There’s a problem in learning theory called transfer. How does a student learn something and then transfer that knowledge or set of skills to the appropriate context? In common sense terms, how does book learning become a real world skill? I’m still waiting for algebra transfer to happen. My 9^th grade algebra teacher, Mr Eastman, really knew his algebra, but didn’t know much about transfer. I learned enough algebra to pass his Friday quizzes, but I still don’t have the foggiest idea what algebra is or the real life problems it’s meant to solve.

There’s also something called negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when previous knowledge is incorrectly applied to new areas. In language, when one’s mother tongue interferes with the speaking of a second language, that’s a case of negative transfer. (more…)

While it’s been quiet on the blog front, it’s been a storm of ideas, activities and projects in the back office, so to speak. I just arrived down in Yachats for my much anticipated and much needed end of year retreat, and I’ve got several projects I’m looking forward to spending time with. Here’s a little overview:

• I’m fascinated by Scott Miller’s work, His research into what works in psychotherapy raises a lot of questions about change and growth, specifically why and how do people change? It seems that rather than any one modality, there are a few ‘meta-therapeutic’ factors that account for efficacy in psychotherapy. Part of what prompts me to look at this more closely is my interest in the future of psychotherapy. Will psychotherapy endure as a profession, or will its ideas and methods become absorbed into the larger discourse of change and learning?
• Kids and leadership! For my work with the Dreamers, the 4th graders I’m sponsoring as part of the I Have a Dream Foundation, I’m starting a “Kids City Club.” Field trips to city hall, the police, local TV station are all part of a project on helping kids understand how the government works, and how the city runs. Part of this will also include learning about the local city council’s proposal to revitalize their neighborhood, and then making a presentation to the city council on what changes they’d like to see.
• Happy to see one of my favorite authors, Doris Kearns Goodwin, get such great publicity of late. Also happy to see how much history is referred to in current events. Just before the election, while traveling overseas, I read her book on FDR, Eleanor and the home front during the war: No Ordinary Time. Tremendous book, and like Team of Rivals, eerily relevant for the current economic crisis.
• Just one thing more on Team of Rivals. When reporters asked Obama how he would avoid having a “clash of rivals” rather than a “team of rivals,” he said he wanted “vigorous debate” as he was “a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions.” He cited the dangers of groupthink, where all data confirm the theories and ideas already agreed upon. I’m happy to see such a discussion on the front page about the value of and necessity for conflict.

The past is never dead. It is not even past.

– William Faulkner

I just finished a Process Work seminar here in Auckland, the second in a series of three. Last week I was in Brisbane, and tomorrow I’m off to Tokyo for a training on workplace bullying (and to watch the US elections from abroad). This weekend’s seminar was called, The Unfinished Work of Ancestors. I wanted to explore how lineal issues, problems inherited from previous generations, determine, influence, and shape our current relationships and family life.

It struck me over the course of the weekend that not only are many of the issues and patterns we grapple with in relationship inherited habits of history, but also how relieving and liberating it is to view our chronic relationship challenges as ‘lineal’ problems – social, historical and political issues that our ancestors struggled with. We are positioned in history, shaped and influenced by social, historical and even natural forces – and the echoes of the great potato famine, World War II, the harsh lives of coal miners in Scotland, of itinerant workers, of Russian peasants reverberate in our intimate interactions, daily habits, and moods.

For instance, perhaps due to the seminar’s setting of New Zealand, the so-called “New World,” for Anglo-Europeans, immigration, refuge, deportation, and itinerancy were themes people connected to their relationship struggles . The immigrant or refugee psychology reflects itself as a lack of certainty, of ‘being-at-homeness,’ never certain of our foothold, of whether the world could sustain or welcome us. What looks like fear of commitment, intimacy problems, or feeling a lack of permission to be yourself with another, for many, was a reflection, amplified through the generations, of the fears and anxieties of their ancestors in a strange land, only tenuously and temporarily hosted by its peoples and government.

Individual psychotherapy, the habit of looking inward, while yielding tremendous insights, needs to be complemented, at least occasionally, with this broad sweep of history. We are who we are for so many reasons, and to realize that our strange tendencies and pesky moods are not only to be found in a psychology text, but in a history book, is, at least for me, a huge relief. What won’t yield to self-reflection and inner probing might best be explained and even resolved by reading the history that our forebearers lived.

