Fear, faith, hope, mindfulness,

     This week, I have had a few meetings in where I was worried about the outcomes only to find that they turned out much better than I expected. It reminded me of studies of learned optimism by Dr. Seligman. Some people are programmed to look at the bright side of things. As has been often stated, looking at the glass as half full. This characteristic is powerful in leadership, as research has shown that the emotional energy of leaders is transferred to the follower. Persistence, a leadership quality, is also linked to optimism; people persist when they have hope and faith that their efforts will yield results.

     I link optimism to the term hope in religious context. Christian scripture talks about the importance of maintaining hope. Psalms 32:10 recites that "Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord". The bible shows that there are times in leadership where hope has been lost with poor effects on the leader and their followers. It also shows the power of hope to transcend death and the best efforts by the powerful and resourceful to stamp out the organization and movement.

     This led me to think this morning on my prayer walk of where we put our trust. Where we put our trust dictates what changes will determine a change in our hope and our well-being. For example, if we put our trust in our bank account, then when the account depletes, a person will lose hope. If a person puts their hope in another person and that person doesn't come through, then their hope diminishes. I think of stories of campaign managers who see their candidate change once they have power and become jaded or a person who puts their trust in a lover only to have that person let them down and are devastated. Conversely, we see mini-lessons in sports where an awful occurrence happens in a game that should have ended any chances of a win, only to have a comeback.

     Yesterday I read a passage that really put the issue in perspective. Those who put their trust in the Lord shall not live in fear. In fact, those who put their trust in God shall be strengthened. "31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." God, being constant, gives us a consistency in a universe that is in constant change. Our bank accounts may change, the political powers may change, conflicts come and they go, business cycles change, laws change, jobs change, but God and his love for us never changes. That is a powerful resource for people, especially leaders.
     I used to think it unrealistic the charge Jesus gave of not worrying. Worrying is part of having a brain. We naturally look out for danger. However, neurology has shown us the deteriorating effects of worry on the brain. Life has also given me the belief that the things we see coming are rarely the things that leave us blindsided. It is the things we cannot see. That is where a primary trust in God allows us to focus on our work at hand as he watches over us. The lack of worry relaxes the amygdala, allowing our frontal cortex to think creatively and critically.
     Daniel Goleman explains that our focus is primary to successes and how we experience our lives. Those who are able to focus for long periods of time on a task experience better results than those who are easily distracted. Malcolm Gladwell identifies a commonality in those who are successful to their ability to spend large amounts of focused time on their pursuits. The endemic effect of worrying is that there is no location you can go to get away from it. There has to be a way for you to internally justify moving your attention away from it. In some cases, there are things one can do to address worries. For other issues, one has to put faith in something. How good it is we can put our faith in something constant. 
      

With Hope

It is interesting that the world is celebrating an American icon in Mohammed Ali with his confidence and swagger. His boasts and bragging and back and forth with media and personalities that were highly respected showed a self value that was labeled as cocky when it was on display. His public stances on his beliefs were flash points with much of American value leaders, especially his conversion to the Muslim faith and his refusal to go to Vietnam, but he had the confidence to hold to them. Now he is revered as a genuine image in line with the American brand of authentic voice. Hauser writes a wonderful article that captures his place in American history.

It would have been hard to imagine that poor young black man from Louisville would have that kind of courage and self-assurance. What made him so confident? It would have been arguable that he talked himself up out of fear and insecurity, but his persona never seemed to break. He seemed strong, courageous and self assured throughout his life, even with his later struggles he didn't hide in the shadows.

In the modern positive psychology movement, Seligman (1991) explains the presence or absence of optimism, the absence being learned helplessness and the effect it has on the person's mindset and the choices that they make, which effects the results of his or her experience. If one has learned optimism, they will use an optimistic outlook to their situations, which will encourage them to try and persist, which creates a greater likelihood to succeed. If a person has learned helplessness, they will see challenges as insurmountable and normally decide to quit trying and fail. Seligman argues that these mindsets can be cultivated and offers some processes to apply to create a more optimistic mindset. One of them is to meditate on positive things.

For Christians, Jesus identifies hope as one of the major ideas he wants his disciples to remember and practice. As it so happens, positive psychology research agrees with that assessment. It would be argued that with the pressures and oppression that early Christians had, it would have been the focus on hope that allowed the disciples of Christ to endure. Goleman (2013) explains that its the things we pay attention to that determine our experiences, thoughts about those experiences, and the choices we make in response to those thoughts. That is why Phillipians 4:8 instructs us to think about what is good, noble, beautiful, and praiseworthy. It isn't religious flowery speech, it is a formula for better living.

