Bob Sutton, in his blog post 12 Things Good Bosses Believe, emphasizes how the power of a role inevitably creates blind spots. Number 1 on his list:

I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it’s like to work for me

And he concludes with Number 12:

Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.

I like how he says it and shows it so bluntly: power corrupts.

But it is not the power of the role alone. It is the fit between the power of the person and the power of the role. Think of it like clothing. The role or position is a piece of clothing, but the body who wears it has a lot to do with how it fits, to stretch an analogy just a bit. (more…)

Last March I posted The Reading Roundup. I got a lot of comments and suggestions from readers, and so I’d like to make this a regular feature, perhaps once a quarter, provided I’ve actually read enough.

So, here is a list of some books I’ve enjoyed since the last Roundup, though a few which I forgot to include in the last list. As I did with the first Round Up, I’m including here where and how I came across the book. And, still, all non-fiction. Not sure what that means. Except that there’s an awful lot of good non-fiction out there. (more…)

As I’ve written about before, solving the problems of bullying depends on the society’s tolerance for abusive interaction. My good friend and colleague, Dawn Menken, psychotherapist and conflict resolution educator, wrote this thoughtful piece for the Oregonian last week. She raises many thought-provoking questions, and asks us to look at how we define bullying. Until we look closely at our tolerance for certain behaviors, we won’t make headway into the problem of bullying.

Cultural tolerance is one part of the problem of bullying. But another is learning how to have healthy and productive conflict. There really is such a thing as a “good fight.” In fact, diversity of opinion, incompatibility of worldviews, and clashes of representational systems increase intelligence. Barbara Strauch, author of The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain said in a recent interview in the New York Times:

One of the most intriguing findings [about maintaining healthy brain functioning] is that if you talk to people who disagree with you, that helps your brain wake up and refine your arguments and shake up the cognitive egg, which is what you want to do.

In a move which I find hard not to characterize as deliberately antagonistic, Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard and City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade are pushing for a vote this week on a resolution to strengthen the citizen police oversight board while Police Chief Rosie Sizer is out of town. This would be the first major overhaul of the citizen review board since 2001. After only 5 days of public process, minus the Chief’s input, Leonard and Griffin-Valade are demanding an immediate vote. Leonard characterized a request to delay the hearing until more public input and the Chief’s return from her overseas trip as a strategy of delay under the guise of ‘public process’ [which will] defer to those who will go to any length to resist transparency at the Portland Police Bureau.” http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/03/randy_leonard_portland_auditor.html

An empowered citizen police review board is vital. But due process works in both directions. The Police Chief’s complete participation in the process will only serve to strengthen the review board. Chief Sizer has gone to great lengths to make the force more accountable and transparent, from revising the training of Police Officers in the use of force to instituting processes to review racial profiling. Under her tenure deadly incidents have decreased 40%. There’s no doubt more work needs to be done, but I can’t help viewing this through my lens of conflict resolution facilitator. Leonard’s escalatory style, while it may serve to push through a resolution, will not ultimately provide the City of Portland with what it needs most: a better relationship between members of the Police force and the city of Portland.

Last week the American Psychiatric Associations released a draft of DSM-V, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The final version is set to come out in May 2013. It has a number of proposed revisions which have been widely blogged about, including a new diagnosis of hypersexuality. In just about every post I’ve read, at some point, the author proposes Tiger Woods as the poster child for this new diagnosis.

As a blog on power and leadership, I’ve spent a fair amount of time here discussing instances in which power goes awry, in particular, why and how public figures and leaders torpedo their careers by engaging in risky sexual behavior. How can public figures like Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer and Tiger Woods, believe their sexual behavior can be kept secret from the world?  It is easy to see it as a mental disorder and it very well may be. Undoubtedly we’ll even find the gene that’s responsible, but making this a medical disorder keeps us from contemplating it as a behavior on a continuum, one we’re all prone to. (more…)

What’s the solution for solving the health care mess? Global warming? The economy? OK, these are bad examples, obviously if we knew, and if it were that easy, they’d be solved. But the question I want to ask is, why do we wait to tackle our problems until they are so complicated, so messy, so escalated that they require Herculean efforts? (more…)