Soft power, a term coined by Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, Jr., is widely taken as the next natural step in leadership. Soft power is the ability to lead and influence using tools of appeal: relationship, collaboration, inspiration, engagement, communication, and emotional appeal. In the November 2008 issue of HBR, Nye points to an interesting paradox about soft power women:

The United States makes it particularly difficult for women to use smart (soft) power in public life, in part because of the macho myths that dominate American culture and in part because of the climate of fear that followed September 11. Look at this year’s Democratic presidential primaries.  A woman seeking public office still has to play against the gender stereotype that women are soft. So Hillary Clinton spent a good deal of her campaign proving that she was tough and experienced. That meant that Obama was able to be the candidate who could use soft power. He could appeal to people with a message of hope, a new beginning, a new future.

To be sure, Obama was also criticized for not being tough enough. (more…)

When I started this blog, I didn’t want it to focus on current events or politics. But it’s hard, in these recent days, not to focus on the issues dominating the headlines. Is anyone else like me? I dread election years. I watch the news and debates out of sense of duty, cringing through them, and finding excuses to leave to the room. I hate the feeling of my lowest instincts being appealed to, my fears, prejudice and hatred being played like a violin. I am insulted by politicians who seek to flatter me or who expect me to admire their wit and cleverness when they mock their opponent. I hate them but I hate myself more for being susceptible to it.

As the nation was riveted this past week on the financial crisis and bailout, a tiny feeling of optimism crept in. The financial crisis requires real understanding, an intellectual grasp of an arcane, highly complex and completely opaque system. While the financial outlook may be grim, one silver lining is the opportunity for learning and a real engagement with issues beyond the usual Punch and Judy show that the media would have us focus on. (more…)

Iâ??m a cyclist, and in summer, I spend hours and hours sharing the road with cars. Mostly I try to avoid very busy roads, but at times, itâ??s inevitable. Thanks goodness Iâ??ve never had an accident involving a car, but there have been a few tense moments, mostly involving Winnebagos on Highway 101 on the Oregon Coast. They always seem to pass me just as the shoulder gives way, on a steep ascent coming around a major headland, with a 20 mph gust of wind coming from the north, making my bike wobble in one direction, while the draft of the Winnebago pulls me sideways in the other direction. Itâ??s not pleasant.

But cars and bikes are a huge issue where I live in Portland, Oregon. Weâ??re increasingly known for our progressive bike politics; weâ??re the only city of our size with the â??platinumâ?? award from the League of American Bicyclists. There are several active and effective bike advocacy groups and a fantastic bike politics blog run by Jonathan Maus. I really admire Jonathanâ??s blog. Bike politics is a contentious topic, and there is a diverse and vocal group of frequent posters on his blog. One of the hot button issues is that of cars and bikes sharing the road. In the wake of several hit and runs, deaths, and road rage incidents (both car drivers and bike riders raging in the different cases), thereâ??s been vigorous debates about cars, riders, safety, and whoâ??s at fault. Is a car always at fault, since itâ??s bigger? What about cyclists and their responsibility?

Anyway, I was thinking about this, riding my bike down Hwy 101, south from Waldport to Yachats, enjoying a great tail wind, reaching speeds over 30 mph. I love having to slow down on my bike to come under the speed limit. But at that speed, I get even more vigilant of cars coming out on my right. Especially on a tourist route like 101. As a rider, Iâ??m not always visible since Iâ??m not directly in the driverâ??s line of vision. So I have this habit of raising my hand, sort of a like a wave. But in honesty, itâ??s actually more like a commanding â??stop!â?? The intent is to make myself visible, to get the attention of the driver, but at times, it feels more like a sentry signaling, â??Halt!â?? in no uncertain terms.

So there I was with a lot of time on my hands, thinking about this, and wondering, how is that hand signal perceived? Do people feel waved at, or do they feel commanded? Do they sense my anxiety, or do they see a cyclist, zooming along in a cycling kit, looking speedy and athletic, raising her hand in an arrogant salute?

Whatever arrogance I communicate is in fact fear. My bike and I weigh about 145 pounds, and the car weighs 5,000, not to mention whatever else velocity adds to the impact. Does the driver really identify with the 5,000 pound weapon he or she is driving? Just because they are in a bigger vehicle, do they actually feel more powerful on the road than the bike? On the bikeportland blog, and in many discussions, this is assumed to be the case. But it warrants a closer look.

