed. (2.62) Senge takes that concept even further when he calls for the creation of "learning organizations". He highlights the "cultural change" that today means we need to "redistribute control" - i.e., power. (2.63) He asks management to give up unidirectional power and learn to listen.

It is important to understand that relinquishing power does not prevent you from achieving your goals. Fairholm describes Mahatma Gandhi as someone that tapped into the power of millions by giving up his own sense of power. (2.64) I chose Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for my illustrations in this chapter because he, like Mahatma Gandhi, demonstrated the ability to tap into the motivations of millions in a display of bidirectional, participative power. Rev. King and Mahatma Gandhi practiced servant leadership. Servant-hood is a reversal of the roles, an inversion of the usage of power.

Leading by being a servant is an ancient concept. Paul the Apostle wrote:

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." (2.65)

In contrast, he notes a few verses later:

"All of them are seeking their own interests..." (2.66)

The theme of servant leadership is expressed simply as follows:

"Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven." (2.67)

Whether you believe in God, Jesus, heaven or any religious theology, the concept still applies. Einstein rejected the concept of an personal God - a God that could be influenced by people or would act within this universe - and yet he still valued the wisdom contained in those writings:

"The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high social goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations. If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind." (2.68)

The author best known for elaborating on the concept of leading through service is Robert Greenleaf. (2.69) In his book, Servant Leadership, he illustrates behaviors that demonstrate the traits associated with leading through serving. While this approach is widely recognized it has been poorly studied. Greenleaf notes that it is difficult to tell what motivates a person. As he puts it: "If there were a dependable way that would tell us 'these people enrich by their presence, these are neutral, or these take away,' life would be without challenge." (2.70) Greenleaf says there is a spectrum of behaviors.

"The leader-first and the servant first are two extreme types. Between them are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."

"The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"

"And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?" (2.71)

Earlier in this chapter I mentioned USA Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter suffered political defeat and lost power because of his inability to resolve the conflict regarding US diplomats that were held hostage in Iran. But was this because he was weak in power, or because he chose to not apply the power he had at his disposal? US troops deployed to advanced bases were capable of striking into Iran. Troops in the US could have flown to Iran on a moment's notice. The US Navy was positioned offshore. But Carter chose to use the least possible force in a rescue attempt and it failed. Is this because he was weak, or is this because he was strong enough to restrain his use of power? Did he risk personal insult rather than risk lives? It seems to me that a wise leader is sometimes called upon to make unpopular decisions. It seems to me that a mature leader must always take responsibility for their decisions.

The first President George Bush had US troops positioned within striking distance of Baghdad, but he ordered them to withdraw. The second President George Bush sent US troops into Baghdad. Which was the more appropriate use of power? I wish I knew. As an idealist, I prefer peace. But the topic is power, not ideals. So which decision was the better use of power? It will take years to learn what influenced those decisions. Both decisions were unpopular. Both decisions are still linked to emotions and political agendas. Someday, however, historians will assess the facts and study those decisions. And those historians will have the last say in this matter. The legacy of these presidents will be altered by the way history interprets their intentions.

But getting back to the point of this chapter, all three of these examples of Presidential power exhibited little consensus building. Two of those decisions were made by a very small group of advisors. And while the third decision was publically discussed there was surprisingly little effort to reach consensus. Thus I ask whether or not these three examples of Presidential power highlight the strengths of authoritarian decision making or highlight the need to align the decision making process with the breadth of the constituency? Should decisions that affect ten people be made by one person? Is it right for five people to make decisions that impact five thousand? Is representative democracy practiced effectively when twenty people make a decision that impacts two billion others?

The concept of servant leadership is that we are all subject to authority and accountable for what we do with the power we are given. Some consider God to be the ultimate judge. Some doubt in God and yet even they recognize that they will be judged. As Greenleaf notes, we live in this world and we act upon what we think and know. But we simultaneously live at a point in time and it is important to view our moment in time in perspective from the vantage point of historical time. (2.71) This duality of thought challenges us. All of us know that we will be judged by those around us, by those who know us too well to be fooled and by those who follow where we led.

The final point to recognize about servant-leadership is that there is no entrance exam. Everyone can be a servant. Everyone can be a servant-leader. (2.72) While Machiavelli wrote for his prince and Rousseau wrote for the intellectuals, Rev. King and Mahatma Gandhi speak to the common person. Neither of those men waited to be appointed chief insurrectionist. Neither rose in ranks through elected office or held corporate office. And yet both led. Every person, in every role is called to lead by example. Consider the dimensions of leadership described in the following email I recently sent to a national chain store.

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I recently came to your store to buy a few items. I selected the items I wanted and proceeded to a check out line. The cashier and box boy in that line were arguing with a customer about whether or not the customer already had possession of the lawn chairs he had just purchased. This argument went on for some time with the cashier insisting that the customer must have taken the chairs out to his car while the customer insisted that he had been standing there the whole time and could not have gone to his car without the cashier noticing his absence. Eventually an assistant showed up with two lawn chairs and offered to take them to the customer's car, but the cashier had not finished arguing with this customer. I waited five minutes and then I gave up, put my items back into my basket and went to the adjoining aisle.

One lady was in front of me and she seemed perplexed. I watched as the cashier and the box boy in this line wiped the turnstile over and over again. The lady working at the next counter encouraged them to keep working at this to ensure that the turnstile was "really, really clean". None of these people ever acknowledged the woman who was waiting for them to ring up her purchase. I waited five minutes and then I gave up, put my items back into my basket and went to another aisle.

I went to a third aisle and found the cashier arguing with the customer there. This lady had written a check for more than the amount of the purchase and asked for cash back. The cashier explained that she must tell him before he begins to ring up her items if she wants cash back and it is now too late for him to give her cash back. She pointed out that the amount on the check exceeded the amount of the purchase. The cashier explained that he had already recorded her check for payment for the exact price of the purchase and could not possible change it now. I did not wait very long this time. I left my merchandise behind and I walked out of that store.

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Were these employees powerless pawns used by the mega-corporation? No, they had power and they were wielding it. They exhibited a strong sense of affiliation and loyalty to each other. And they took the concept of achievement and inverted it. Each action was measured against the amount of delay it could add to the process. They were inspired. They were transforming this business into something unlike what the mega-corporation anticipated. They optimized their advantage in each situation. They collaborated in a highly participatory manner. They did everything that managerial training could expect, except one thing. They did not serve.

Do you see why it is necessary to pull the best from each of these approaches? Inspirational, transformation, situational, contingency and servant leadership blend together and support each other. Motivations, traits and knowledge work together to shape behaviors. We need to take our motivations for power, affiliation and achievement and learn how to apply them so as to generate actions that further the good.

When I put these pieces together I get a tentative conceptual model shown below. This diagram represents a three-dimensional conic shape. The horizontal dimension measures the impact, the span of control of your action along a social spectrum beginning with relationships where you treat others like objects and extending outward to a universal concern for all. The vertical dimension measures the style of relationship you are leveraging along Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The third dimension assesses the amount of participation you enlist in the decision and action. Note that the appearance of this model implies there is a relationship between the style of leadership and the breadth of the impact. Issues that impact a broad spectrum of people need more participative leadership. Issues that impact only a few people can more safely use the authoritative styles. Leaders learn which style fits which purpose by sensing their impact on those around them.

This is just a working concept. I think there is a pattern that will allow us to organize all of this vast material about the science of psychology, organizational psychology, leadership and management into one framework. I do not think this is it, but I am going to propose this as a working hypothesis and then keep piling theories onto it until it breaks.

One of the first additional concepts I want to explore is called "Emotional Intelligence". This theory was proposed by Daniel Goleman. Goleman studied under David McClelland and built upon McClelland's work. (2.73) In Goleman's opinion, the primary duty of a leader is to create "resonance". (2.74) He defines resonance as harmonious emotional relationship. Harmony needs to permeate the organization. This is an old theme, come back in a new style.

Most religious leaders throughout history emphasize the need for harmonious relationships. Revival movements, like the Quaker movement in England four hundred years ago, take the concept of harmony from personal lives into the community and then out into the world. The Quakers call their religious order the "Society of Friends". William Penn founded a colony in the Americas where people could live in Friendship with their neighbors, the Native Americans. Penn then lobbied for harmonious relationships between the countries in Europe and wrote a widely published book called The Peace of Europe: The Fruits of Solitude and Other Writing by William Penn. (2.75) Penn had a vision that the countries of Europe could form a union and work together to make this a better world for all. But Penn was a "visionary". And back then people used that term in a derogatory way. The peace with the Native Americans broke down and European leaders ignored him.

Nearly four hundred years and millions of casualties later we find that a European Union might be a pretty good idea after all. And thus we repeat an endless cycle. The visionary tells us about what could be. We need priests, which is the role that scientists like McClelland now fill, to then divine what is good and what is false. Then we need teachers, like Goleman, to package those concepts and explain them to us.

I value what I have read of Goleman's concepts, but I am going to bypass them. His approach is based upon the emotional impact of relationships. I value that concept and agree. But, for the purpose of this book, I am going forward with the approach that the three primary sources are motivations, traits and cognitions. Thus I am going to act as if emotions are inputs that activate the sources and emotions are outputs displayed as behaviors. I am, however, going to leverage Goleman's wisdom to launch into the next topic - resistance to change.

Resistance to change is triggered by motivations. Resistance to change correlates well with certain personality traits. Resistance to change is choice. But most importantly, resistance to change is frequently displayed as an emotional reaction. Goleman notes that we are self-deceivers. (2.76) We use our cognitive filters to block or distort information that does not suit our purpose. For example, I chose not to fit Goleman's six management styles into this work when Bass, Vroom and others have identified four. It is not convenient for me to grapple with that disconnect in the midst of this book because I think it would only add confusion to a topic that is already overloaded with information. That choice is a defense mechanism. There are many defense mechanisms available to us. Therapists group those defenses into three categories.

"Healthier clients rely on reality-respecting defenses (like intellectualization, rationalization, or undoing), while less advanced clients rely on reality-distorting defenses (such as projection or reaction formation). Our least advanced patients, on the other hand, utilize reality-denying defenses (including denial and splitting)." (2.77)

I think most of the terms used in that paragraph are commonly understood, except, perhaps for the term "splitting". Splitting is a defense whereby people and concepts are categorized drastically. I once worked with a person who immediately categorized everything I said as wrong. For example, we discussed a program change in a meeting one time and he was going along with our suggestion. All was well. Someone else had done the presentation and all of the talking. We reached agreement. And then one of the managers thanked me for helping them come to this conclusion. The uproar began. Anything that I favored was wrong. Anything that I had influenced was evil. So even though the six client managers wanted this change it was denied because one of the managers let slip that I had been involved in the conversations leading up to this meeting. That is splitting.

You have it in your organization. Have you heard "If he is in favor, then I am opposed." How many times do you see it in the news or hear it in political commentary. We veto ideas because we do not like the person that suggests it. Remember Vygotsky's concept of fossilized behaviors. We are all capable of the least-evolved behaviors. We all use the least advanced defense mechanisms. An emotionally intelligent manager needs to anticipate defensive reaction and strive for resonance. Goleman goes on to say "...this is the true work of the leader: to monitor the emotional tone of the team and to help its members recognize any underlying dissonance". (2.78)

Resistance to change is a natural human reaction. We desire stability in a world that is constantly changing. We have little say in the deaths of those we love, in the purchase and sales of the organizations we work for, in the choices made by our elected officials. Thus families, organizations and cultures strive to hold us in place so as to at least reduce the number of changes that impact their lives. (2.79)

As a matter of fact, we do so well at resisting change that McCrae and Costa initially concluded that people beyond the age of thirty would not change at all. (2.80) McCrae and Costa are the researchers most commonly associated with the Five-Factor theory of personality traits. Their opinion is rather polarizing. While they admit it is possible for people to change and admit that psychology might be able to help people change, they emphasize our resistance to change. (2.81) They agree that people up to the age of thirty appear to develop, but they say they can find no evidence of subsequent "development" - and thus they question the concept of developmentalism. (2.82)

Nearly the entirety of their book is devoted to criticism of the other theories of psychology. But in order to refute those other theories they first provide a brief description of each. That content is one of the redeeming values in their book. For example, they provide an excellent description of Jane Loevinger's expression of developmentalism as a socialization process. (2.83)

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Stage-1: Impulsive - the behavior of an infant.

Stage-2: Preconventional - focused on self.

Stage-3: Conventional - people live within the rules set by their social affiliations / peers.

Stage-4: Conforming - people who follow the rules, but are motivated by self-esteem.

Stage-5: Conscientious - motivated by principles while belonging to multiple social groups.

Stages-6 and 7: Postconventional - people that transcend their social environment.

\--

Kegan is the author that first brought Loevinger's concepts to my attention. It also seems that Vygotsky was saying much the same forty years before Loevinger. I admire Kegan because his theories seem to match a change that I experienced many years ago - something that I interpret to be a developmental shift. I admire the concept of personality traits because I have effectively used the predecessor tool and it seems to work. Personally, I find McClelland's work on motivations aligns well with my observations of people and yet, McCrae and Costa appear to question McClelland's methods and results. (2.84) McCrae and Costa question the value of the treatment processes used by Freud, Jung, Rogers and others and they question the results from Maslow's research. (2.85) In general, these authors are so focused on their own theory that they seem compelled to discount all other theories. However, they do say: "Yet we are not prepared to dismiss entirely the contributions of a number of distinguished thinkers who have written extensively on the development of personality in adulthood." (2.86)

I hope that by now you understand enough of my approach to realize that I have read extensively and I have tried to distill the essentials from many of those works into this single book. My goal is to collect and organize tools to help you. My search has been broad and at times I may have brought in too much material. So it would be easy to just ignore the concept of personality traits like I ignored Goleman's description of management styles. But I am an idealist. I believe there is a "truth" waiting to be found. I believe that all of these great thinkers have seen a glimpse of that truth. Thus I include the following list of personality traits for your reference.
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Openness

Down-to-earth - Imaginative

Uncreative - Creative

Conventional - Original

Prefer routine - Prefer variety

Uncurious - Curious

Conservative - Liberal

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Conscientiousness

Negligent - Conscientious

Lazy - Hardworking

Disorganized - Well-organized

Late - Punctual

Aimless - Ambitious

Quitting - Persevering

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Extraversion

Reserved - Affectionate

Loner - Joiner

Quite - Talkative

Passive - Active

Sober - Fun-loving

Unfeeling - Passionate

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Agreeableness

Ruthless - Softhearted

Suspicious - Trusting

Stingy - Generous

Antagonistic - Acquiescent

Critical - Lenient

Irritable - Good-natured

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Neuroticism

Calm - Worrying

Even-tempered - Temperamental

Self-satisfied - Self-pitying

Comfortable - Self-conscious

Unemotional - Emotional

Hardy - Vulnerable

\--

But I find it interesting that even though project managers seem to be among the most stubborn people I have met, somehow they managed to get together and create a single best practice guide on how to manage a project. It seems to me that data processing managers are among the most power-centric people I have met, yet, somehow, they managed to get together and create a single best practice guide on how to manage a data center. If we look at religion we see what is probably the most emotionally charged topic of contention now, and throughout history. And yet, I think it could be possible to collect representatives from each of those belief systems and it should be possible to identify about a dozen books that could be put into a time capsule to represent the traditional wisdom of humanity. Why then, is it so difficult to reach consensus on the topic of psychology?

As an idealist, all I can do is to look at each of these theories, read and learn from each and then try to distill those results into something you can use. In my opinion, each of the major schools of psychology is accurately representing what they have seen and measured. Freud found that we can consciously plan our actions and then discover that we did something unexpected. Skinner documented the predictability of reactions and described how to change behaviors through conditioning. Rogers worked with people and found that he could create an environment that would allow a person to change. McClelland studied, measured and documented a collection of unconscious motivations including achievement, affiliation, power and twenty or so others. Freud described the development of human sexual urges. Jung described the human personality as consisting of traits that are stable and aspects that develop. Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson, Loevinger, Kegan and others probed the developmental side of human personality. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicators were derived by exploring the traits identified by Jung. And now we have the Five-Factor Theory (FFT) as an upgrade to Myers-Briggs. As an idealist I accept that all of these are useful tools. I do not believe that any of them are holistic. Instead, I believe that each of them offers insight that serves a purpose. Therefore, even if these authors do not seem to want to play nice with each other, I am going to proceed with a description of personality traits as yet another piece of this puzzle that somewhere, somehow, fits in with the motivations studied by McClelland and the cognitive processes described by Bandura.