Acceptance

     Lately, I have been thinking about how the approval of others causes so much anxiety in our inner dialogue. I am up for the second part of my comprehensive exam for my Doctorate. My thoughts on the fear of what could So wrong helped me miss my first appointment. It reminded me that some of the most liked and polished people I know don't voice or display any worries about not performing to par.

     When the Bible talks about planning, it talks about not worrying what will happen or even what to say. This may be tied to neuroscience with respect to how fear cuts off the frontal cortex and stops the planning and decision-making part of the brain.
    Cultivating faith should do more for performance than planning. Many times in planning we consider the worst Case scenarios. In prayer, we express our hopes and faith qlong with our fears. Also, placing the determinant of our successes and failure outside of ourselves takes away some of the pressure to perform. In reality, there are too many determinants outside of our control to realistically put that responsibility on ourselves, not to mention, bad for performance.

Easter's answer to terrorism

     The current situation of terrorism has many on edge and fearful of what will come next. That encourages us to give in to messages of safety through attacks and restrictions on others. However, there are lessons in the gospel against these types of reactions. You see, the Jews were under two different and powerful threats: the Romans who could take their freedom and their lives and the Jewish establishment who could take away their identity and their soul.
     Jesus first disarms the Jewish establishment of their power through the forgiveness of sins, a restoration of those formerly outside of their religious tribe. His healing of the sick began with a pardon of sin. When questioned,  he answered which was more, important, not the physical healing but the spiritual one. As we can atrest, it is the psychological scars that wound us greater than the physical ones.
    Then he confronted the Roman power of life and death. He modeled the courage of facing the cross that his disciples in turn followed. It was not the pain and death, it was and is the fear of pain and death. The conquering of the fear in the Garden of Gethsemane was the preface to the conquering of the social status quo.
     In the miltary, a sizable percentage of the training is the overcoming of personal fears. At the outset of our involvement in the Second World War, the admonition was that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. In scripture, Paul clarifies that our war is not of flesh and blood but one of spirit. Will we allow fear to turn us away from being the better people, the more loving, the more faithful, the more hopeful people that we can be?

Your Brand of Leadership

It has been amazing to watch the emergence of the power of brand to the national race for the nation's leader. Obama was famous for establishing and using his brand to propel him to the White House. Now, we see a newbie in political races use his mastery of brand cultivation and management to vault to the lead in his party. Each candidate has their own identity and brand in this election, whether it's feel the Bern or young Marco, each candidate is attached to their brand.

What about you? What is your identity? What do people think when they think of you? Do you know? How have you contributed to it? What can you do to shape it? What kind of brand do you want? Whose brand do you admire? Why? Is it written down, concrete, or amorphous?

These are questions that can help focus you on what qualities you admire and value. That can help you more effectively know why you lead and what you want to change. It can also help your followers understand your brand and work to support it to improve the organization.

We are influencers in our groups, not controllers. As organizations become flatter, the skills at influencing rather than commanding become more valuable. It helps others to know where you're coming from to align to where you want to go. A clear brand helps others do that and gives them an expectation of things to come. In this era of uncertainty, clear expectations are welcomed.

A Bright Hope For Tomorrow.

I am so excited that a goal and dream I have been pursuing for almost 10 years is coming to fruition. I have been selected to be the middle school principal at New Diana middle school. They want me to start as soon as possible. We just started Spring Break but I feel like I need to hit the ground running. I have been focusing on building my leadership skills and I want to take advantage of all that preparation. This is my last semester before I become a Doctoral candidate. I take my comprehensive exams the last week of March and my oral exams the first week of April. I will also be presenting my research on April 7th. That is quite a couple of challenges all at once but I can do it. And once I do it, it is done!

I have been at this for quite a long time. My first interview for principal was a few years ago. That is when I was getting started with my superintendent certification which led me to the Doctorate program. I have read, researched, and written more than I can remember on different areas of educational leadership which is unfortunate, because I am going to have to remember them all here in a few weeks!

We had a timely sermon on living by faith this morning. It was a fitting message as I have been feeling like the extra time, money, and effort may be for nothing. Live by faith and not by sight. Fear not, for I am with you. In research terms the word is self-efficacy. I don't believe in self-efficacy. I have seen well trained people lose out to bad luck. I believe in God-efficacy. He sees us, has plans for us to prosper and have a future. We just have to have enough faith, patience, hope, and persistence. Pray for me and both the school and district I am leaving and the one I am going to be serving. For if God is not with us, we work in vain. But, if we wait on the Lord, we will rise up, as if on wings of EAGLES!