Personally, I donâ??t think bigger size automatically translates into an awareness of power. I think this is the problem with many kinds of clashes involving power differentials. The person with less physical power, or material wealth, or resources insists on their lower status vis-Ã -vis the other; and yet the one with greater size, wealth, resource etc., does not always feel that way. There are psychological dynamics which intervene into what would otherwise be a straightforward social-political issue.

My friend Jan and I were riding earlier this summer in the foothills of Mt. Hood, on some lovely back country roads. It was a glorious summer day and we were enjoying a terrific descent, down into a beautiful valley. As we came around a long winding curve, we saw a car up ahead, slowing down in the middle of the road. Uncertain whether he was turning, stopping, or what, we had to slow down in the middle of a hill, which is difficult. And we didnâ??t know whether to pass him on the right, or if he was turning right. His brake lights kept going on and off, blinkers going left, then right. I felt my anger rise. Didnâ??t he see us? Does he think heâ??s alone on the road? I started to mutter something aggressive under my breath as we neared his car, but Jan silenced me. Look, she said, heâ??s lost. I looked in the car, and saw an elderly man, with a map and papers in his hand. He was leaning out the window, looking every which way, and clearly he was lost or looking for something or someone. Jan rolled up to his window, and said, can I help you? Are you lost? He said he was looking for a house number. I can appreciate how frustrating it is looking for a house out in the country. Driveways can be a half mile from the house, and the house numbers are often hard to read. We stopped and tried to help him for a few minutes, but not once did he acknowledge us, thank us, or talk to us. And then, he just turned around in the road, blocking us off completely, and took off in the other direction. Jan and I looked at each other, amazed.

I guess this guy was really frustrated, anxious or just angry at being lost. Iâ??m sure it had nothing to do with us as cyclists. But as I rode off, I thought of my parents. Theyâ??re great drivers, but they are getting older, and I know they feel more nervous on the road than they used to. They feel as much a victim of the 5,000 pounds of metal as a pedestrian or bicyclist, unsure of themselves, and unsure of other drivers.

Thatâ??s the problem with assigning power to the one with greater size. It doesnâ??t take into account how people feel, how they identify. A purely material way of determining power misses the fact that how we feel about ourselves, or how we feel inside often trumps the outer trappings of power. No matter how rich, powerful, or strong someone is, if she grew up with abusive parents or was badly bullied as a child, chances are she feels less powerful than her wealth or size would have us imagine. Psychologically, powerlessness tends to trump power. Hurt, abuse, insecurity, anxieties, itâ??s unfortunate, but these pesky little things have the power to dwarf the biggest stick, even 5,000 pounds of metal. Which is probably why I will continue my authoritarian salute as I pass by motorists. At the risk of offending them, I canâ??t trust that they are really aware of their 5,000 pound advantage.

As promised, Iâ??ve been looking at abuse of power, including bullying, ethical violations, exploitation, and conflict of interest. These past few weeks, Iâ??ve been researching workplace and school bullying. I find the topic to be really disturbing. If the literature is accurate, itâ??s a far bigger problem than I realized. Thereâ??s even a newly coined term, bullycide, to describe children who suicide because of being bullied. Itâ??s pretty much accepted that most mass shootings at schools were caused by bullying: the shooters were all targets of bullies who finally snapped.

One of the big controversies in the topic of bullying concerns attribution, or the causes of bullying. Here the research splits into two camps. One camp attributes internal or innate causes to bullying, such as a personality disorder. The other camp points to external (or situational) attributes: upbringing and social forces, group dynamics, socialization, etc.

A lot of what Iâ??ve read on childhood bullying posits external causes to explain why children become bullies. Thus, prevention focuses on creating empathy in children, teaching conflict resolution skills, and raising children to feel empowered, responsible, and empathic. Workplace bullying, however, is often explained in terms of internal attribution such as an underlying personality disorder, and prevention focuses on law, workplace tolerance, organizational norms, and policies. In the literature, the terms psychopath and sociopath crop up frequently, even though there is no hard evidence that bullying is a mental disorder. Even so, the tendency to diagnose it persists. Bullying, like so many other things that fall outside the bell curve of acceptable human behavior, is medicalized.