The definition of a motivation is "...a recurrent concern for a goal state based on a natural incentive - a concern that energizes, orients, and selects behavior." (2.87) The definition of a trait in "...endogenous Basic Tendencies that give rise to consistent patterns of thought, feeling, and actions." (2.88) Motivations can change. Traits, by definition, do not change. The five-factor model (FFM) for personality traits defines the thirty gradients that are listed in the list shown a few paragraphs earlier. (2.89) This is sometimes known as the OCEAN model - Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.

Rather than delve into the definition of each I propose that we review these traits as part of a comprehensive review of motivations, personal needs and social developmentalism. For the purpose of this illustration I offer the following description of an organizational approach that has been very popular in the USA for about twenty-years. Consider the following text.

"Today fund-raising organizations offer to provide professional coaches to help amateur athletes learn how to run a marathon. The system is simple. You sign up to participate. Then you need to solicit your friends to pledge $3,000 or more to charity on the condition that you complete the event. The organization then provides training opportunities so that you can meet and train with a professional coach and a group of fellow amateurs. The organization supports you by setting up refreshment stands for your training activities, by sending volunteers out to cheer you on and by supporting you during the actual race to ensure that you finish."

Now consider the motivations encapsulated in this organizational structure.

"Today fund-raising organizations (affiliation + power) offer to provide (affiliation + power) professional coaches (achievement + power) to help amateur athletes learn (affiliation + power) how to run a marathon (achievement + power). The system (power) is simple. You sign up to participate (affiliation). Then you need to solicit (power) your friends (affiliation) to pledge $3,000 or more (achievement + power) to charity (affiliation + achievement) on the condition that you complete (achievement + power) the event. The organization (power) then provides training opportunities (affiliation) so that you can meet and train (achievement + power) with a professional coach (affiliation + power) and a group of fellow amateurs (affiliation). The organization supports you (affiliation + power) by setting up refreshment stands for your training activities (power), by sending volunteers out to cheer you on (affiliation) and by supporting you during the actual race to ensure that you finish (achievement)."

Reconsider this now from the perspective of a hierarchy of needs.

"Today fund-raising organizations (social) offer to provide professional coaches (self-esteem) to help amateur athletes learn how to run a marathon (self-actualization). The system is simple (survival). You sign up to participate (self-esteem). Then you need to solicit your friends (social) to pledge $3,000 or more to charity (self-esteem) on the condition that you complete the event (self-actualization). The organization then provides training opportunities so that you can meet and train with a professional coach and a group of fellow amateurs (survival, social & self-esteem). The organization supports you by setting up refreshment stands for your training activities (safety + survival), by sending volunteers out to cheer you on (social) and by supporting you during the actual race to ensure that you finish (safety, survival, social, self-esteem and self-actualization)."

One more time. This time consider the developmental aspects.

"Today fund-raising organizations (organization) offer to provide professional coaches to help amateur athletes learn how to run a marathon (social). The system is simple (object). You sign up to participate (individual). Then you need to solicit your friends (group) to pledge $3,000 or more to charity (universal) on the condition that you complete the event (individual). The organization (organization) then provides training opportunities so that you can meet and train with a professional coach (group) and a group of fellow amateurs (social). The organization (organization) supports you by setting up refreshment stands for your training activities (social), by sending volunteers out to cheer you on (social) and by supporting you during the actual race (ecology) to ensure that you finish (individual)."

And now, we go through this same text searching for personality traits.

"Today fund-raising organizations offer to provide professional (conscientiousness) coaches to help amateur (neuroticism) athletes learn how to run a marathon. The system is simple (openness). You sign up to participate (agreeableness). Then you need to solicit your friends to pledge $3,000 or more to charity on the condition that you complete the event (conscientiousness). The organization then provides (conscientiousness) training opportunities (openness) so that you can meet (extraversion) and train (conscientiousness) with a professional coach and a group of fellow amateurs (agreeableness). The organization supports you by setting up refreshment stands for your training activities (neuroticism + conscientiousness), by sending volunteers out to cheer you on (extraversion + agreeableness) and by supporting you during the actual race to ensure that you finish (conscientiousness + neuroticism)."

Do you see how beautifully structured this organizational approach is. It appeals to all of the primary motivations. It carefully accommodates all of your personal needs. It packages an object (the organization) into an approach that appeals to the individual, taps into group resources, pulls a social team into an organization, manages the ecology of a chaotic event and packages the whole into a universal appeal to give to charity.

All the traits are covered. If you worry (neuroticism), then the organization will protect you. If are an extravert you have a team to affiliate with. If you are an introvert then you can run alone and still have private time with the coach. If you like something new (openness), then you can take on the whole package all at once. If you prefer your own routine, then this system allows you to gradually work up to the event. If you are agreeable, then you will be surrounded by a team of agreeable people. If you are critical, then you can set your own pace and still have the resources of the team to support you. If you are conscientious, then you get the fund raising done sooner and focus on going for the world record at race time. And if you have a hard time staying with your commitments, then the team will be there to provide peer pressure and advice to help you.

Whichever way you want to look at the psychology of this organizational approach it is well thought out. All of the primary motivations are matched. Your hierarchy of needs is covered. You can fit in anywhere along the developmental scale. And regardless of whatever mixture of traits you own, you fit in, somewhere, somehow. Here is where I value traits and yet diverge from their philosophy. We are all different. And a well designed human organization is going to accommodate people with the entire spectrum of personality traits. But we adapt, both in how we relate and in how we behave. Bandura illustrated this with the simple diagram shown below. (2.90)

We sense our environment and shape our behaviors accordingly. Our behaviors impact the environment and we get feedback. We then adapt our behaviors. For example, I score as an introvert on trait evaluations. Given my choice between going to dinner with a couple hundred project managers and having a conversation with one friend, I prefer the later. And yet, on numerous occasions people have pointed to me as an example of what an extravert looks like.

The way we adapt our traits to fit the situation is through roles. I have an actress friend who rates higher on neuroticism than I do. But when she stands in front of an audience she exudes a persona that is calm, even-tempered, self-satisfied, comfortable and hardy. She displays the persona of someone who should score low on the factors underlying neuroticism. She knows that to be successful on stage she must appear self-confident.

We adapt our traits by playing roles. (2.91) As Shakespeare once wrote "All the world's a stage." (2.92) We fool others by appearing to be what we would rather not be. We fool ourselves by adopting an identify. Our environment then constrains us to fill that role. And when the role runs against our tendencies, then we are negatively impacted. We are stressed. We are stretched and we are exhausted. Traits, it appears, are valuable in helping us align our preferences with our roles. But society has other plans for us. And thus, Bandura notes that traits only seem to account for about ten-percent of our behaviors. (2.93) Bandura goes on to suggest that we skip a lot of these complicated tests and just ask people to predict for themselves how they will behave. (2.94) In Bandura's theory of social cognition:

"People's conceptions about themselves and the nature of things are developed and verified through four different processes:  
Direct experience of the effects produced by their actions,  
Vicarious experience of the effects produced by somebody else's actions,  
Judgments voiced by others, and  
Derivation of further knowledge from what they already know using rules of inference."

Traits influence our actions but they do not determine our choices.

People who are strong in "conscientiousness" tend to do well with regimented jobs. I am good at showing up on time, every time, without fail. My actress friend struggles with this trait and is much happier with jobs where she has freedom to set her own schedule.

People who score high on "agreeableness" are excellent at customer service. When I am in customer service mode, I am very agreeable. When I am in project expediter mode I can be abrasive. People who have only seen me in one role think that is who I am.

People who are "open" to new ideas will hear new ideas. People who are closed to new ideas not only tune out what they are told, but their behavior discourages others from proposing new ideas.

Our behaviors impact our environments. And since you share that environment, your feedback influences you as a person and you will modify your future behaviors to minimize friction in that shared environment.

People who are "extraverted" are good at working with people. Extraversion is a trait useful in sales. When I teach, I am an extravert, but that is not my normal behavior. At the end of a long day I can compare body language and emotional tone with other teachers. Those even more introverted than I are exhausted. Those more extraverted than I will be fully energized and have a difficult time sleeping that night. But we all do the job. We play the role, and I, even though I am an introvert, play my role so well that many think I am an extravert. Thus, I am skeptical about using personality traits as a tool for job placement. I believe it is much more important for leaders to be sensitive to their environments. Leaders need to work for harmony and be sensitive to dissonance.

A Few Dangerous Characteristics

I previously mentioned the behavior called "splitting". Splitting means that the universe is divided into good and evil. Ideas and behaviors are labeled good or evil based upon the label already assigned to the person. Thus, every idea proposed by the Nazi government is evil and cannot be allowed into modern society. Every quality recommendation that comes from Japan is good and must be incorporated into American industry. The source of the idea predetermines the value we assign to the idea. We all do this. But doing it excessively devalues people and divides your organization into feuding camps.

"Narcissism" is another personality trait that we frequently encounter. (2.96) Most managers accept part of the credit for the work performed by their people. This is "natural". After all, we create the environment that allows people to be productive. But it can go too far. I am a creative person. When I was a programmer, I spent a lot of my nights and weekends developing little tools to make my job easier. I shared those tools with the people I worked with. Now I maintain a web site where I post my writings about project management, ITIL and other related topics. I once went to work in a company and soon learned that my manager was claiming that he had created all of those wonderful little tools that I brought with me. I thought this was odd. But what was even odder was that one of our directors was pulling my writings off my web site, stripping out my copyright and selling them as his own materials. Now, if they were simply crooks, I would have been disappointed. But when I confronted each of them they both responded with outrage. In both cases they were truly convinced that these were their ideas that somehow I had plagiarized. Code and documents that I created years before I met either of these people were, in their minds, their inventions. And they were not pretending their outrage. Both truly felt that because they had thought about doing something once upon a time they were now the creators of materials that it had taken me years to develop. Eventually they were both pushed out of that company, but not before they had done a lot of damage.

"Machiavellianism" is a colloquialism rather than a psychiatric definition. A person that exhibits Machiavellian tendencies uses people in a political manner. I worked for one vice president that was a master strategist. He would plan the placement of people to achieve his goals. If a project was blocked by one recalcitrant, he would promote, demote or transfer that person out of his way. And the project would move forward. He did not persuade the person to change their mind; he convinced them to change their location. He excelled at achieving strategic objectives. But some of those changes put political allies where they were neither suited nor skilled. Some of those changes hurt the company.

I doubt that a trait analysis would have altered the hiring decisions that brought in the splitter, the narcissists or the Machiavellian. But an emotionally intelligent leader would have caught onto those people sooner and minimized the damage. And that, finally, is the key point of this chapter. There are a lot of valuable tools to help leaders and develop managers. Ultimately, however, they all depend upon how well you watch, listen and sense what is actually going on in your organization.

Recap Again

Leadership begins with a vision.

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The vision needs to be inspirational and transformational.

The vision must relate to our personal needs from survival to self-actualization.

The vision must address the full spectrum of social needs from personal to ecological.

Layering is the ability to speak to multiple developmental levels simultaneously.

\--

A leader acts on situations.

\--

Telling, selling, participating and delegating are four leadership styles.

Teacher, consultant, team player and mentor are four roles that a leader adopts.

Authoritarian, consultative, group and delegated are four styles of decision making.

Delegating does not mean absence, it means trusting while communicating.

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People are driven by motivations for power, achievement and affiliation.

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The broader the social impact the greater the need for participative decision making.

People are resistant to change for personal and social reasons.

People bring personality traits with them.

People act through roles and those roles define expectations.

\--

A leader needs to be resonant with the organization.

\--

A leader needs to understand people.

A leader needs to protect the organization from destructive personality types.

A leader must be vulnerable.

\--

My advice to you is:

\--

Study Blanchard's recommendations from the One Minute Manager.

Work with Vroom's decision trees to understand participative management criteria.

Take a personality trait test and learn about yourself. (2.98)

Keep studying and keep practicing.

Read works by those who exhibit the greatest levels of social development.

\--

I recommend that you start with the religious books that match your culture because those works incorporate thousands of years of wisdom. I recommend that you read authors who demonstrate a concern for humanity as a whole. The authors I find the most enlightening are Jesus, Carl Rogers, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Peter Senge. I search for inclusiveness and the concept of the universal. Each of these authors seems to pull me towards self-actualization. In each I see management portrayed as a trusting delegation to the individual. Of course, their goals seem unreachable. But a well formulated vision should be challenging. For example, consider the following quote from Robert Greenleaf.

"I suggest these five words - beauty, momentaneity, openness, humor, and tolerance - as marking some dimensions of a lifestyle that is rooted in an inward grace: sensitive and aware, concerned for the ever-present neighbor, both the well-fed one next door and the hungry on the other side of the earth, seeing and feeling what is right in the situation." (2.99)

You are a leader. Each and every one of us is called to be a leader. I lead my life. I lead people through my example. You lead people when you ask a question or share an answer. If you are a manager, then you are leading people. I hope you understanding that even if you manage no one but yourself, you are still a leader.

In closing, I think there are themes associated with each historic era. Rousseau's Social Contract sparked a series of revolutions. I think the theme that exemplified management in the era from about 1859 to 1962 was captured by Charles Darwin as "survival of the fittest". Darwin wrote at a time when society has on the verge of acceptance. (2.100) If he had written any sooner his works would have been ignored. If he had written any later he would have been displaced by others. In 1859 Darwin brought forth the scientific theory that fit his society. At the time the United States was striving to fulfill the concept of "manifest destiny" - the right of these rebellious colonialists to occupy the North American continent from coast to coast. Britain was still solidifying her global reach. Industrial battles were fought and the best of the best emerged as monopolies. The powerful giants of industry battled each other and management became a science. Management, with few exceptions, was based on conquest and power. The most powerful were promoted. The weak were discarded. Darwin captured the spirit of that time and was used to justify the results. Survival of the fittest was a theme for management and politics.

In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring and brought the word "ecology" to public attention. (2.101) Winner takes all, manifest destiny and survival of the fittest are still common management themes. But slowly, a concern for the ecology is creeping into our lives. Darwin published in 1859 and it was not until the 1930s that the public finally realized the value of his work. Carson published in 1962. We are close to the fiftieth anniversary of her publication. Perhaps it is time to finally recognize that what she said is just as much about management and leadership as it is about fish and birds. A wise leader is one that understands the impact of his or her choices on individuals, groups, teams, the organization, society and beyond that to the ecology that surrounds us. A wise leader will cultivate an organization that grows and prospers in a system of interrelated connectedness. That starts very simply by taking the time to realize what impact your actions will have on those around you. Then, ask, how you can lead by serving.

Case Study on Leadership

I began this chapter by setting a goal to describe a framework useful in assessing current and future leaders. The purpose for this case study is to apply the content of this book to the examination of a real life work environment.

Once upon a time a new CIO was appointed to head the IT organization for the USA operations of a large multi-national corporation. She studied the environment and found that very few of their projects were finishing successfully. She knew the benefits of the Project Management Institute (PMI) framework and she instructed her people to become certified as Project Management Professionals (PMP). Being the CIO in a large corporation she was able to provide funding to make PMP training available to her people. Many of her people did as she commanded and passed the test to become PMPs. But the projects continued to flounder.

Having been in the industry for some time, she realized that this organization needed a central Program Management Office (PMO). She designated a person to organize a PMO and gave them funding to build project management templates. But many of the people in her organization were not able to make proper use of those templates. Upon investigation, the senior managers that report to this CIO found that their people were too distracted by daily interruptions to be able to learn how to use the new templates.

Now the problem was clearer. Interruptions to daily activities prevented the organization from making appropriate use of the new project management templates. Failing to use those templates made it more difficult for people to finish their projects successfully. And failing to complete their projects successfully was blocking progress. Thus, the obvious solution was to launch an initiative to address those daily interruptions. That initiative suffered a painful launch and took a long time to penetrate the organization.

Question 1: Based upon what I have described in this case study, which style of management is being used to decide which initiative to next launch - authoritarian, consultative, participatory or delegation?

Question 2: Which decision making style is best suited for decisions that will impact an entire organization and spill over to impact the parent corporation?

Question 3: Which of the three primary motivations appears to be driving these decisions - achievement, affiliation or power? What evidence supports your opinion?

Question 4: Assuming that the politics of this organization are such that it is necessary for this CIO to launch another initiative anyway, what advice would you offer her? Can you outline the steps that could produce more successful results?

My responses to those questions is summarized below.

Answer 1: It appears to me that these decisions are being made through an authoritarian style. I tried to lead you to that conclusion by the choice of words I used in describing these decisions. But the words I used reflect the opinions I gleaned while working there.

Answer 2: The broader the impact, the more important it is to broaden the decision making process. I would suggest that a participatory style is more likely to get results. Otherwise the tendency is for people to do what they are told without accepting any responsibility for the results.