New Models of Improvement

In training for the last three days, we have learned and practiced a shift from evaluation to a growth model approach to improving teacher practice. In the past, there were boxes to check and comments at the bottom. The focus, then was to see how many boxes were checked and a general overview evaluation in each area.
The new approach is different in a few ways. One is that there is a more descriptive guide to quality in each dimension of good teaching. Another is that that the method provides a process for professional growth rather than a question of covering all of the boxes. A part of the approach is that there is one focus on strength and one focus on growth.
A frustration in growing is competing commitments. Usually, when we fail at change, it is because of a loss of attention and focus. I like this quality of focusing one one thing until it is mastered before moving on to another thing or trying to change multiple things at one time.

Social Model Shift

The last few weeks have been both enlightening and confusing. I have been to three conferences in education and have read a couple  of books on learning, teaching, and learning about teaching, as well as leadership and motivation. At the same time, my conversations and thoughts on religion, spirituality , psychology, and growth individually have informed my thoughts on economics and politics corporately. My Doctoral focus on social learning is a result of that.
Arguments on capitalism and socialism, selfishness and selflessness, are at the center of this political debate, whether it's immigration, economic and tax policy,  health care, or national security, the tension rests on the question of the power of selfishness or collectiveness as the effective strategy and motivation to improve these problems. Should we put our money in collectively to solve these problems or should we use the allure of individual  riches to have individuals solve these problems?
My reading of the situation is that there tends to be a cycle or a swing in the pendulum in thinking socially about these problems. Since Reagan, the people have chosen leaders that are corporation friendly. Even the Democratic presidents were protective of the corporation in regulation and trade. I feel that the thinking is that keeping corporations safe and profitable will help all Americans: "What is good for General Motors is good for America."
The anomaly in this trend for the last two and this election cycle is that the electorate has chosen a branded socialist and the new socialist choice is gaining popularity quickly. It seems that the mental model of protecting corporations at all costs has soured on the American people, especially as it comes to light how much the profits of their work has flowed away from them to the top one percent. This is true globally, as the Pope and other world leaders have called out income inequality as the major issue.
Religiously, selfishness and the love of money has been singled out as a root of all kinds of evil. Psychologically, we may find the same occurrence. Daniel Pink in Drive and Dan Gilbert in Stumbling Towards Happiness argue that there is a limited positive effect on personal gain and motivation. Maslow's hierarchy of needs identifies physical needs as basic but the higher needs moving away from what the physical reward can provide. Victor Frankl and others show that the the mental and spiritual has a more powerful effect on the physical than physical reward alone. Research shows that we are strongly social creatures and that we are missing the connections of belonging following the mantra of individual gain. Maybe a more balanced approach between individual and the group is in the future.

The Power of Hope

In the pursuit to find consistent and proven techniques to ensure success in endeavors, researchers tend to look for certain behaviors or characteristics. Why did this person succeed and this person did not? Why did this organization succeed and this one did not?
What I am finding in looking at a multitude of books and research studies is that many of the outcomes are dependent on too many variables to be without critical detraction. One of the dimensions that doesn't seem to change is the spirit/physical connection. Where authors have identified  work/practice/grit there must first be a grounding in hope. Without hope there is no grit. In order to have hope, there must be faith, either faith in probabilities or faith in a higher power. If a person does not have a belief that certain laws apply that will lead to a wanted outcome, then hope is hard to build. And again, without hope actions and persistence are hard to come by. Even with faith and hope, without a connection to values: things that you love and hold important, there is no meaning to achievement. It is telling that when Frankl (2006) describes the clues of when someone had given up and started to die during the Holocaust, that after everything that they loved was taken away from them, they began to lose hope and decided to stop trying.
In Start With Why, Sineck outlines how a constant of compelling leaders is the process they have to connect what they do to an important cause, a cause that resonates with the members' interests, the things that they find important, the things that they love. So, when Jesus shares that he gives us three things: faith, hope, and love, it is not a superstitious hocus-pocus religious-speak. It is grounded in business, sociology, and psychological study.
In identifying things that we should love there is also some guidance in Jesus's words: Do not build your treasures here on earth, where moth and rust destroy. Psychology has shown that money spent on things diminish with time. (Gilbert, 2006) Experiences, especially with people you have a connection with provide a much stronger and long-lasting memory and sense of satisfaction than things.
So, knowing these things, as we plan and evaluate our actions, what should be the focus of our priorities and the method of our measurements? What voices do you listen to when evaluating your actions and accomplishments? What do you think they should be? How do we make those changes? Would they lead to greater fulfillment?