We used to use moral discourse; now itâ??s medical or psychiatric discourse that banishes criminal behavior and violence to the margins. Putting things into the medical model, as an aberration or disorder, is a way of containing the anxiety we feel over the incomprehensible cruelty that humans are capable of. For instance, Hitler is often called a sociopath, and those who did his bidding are said to have fallen under his hypnotic spell. It may be clinically the case, but it also obscures the fact that Hitler had many helpers. Was every German who followed Hitler a sociopath, or an anomaly?

Foucault famously said, weâ??ve come to view criminal as â??a kernel of danger, representing a type of anomaly.â?? I call this the â??lone gunman theory,â?? which states: some deranged wacko unlike you and me is responsible. Yet the truth is, none of us is too far from bullying behavior. Milgramâ??s well known experiment which measured the willingness of people to obey authority, even when it conflicted with their conscience, shows how amendable we are to so-called sociopathic tendencies. Seeking the cause of bullying as an internal attribution might help create workplace and school guidelines to prevent and curtail bullying, but it wonâ??t do enough because the question itself reflects a worldview that bullying is not a feature of human experience but a deviation from it. If on the other hand, we saw it as a continuum of behavior we are all capable of, we would learn, from an early age, how to deal with those tendencies in ourselves and others.

Bullying is abhorrent, but it is not an aberration of the human condition and calls for no special explanation. We all have bullying impulses â?? whether or not we act on them, or more accurately, to which degree we act on them. Bullying is defined as the use of power to hurt, demean, ridicule, abuse, torture, mistreat or exploit someone else to promote oneself at the othersâ?? expense. Is it not in our human nature to want to get our way no matter what? To exploit anotherâ??s weakness for our gain? To use emotions – pressure, guilt, threats â??to get our way? Isnâ??t mocking someoneâ??s point of view in public a form of bullying? When I tune in to Fox News or CNN, and watch political pundits hammering away at each other, or read comments on my favorite blogs, I find it rife with bullying.

The Workplace Bullying Institute has a simple explanation for what causes bullying: bullies bully because they can. There is a German expression: Gelegenheit macht Diebe (Opportunity makes the thief) There is opportunity and reward for those who use power to exploit others for their own gain. So bullying as a behavior cannot be addressed in isolation from the school, organization or society that promotes and rewards that use of power, competition and exploitation. Bullying is a use of power, and a poor one at that. If there is a disorder at play, it might just be a social one to which weâ??re all prone to varying degrees.

Iâ??ve got the task of developing a performance evaluation process with and for faculty at the Process Work Institute. Weâ??re a small training institute, and while we have had many different forums for feedback and evaluation, weâ??ve not created a standardized process that is tied to accountability.

Itâ??s a tricky process. As a colleague pointed out, itâ??s been a steep learning curve. Weâ??ve run into many snarls en route to developing this performance evaluation procedure. The topic is a minefield, on both sides, for the evaluated and the evaluator. For starters, itâ??s basically about being judged â?? am I good or bad? And trust. Can I trust whoâ??s evaluating me? What about the disgruntled colleague or student who has it in for me? Or that the feedback is filtered through the personality of the other person, complete with their values, beliefs about me, biases, etc. And of course, now that we are moving towards performance evaluation as mandatory, it raises the twin issues of motivation and resistance. Whatâ??s in it for me? Why should I jump that hoop? And do these standards relate to my own personal growth goals? And probably one of the biggest difficulties is that, like any tight knit organization, we sit comfortably in a single loop learning style â?? we have our way of looking at things and doing things, and when it comes to performance evaluation, we can police ourselves thank you very much.

But of course we canâ??t. And we know that. So we want the opportunity to reflect on ourselves, to a degree. Because itâ??s also human nature to bristle at anyone who points out any kind of flaw, even if they call it a â??challengeâ?? or â??opportunity.â?? We know negative feedback and criticism, no matter what perfume it has on.

I could write volumes on this, and others have, better than I can. So, the point I want to focus on is the question of accountability. Why do we, or does any organization, need evaluations, and accountability procedures? Why does bureaucracy have to intervene here?