Answer 3: In my opinion, these decisions are driven by power. Earlier in this chapter I described political solutions to problems as a use of power. Achievement is oriented towards measurements and a moderate level of risk. Affiliation is oriented towards low risk and consensus. The power motivation leads to riskier decisions and implementing major initiative after major initiative is a very risky way to run a business. The power motivation also gets gratification from launching the initiative and provides little incentive to follow up afterwards...

Answer 4: I recommend beginning with vision. Clearly this CIO has a great depth of knowledge and has the insight to understand how to leverage trends. But rather than launching an initiative I recommend creating a vision statement and then delegating to her direct reports the responsibility to implement. I suggest that those direct reports then mimic the behaviors of their leader and delegate downward as well. If consensus is achieved from the bottom up, then there is a higher probability that people will take ownership. But this will not be simple. The organization has learned how to work with the current structure. The people that work there understand how to follow orders. It is not easy for people to learn how to manage themselves and take responsibility for the results. They will resist that responsibility. But you need to start somewhere.

*****

**Chapter 3: Workplace Ecology**

Organizations are built by people and for people. People are our greatest asset, the weakest link and our only hope. We need to value people where they are and as they are. Consider the following illustration.

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Take pride in what you have done.

I went running the other day and my back and hip were in terrible pain. I ran 10 miles, in pain. Another guy came onto the trail mid-way and was about 50 feet in front of me. His hair was perfectly styled. His outfit had a unique cut I have never seen in the running shops. This guy has money. And he looked like he was not working at all. I was sweating and had to keep wiping my brow. He never broke a sweat. On any other day I would have run right past him in no time. But on this day I struggled to try to not fall any further behind. Eventually I passed him just before he turned off to the parking lot where he must have left his car. And it came to me that this is life. Some of us run and never break into a sweat and have everything. Some of us struggle and cannot even keep up because of the loads we carry. All we are asked to do is to run the race that is given to us, and not the race that is someone else's.

Your life has been as much unlike the average Orange County preppy as my run was unlike that guy I saw on the trail. You struggle to just keep going and others do not understand. To them, working 8-hours, buying a house and raising a family are so easy they never break into a sweat. For you, getting up in the morning can be a battle of major proportions. You cannot breeze through life like some people do. But I wonder how many in Orange County could bare the load that you carry?

Run the race that God gave to you and take pride that he trusts you with such a load. Remember Job and be prepared for friends that have no ability to understand what life is like for you. Now it is your turn to contemplate, gather yourself and have patience for the next adventure. You are exceptional at re-inventing yourself. And you have been as faithful as Job through it all. Take care my friend.

\--

I wrote that note for a friend who left her job to go on medical disability. There was a disconnect between her personality and the role she played at work. That disconnect led to stress that manifested itself through physical symptoms. Many of us work in jobs that do not fit our personalities. In the first part of this chapter I will examine the way our primary motivations relate to our position in the work environment. Next I am going to describe communication techniques we can use to reshape our environments. Throughout this chapter my theme is one of integration. We need to bring all of the pieces together into an ecology - an environment capable of supporting life.

Organizational Structures

The most classic representation of an organization is that of a pyramid. Consider the organizational structure used by the Egyptians during the time of Moses. Pharaoh ruled absolutely. Supervisors, such as Moses, acted on behalf of Pharaoh. Slaves did the work. On rare occasions a supervisor moved from being a supervisor to being a member of slave caste. Joseph, the patriarch that came before Moses, moved from being a slave to being a supervisor. In general, though, the role you were born into determined the role you held for life.

We see this same structure in place today in the Catholic Church. The Pope rules for life. The priestly hierarchy lies in the middle with the followers at the base.

Frederick Taylor's work on organizational management began with a very similar structure. A business was owned by a capitalist. The capitalist hired managers. The managers hired workers. Part of Taylor's campaign was to protect those workers from abuse. And part of his campaign was to aid management in wresting control from the workers. Workers, at that time, understood how to use the tools to do the work. Managers, at that time had little understanding of the work or the tools. Taylor explained the application of mechanization in a way that allowed management to make intelligent decisions.

There have been experiments with alternative structures. Marx and Lenin thought they could flatten the structure. Lenin put his concepts into practice in Russia at about the same time Taylor was working in the USA. But the communistic alternative soon resembled the classic when a new elite arose. Party members gave themselves special privileges and the people suffered. It seems that this is the way people organize themselves. We dream of other arrangements, but none of the numerous experiments so far have produced anything that could sustain itself.

Consider the self-serving end described by many religions. "Our" God will triumph. The believers will be rewarded. Non-believers will suffer. Over and over this same pattern is repeated in the best thinking from those who are the most detached from the constraints of this very pattern. And if those with nothing to gain from the preservation of this pattern cannot come up with anything better, then we seem to be stuck with it, at least for now.

The best compromise proposed so far is to make the roles transitory. In most modern societies, for example, the role of ruler is temporary. In most modern industries, the barrier between worker and manager is permeable. The classic American dream is that anyone who wants can go from humble beginnings and rise to the top of a pyramid. But is that dream anything more than an illusion? Consider it from the point of view of the motivations of power, achievement and affiliation.

Changing roles from worker to manager requires effort and opportunity. You might work hard, but your value is not recognized. You can work to finish degrees or certifications and still be ignored. You can identify a key innovation that will revolutionize the industry and get no credit. Or, you can just be standing in the right spot at the right time and an opportunity lands at your feet. In general, though, those who are content to focus on affiliation are not going to put in the effort required to change their position. And those who desire power are not going to be content until they succeed at changing their position. Those with the greatest need for power will complete the prerequisites required for advancement and persevere until they find an opportunity that fills their need. Those who are content with affiliation do not feel the internal pressure to change the situation. Whether it is what they desired or not, they focus on what is achievable. Those who need power work the system to get the power they desire.

In between lay those that have a need for achievement. Power does not bring achievement. Power issues edicts for others to act on. If you desire achievement then you need to get into the middle. The middle layer of an organization consists of those with enough power to shape their environment, enough affiliation to stay connected and enough achievement motivation to drive them into this layer. It is hard to differentiate yourself enough to get out of the bottom layer. It is hard to hang onto what little you have when you are in the middle. Unless you are motivated you either never rise to this level or you rise only to be bounced back to the bottom. Please indulge me as I illustrate this point with a short story from years ago.

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Some of my favorite times with my father were when we went fishing. There was a small pond in Pennsylvania where we would go in the summers. We went fishing with my Uncle in Kentucky. We went fishing in the Mississippi when we visited Granddad. We went fishing in the nearby lake when we moved to California. But my favorite story about fishing is when we went fishing in Maryland.

We were staying in a cabin that belonged to one of my great aunts and they had a pier on the lake. We would go there in the evenings and it was nice and cool. As a matter of fact it got a bit chilly sometimes and I remember wearing a jacket. Twilight was the best time for fishing. All the bugs were out and we would be busy swatting bugs with one hand and holding the fishing pole with the other. I was nine and this was great. We generally caught a few blue gill and we would cook them up fresh for dinner. Dad taught me to clean the fish and mom let me fry them myself.

One evening I was putting on my jacket, swatting mosquitoes and holding onto my fishing pole all at the same time when I hooked something. It tugged and I tugged back. It tugged again and I went into the water with the pole. I sank to the bottom and looked around at all the stuff floating around me. This was interesting, but I thought it best to head back up to the surface and get some air. The problem was my boots and jeans and jacket and all the stuff that a boy keeps in his pockets added quite a bit of weight. So I jumped and I just made it. I grabbed some air, let out a shout and went back to the bottom. Now I am not sure what I expected to happen, but going back to the bottom was not it. And while it was fascinating seeing the lake from down there it was starting to get dark and I thought it best to get back to the cabin fairly soon. I jumped again, flapped my arms a bit, grabbed as much air as I could, yelled once more and sank to the bottom again.

By now I was getting cold. And this was not where I wanted to be. So once more I jumped up, gasped for air, yelled something, and then I kept floating upward. Now this was a surprise. I figured I was about due to be going back down again by now, but instead I was still going upward. Dad had grabbed hold of my jacket and he was trying to get me back onto the dock. Once my arms made contact I pushed up and slide back onto the dock. My teeth were chattering and I was about as cold as I could be. But somehow I asked Dad why it took him so long to pull me back out. He put his jacket around me and we started walking up to the cabin. As we walked he showed me the biggest catfish I had ever seen. And he explained that he had to land the catfish before he reeled me back in because he knew I would not want that catfish to get away.

That was the very best catfish I ever tasted.

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I desired to rise from the bottom of that lake and yet my drive for achievement could not get me there. It took an external intervention to create the opportunity for me to change my position. Many of us find ourselves in the same situation where we work. We are drowning at the bottom of the lake and cannot rise from there.

Many people desire power and find themselves trapped in the worker caste. Many people want to accomplish something but find themselves trapped in a repetitive operation with no chance to show what they can do. Those people go home frustrated. In today's organizational structure they only have two choices - fulfill what seems to be an empty dream or fulfill a role that does not fit. For most people the American dream is part myth, part illusion and partially a guilt inducing delusion. The myth says that anyone can succeed. We perpetuation this illusion by celebrating the few that are on top. And then we blame those that languish and imply it is their own fault. But it has always been this way. Our Pharaoh's have seldom been the best of the best. Our supervisors have seldom been all that different from those they manage. And the great mass of workers has always included those who could have been a better Pharaoh, a better CEO or a better manager.

Now since this is a recurring theme we should be able to study how society has responded in the past and learn from those experiments. Consider, for example, the governance implemented in the United States of America. Here there are three branches of government - the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. This system is based on traditions carried over from England. And that system is based upon the experiments carried out throughout the history of Europe and the Middle-East.

Now, if we temporarily ignore the bottom layer - the people governed by this system-we can focus on the structure of this governance system. I do not think you will find it too hard to ignore the governed for a few minutes because we have examples throughout history of entire governments ignoring the governed to such an extent that the governed eventually revolt. Let us not ignore them for that long, but instead let us ignore them just for the point of this illustration.

Once we do that we can more clearly see that the governmental body is not just the three segments defined in the US Constitution. The vast bulk of the governance is actually an enormous body of administrators. These are the operational parts of the structure. These are the people that implement the orders from the executives, fulfill the mandates from the legislators and adapt to the decisions made by the judiciary. And if we probe a little deeper into that structure we find that most of those people are charged with the task of repeatable operations while a few are charged with the task of changing those operations.

If we probe deeper into the other segments of this governmental body we will also find divisions of labor. One of the most important such divisions is the separation of power implemented through a bicameral legislature. The system used today throughout much of society is based upon an experiment that began when the English created a House of Lords and a House of Commons. The British House of Lords and the US Senate represent those with power. We may complain that this does not seem fair, but it is designed that way. The authors of the US Constitution desired to balance the whims of the common people with the long-term needs of the elite. If we have a complaint today, then our complaint should be directed towards the British House of Commons or the US House of Representatives. Because of the economic pressures of campaigning, because the people who want those roles are driven by a need for power and because we tolerate it, our representatives are less in touch with the common person than we might desire.

I do not fault those representatives. I know my representative and he is an admirable person. I knew him before he became our representative and he is still very much the same person he was before. And so this leads me to question which part of this is myth and which is reality. Was the US House of Representatives ever intended to represent the common people? I think not. I think that if we go back to the history of legislative bodies those bodies have always been created to both represent the governed and to protect the rulers. The legislative bodies in Europe came about when the governed were able to separate themselves into castes of workers and merchants. The monarchs of those days agreed to a legislative body in order to channel the merchants' desires into a structure that allowed the monarchs to retain most of the power they then held. Thus, it is my supposition that the purpose for the US Senate is to represent those with power. It is my belief that the purpose for the US House of Representative is to represent those driven by achievement. The lines get blurred because the merchant class today is so permeated with those desiring power that the drive for achievement is hard to find.

But think about the history of most "new" companies. One person has a vision. One person sets out to build something - a better mouse-trap or a better potion to take care of some need. Companies are begun by people that want to build something. If they fail, then they are gone. If they succeed, then those who desire power quickly descend on this organization and soon the founder is ousted. Over and over this cycle repeats itself. An innovator creates only to be tossed out of the company that he or she founded. Those innovators are the merchants that the House of Representatives serve.

Who then serves those that focus on affiliation? I believe it is the judiciary. In concept, the judiciary is impervious to pressure by the powerful and immune to temptation from those who want to use governance to further their need to make things better and better. Over and over again the judiciary steps away from the opportunity to reshape society for the better. Environmentalists become infuriated because the judiciary will not help them achieve their goals. The powerful are infuriated because they cannot fund campaigns to replace the appointed judiciary. The judiciary fills its role by buffering society from the desires of the powerful and the goals of those who want achievements. Allow me to recap.

Reaching the top of the pyramid is a challenging task. The reward to those on top is power. Power was traditionally measured by the ability to command masses of people. Power today is more commonly assessed with wealth. This same challenge existed even during the times when the elite obtained their positions through birth because even those born to be king could only obtain their crown if they survived the competition from those who worked to deny them that role. The people with the greatest need for power are the people that will work the hardest to give themselves power. Thus, power motivated people always take the top most positions in any structure.

Throughout history the great majority have been excluded from the competition for the top positions. People without the need for power do not try to climb the pyramid. People who are blocked from climbing the pyramid assume roles that fit their environment in order to reduce the strain they experience from being denied what they want. Thus, the great majority find their lives focused on affiliation. They affiliate with friends and family. They affiliate by joining cliques and forming unions.

Throughout history there have been people that want to change things. They are motivated to make things better. The term used to describe the desire to improve is achievement. When all wealth was held by a small elite, those that wanted to achieve worked for those elite. Along the way a merchant class evolved and finally gained enough power to contest the exclusive rights of the elite. Indeed, one of the justifications given for the revolution in which the Protestants split from the Catholic Church was an abuse of power. The middle managers in the Protestant organization - the priests and theologians - then worked with the executives - the monarchs - to redefine the structure of their organization. The result in most cases was to weaken the role of the executive and implement some structural checks-and-balances.

Consider the structure adopted by the Presbyterian Church. The role of the pastor in a Presbyterian Church is very weak compared to that of the priest serving a Catholic congregation. The focus of power in the Presbyterian Church is in an elected body called the "Session". The pastor is hired by the Session and can be fired. In contrast, a Catholic priest is appointed to his position by his manager and can only be removed from this position by someone in the hierarchy of church power.

Another change implemented by many Protestants is the addition of a third governance body. In the Presbyterian Church this third body consists of people elected to the position of Deacon. A Presbyterian deacon is responsible for connecting families with the church infrastructure. The mission given to the deacons is that of affiliation - connectivity. Deacons are supposed to make a body of governance feel like a family.

In practice, the pastor in most growing churches is focused on power and expresses his vision for the future in a way that the Session can act on. In thriving churches the Session is focused on achievement. Session sets goals and implements projects to meet those goals. In some churches those roles are reversed. I was on the Session in one church where the Session tried to set the vision and critiqued the pastor for failing to make it happen. We succeed at proving that reversing these roles is counter-productive.

Think of the same model in a business organization. The CEO sets the vision. Middle management acts on that vision and achieves goals. Asking middle management to set a global vision will fail. But ignoring middle management when setting a corporate vision will also fail. Vision needs to come from a point that has authority over the entire span-of-control. Vision needs to be participatory or those that it is imposed on will resist.

If I extend this concept into a business environment, I come up with the following two models for an organization.

Vision must be adopted at the top and leverages the power of the executive body to give it authority. Strategy comes from middle management and can be formalized in a PMO (Project Management Office). Changes are imposed on the organization. We need to assess the effect those changes have. Then we need to resume consistency and repeatability in operations. To implement this we have vision, governance, projects, operations and a foundational layer focused on customer satisfaction. But there is one limit to this model. This is a logical model for processing change. This is not a model for organizational structure. The problem with using this model as an organizational structure is that both governance and assessment are focused on achievement. We need an alternative that balances all three of the primary work place motivations.

There is a gap. And when there is a gap, then there is going to be historical evidence of people trying to fill that gap. Think about the companies that you have worked for or understand. Which department in those organizations fills the role assigned to the deacons in a Presbyterian Church? Is it the HR (human relationship) department? Has all responsibility for touchy-feeling stuff be packaged up and handed off to HR? Consider the role the judiciary plays in government. The judiciary is supposed to be neutral. Is your HR department neutral? Is your HR department willing to make an impartial decision that reflects the best interests of the employee and their manager? I think not. Every HR department that I have seen is an extension of executive management. The charter for HR departments today is to protect the corporation from lawsuits. There is nothing in that charter that gives HR sufficient autonomy to make an impartial decision.