As I ponder it, I think the real meaning of performance evaluation is a cost analysis: does what you add to a group outweigh what you cost your colleagues, customers, and organization? That sounds harsh to think that who we are has a price tag, but it does. Mostly, we add value. But itâ??s often hard to see the price others pay in getting along with us. Even our talents come with a price. I have a great talent at seeing the bigger picture, and this comes with the cost of frequently neglecting details and making small mistakes that definitely cause some teeth grinding downstream. Or, if I am difficult to collaborate with, I make the atmosphere tense, if I derail the conversation, neglecting the deadline that the other team members are trying to meet, I cost those around me in terms of energy, emotional wear and tear.

The problem isnâ??t what we cost; the problem is not knowing that cost, and not taking measures to reduce the difference between our value and our costs. For instance, if I am sloppy with details (as I am), and I send out information with the wrong date, this means that the office staff or my organizer has to spend extra time chasing me down to correct dates, sending out corrections, and responding to questions because people have been misinformed. In order to mitigate that cost, I need to do something â?? apologize, offer to help write the emails or mail out the corrections, or offer to pay extra money for the extra time involved. If I donâ??t, if I just assume someone else will clean up that mess, and anyway, mistakes happen, then laws, regulatory agencies, performance reviews, police forces, etc., spring up to fulfill the function I neglect.

Whatever we miss doing for ourselves, we outsource to another body. But this escalates the problem, and brings in force or power of some kind. If two people canâ??t resolve a fight alone, then a third party comes in to resolve it for them. When we outsource it to another we use power in place of natural consequences.

Barbara Coloroso, a parenting expert, uses the concept of natural consequences in parenting. Rather than controlling behavior through force or might (â??Do so because I say so!â??) children should learn that what they do has consequences for which they are responsible. You throw a cigarette butt out your house window and start a fire next door that threatens your home as well. You see and experience the consequences of your action, and are forced to take steps to counter it. But we seldom have that proximity to the effects of our action. We have lost contact between cause and effect. So laws are created that replace natural consequences with force. Donâ??t do this because the government says so. Now itâ??s impersonal, and there is no longer a reason attached. The violator, the one who throws the butt out the window, whether he obeys the law or not, is still dissociated from the loss of habitat, cost to taxpayers, homelessness, and the myriad issues caused by that one action.

Getting back to the issue of performance evaluation â??I donâ??t deal with my sloppiness, and eventually the office staff complains. So a new law gets posted: if you make a mistake on your dates, you are responsible for making the correction, or something like that. But now itâ??s bureaucracy, an arbitrary law. I might improve, but I probably wonâ??t. Even more significantly, I havenâ??t become more aware of what I cost.

I believe this is one of the reasons evaluators chafe at their role. Not only because they may not be trained for it, but also because they are recruited into the role because the person isnâ??t evaluating themselves sufficiently. The function really belongs to the one being evaluated. Thatâ??s why, in the way we do feedback at the Process Work Institute, we make a big point of training the ones giving and getting feedback to take the other roles.

The one receiving feedback should already know that feedback â?? itâ??s only coming to them from the outside because they somehow missed it. Feedback we donâ??t know about ourselves catches us by surprise, and is the worst kind. It hurts the most to receive criticism about something we donâ??t know about ourselves. But we should. We should be in touch with our cost, and have a sense of how we are received. On the other side of the equation, giving feedback is hardest when the person receiving it doesnâ??t already know about. Itâ??s for these reasons that the real learning involved in evaluation is less about substance (what should I focus on) and more about the process (Do I already know this, and if not, why not?).

And the big question is, why donâ??t we? Thereâ??s been a lot written about this, especially recently. Itâ??s a well know problem in social psychology that people chronically overrate their performance (unless they are  depressed). Cornell psychologist David Dunning, PhD. is one of the top researchers in this field. Heâ??s found that in North American culture, people overestimate their abilities, and that the least competent performers inflate their abilities the most. No one really knows for sure why this is the case. People are definitely prone to bias. They overrate the particular areas they excel at, and minimize the importance of those areas they donâ??t excel at. For instance, people with verbal ability would overestimate the role verbal ability, in contrast to mathematical ability, plays in intelligence. Or task focused people would rate task orientation as the most important leadership trait on a questionnaire about what makes a good leader.

Another reason we donâ??t see ourselves more clearly is due to fundamental attribution error, meaning, we tend to give credit to ourselves for a positive outcome, and lay the blame elsewhere for a negative outcome. Additionally, we seldom receive accurate feedback about ourselves. People tend to give each other more positive feedback to their faces, but say negative things behind their back. Finally, people lack the information they need to fully assess themselves; the paradox is that our incompetence makes us incompetent to accurately judge ourselves.

But another reason is that we donâ??t see ourselves as part of the whole. Itâ??s one of the reasons we struggle to see the environmental impact of our decisions, or the nutritional and health impact of our behaviors. Social marketers who try to educate the public about health issues such as skin cancer, AIDS awareness, smoking, and drunk driving, have to contend with this problem a lot: How do we get people to relate to the consequences of their actions? In organizations, how do we get people to identify with the organizational itself, not just their job, team, or silo?

Power is used as the intermediary between people, between individuals and whole. Rules and law force us to be responsible to each other, to think of the whole when we have lost our ability to do so. Weâ??ve made a big leap from performance evaluation to politics, but I think the common denominator is the essence of organization – association and affiliation. When we donâ??t affiliate with others, we outsource that task to the government or bureaucracy, and then inveigh against its restrictive rules and regulations. But we can and should police ourselves, not out of a sense of duty or morality, but out of the sense of connection and community. It reminds me of how Gandhi understood freedom â?? not as the ability to do whatever you wanted, but as liberation from the prison of dualism â?? that we are separate from each other. Democracy has always been a tension between its two parts: demos (people, community) and kratie (power, law). While we struggle to comprehend community, to identify with the demos, we depend on kratie, the power to force affiliation, but in the absence of heart, it becomes mere obedience.

I hesitated a long time before starting this blog because I knew it would be a challenge to keep at it, even when my schedule got busy as it has these past few weeks. I knew I would just have to bear down, set my alarm for 5 am on some days, and just push myself to do it.

Pushing ourselves. This has to be one of the most interesting topics in my work with clients. When to push, when not to push. When is it injurious, even suicidal to push ourselves past limits, past fear and uncertainty, and when is it an act of courage, a needed force for change? On the one hand self-help advocates urge us to take it easy, to love ourselves, just as we are, and not only for what we do. On the other hand, we are urged to push past identities of smallness, to get out our comfort zones, and to go for our goals. How do we know which direction to take? There is no rule. Managing this inner use of power requires self-awareness.

In Deep Survival, a book exploring the psychological and biological reasons some people survive disasters and life-threatening situations, while others don’t, Laurence Gonzales writes, “the Rambo types are the first to go.” He quotes a Navy Seal commander that believing in your abilities too much can lead you to overestimate what you can do elsewhere. A certain respect for the conditions is necessary to calculate risk.

The problem with courage is that it is often used against weakness, fear or limits. We interpret difficult external conditions, or inner fear as an enemy to overcome. But courage is not fearlessness. The best warriors understand that fear is an important signal of danger, and only by listening to it do we know whether it means stop or proceed with caution. If we just push past fear, we can leave ourselves open to injury or death.

It takes just as much courage to retreat than it does to go forward. Courage can be used as a defense because we are afraid to admit defeat, shamed to fail, and hating weakness. This doesn’t take more than the most cursory reading of history to see how many follies, disasters, and collapses of empires resulted from a false sense of courage and fear of looking weak.

Sometimes courage is a suicidal impulse. When I facilitate groups, there is often someone who stands up, takes a deep breath, and says: “There’s something I have to say,” or, “This has to be said.” I cringe because I know what’s coming. Cops call it”suicide by cops:” someone kills themselves by provoking a lethal response. In groups or social settings, and increasingly on email, someone finally decides to put it all out there. “What the hell,” they think, “I’ve kept my mouth shut all this time, now I’m going to tell it like it is.”

I call this launching yourself over the edge – the force we need to get over our inhibition overshoots the mark, and we end up way out on a limb. We pump ourselves up, after having been passive too long, and blast through our inhibitions, going way past where we need to go. We do this because confuse the target of our actions with the inner inhibition we have lived with. In blasting past our inhibitions, we blast the other.

Similarly, we confuse doubts with inhibitions. We think doubts are just a sign we lack belief in ourselves. And popular psychology contributes to this by promoting self-esteem above self-reflection. While we can get past some doubts with encouragement, we can’t get past them all. This is because doubts are thoughts. Our thoughts. The thoughts we’re not identified with. We decide to go with one thought and not the others, so the unloved thought pesters us as a doubt. And the more we don’t love our thoughts, the more dissociated they become. At first they are just nagging doubts, next they come back in drag, clothed as someone else’s thoughts, “John thinks this is stupid.” This only fortifies us, and now, with an “enemy” to fight, we become even more intractable and one-sided, determined to go our own way, and prove ourselves right against naysayers. But decision making is strengthened by considering all the doubts. Bringing in all the possible problems, and truly considering them, makes robust decisions. It’s aikido – open up to the energy and force coming towards us and use it to go forward.