But there are other arms in corporate governance. Do they fill this need? For example, legislation in the USA requires corporations to have an autonomous auditing body that is designed to be immune to executive pressure. Why have these been created? Because power corrupts. Because the only way to contain the desire for power is to balance competing interests in a system of checks and balances. But is your auditing body interested in the affiliation needs of your employees? Does your auditing body represent the interests of the workers? I think not. But I believe there is a structure here that could be adapted to the purpose. If the HR department truly was an independent body with responsibility to report to the public then we could create the appropriate set of checks and balances.

But since that does not exist, we need to go back further in time and see what else has been tried. Quality circles brought workers together to search for innovations. Quality circles died because management did not share power. Scanlon Plans predate quality circles. Where they are respected they deliver results. Where they go against the corporate grain, they fail. Both, however, represent a behavioral pattern. Executives have power and are reluctant to share. Middle management is focused on achievement and measures their progress with charts and graphs. People need affiliation as well as power and achievement. People are trapped at the bottom of the pyramid even though they have the insight and talents to change the organization. Modern organizations work better than medieval organizations, but modern organizations have a hole in their structure. Power and achievement are recognized and valued. Affiliation is not.

If we keep going back in history we next come to the communistic and socialistic movements. The Soviet revolution of 1917 is well noted for introducing communism into governance. Not so well remembered, however, are the quiet revolutions that swept Europe following World War II. Communism might be waning now, but Socialism is not yet dead. Both movements sought to change society to ensure that power was not concentrated too tightly, to ensure that achievement goals did not trample on individuals and to ensure that society was just to all. I wish I knew more about what life was actually like in a communistic society, but from what I have read there was an effort to implement bicameral governance in industry. Executives were charged with meeting the goals set by the central party and with ensuring worker satisfaction as assessed by the local party. The experiment failed but I bring it up now to further illustrate the existence of a gap in modern organizational structures. The communists, and to some extent the socialists, have sought to fill that gap by introducing organizational bodies responsible for shepherding the affiliation motive.

At the same time that those experiments were underway there was parallel effort elsewhere. Marx looked at the concentration of power into fewer and fewer hands and predicted a revolution. The Soviet revolution of 1917 was one such revolution. But there was a revolution already underway in the USA that has often been just as violent. Efforts to unionize in the USA have led to shooting, bombings, arrests and mass upheavals. The history of this movement is filled with violence, orchestrated by the government, by corporations and by the unions themselves. Unions, today, form a parallel governance structure within an organization. Employees have a corporate manager and a union representative. There are executives responsible for the corporation and executives responsible for the union. Sometimes these bodies work together. But, by nature, they are in competition. Both seem to be led by people that desire power. Both use metrics to justify their positions and set achievement goals. But does either side actually do a better job today of facilitating the affiliation need of their people?

Consider again the deacons in the Presbyterian Church. Deacons have no power. Deacons do not go to Session meetings, do not run committees and do not run projects. This is intentional. Deacons have no power. Having no power allows the Deacons to focus on affiliation. The existence of unions, communists, socialists, Scanlon Plans and quality circles all give evidence of an un-met need in modern organizations. But what is the typical response from executive management? Typically they simply delegate this responsibility to the same managers that they hired to represent their needs with those workers. This is a conflict of interest. I cannot represent management and represent labor without falling short on one side or the other. Consider the following evaporating cloud. Given the conflicting goals of taking care of their department and meeting the organizational needs, most managers flounder, choose one over the other, and stop struggling with the choice. Given the directive to accomplish, most managers are either going to focus on goals or focus on people.

The one new twist on this old theme is that of project management. In many locations this just adds yet more conflict to the managerial workload. But I hear stories about organizations experimenting with something different. I hear about companies where the employee manager is focused on his or her personnel and the project manager is responsible for the accomplishments. Here then we have a structure that aligns with human nature.

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Power, for better or worse, is held by those with the greatest need for power. In an enlightened organization, those executives know how to share power.

Achievement is all about goals, metrics and accomplishments. Those with the need to achieve will gravitate towards these positions. Typically the best middle managers are those that want to achieve. Middle managers motivated by power are simply putting in time waiting to move upward. Middle managers motivated by affiliation will struggle with the hard decisions and the stress will destroy them if they do not to move elsewhere. In many modern corporations the role of middle manager is being replaced by project management.

Affiliation is a powerful human need. It is seldom recognized in modern corporations. Those corporations that understand this need are organizing themselves so that employees have a personnel manager tasked with the well being of the employee. This personnel manager represents the employee. The project manager represents the organization. Implementing this structure creates checks and balances.

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Roles aligned with Motivations

The structural change that I recommend relies on roles. The "Focus Manager" is charged with getting things done. The "Personnel Manager" is charged with ensuring the longevity of the relationship. I think we have all seen plenty of illustrations of managers that focus on tasks. This is the traditional role for a middle manager. This is the role typically assigned to a project manager. I do not think it is safe, however, to assume that you know what I mean here by "Personnel Manager". So let me start by first describing a matrix organization.

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Functional: The functional manager is responsible for the workers and for accomplishing the work. Workers continue in this job indefinitely.

Weak Matrix: The functional manager is responsible for the workers and also gives those people work assignments. A project manager gives those workers additional work and requests that the functional manager allow the workers enough free time to work on the project.

Balanced Matrix: There is a balance between the roles of the functional manager and the project manager. Balance is something that is always precarious and so this structure typically shifts to either the weak or strong matrix.

Strong Matrix: The project manager assigns most of the work but needs to coordinate with the functional manager when there is a conflict. The functional manager provides support resources to help the workers and has a budget to pay them when the project ends.

Projectized: The project manager is responsible for getting the work completed and for the workers. When the project ends all of the workers need to find another project.

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Allow me to illustrate these structures through two examples.

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I once worked on a large project run by one of the big five accounting firms. Most of us on that project were contractors assigned to work for the employees of the accounting firm. All of the contractors were concerned about continuity. Changes happened and suddenly people would be dropped. We all knew that the project would eventually end and so we all took time to stay connected with people that could generate our next contracting assignment. For us this was a projectized organizational structure. Our tenure was directly tied to this one project.

In contract, the employees of the accounting firm worked in a strong matrix organization. They each had a home office and a "Personnel Manager". Today the consulting company that I work for has a similar arrangement. I am paid a salary and I have continuous employment. I work projects and each project is temporary. I have a boss who is focused on this project and on the long term relationship with this specific customer. My other boss is focused on maintaining the relationship with key employees while ensuring there is appropriate staffing for all projects. But is it not just the switch from a projectized structure to a strong matrix that makes this work. The key to making this work is to have two bosses with different goals.

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One of the locations where I saw this put to best use was in a company that outsourced the database administration group. The personnel manager for that group focused on building the competency of his team. They practiced installations so that they were proficient when the customer needed an installation. They practiced recovery from database crashes to ensure they could minimize the downtime if a production database crashed. They spent time every week in training session to ensure everyone on the team was up to date on the latest technology. That team idolized their outsource manager and did whatever it took to succeed. And the functional managers those people worked for loved the results.

A few years later I ran into that same personnel manager at another location. Many of the people from his old team had followed him to this new location and the enthusiasm was just as high as I remembered. They made an offer and I joined the team. There was, however, one difference. When this team worked as contractors in an outsourcing arrangement they billed by the hour. All of those hours practicing installations, practicing recoveries and learning new technologies were billed to that client at an hourly rate. That personnel manager made money by having his teams do work that was outside the scope of their contract. This time that same manager was part owner of the company. Do you think he wanted to spend any of his money on training? And here we encounter the problem with organizational structures. People find the best possible way to maximize their personal gain from any structure. In the industry this practice is called "gaming". (3.1)

John C. Bogle goes so far as to describe much of modern corporate management as efforts by executive management to "game" the system-to rig the results for their personal profit. In The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism Bogle outlines the pitfall created by modern Management by Objective (MBO) programs. Managers make decisions every day that must weigh the long term good with the short term gain. The training the aforementioned personnel manager gave his team was an investment. It was beneficial to the team and to the customer. But the motivation for doing it was to increase the billable hours and thus pocket more money. The motivation was not aligned with the best long term interests of the company paying the bills even if the results proved beneficial.

I have tried to illustrate this dilemma in the evaporating cloud shown above. I suggest, however, that we not discount the approach simply because it can be abused. Every system can be gamed. The way to minimize the conflict in this cloud is to focus on alignment. And the way to create and maintain alignment is to communicate - which is the second major topic for this chapter.

Before we move onto the topic of communication, allow me to recap. The work place motivations of power, achievement and affiliation are displayed in the typical organizational pyramid. Those that need power will obtain power. Those that want to achieve will lose the battle for power to those with a greater motivation. The people that cannot obtain power and are blocked from achievement will focus on affiliation. We cannot change this and should not expect to see results in the future that differ from what we see today.

We can, however, learn from the past. The system of checks and balances has done a reasonable job of minimizing the excesses of the past. People will always distort a system to maximize their personal gain. Appropriate counter-measures can minimize the damage. Thus, the USA has a bicameral legislature that keeps check on each other and on the executive. In theory the executive branch displays power while one branch of the legislature is oriented towards achievement. The judiciary provides a check on both the executive and judiciary and is the governmental body that aligns best with affiliation.

We can learn from other organizational structures. The organizational structure in the Presbyterian Church splits leadership into three segments - pastoral, session and deacons. The deacons focus on affiliation. Of course, it is easy to say that what applies to one religious order has little relevance to modern multinational corporations. Remember, however, that the idealistic implementation of communism divided power within each organization between those focused on the product and those focused on the people. We may be tempted to discount that effort because it is considered a failure, but the same structure was being created elsewhere in different guises at the same time. The modern union is focused on the needs of the workers while "management" is focused on the needs of the corporation. Sadly, that polarity is divisive. But, if the Presbyterians, communists and union movements have all created the same organizational structure, then there must be some underlying alignment between that structure and human nature. The system that today encourages the use of a management pairing is the Project Management Institute in their definition of a strong matrix organization. A strong matrix gives each worker a reporting manager that continues and a project manager that is temporary. This structure seems to align well with human nature and seems to be suitably packaged to be more palatable to modern multinationals than is the same structure when developed by Presbyterians, communists or unionist.

There is an old saying that we need wisdom to know what we can change and patience to accept what we cannot change. I cannot change human nature. I cannot change the recurring pattern that gives power to those that most desire power. I can, however, do my part to ensure that the people I work with have an environment, an ecology, that provides for all of their work place needs. I do my part in creating that ecology by communicating.

Communications

Communication is a vast and complex subject. I propose the diagram shown below as a starting place for our study of this topic. What I endeavor to show in that diagram is the correlation between the size of the social setting and the tools that are useful in communication. In the next section of this chapter I will briefly survey those tools and then connect back to the theme of reshaping the workplace ecology.

The first social setting shown on that diagram is "self". Today we tend to discount "self" as a communication media. Today we cannot sit without having music, radio, television or some other electronic media readily converting our monologues into a type of dialogue. The only way to experience monologue is when there is no other communication occurring. For the purpose of this survey I do not count as monologue the typical comic routine. (3.2) While comics, politicians, teachers and executives tend to speak without regard for the response from their listeners they are not immune to the reciprocated communication even if the audience response is non-verbal. Instead, when I use monologue in this conversation I refer to those conversations that one has with oneself. Meditation is a traditional form of monologue. Journaling is another type of communication where you communicate with yourself. Both techniques are extremely valuable in focusing yourself and seeking alignment within the chaos of our widely scattered emotions and drives. Without self-alignment, it is difficult to achieve group alignment.

Between monologue and dialogue I introduced a category labeled "asynchronous". Asynchronous communication is today so specialized that I believe it deserves recognition as an approach mid-way between monologue and dialogue. You probably use asynchronous communication today when you send emails, write blogs or write documents. This book, for example, is intended as a dialogue, not a monologue. Aspects of it stem from my efforts at journaling and meditation. Parts of this book come about from a type of dialogue known as prayer and parts come from dialogues with friends and colleagues. But most of the content of this book is being written as a time-delayed conversation between the two of us. I speak in the "now' that is my time, but my goal is for you to participate in the conversation during the "now" that is your time. Thus we create a time delayed dialogue.

Dialogue is an ancient form of communication. (3.3) In the mid-twentieth century Martin Buber rejuvenated the definition of that term. (3.4) Buber focused on intent. I can communicate with you like you are a person that I intend to relate with or I can communicate with you like you are an object that I intend to use. The possible outcomes are illustrated in the following table. According to Buber, real dialogue only occurs when we both work at relating to the other as unique people with differing perspectives. For the purpose of this topic I am introducing the words "conversation" and "parallel" to designate other types of communication between two people.

A "parallel" experience occurs when two people have the same sensory inputs without relating to each other in the process. Watching television is a very popular form of parallel communication. Two people can see the same communication, hear the same words and sense the presence of each other without actually relating to each other. Parallel communication occupies time and provides the illusion of communication. We take this same behavior with us into the work place when we attend meetings and listen to presentations. We see the images projected onto the screen at the same time that others do. We hear the same words that others hear, and yet we do not engage in the process.

The type of communication that is deeper than the parallel experience is what we typically call conversation. Conversation differs from what Buber calls dialogue in that we fail to connect at our deepest level. Somewhere inside each of us is the self that is real. We hide that self from our self with a self-image - a set of delusions about who we are.

We further mask even that self-image with projections of who we want people to think we are. For example, there is a disconnect today between the self that I am, the self that I want to be and the self that other's think I am. My inner self wants to change the world and make it better. The self that people see where I work is a quiet project manager that does not know how to play the games that one must play in order to gain power. In between lies my self-image. My self-image is my own personal delusion. It buffers me from the disconnect between my motivation to make the world better and the reality that I possess little power to change even the organization in which I work. We all have this disconnect. Some of us mask it by pretending it does not exist. We say "Oh that is not important to me." We lie to ourselves and to others when we pretend that there is no gap between who we are, who others think we are and who we wish we could be. Dialogue can only occur when our true self connects with the true self in the person we engage.

When asked to recall his experiences of true dialogue Buber noted that they were few. We protect ourselves by blocking attempts at dialogue. If the momentary instance in which I open my soul to you is not reciprocated, then I again raise my protective barriers. Yet we persist in this effort and you momentarily reveal your true self. If I see that opportunity and if I somehow reciprocate in a manner that furthers this moment, then we experience dialogue. Perhaps it lasts but a moment. Perhaps we can learn to be open enough to maintain that communication for a brief time. When that occurs, then we have achieved dialogue.

Dr. Carl Rogers psychotherapeutic technique was based on a communications style he called "Active Listening". (3.5) In brief, active listening requires that I exert effort to clear my mind of the distractions that envelope it and focus my efforts into being fully engaged in the conversation. This is difficult. Our natural tendency is to take our listening time and use it to better prepare our rebuttals. Rogers transmuted that tendency by asking that we use that listening time to focus on the other person and only use our rebuttal time as an opportunity to confirm that we have actually heard what the other person was saying. Rogers demonstrated this technique in his teaching and in his presentations. As a lecturer he engaged the audience into the conversation. Two of his most famous uses of active listening were in his dialogue with Martin Buber and his dialogue with B. F. Skinner. (3.6)

Buber and Rogers where both widely recognized for their emphasis on dialogue. In their one opportunity to meet Rogers demonstrated active listening in his clarifying comments while Buber demonstrated his concept of dialogue by opening his inner thoughts so that the audience could learn from his experience of life. Together they demonstrated dialogue. Separately they lived lives focused on dialogue.

B. F. Skinner, on the other hand, was well known as an aloof researcher adapt at keeping a scientific façade between his inner self and the world he wished to study. In the 1960's many considered Rogers and Skinner as the opposite poles in the spectrum of psychology. And yet, in the recorded transcript of one of their encounters they both worked to find convergence. Allow me to elaborate for in that one sentence I am making two points. First, dialogue requires hard work by both parties. Active listening requires hard work by the person in the listening role and it evokes hard work from the speaker. Conversation can be had for a cheap price and parallel communication is essentially free of involvement. Thus we live in a world filled with parallel communication, consider it memorable when we engage in conversation and seldom see dialogue. We protect ourselves from the labor required and shield ourselves from the risk incurred in dialogue. You can change this. When you chose to work at active listening then you will generate a reciprocal response. You change the ecology you live in by choosing to participate actively.

The second point I raised in that prior sentence is that two people engaged in dialogue will converge. Consider the diagram shown below. What I am attempting to depict in this diagram is that I have my set of life experiences, my genetic makeup and my resulting interpretation of events. You have your own experiences, genetics and interpretations. Depending upon the differences in those factors we might or might not have much common ground for agreement. The overlap between my interpretation and your interpretation can be slim. If, on the other hand, we communicate then we gain a shared set of observations. When I learn about the life experience that caused you to adopt your interpretation of events you influence my interpretation of those same events. If we both work at this, then we can begin to narrow the divergence in how we interpret our observations. That will then allow us to begin to converge which will increase the amount of overlap between our views on the subject. Dialogue increases our knowledge and allows us to converge with our dialogue partner towards mutual understanding.

Listen and you will change the environment around you. Avoid parallelism-it is a waste of time. Communicate clearly when you must communicate. Use active listening when you are willing to engage in dialogue and see if the other person will respond. Enter dialogue whenever you can, even if it is just for a moment.

While on the topic of convergence, however, there is another technique that also works. If we cannot narrow the difference in our opinions, then another approach is to increase the distance from our vantage point to the current conflict. Consider the third diagram in this set. Increasing the distance between the first observation and the second observation narrows the range of possible meanings. We do this by pulling in wisdom that has a greater perspective. Best practices, for example, provide greater perspective on the topic because they are removed from the personalities and politics of the moment. Historical wisdom also increases the distance between our current observation and the observations made by others over time. The ancient wisdom literature, such as the Vedas, Torah, Bible, Koran or other collections of wisdom, are further removed from the moment than we can be. Using those observations will narrow our search for meaning and allow us to reach convergence more quickly.

Of course some question what an ancient set of books can possible tell us about multinational corporations. My response is simple. Those ancient books describe people and people are the primary building block used in the assembly of multinational corporations. Wisdom about people is found in the religious texts.

Consider, for example, Mahatma Gandhi's response to the increased pressures he faced as a leader of a movement, as a leader of a national rebellion and as a world leader. The broader his power spread the deeper he went into his study of religion. Or consider the numerous times that Jesus set aside for prayer. As his fame spread he increased the time he spent in preparation. Dialogue requires self-awareness and an understanding of human nature. The religious texts provide great insight into human nature.

Returning to the chart I presented near the beginning of this chapter, we can see that larger topics require broader participation. Communication within a group is much more complex than is communication between individuals. Groups can narrow the scope of the problem by treating group discussion as a series of dialogues. Modern collaborative work spaces are electronic tools that allow groups of people to communicate asynchronously. For example, sending an email to a group can elicit responses that broaden the perspective. Posting a blog is an invitation for responses from people both near and far. Writing, in general, allows for a broad distribution of knowledge and can be organized so as to invite response.

True dialogue is difficult to sustain between two people and likely to be rare indeed with a group. Even so we should do our best to invite dialogue whenever we stand in front of a group and talk. We should strive for dialogue whenever we meet as a group. And if the best we achieve is communication, then we should be grateful that conversation has the potential to change lives. Personally, I try to avoid parallel communication. I find conversations unfulfilling. So I practice active listening when I have the energy it requires. Most of all I long for dialogue. So I open my web site and I am using this book to express my desire for that dialogue with you, even if we have not yet met. Dialogue, in the broad usage of that term, is a type communication that I understand.

The next item on this chart is negotiation. I find that I treat negotiation as an opening gambit for dialogue and thus I am poor at getting what I want out of that process. Therefore, rather than bore you with my explanations of that topic I am going to just touch on it lightly. There are excellent books on the topic. Two of my favorites are The Manager as Negotiator by David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius and Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton. (3.7)

Lax and Sebenius provide an excellent reference on the subject of negotiation and work to make it clear that negotiation is pervasive. Any time there is more than one person present then negotiation is underway. A manager issuing a command is still negotiating to have that command carried out. Lax and Sebenius provide a broad definition to the concept of negotiation. They also use a broad definition for leadership. Consider the following:

"If enough people tacitly or explicitly agree or think that a person has a right to make a certain class of decisions for them, then that person has the authority to make such decisions."

Fisher, Ury and Patton have devoted much of their careers to the study of negotiation. Their conclusion is that the most effective way to reach a mutually beneficial agreement is to focus on principles. For example, do not negotiate for as much pay as you can get, but instead negotiate to be paid in line with what other people doing the same work are paid. For some of us that means less pay than we are used to and for some of us that will actually mean more pay than we have previously been given. They cite the negotiation of President Anwar Al Sadat of Egypt, Prime Minister Menachem Begin from Israel and President Jimmy Carter from the USA as an example of a negotiation that focused on a neutral document to achieve principled negotiation. Their concept of principled negotiation is based on four goals:

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People: Separate the people from the problem.

Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.

Options: Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.

Criteria: Insist that the results be based on some objective standard. (3.8)

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You can put principled negotiation into practice within your organization by focusing on written agreements. Define the goals and ensure you have agreement on those goals. Drill down further and ensure you have agreement. And if you insist on the approach that everything is open to discussion, while persisting in the requirement that the agreement be documented and open to review, then you increase the "zone of possible settlements". Consider the diagram shown below. The social illusion that holds capitalistic society together is the belief that if you work hard enough then you will have sufficient wealth. This is the common definition of "success". The public despises those that gain excessive wealth with too little effort and calls those people "profiteers". The public does not comprehend those who put in too much effort and have little wealth to show for the effort. We call those people "saints". But the answer most frequently given to those with little wealth is that they should work harder. If today someone is poor then they will be wealthy if they work hard and invest wisely. When people stop believing that illusion they become alienated and either cease trying or they resort to anti-social means to gain wealth.

When two people negotiate we overlay this diagram with a mirror of it. I believe that if I exert sufficient negotiating effort then I will gain more wealth. You believe that if you exert sufficient negotiating effort then you will gain more wealth. Thus we negotiate. We consider it unfair when one party ends up with a disproportionate share of the wealth. And if the negotiation consistently distributes wealth in a way we perceive to be unfair then we question the system. If the problem persists we revolt.

Negotiation occurs when you and your spouse decide on dinner. Negotiation occurs every hour of every day in your relationship with fellow workers. Negotiation occurs when you drive to work in the morning. Consider, for example, the simple queuing of cars to enter a freeway. Cars line up and wait their turn. Initially they leave space between each other. Then they start to squeeze closer and closer.

Queues, for better or worse, are socially accepted as a fair means of distributing a scare resource. Here the resource is access to the freeway. Whoever arrives first will be served first. Whoever arrives last, ah, now there is where the problem begins. Inevitably, someone decides that they are not bound by the rules of this social agreement. You would be surprised at the number of times I have seen drivers decide that the break down lane or bicycle lane is specifically designated for their personal use.

Equally surprising are the number of times that people decide that they truly deserve dispensation from waiting in queue and simply jump to the front. This is negotiation. I offer these images as a reminder that sharing is nice. I strongly recommend Fisher, Ury and Patton's concept of principled negotiation. The best long term outcomes result from win-win negotiations. At the same time, I accept the fact that some people do not and will not play by the rules.

Returning to that earlier chart on communication techniques we can see that groups have two more communications tool available: voting and representation. Voting is widely used, but voting is a win-lose strategy. The winners are content, but the losers are at risk. If there are any adverse side effects the losers have an easy out. Thus it is difficult to get commitment to a decision made through voting.

The Quaker religion has a system of governance based on consensus. Their belief is that voting divides while consensus unites. On the down side, obtaining consensus takes longer. As Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey note, however, expediency is not always the best strategy. (3.9) In their book, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation, they describe a neutral document approach to negotiation. I think their approach is interesting, but I reference them here more for their commentary on the problem than for their solution. Specifically, they make four points that I believe have relevance.

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Solutions optimized for a specific situation often have unforeseen side effects.

"...some problems, if we can bear to stay in relation to them and not solve them too quickly, can teach us a great deal. We can use them to solve us."

Working on a problem can help us obtain perspective onto the larger whole.

Leaders should recognize that imposed change often triggers an immune response that can defeat the change. (3.10)

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I believe that the scientific evidence that Kegan and Lahey bring to the discussion lends credence to the practice of consensus followed by my Quaker friends. Voting divides. Dialogue that builds consensus lends strength to the action that will follow. And if you wonder how this applies to business, then look at the management technique used by the Japanese when working within their own culture. Discussion comes first. Consensus must be reached. And only once consensus is reached will the Japanese meet to approve the consensus they have already obtained. When consensus is not obtained, then the problem has not yet been fully explored. Problems are opportunities to learn. Problems are opportunities to initiate dialogue. Problems can "solve us" means that problems are the doorway to learning.

Now contrast that with the American custom of meeting until one side or the other gives in or gives up. Consensus is neither sought nor obtained. The winners then march forward while the losers plot their revenge. Since that is not an effective use of our limited resources we need to change that behavior.

Divisions arise when someone opposes an idea. To eliminate divisiveness we need to either change that person or remove that person from our environment. Now if we start eliminating everyone that disagrees with us we will soon find that monologue is the only communication tool left in our arsenal. Therefore we need to find a way to change the opinion held by the person who does not agree. The most powerful communication tool available to us is dialogue. Now dialogue requires openness and trust. We cannot build openness and trust through hostility. And thus we come full circle to the non-violent practices of Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The difference, however, is that those leaders were acting on the global stage while we are acting on the small stage of our project or meeting. Non-violent protests are an expression of active listening made in order to elicit dialogue. I suggest that you might not need to hold a sit-in. But I do suggest that you consider the power of active listening and dialogue in changing the environment and dissolving contention.

Before leaving this topic there is one more item on the chart that shows the communication categories. That final item is labeled "representation". I think it is safe to assume you understand this concept. We cannot all meet to discuss every issue so we chose representatives. We then delegate our responsibility to that representative. From there the cycle simply repeats. We expect our representatives to use monologue, dialogue and negotiation. When the number of representatives is large they often resort to plurality or even elect representatives. The committees that most governing bodies use to get their work done consist of representatives delegated by the representatives that we had delegated. Committees and subcommittees are created to channel the communication. And once more I will summarize.

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Communication begins with self.

Communication between two can be meaningless, effective or profound.

Negotiation based on principles can lead to mutual satisfaction.

Though it takes time, consensus unifies while voting divides.

An ecology is built by people using communication and organizational structures.

Organizational structures tend to provide routes for people that need power to gain more.

Organizations build upon the improvements made by people focused on achievement.

Organizational structures tend to ignore the human need for affiliation.

The strong matrix organizational structure can be adapted to provide for affiliation.

HR departments focus on protecting the corporation rather than serving the workers.

If HR departments were detached from management then they could act independently.

Vision must be owned by the executives, and bought into by management and workers.

People are often trapped in roles that do not align with their needs.

Dialogue is rare because it requires commitment, hard work and reciprocity.

Dialogue will lead to convergence.

Active listening is a tool that can lead to opportunities for dialogue.

You can change the ecology of your world through the way you communicate.

I recommend the neutral document approach to negotiation and practice it by creating project charters, requirements documents, project schedules and other shared documents.

Some people do not and will not play by the rules.

Organizations and people resist change.

When we dialogue with a person or a problem we will be changed.

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How then do we put this to use? Consider the diagram shown below. In this diagram I show a collection of project management tools.

As you look at that diagram, is there anything there that you did not already use? If there is something new here, I suggest you try it and see what you learn from the experience. It is the journey not the destination that will change you. Consider the following diagram.

Thousands of books explain how to improve yourself while staying within the realm of "reality". My goal has been to help you exceed reality. Question reality and dialogue with it and you will find that you are both changed in the process. Reality is bounded when we limit our vision. Reality is changed when we chose to go beyond.

From here I recommend you search for wisdom. Dean R. Spitzer provides a succinct explanation of the hierarchy of data, information, knowledge and wisdom with the following:

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Data is essentially just isolated facts out of context.

Information is an organized select of data presented in such a way that its meaning can be recognized by a user.

Knowledge is personally relevant information you can take action on.

Wisdom is deep, rich understanding and insight that usually develops through a combination of extensive knowledge (knowing) and personal experience (doing) over time. (3.11)

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The distinction between knowledge and wisdom comes from doing. The same pattern is repeated in "Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Skills" summarized in the following table. (3.12)

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Knowledge: The ability to recall or recite. For example, the ability to name types of communication tools listed earlier in this chapter.

Comprehension: The ability to explain the facts in your own words. For example, the ability to describe the difference between conversation and dialogue.

Application: The ability to put the concept to use. For example, taking one of the exercises from this book and putting it to use in your own work place.

Analysis: The ability to classify and categorize the data. For example, listing some of the tools and techniques described in this book and comparing that list to the tools and techniques you currently use.

Synthesis: The ability to create something new. For example, taking the concept of active listening and finding a way to put it to use when one of your meetings runs amok.

Evaluation: The ability to compare and discuss alternatives. For example, the ability to choose the change that you think will be most effective in improving your workplace ecology.

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The goal is to progress from knowing facts to putting those facts to use in a discerning manner. This is the traditional approach to learning. An apprentice did as he or she was told. For example, a blacksmith would tell the apprentice to add more coal and then work the bellows to make the fire hot. A journeyman knew how to take general directions and repeat what he or she had done before. For example, a journeyman might be proficient at fitting horse shoes and spend much of his or her time doing that one repeated task. A master knew more. A master was expected to be able to create all of his or her own tools and then put them to use in new and novel ways. My advices on your journey towards mastery is summarized below.

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Improved communication will change your organization. There are lots of books available on that subject. I have listed a few of my favorites in the footnotes. (3.13)

Understand that the organizational structure shapes your behavior. One of the best books I have found on that topic is Corporate Tides: The Inescapable Laws of Organizational Structure by Robert Fritz. (3.14)

Understand that change is always resisted. I once bought about a dozen copies of Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese and distributed them to key managers during a reorganizational project. (3.15) I highly recommend it and try to remind myself constantly to keep my running shoes handy.

You can change your company just by changing the way you communicate. It is hard. I struggle and sometimes wonder if I am making any progress. What I have learned is to balance my span of control with the scope of what I am trying to change. Then I start small changes and wait to engage in dialogue with the change. I call this concept "Kinetics". Start something small and leave it insufficiently defined. Then wait to see if someone else has enough interest to pick it up and carry it forward. When it comes back to you in a new form, then your change has taken flight. As the old saying goes-if you love it, set it free. For example, I once created a rather plain looking form for our root cause analysis (RCA) procedure. About a month later one of our technicians sent me a copy of the new RCA template his team had just adopted. It was my template, but now it had brightly colored boxes and helpful explanations. I felt like a proud parent watching my child get married. My little template had grown up and found a new home. Kinetics starts small and leaves things sufficiently incomplete that others see a need they can fill.

Expect resistance. When a person experiences change they go through the same cycle of emotions as if someone has died. (3.16) Indeed, part of their ecology has changed. They react to this by going through the stages of "shock, defensive retreat, acknowledgement, and acceptance and adaptation." (3.15) Pyzdek includes the following diagram in his six sigma reference because resistance is such a common reaction. (3.17)

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And with that it is time for a couple exercises.

Exercises

The exercise for this chapter is the most complex exercise I have introduced so far in this book. First, consider the parable told in Matthew 20 which I summarize and interpret as follows:

A manager went and hired some workers and put them to work for the day. Later in the day he found more workers and hired them. And near the end of the day he hired more workers, but it was so late that they were only able to work one hour. At the end of the day he paid them. Now, having been a part time contractor most of this year I can tell you first-hand how that works. There have been times when I spent one or two hours driving to a location only to be told that they did not need me that day and so I got paid nothing. Well, this particular manager is generous. He paid the workers that showed up last the amount most workers would earn in a whole day. Think about that from the point of view of someone who works part time. You might only get paid for one hour, and yet you still need to buy gas, eat, pay for your housing and utilities. All those expenses are the same whether your work one hour or twenty. So, from the point of view of the workers, their disadvantageous circumstances did not preclude them being able to earn enough to survive.

Next think about this from the point of view of the manager. Many of the projects I have worked on this year have come about because companies want to shave a dollar or two off what they pay their workers, and so they turn to contractors and they send their work offshore. I help them do both. But what is their motivation - they are motivated by the fear that they cannot make enough profit. Now look at the behavior of the manager described in Matthew 20. He paid more than the union contract said he needed to pay. He paid what it took for his workers to survive, even if they were only there for one hour.

Finally, think about this parable from the point of view of the other workers. The workers that only worked one hour got paid wages for a full day, so the workers that worked the whole day expected more. But they got what they needed, rather than what they wanted, and they were disappointed. Where are we today? Are we content with having enough or are we afraid that we do not have as much as we need? As you look about, do you feel like everyone else is getting more than you? The message in this parable is that we should align ourselves with a greater good. Give to those that need. Accept what we are given. And trust that there will be enough.

This parable is a lesson in corporate management. In my opinion, this parable explains why it is that data processing shops cannot implement best practices. Please take some time now and think about that. Then see what you come up with as answers to the following questions. Note that my responses to these questions are included after the list of questions.

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Question 1: When this manager pays the first group of workers for a full day even though they only worked one hour is he emphasizing power, achievement of affiliation?

Question 2: Was the decision to change the pay scale made and communicated using a delegating, participating, selling or telling management style?

Question 3: Are the workers that expected more focusing on power, achievement or affiliation?

Question 4: Look at the developmental aspects in this conversation. For the purpose of this exercise, I suggest we divide these people into three groups: management, disgruntled workers and the employees that showed up late. Which of these groups does the manager consider part of his circle of caring?

Question 5: Who do the disgruntled workers include within their circle of caring?

Question 6: Which of these three groups seems to be willing to use principled negotiation?

Question 7: Are parables packaged in the Bible as monologues, asynchronous communication or as dialogue?

Question 8: Is the purpose for reading parables to enter into a monologue, to respond to an asynchronous communication or to enter dialogue?

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Here are my thoughts regarding that list of questions.

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Response 1: In my opinion, this manager is demonstrating a blend of all three of those motivations. He inverts power by giving away his money in an unexpected manner. He inverts achievement by knowing the metrics - the hours worked - and then acting in a way counterintuitive to what is expected from those metrics. Then he demonstrates affiliation by caring for the workers who had no reason to expect this benevolence.

Response 2: In my opinion, this manager made his decision without consultation or consensus. He simply told the first group of workers that they were getting more than they expected. Later he tries to sell this approach to the workers that expected more.

Response 3: In my opinion, the workers that are displeased with these results are not concerned about the benefit received by the other workers and so I think they are not well aligned with affiliation. In my opinion the disgruntled workers are not disputing the power of the manager to pay as he wishes. If anything they want to capitalize on that aberration and get more for themselves. What I see these workers doing is pointing to the metrics. They describe the hours worked and imply that there is a correlation between that metric and what they should be paid. In my opinion people who focus on metrics and expect the world to align with their concept are people that focus on achievement.

Response 4: The behavior of the manager when he paid all of the workers the same implies that they are all considered equals in his circle of caring.

Response 5: The behavior that I see demonstrated by the disgruntled workers is an "us-them" type of behavior. I see no evidence here that they have any sympathy for the employees that showed up late. I think these disgruntled workers are only concerned about themselves.

Response 6: I see no evidence that the employees that showed up late are doing any negotiation. I do see elements of negotiation in the conversation between the manager and the disgruntled workers. Principled negotiation implies there is an external standard that can be used to measure the distribution. Clearly the disgruntled workers are concerned about using the number of hours worked as a measure of fairness. They also imply that there is some correlation between what other managers do and what this manager should do. The manager seems to ignore the prevailing standards and ignores the traditional metrics. Yet, one of the points in this parable is that there are external standards that are even greater than the prevailing standards.

Response 7: In my opinion, the packaging is a type of asynchronous communication. We read now what was said a long time ago.

Response 8: In my opinion, the true benefit from studying parables is the possibility of entering into dialogue with the author. Test this yourself. Mentally place yourself into dialogue with the story teller and respond to the story teller. Strive for dialogue. In my opinion, this is one of the aspects of the mind that is most uniquely human. We are fully capable of internalizing and conversing with an internal representation of others. Think about it. Do you internally anticipate your spouse's response to suggestions about dinner? Do you internally anticipate the response from workers when you tell them about some upcoming change? We are capable of hosting dialogue within our own minds. Clearly the dialogue is restricted. But the point of a parable is that it is intentionally insufficiently explained. The concept of a parable is to bring you into the conversation to fill in the gaps.

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The manager in that story changed the rules and by doing that he changed his organization. You can do the same. Even if you cannot change the corporate rules, you can change the rules that govern your life. Consider the following story about how one person modified her ecology.

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Kathrine Switzer liked to run. (3.23) One day while running her mentor reminded her that women could not run marathons. She happened to be in a disagreeable mode that day and decided it was time to fix that misconception. She practiced long and hard, registered for the Boston Marathon and ran the race. It was really quite simple. But Kathrine was the first woman to register for the Boston Marathon and she was not welcome. The expectation in 1967 was that men ran marathons and women raised children. Kathrine had no intention of creating a commotion. She just wanted the same rights that were afforded to the men. But the result was a furor. During the race one race official tried to rip the identification numbers off of her and thus this simple choice to go out and run a race gained worldwide attention. There was a public outcry. 1967 was already a turbulent time in the USA and Kathrine was praised and ridiculed. In the end the Boston Marathon, and then worldwide marathons and finally the Olympics agreed that women can run marathons. And today thousands of women run marathons to such an extent that they sometimes outnumber the men.

Looking back today it is easy to gloss over the work that it took. First, running a marathon is not easy. Second, once she was noticed Kathrine knew she was now a representative of a movement. Then, once she was attacked she knew there was no going back.

"But it was clear that Jock was some kind of official and he was out of control, now he's hurt, we're in trouble, and we're going to get arrested. That was how scared I felt, as well as deeply humiliated, and for just a tiny moment, I wondered if I should step off the course. I did not want to mess up this prestigious race. But the thought was only a flicker. I knew if I quit, nobody would ever believe that women had the capability to run the marathon distance." (3.24)

"'Women can do this.' But why weren't they here running, too? Those women's faces covered a sweep of emotions—fear, anger, propriety, disbelief, joy, inspiration, hope—and I got lots of messages. A light went on. Those women weren't in the race because they actually believed all those myths about women's fragility and limitation, and the reason they believed them is because they had no opportunity to experience something else. That is why I seem like a creature from outer space to them; I represent something unimagined. And yet, I look just like they do!" (3.25)

She ran a race and the world was never the same again. And the legend would imply that it was just that simple. So we use dialogue in a meeting and then expect to see results in the newspaper the next morning. Instead we see no change in behaviors and wonder why we should bother. The truth, however, is that Kathrine Switzer worked relentlessly for six more years before she was allowed to again register for the Boston Marathon. During those six years she and thousands of other women changed the culture so that in 1973, her prior nemesis, Jock, would say "And so, uh... you ladies are welcome at Boston. But you have to meet the men's qualifying time!" (3.26) Changing people is a very slow process. Switzer devoted her life to pushing the boundaries on women's sports. She had a vision. She became one of the living embodiments of that vision. Then she worked hard. She created dialogue and strove for consensus. In the end she succeeded in changing culture in ways she never anticipated.

Recap on Workplace Ecology

In the third chapter of this book I presented materials on human relationships, leadership and workplace ecology. Doing the research was interesting and I learned from the study. For example, I now believe there is a correlation between the structure of an organization and human nature. When structures are aligned with human nature, they are perpetuated. When the structure chafes against human nature we harm people and they, in turn, harm the organization. Robert Fritz believes that organizational structure is one of the primary causes of resistance to change. He says: "If the organization's structure remains unchanged, the organization's behavior will revert to its previous behavior." (3.18)

Based on my understanding of McClelland, Vroom and others, I believe there is a correlation between the motivation of power and the drive to control an organization. Thus, when John Bogle describes a long litany of changes that Congress should enact to make the US stock market work better I see a disconnect. (3.19) I believe that Bogle is describing achievement oriented innovations. I believe that most politicians are focused on power rather than achievement. I see evidence of this in the way legislation is enacted and quickly forgotten. I see evidence of this in the way corporate management launches initiative after initiative with little regard for the results. Power gains satisfaction from the impact of launching the initiative. Power gains little from measuring the results and can be threatened if the results are not what were expected. Instead, executives launch initiatives, immediately claim success, and then blame the workers if someone should point out that the initiative actually provided little benefit. In my opinion, we can express this with the following force field diagram.

Buber elaborated on a key concept in communication which he called true dialogue. He noted that we tend to treat others as objects that we can manipulate. He challenges us to treat others as a mirror into our sole, enter dialogue and allow ourselves to be changed in the process. In contrast, Bogle reminds us that much of what is wrong with modern corporations stems from management treating the organization as an object that they can manipulate for their personal profit. I link both of these responses to developmentalism. At the lower levels of developmentalism we treat everyone as objects. Later we learn to increasingly broaden our concept of family until we have the potential to see everything as an entity within our circle of caring. Buber notes that it is possible to dialogue with a tree. Surely, if Buber can dialogue with a tree, we should be able to find some way to harmoniously relate to our organizations. Change from viewing the organization as an object to be manipulated and begin to consider the organization as an equal who you can reach through dialogue.

Rogers then reminds us that dialogue is bidirectional. When we seek to change others we will be changed.

"I eh - already then as a young man - I felt I have not the right to want to change another if I am not open to be changed by him as far as it is legitimate." (3.20)

"I guess I feel, too, that, um, that acceptance of the most complete sort, acceptance of this person as he is, is the strongest factor making for change that I know. In other words, I think that does release change or release potentiality to find that as I am, exactly as I am, I am fully accepted - then I can't help but change." (3.21)

In closing I offer the following quote from Mahatma Gandhi.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." (3.22)

*****

**Chapter 4: What Does It Mean?**

Introduction to the Conclusion

This fourth chapter is the conclusion to this book. When I first set out to do this survey I had three motivations: 1) I wanted to learn more about the relational aspects of project management, 2) I wanted to find patterns that would simplify some of this data and 3) I wanted to create material that would help some of the people I worked with quickly grasp the fundamentals. The results are 1) I learned a lot, 2) I found two patterns that I think are useful and 3) I created this summary of the topics that I studied.

Once I found these two patterns I proceeded to explore each. I did two case studies, which are documented as _Communicating Effectively: A Case Study in Project Management_ and _Workplace Ecology: A Case Study in Project Management_. I then continued this study and posted my work notes on my web site at <http://www.robertperrine.biz/Vision/index.html>. I then wrote _Coping Styles: Dealing with Life on Life's Terms_ and _Growth Rings: How We Get Connected_. Those two books elaborate on the two patterns that I found while doing this survey.

Of those two books, Coping Styles is the one that is most relevant to project management. I believe, however, that the gap between this survey and Coping Styles is larger than desirable. And thus, after finishing those works, I have come back to this work to add this concluding chapter.

A Simple Pattern

I mentioned earlier in this book that I see commonality in the "Blake and Moulton", "Hersey and Blanchard" and "Vroom, Yetton and Jago" models. I believe that each is an expression of relationship and focus. One dimension on those grids measures how nurturing the relationship is. The other dimension measures how focused the team is on the goal. The pattern became more clear, however, when I tried to blend conflict resolution styles and team formation stages into this same pattern.

The five primary conflict resolution styles typically found in management literature are:

\--

Smoothing – pretending like the issue is not a problem.

Forcing – imposing a solution against the will of others.

Withdrawal – running away from the problem.

Confronting – tackling the problem and solving it.

Compromise – a little bit of all of the styles mixed together.

\--

I suggest we can put these styles onto a grid of relationships and focus, as shown below.

On this grid I show the relational dimension starting from zero on the left and leading towards increased antagonism on the right. I show the focus dimension starting from zero on the bottom and increasing upwards. The label I used on the focus dimension is "Dissonance" based on the concept of "Cognitive Dissonance" described by Leon Festinger. (4.1) For now, just accept my word that "dissonance" relates to awareness and awareness relates to focus.

Do you agree with me that forcing is a technique that generates antagonism? Do you also agree that forcing ignores the pain inflicted on the recipient? For example, your boss comes to you Friday afternoon and says that you need to work on Saturday. You explain that you have already bought tickets to go to a big event with your family on Saturday. And your boss says that you had better be in the office on Saturday or start looking for a new job on Monday.

Now think about smoothing. Smoothing is all about pretending the issue is not important. To do that we need to ignore the issue and we need to ignore our feelings. You go home, explain to your spouse that your plans for Saturday need to change. Your spouse says that it is alright, turns on a movie and tunes you out. You know that things are not good, and yet there is an implicit agreement to pretend like everything is alright.

Withdrawal is an expression of anger. Your child learns that your big plans for Saturday have been cancelled. Your child then runs to their room, slams the door and refuses to come out for dinner. You know your child is angry and you know that your child is being overwhelmed with thoughts about what they are going to miss.

Compromise leaves no one happy. After your child withdraws, you and your spouse talk. You reach a compromise that the family will go to the big event without you. Everyone is unhappy and yet everyone is less unhappy than they were when no one was going.

Confronting is the style that causes the most confusion. People often confuse confronting with forcing. You see how unhappy everyone is with the compromise and you call your boss. You yell and demand that you get Saturday off. Many people think that type of action is confronting. It is not. That is just you trying to force your solution onto your boss in response to your boss forcing his solution onto you. Real confronting is finding a solution. So, instead of calling your boss and yelling, you call your boss, remind him that you did not create this crises, and then agree to meet on Monday to find a way to get the work done before the deadline. That is a start. Actually meeting on Monday and finding a solution is what confronting truly means.

Now, think about the Blake and Moulton managerial grid, shown below.

Can you see that word "social" is an expression of relationships? And "task" is just another word for focus. So we should be able to then stack the Blake-Moulton managerial grid onto the conflict resolution styles grid. The result is shown below.

Cozy seems to fit well. No one wants to rock the boat, so we have good relationships. But we maintain those relationships by overlooking our problems. We smooth over anything that threatens to disrupt our cozy little space. And the longer we continue to sweep things under the rug, the harder it is to focus on getting things done.

Optimal seems to fit well. We have good relationships and a good focus on getting things done. This seems like a great way to run a company.

Cold describes the relationships when there is little effort to bond and a lot of effort to get things done. This is the type of company where no one can take a vacation. It is not that people choose to abandon their relationships, they just do not have time to do anything besides work. In order to maintain our focus on work we withdraw from our relationships. Our love for each other grows cold.

The one style that is hardest to explain is "dysfunctional". This is an organization where there is little focus and little bonding. The trick in linking this with the conflict resolution style of forcing is to get the right perspective. Many managers believe that forcing is the best way to get work done. Their relationships with their employees are hostile. They demand that everything be done their way. And so it seems that the manager has a high focus on the task. The problem is that the employee does not share that focus. So everything seems to work out acceptably as long as the manager is there. Once the manager steps out for lunch or takes a vacation, however, then everything falls apart. The fact that everything falls apart when the manager leaves is what distinguishes a cold environment from a dysfunctional environment.

I think there is a fit, but perhaps this is not an ideal junction. I feel like this is pointing to something, and yet I feel like it is incomplete. Rather than continue to wrestle with this small set of data, I then added on one more model. The model that was the most helpful to add next is the team formation model, shown below.

I believe that forming is a time when teams have comfortable relationships and yet little focus on getting things done. I believe that storming is a time when teams have hostile relationships and are impaired from getting things done. Norming is the time when a team has comfortable relationships and a focus on the work. But where does performing fit? As I struggled with this I realized that I needed to extend the graph to the left, as shown below.

Notice that the Blake-Moulton styles have moved to the left. The center of this grid now expresses neutral relationship. The left expresses loving relationships. And the right holds hostile relationships. A cozy environment has love without being able to focus on the work. A dysfunctional environment has no focus and no relationships. I think this is a better fit than when I had previously tried to fit dysfunctional with forcing. A cold environment has no relationships and yet there is high pressure to do the work. And an optimal environment is one with loving relationships and a committed focus on the work.

To make this work I needed to add two additional conflict resolution styles: pampered and aligned. A pampered relationship is one in which our every desire is fulfilled and yet we are not held accountable for anything. An aligned relationship is one in which we agree without needing to speak. Alignment means we all strive to resolve the conflicts before they create any ripples in our relationships. Also, since the purpose for this book is to focus on projects, I changed the upper label from dissonance to task. Our focus is on the task, not on our psychology.

Now, I think we can add the Hersey-Blanchard model on top of this, as shown below.

When you adopt a selling style, then you explain the concept and your team buys-in. Since everyone is in agreement, then the team is aligned. But the key to a successful sale is the relationship. Unless we have a warm, trusting relationship, then I am not going to fully commit to the deal. Without that relationship we slip from selling to telling.

Telling is when we focus on the work and avoid the relationship.

Participating is a bit harder to explain. As an example, think about a loving mother teaching her daughter how to bake cookies. Or think about a pre-school teacher showing her class how to paint with her fingers. There is a lot of love and some focus on the effort. This is not like pampering in which I do all of your work for you. And this is not like selling because the amount of work that we do is small.

Delegating is another difficult concept. People often think of delegating as empowering. When I empower you, I give you the tools to do the work. This is not what Hersey and Blanchard mean by delegating. They use the word to mean a cold relationship with little concern for the work. When they use this word they mean a dysfunctional type of management.

The best way to understand the Hersey-Blanchard model is to read The One Minute Manager. (4.2) In that simple story Blanchard teams up with Johnson to illustrate an optimal management style. In that story the ideal manager explains what needs to be done and then their subordinate gets the work done. People often misunderstand the concept and think that it is delegating. In common usage, delegating means there is little communication. Blanchard tries to explain that an ideal manager has a lot of communication. Some of that communication is explicit and some is implicit. It is the invisible implicit communication that goes unnoticed. It is because the manager and the subordinate are aligned that the amount of communication can be reduced to only the essentials.

I believe I see a pattern here that merges conflict resolution styles, the Blake-Moulton managerial grid, the stages of team formation and the Hersey-Blanchard model into one. The next challenge is to fit in the Vroom, Yetton and Jago model, shown below.

I think the key here is to link the concept "participation" with relationship and link "urgency" with focus. Thus, Vroom's consulting aligns with Hersey's selling. Vroom's authoritative aligns with Hersey's telling. Vroom's delegating aligns with Hersey's delegating. And Vroom's group aligns with Hersey's participating.

I then added McClelland's three primary workplace motivations onto this grid. I believe that a pure focus on power expresses the conflict resolution style of forcing. The task is not important and the relationship is damaged. So this motivation is in the lower right part of this diagram. Pure achievement is focused on the goal and ignores the relationships. Thus the achievement motivation plots in the upper center of this grid. And the affiliation motivation is primarily about the relationships with little concern for the work. So I plot affiliation in the lower left of the grid shown below.

I believe we now have a grid that expresses the primary organizational psychology models that were discussed in this book. What I wanted to do next was to add the human psychology models onto this same grid. To do that I first did two work related case studies. I did the _Communicating Effectively: A Case Study in Project Management_ and _Workplace Ecology: A Case Study in Project Management_ case studies and found that I could make use of this grid on actual projects. Actual projects, however, are complicated. It was often difficult for me to maintain my objectivity. So I turned to literature and did case studies based on biographies of a few famous people. The primary source that I used in those studies was the Christian Bible. My research notes are posted on my web site at <http://www.robertperrine.biz/Vision/index.html>. From those studies I learned that this grid needs to be extended downward. Just as the dimension of relationships is not bounded on either side, so too, our ability to focus is both positive and negative. Denial is the word that describes an active avoidance.

And with that I finally began to see how to fit the scientific theories regarding human psychology onto a grid that had begun with organizational psychology. One key was to add existential psychology. Viktor Frankl was the founder of this movement. Basically, this school of psychology believes that we experience events and then interpret those events. It is our interpretation that triggers our response. If we can learn to interpret events neutrally, then our psychology will remain neutral. When we interpret events with hostility, then we experience hostility. The goal is to find the center and not allow events to disrupt our interpretation of life.

Next I needed to swap out some of the older schools of psychology for one of the more dominate modern theories – cognitive-behavioral psychology. Cognitive-behavioral has absorbed the good from behavioral and analytic and merged them into one. (4.4) The key concept is that thoughts and behaviors are bound together. If we do something, then we will alter our thoughts about the event to justify our actions. If we think something is right, then we will change our behaviors to align with our self-image. The key to cognitive-behavioral is to become aware of this relationship and then change whichever is easier. For example, if I believe that exercise is important, then I will be unhappy with myself unless I exercise. I then have two choices – either change my behaviors by exercising more consistently, or change my thinking to put less emphasis on a belief that I am not fulfilling.

I then added relational psychology to express the horizontal dimension and created the diagram shown above. If you want to know more about these concepts read my books _Coping Styles: Dealing with Life on Life's Terms_ and _Growth Rings: How We Get Connected_. The scope for this book is broad enough already.

Psychology of Project Management

The focus of this book is project management. I have led you on a vast exploration of the human relations aspects of project management. What I want to do now is make this relevant to you. I believe that most project managers understand the basic sequence in the stages of team formation. My plan is to build upon your understanding of team formation to explore the management styles that correlate with those stages.

Forming

A team begins in the forming stage. People relate to each other formally. The relationships are neutral. There might be people you already know, but, if this is a new team, then there is something new. Either the people are new, their roles are new, or the project is new. When a project starts there is insufficient information to immediately deliver results. The project needs to be scoped and the product needs to be defined in detail.

Blake and Moulton describe a dysfunctional management style as low in relations and low in focus. That description implies a flawed organization. That same description, however, can also apply to an excellent project team that has just not had enough time to get organized. The new team needs to put effort into learning about the relationships and defining their focus. Thus, an organization that gets stuck with low focus and poor relationships is dysfunctional. But there is nothing dysfunctional about a project team that is simply passing through this stage. The problem is that there are few results from what seems like a lot of effort. Thus this startup time is risky. Too often project sponsors kick off a project and then expect to see results within days or weeks. As long as the team remains in the forming stage there will be few deliverables.

As a project manager, I think the Hersey-Blanchard and the Vroom-Yelton-Jago concept of delegating is valuable when a team is forming. No one knows the deliverables or the relationships well enough to assume anything. So the project manager needs to use more authority to assign work. Those initial assignments then begin to bring in results and help test the relationships. It is the ability to get the team to focus that moves the team from a dysfunctional – delegating style towards an authoritative – telling style. People, however, have widely differing perspectives and so the journey from forming to norming always detours through storming.

Storming

The reason a team moves from forming to storming is because the relationships need adjustment. People bring skills and knowledge to a team. Most people feel like their skills and knowledge are not fully appreciated. So we chafe under a burden of misperceptions. Most people tend to react with hostility when they feel they are being forced into a role they do not fit. Because the project manager does not have infinite knowledge of the people, product or project, those first assignments the project manager makes rely upon the management style of forcing.

And people look with envy on some duty, role or assignment that someone else has. They then try to force someone to give them what they want. Project managers who like power enjoy their role. They continue to use forcing as the best way to resolve conflicts. Project managers who hold power lightly resist the move into storming and tend to smooth over all the problems. Both of those strategies are counter-productive.

Teams should move from forming to storming. This is like the adolescent period. People need to go through adolescence in order to reach adulthood. Teams need to move through storming in order to reach norming.

What is important is understanding how to get out of storming and move into norming. Look at the managerial style diagram, above. Storming is on the right and norming is in the middle. Storming has a neutral attitude towards the work, while norming has a focus on the work. So the way to move from storming to norming is to dampen the hostilities and increase the communication. Most importantly, we need to stop smoothing, stop forcing, avoid compromise and begin confronting the problems.

Norming

A normal project team is focused on getting the work done. After all, that is what pays the bills. Relationships are nice, but not necessary. People who thrive in this environment are the people that like to get things done. McClelland describes this as the achievement motivation. Software developers, researchers and others gladly cut themselves off from virtually all human contact in order to gain focus.

If a sales person stumbles into this environment they are often amazed at how cold everyone is. To a sales person, relationships are a vital part of making a sale. To a software developer, relationships are a luxury reserved for times when the work is not consuming the person.

Most project managers are relieved once the team finally settles into norming. Now they just tell people what to do and it gets done. Vroom calls this an authoritative style and mentions the military. For example, the captain on a ship gives an order and people do what they are told. What goes unmentioned, however, it the consent that has already been granted.

No matter what your rank, if you treat me with hostility, I will distrust your motives. For the project manager to succeed with an authoritative style, the project team must trust the project manager. They must already agree to the goals. They must already agree on the objectives.

I believe this is where most information technology projects run into trouble. How best to accomplish the goal is often only vaguely agreed. And often the project manager is the person least qualified to make that decision. Project managers, however, tend to get into the telling mode and stay there even when they should do more listening. And if a polite discussion degenerates, then the team moves out of norming and lands back in storming.

The choice then is whether to use an amplifying feedback loop or a dampening feedback loop. If the project manager begins forcing a solution, then there is often resistance. If the response to that resistance is more force, then the problem gets amplified. If, instead, the project manager focuses on dampening the hostility, then there is hope. The way to get a team from storming back to norming is to do what it took to get there the first time. Improve the relationships and improve the communication.

Otherwise, people tend to isolate. When force is applied people move towards the right. If they can give up on their focus, then they reluctantly do the minimal work and allow the project manager to force what results they can. If, however, the person is already committed to the goal, then an alternative response to hostility is to withdraw.

Performing

The optimal goal for every project is to reach the performing stage of team development. This is difficult and it seldom happens. Most teams somehow reach norming. The transition from norming to performing is to increase the relational bonding.

Look at the conflict resolution styles shown in the prior grids. The conflict resolution style for a norming team is confronting. The conflict resolution style for a performing team is alignment.

Confronting means that we focus on the problem and find a solution. Alignment means we have a deep implicit communication that allows us to seek mutual goals intuitively. Hersey and Blanchard call this "selling". As the project manager I describe the goal, get you to agree to the goal, and then trust that you will find the best way to get there. This requires a deep level of trust. And it requires constant consistent communication to correct any misinformation.

We all know how to do this. Think about the mistakes you make getting to know someone. You think this person likes Chinese food, only to discover they have a peanut allergy which precludes going to your favorite Chinese restaurant. You think this person likes coffee only to discover they only drink decaffeinated coffee. But after a while you work your way through those hazards and begin to anticipate what this other person wants.

A performing team does that every day. To do that you need to care enough about all of the people on the team to put the effort into learning what they want. Not their personal desires, but the needs that are relevant to the team. And then you need to put the effort into learning as much as possible about what it is that your team is trying to do.

Now some teams take the relational aspects of this and drop their focus on the work. Those are the cozy teams where everyone is pampered, but little work gets done. A performing team requires a high focus on the work and a high effort to maintain harmonious relationships.

Conclusion

I keep the grid of management styles in my head and I use it daily. I use it to assess where the other person is so that I can formulate a strategy to lead them forward. And I use it daily to check on my own behaviors to ensure I am leading my teams in the right direction. I hope you also find it useful.

*****

**Footnotes**

1.1 Joseph Campbell; The Masks of God, Occidental Mythology; Penguin Books; 1964; ISBN 0-14-00-4306-3. Joseph Campbell; The Hero with a Thousand Faces; Bollingen Paperback Printing; 1973; ISBN 0-691-01784-0.

1.2 Sigmund Freud; The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud; Random House; 1964.

1.3 Wikipedia; "Alfred Adler"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler. Wikipedia; "Carl Jung"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung.

1.4 Erik H. Erikson; Identity and the Life Cycle; W. W. Norton; 1980; ISBN 0-393-00949-1.

1.5 Jean Piaget; Structuralism; Harper & Row; 1970; ISBN; 06-131610-5. Robert Kegan; The Evolving Self; Harvard University Press; 1982; ISBN 0-674-27231-5. B. F. Skinner; Beyond Freedom and Dignity; Hackett Publishing Company; 1971; ISBN 0872206270. Psi Cafe; "John B. Watson"; Psi Cafe; http://www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/KeyTheorists/Watson.htm. Wikipedia; "Edward Thorndike"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thorndike.

1.7 Saul W. Gellerman; Motivation and Productivity; Amacom; 1963; ISBN 0-8144-7502-7; pages 160-169.

1.8 Carl R. Rogers; On Becoming a Person; Houghton Mifflin; 1961; ISBN 0-395-08409-1.

1.9 J. Scott Rutan and Walter N. Stone; Psychodynamic Group Psychotherapy, Third Edition; The Guilford Press; 2001; ISBN 1-57230-518-5.

1.10 C. B. Truax and Robert R. Carkhuff; Toward Effective Counseling and Psychotherapy: Training and Practice; Aldine; 1967.

1.11 Albert Bandura; Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory; Prentice Hall; 1985; ISBN 013815614X. Danice Stone and Kelli McCormack Brown: "Social Cognitive Theory"; University of Southern Florida; 1999; http://hsc.usf.edu/~kmbrown/Social_Cognitive_Theory_Overview.htm.

1.12 Urie Bronfenbrenner; The Ecology of Human Development; Harvard University Press; 1979; ISBN 0-674-22457-4.

1.13 James Gleick; Chaos: Making a New Science; Penguin Books; 1987; ISBN 0-14-00-9250-1.

1.14 Gerald M. Weinberg; An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, Silver Anniversary Edition; Dorset House; 2001; ISBN 0-932633-49-8.

1.15 Gellerman; IBID.

1.16 Neal Bascomb; The Perfect Mile; Houghton Mifflin; 2004; ISBN 13-978-0-618-39112-7.

1.17 Stone and McCormack Brown; IBID.

1.18 Kegan; IBID; pages 86-87.

1.19 Kevin Harris; "Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein"; Stuart Cheshire; 1995; http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html. Peter M. Senge; The Fifth Discipline; Doubleday; 1990; ISBN 0-385-51725-4; page 160.

1.20 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America; The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Edition; 1989; Holman Bible Publishers. Mark 3:31-35.

1.21 Gellerman; IBID.

1.22 Accel Team; "Historical perspective on productivity improvement"; Accel Team; http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/scientific_02.html.

1.23 Gellerman; IBID; pages 19-31.

1.24 Gellerman; IBID; pages 32-47.

1.25 Gellerman; IBID; pages 40-47.

1.26 Erikson; IBID; pages 178-179. Robert Kegan; IBID; page 86.

1.27 Senge; IBID; page 194.

1.28 Gellerman; IBID; pages 48-55.

1.29 Gellerman; IBID; pages 56-62.

1.30 Gellerman; IBID; pages 63-71.

1.31 Gellerman; IBID; pages 68-71. Douglas McGregor; The Human Side of Enterprise; McGraw-Hill; 1960; ISBN 07-045092-7; pages 110-123.

1.32 Scanlon Leadership Network; "Welcome to the Scanlon Leadership Network and Scanlon Foundation"; Scanlon Leadership Network; http://www.scanlonleader.org/.

1.33 Peter F. Drucker; The Effective Executive; Harper and Row; 1966; ISBN 0-06-091209-X. Wikipedia; "Peter Drucker"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker.

1.34 McGregor; IBID. Gellerman; IBID; pages 83-92. 12Manage; "Theory X, Theory Y (McGregor) Theory Z (Ouchi)"; 12Manage; http://www.12manage.com/methods_mcgregor_theory_X_Y.html.

1.35 Chris Argyris; Knowledge for Action; Jossey-Bass; 1993; ISBN; 1-55542-519-4; pages 50-51.

1.36 Gellerman; IBID; page 92.

1.37 Rogers; IBID; pages 61-62.

1.38 M. K. Smith; "Chris Argyris; theories of action, double-loop learning and organizational learning"; the encyclopedia of informal education; 2001; www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm.

1.39 Wikipedia; "William Ouchi"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ouchi. 12Manage; IBID.

1.40 Gellerman; IBID; pages 115-121.

1.41 Gellerman; IBID; page 30.

1.42 Gellerman; IBID; pages 122-141.

1.43 Robert W. Fuller; Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank; New Society Publishers; 2004; ISBN 0-86571-487-8.

1.44 Gellerman; IBID; pages 293-294.

1.45 Michael A. West; Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research; BPS Blackwell; 2004; ISBN 1-4051-1057-0; pages 1-5. Wikipedia; "Managerial Grid Model"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_grid_model. Don Clark; "Two Dimensional Modeling"; 2001; http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/development/modeling.html.

1.46 Bruce W. Tuckman; "Developmental Sequence in Small Groups"; American Psychological Association; 1965; Psychological Bulletin, Volume 63, Number 6; pages 384-399. West; IBID; pages 29-30. BusinessBalls.com; "Bruce Tuckman; Storming, Forming, Norming and Performing model of team development"; BusinessBalls.com; http://www.businessballs.com/tuckmanformingstormingnormingperforming.htm. M. K. Smith; "Bruce W. Tuckman - forming, storming, norming and performing in groups"; the encyclopaedia of informal education, 2005; www.infed.org/thinkers/tuckman.htm. Rutan and Stone; IBID; pages 36-53.

1.47 Argyris; IBID.

1.48 Argyris; IBID. Gellerman; IBID; pages 72-82. M. K. Smith; 2001; IBID.

1.49 Gellerman; IBID; pages 20-24.

1.50 Argyris; IBID; page 52.

1.51 Daniel Goleman; Social Intelligence; Audio Renaissance; 2006; ISBN 1-59397-984-3.

1.52 Argyris; IBID; 50.

1.53 Senge; IBID. M. K. Smith; "Peter Senge and the learning organization"; the encyclopaedia of informal education, 2006; http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm.

1.54 Miyamoto Musashi; A Book of Five Rings; Overlook Press; 1982; ISBN 0-87951-153-2.

1.55 Musashi; IBID; page 39.

1.56 Holman Bible Publishers; IBID; 1 Corinthians 9:24-25.

1.57 Ziva Kunda; Social Cognition: Making Sense of People; MIT Press; 1999; ISBN 0-262-61143-0.

1.58 Senge; IBID; page 139.

1.59 Senge; IBID; page 25.

1.60 Argyris; IBID; page 268.

1.61 Senge; IBID; page 9.

1.62 Holman Bible Publishers; IBID; Romans 12:3-6.

1.63 Smith; 2006; IBID.

1.64 West; IBID; page 122.

1.65 Charles Nordhoff; The Communistic Societies of the United States; Dover; 1966; ISBN 0-486-21580-6.

1.66 Goleman; IBID.

1.67 Albert Einstein; Ideas & Opinions; Wings; 1988; ISBN 978-0517003930. John Penner; "Storm's Journal"; John Penner; 2001; http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/Einstein3.html. Circle of Compassion; "Circle of Compassion: Exploring peaceable choices for the planet and all who share it"; Circle of Compassion; http://www.circleofcompassion.net/FreePres.htm.

1.68 Mohandas K. Gandhi; The Story of My Experiments with Truth; Beacon; 1969; also Audio CD ISBN 1-56511-518-X. Mahatma Gandhi; Mahatma Gandhi - His Own Story; MacMillan; 1930. Erik H. Erikson; Gandhi's Truth; Norton; 1969; ISBN 393-09882.

1.69 Holman Bible Publishers; IBID; Luke 6:31.

2.1 Martin Luther King, Jr.; I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World; HarperCollins; 1992; ISBN 0-06-250552-1; page 4.

2.2 King; IBID; page 103.

2.3 Lev Vygotsky (author) and Alex Kozulin (editor); Thought and Language; MIT Press; 1986; ISBN 0-262-72010-8; page xl.

2.4 King; IBID; page 36.

2.5 King; IBID; page 84.

2.6 King; IBID; page 177.

2.7 King; IBID; page 140.

2.8 King; IBID; page 105.

2.9 King; IBID; page 110.

2.10 King; IBID; page 19.

2.11 King; IBID; page 67.

2.12 King; IBID; page 89.

2.13 Thomas Jefferson, et al.; "The Declaration of Independence"; http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm.

2.14 Bernard M. Bass and Bruce J. Avolio, editors; Improving Organizational Effectiveness Through Transformational Leadership; Sage Publications; 1994; ISBN 0-8039-5236-8. ChangingMinds.org; "Transformational Leadership"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/transformational_leadership.htm.

2.15 Bass and Avolio; IBID; page 130 in an article by Bruce J. Avolio titled "The Alliance of Total Quality and the Full Range of Leadership." Bass and Avolio; IBID; pages 204-205 in an article by Bass and Avolio titled "Conclusion and Implications". Bass and Avolio; IBID; pages 13-21 in an article by Karl W. Kuhnert titled "Transforming Leadership".

2.16 L. S. Vygotsky (author), Michael Cole (editor), Vera John-Steiner (editor), Sylvia Scribner (editor) and Ellen Souberman (Editor); Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes; Harvard University Press; 2006; 978-0674576292; pages 84-89. Vygotsky; 1986; IBID; page 189. Wikipedia; "Lev Vygotsky"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky. Funderstanding; "Vygotsky and Social Cognition"; Funderstanding; http://www.funderstanding.com/vygotsky.cfm. The Virtual Faculty; "Lev Semenovich Vygotsky"; The Virtual Faculty; http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/project2.htm. Michael Cole and James Wertsch; "Beyond the Individual-Social Antimony in Discussions of Piaget and Vygotsky"; The Virtual Faculty; http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/colevyg.htm.

2.17 Thomas S. Kuhn; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; University of Chicago Press; 1970; ISBN 0-226-45804-0.

2.18 Vygotsky; 2006; IBID; page 89. Vygotsky; 1986; IBID; page 108.

2.19 Vygotsky; 2006; IBID; pages 117-118.

2.20 Vygotsky; 2006; IBID; page 56.

2.21 Vygotsky; 2006; IBID; page 63.

2.22 ChangingMinds.org; "Leadership Styles"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles.

2.23 Ken Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi and Drea Zigarmi; Leadership and the One Minute Manager; William Morrow, 1985; ISBN 0-688-03969-3. ChangingMinds.org; "Situational Leadership"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/situational_leadership.htm. ChangingMinds.org; "Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/situational_leadership_hersey_blanchard.htm.

2.24 Victor Vroom and Arthur G. Jago; The New Leadership: Managing Participation in Organizations; Prentice-Hall; 1988; ISBN 978-0136150305; page 52.

2.25 Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson; The One Minute Manager; HarperCollins; 1981; ISBN 0-688-01429-1.

2.26 Blanchard and Johnson; IBID; page 101.

2.27 Michael A. West; Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research; BPS Blackwell; 2004; ISBN 1-4051-1057-0; pages 1-5. Wikipedia; "Managerial Grid Model"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_grid_model. Don Clark; "Two Dimensional Modeling"; 2001; http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/development/modeling.html.

2.28 Victor H. Vroom and Philip W. Yetton; Leadership and decision-making; University of Pittsburgh Press; 1973; ISBN 978-0822952657. Victor H. Vroom and Arthur G. Jago; IBID. ChangingMinds.org; "Vroom and Yetton's Normative Model"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/theories/vroom_yetton.htm.

2.29 Vroom and Jago; IBID; page 52.

2.30 Vroom and Yetton; IBID; page 62.

2.31 Vroom and Jago; IBID; page 184.

2.32 Vroom and Jago; IBID; pages 33-35.

2.33 Vroom and Jago; IBID; page 184.

2.34 Vroom and Yetton; IBID; page 67.

2.35 Vroom and Yetton; IBID; page 45.

2.36 Vroom and Jago; IBID; page 18.

2.37 Vroom and Yetton; IBID; page 25.

2.38 Vroom and Yetton; IBID; page 132.

2.39 Vroom and Jago; IBID; page 215.

2.40 David C. McClelland; Human Motivation; Cambridge University Press; 1988; ISBN 978-0521369510. Businessballs.com; "David McClelland"; Businessballs.com; http://www.businessballs.com/davidmcclelland.htm. Wikipedia; "David McClelland"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McClelland.

2.41 McClelland; IBID; page 6.

2.42 Ziva Kunda; Social Cognition: Making Sense of People; MIT Press; 1999; ISBN 0-262-61143-0. Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee; Primal Leadership; Harvard Business School Press; 2002; ISBN 1-59139-184-9.

2.43 McClelland; IBID; pages 119 through 128.

2.44 McClelland; IBID; pages 46, 47 and 474.

2.45 McClelland; IBID; pages 504-506.

2.46 McClelland; IBID; page 536.

2.47 McClelland; IBID; pages 544..

2.48 McClelland; IBID; pages 595-598.

2.49 McClelland; IBID; page 282.

2.50 McClelland; IBID; pages 378-381.

2.51 Albert Einstein; Ideas & Opinions; Wings; 1988; ISBN 978-0517003930; page 8.

2.52 George Lucas; Star Wars; 20th Century Fox; 2004; DVD edition.

2.53 Machiavelli; The Prince; Penguin Classics; 1978; ISBN 0-14-044-107-7; page 119.

2.54 ChangingMinds.org; "French and Raven's Five Forms of Power"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/explanations/power/french_and_raven.htm. Vroom and Yetton; IBID; page 28. Wikipedia; "Power (sociology)"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(sociology). Gilbert W. Fairholm; Organizational Power Politics; Praeger; 1993; ISBN 0-275-94420-4; pages 181-182.

2.55 Fairholm; IBID.

2.56 Fairholm; IBID; page 7.

2.57 Fairholm; IBID; page 41.

2.58 Fairholm; IBID; page 34.

2.59 Fairholm; IBID; page 48.

2.60 Fairholm; IBID; page 62.

2.61 Jean-Jacques Rousseau; The Social Contract; Penguin; 1988; ISBN 0-14-044201-4.

2.62 Fairholm; IBID; page 108.

2.63 Peter M. Senge; The Fifth Discipline; Doubleday; 1990; ISBN 0-385-51725-4; page 100-101.

2.64 Fairholm; IBID; pages 91-92.

2.65 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America; The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Edition; Holman Bible Publishers; 1989; Philippians 2:5-8.

2.66 Holman Bible Publishers; IBID; Philippians 2:21.

2.67 Holman Bible Publishers; IBID; Colossians 4:1.

2.68 Einstein; IBID: pages 36-52.

2.69 Robert K. Greenleaf and Larry C. Spears; Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 25th Anniversary Edition; Paulist Press; 2002; ISBN 978-0809105540. ChangingMinds.org; "Servant Leadership"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/servant_leadership.htm.

2.70 Greenleaf; IBID; page 56.

2.71 Greenleaf; IBID; page 40.

2.72 Greenleaf; IBID; page 109.

2.73 Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee; IBID; pages xv, 35 and 83.

2.74 Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee; IBID; pages ix and 51. ChangingMinds.org; "Six Emotional Leadership Styles"; ChangingMinds.org; http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/six_emotional_styles.htm.

2.75 William Penn; The Peace of Europe: The Fruits of Solitude and Other Writing by William Penn; J. M. Dent & Sons; 1905.

2.76 Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee; IBID; page 130.

2.77 J. Scott Rutan and Walter N. Stone; Psychodynamic Group Psychotherapy, Third Edition; The Guilford Press; 2001; ISBN 1-57230-518-5.

2.78 Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee; IBID; page 183.

2.79 Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee; IBID; pages 163, 189, 199 and 225

2.80 Robert R. McCrae, Jr. and Paul T. Costa; Personality in Adulthood, Second Edition: A Five-Factor Theory Perspective; The Guilford Press; 2002; ISBN 1572308273; page 2.

2.81 McCrae and Costa; IBID; page 9.

2.82 McCrae and Costa; IBID; pages 11, 96 and 112.

2.83 McCrae and Costa; IBID; pages 141-150. Robert Kegan; The Evolving Self; Harvard University Press; 1982; ISBN 0-674-27231-5; pages 86 and 87. Jane Loevinger and Augusto Blasi; Ego Development: Conceptions and Theories; Jossey-Bass Behavioral Science Series; 1976; ISBN 0875892752.

2.84 McCrae and Costa; IBID; pages 151 and 152.

2.85 McCrae and Costa; IBID; pages 140-141, etc.

2.86 McCrae and Costa; IBID; page 167.

2.87 McClelland; IBID; page 590.

2.88 McCrae and Costa; IBID; pages 204-205.

2.89 McCrae and Costa; IBID; page 4.

2.90 Albert Bandura; Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory; Prentice Hall; 1985; ISBN 013815614X; pages 24-30. Gerald Matthews, Ian J. Deary and Martha C. Whiteman; Personality Traits; Cambridge University Press; 2004; ISBN 0521538246; page 215.

2.91 McCrae and Costa; IBID; pages 211-216 and 227-231.

2.92 William Shakespeare; As You Like It. R. Moore (author) and Penny Satoris (editor); "Shakespeare Quotes' Famous Quotations: All the world's a stage...: An Explanation." Enotes.com LLC; 2007; .

2.93 Bandura; IBID: page 6.

2.94 Bandura; IBID; page 9.

2.95 Bandura; IBID; page 27.

2.96 American Psychiatric Association; Quick Reference to the Diagnostic Criteria from DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association; 2000; ISBN 0-89042-026-2; page 294.

2.97 Greenleaf; IBID; pages 343-359.

2.98 PersonalityResearch.org; "Five-Factor Model"; PersonalityResearch.org; http://www.personalityresearch.org/bigfive.html. PersonalityResearch.org; "Goldberg"; PersonalityResearch.org; http://www.personalityresearch.org/bigfive/goldberg.html. Wikipedia; "Trait Theory"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_theory. Oliver P. John, et al; "The Big Five Personality Test"; OutOfService.com; http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/. Dr. Tom Buchanan; "Five Factor Personality Test"; PersonalityTest.org; http://www.personalitytest.org.uk/.

2.99 Greenleaf; IBID; page 316.

2.100 Charles Darwin; On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; Librivox; MP3 recording; http://librivox.org/the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/. Wikipedia; "Charles Darwin"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin. Einstein; IBID; page 62.

2.101 Rachel Carson; Silent Spring; Mariner Books; 2002; ISBN 0618249060. Wikipedia; "Rachel Carson"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson. Wikipedia; "Ecological Systems Theory"; Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_Systems_Theory.

3.1 John C. Bogle; The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism; Gildan Media Corp; ISBN 1-59659-098-X.

3.2 Rob Anderson and Kenneth N. Cissna; The Martin Buber - Carl Rogers Dialogue; State University of New York; 1997; ISBN 0-7914-3438-9; page 107.

3.3 Plato; The Last Days of Socrates; Penguin Books; 1969; ISBN 0-14-044-037-2.

3.4 Martin Buber (author) and Ronald Smith (translator); I and Thou; Scribner; 2000; ISBN: 0743201337. Kenneth Paul Kramer with Mechthild Gawlick; Martin Buber's I and Thou; Paulist Press; 2004; ISBN 0809141582. M. K. Smith; "Martin Buber on Education"; the encyclopedia of informal education; 2006; http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-buber.htm.

3.5 Carl R. Rogers; On Becoming a Person; Houghton Mifflin; 1961; ISBN 0-395-08409-1.

3.6 Anderson and Cissna; IBID. Carl R. Rogers and B. F. Skinner; Rogers & Skinner: A Dialogue on the Control of Human Behavior; Jeffrey Norton Publishers; 1976.

3.7 David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius; The Manager as Negotiator; Free Press; 1986; ISBN 0-02-918770-2. Roger Fisher (Author), William L. Ury (Author) and Bruce Patton (Editor); Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In; Penguin; 1991; ISBN: 0140157352. Roger Fisher (Author), William L. Ury (Author) and Bruce Patton (Editor); Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In; Audio CD edition; Simon and Schuster; .2003; ISBN 0-7435-2693-7.

3.8 Fisher, Ury and Patton; IBID; pages 10 and 11.

3.9 Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey; How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation; Jossey-Bass; 2002; ISBN 078796378X.

3.10 Kegan and Lahey; IBID; page 76.

3.11 Dean R. Spitzer; Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success; Amacom; 2007; ISBN 0-8144-0891-5.

3.12 Don Clark; "Learning Domains or Bloom's Taxonomy";http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

3.13 Carl R. Rogers; On Becoming a Person; Houghton Mifflin; 1961; ISBN 0-395-08409-1. David Augsburger; Caring Enough to Hear and Be Heard; Regal Books; 1982; ISBN 0-8037-0836-7. Joyce Huggett; Listening to Others: How One Woman Discovered a Healing Art; InterVarsity Press; 1988; ISBN 0-8308-1262-8.

3.14 Robert Fritz; Corporate Tides: The Inescapable Laws of Organizational Structure; Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 1996; ISBN 1-881052-88-5.

3.15 Spencer Johnson; Who Moved My Cheese?; G. P. Putnam's Sons; 1998; ISBN 0-399-14446-3.

3.16 Harvard Business Review; Managing Change and Transition; Harvard Business School Press; 2003; ISBN 1-57851-874-1; page 99.

3.17 Thomas Pyzdek; The Six Sigma Handbook; McGraw-Hill; 2003; ISBN 0-07-141-15-5; page 562. In this section Pyzdek is quoting from The Pursuit of Quality through Personal Change by H. I. Forsha.

3.18 Fritz; IBID; page 113.

3.19 Bogle; IBID.

3.20 Anderson and Cissna; IBID; page 21.

3.21 Anderson and Cissna; IBID; page 94.

3.22 I do not know the source of this quote. It has been with me for a while and somewhere I misplaced the reference as to where it came from.

3.23 Kathrine Switzer; Marathon Woman: Running the Race to Revolutionize Women's Sports; Carroll and Graf; 2007; ISBN 0-7867-1967-2.

3.24 Switzer; IBID; page 93.

3.25 Switzer; IBID; pages 102 and 103.

3.26 Switzer; IBID; page 168.

4.1 Festinger, Leon; 1957; Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Stanford University Press; 978-0804701310.

4.2 Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson; The One Minute Manager; HarperCollins; 1981; ISBN 0-688-01429-1.

4.3 Viktor Frankl; 2006; Man's Search for Meaning; Beacon Press; 080701429X.

4.4 Albert Ellis; 2001; Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy; Prometheus Books; 978-1573928793.

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