If we are to take the ecological crisis to heart, we have to consider sustainability as a psychological issue, not just an environmental one. What business calls the triple bottom line means factoring social, environmental and ethical factors into profits. For us, it means factoring in our psychological and physical health by having the courage to recognize limits – our own and that of others. Our bodies are like the canary in the coal mine: fear, hesitation and uncertainty are important signals that can help us create more sustainable leadership practices for ourselves and for the people we lead.

It’s been quiet on the blog, but not due to a lack of activity. It’s riding season, and I keep forgetting how much it takes to get in shape early in the season. Reach the Beach in 100 degrees was a sufferfest. But that’s not the only thing keeping me busy. Last Tuesday was the Oregon primary, and the media descended on Portland, along with Obama, Bill and Chelsea Clinton. I’m a sponsor of the third grade at Rigler Elementary, as part of the I Have a Dream foundation, which was one of the organizations taking part in a community service project with the Clintons. So there I was, on Sunday morning, with a small group of kids and adults planting tomatoes and painting murals in a community garden with Bill and Chelsea. After an hour of cameras clicking, tomato planting and painting, I hopped on my bike, and whizzed across town to Tom McCall Waterfront Park to join a throng of 75,000 people listening to Barack Obama.

But with all that activity and excitement, one image keeps replaying in my mind. I had an opportunity to talk for a few minutes with Chelsea Clinton, without the media or other adults around. We chatted about nothing in particular, just small talk about community projects, teaching, and the like. I avoided asking anything political, or about her mother’s campaign, and yet I noticed she studiously avoided eye contact. Now, maybe I’m making a big deal out of this, but she kept her eyes downcast the whole time. Reading into it I got the sense that the public has to be a frightful thing for her.

And this is where this post winds its way back to leadership and power. I’ve been asking, what is it about leadership, about power, that lends itself to abuse or corruption? The problem is, though, the question doesn’t differentiate the person from the role. The leadership role and the person inhabiting that role are not one and the same. Stepping into a role is like stepping into a vortex of energies. You become a target for projections of all kinds: you are admired, hated, feared, seen as a role model, castigated for failing to be a role model. Your role represents qualities that you personally could never fulfill. And the role, as I pointed out in Public Life, Private Selves, has qualities and features that can take on a life of their own. So fully investigating power and its use and abuse has to take into account not just the individual, and what he or she does with power, but the role, and what influence or affect the role has on the individual.

When leaders or those in power are criticized, even if justified, too much is made of their personality, which leads to a dead end conversation: people in power are corrupt, psychopathic or evil. But if leadership can truly be everyday leadership, something for us all to share, then knowing more about the role and how projection and expectation factor into it, is important. There’s a reality to projection, to social expectation, and stereotyping. Studies show that expectations can play a determining role in performance. If teachers expect students to do poorly, students tend to do, well, poorly. And vice versa. High expectations can raise performance. I have had both experiences. I’ve stepped into the role of facilitator, and people expect me to know, and somehow I always find something brilliant to say. Likewise, I’ve been in the facilitator role when it was “take a shot at the leader” day, and well, it’s no fun.

Back to Chelsea. I kept thinking about her childhood, growing up hearing and seeing difficult, critical and nasty things being said about your parents, about you. What it must be like to be in the public eye, while her father’s infidelities were daily fodder for months on end. Then, just as things subside, your mother runs for President, and there you are again, in the public eye, open season. My eyes would be downcast too. Do I want to be open to whatever some stranger might say to me? Or even what they might think? How would I protect myself from that? How do we survive the roles we’re in? Step one is to become aware that we are in roles, that what happens to us is not just personal, but belongs to the role. Peter Block, who writes about leadership and about consulting, says, when working as a consultant, “take nothing personally before 6 pm.” In other words, what happens to you is addressed to the role, not only you.

Too often, our political leaders only embody the role, but not the personal part. But occasionally, there are amazing glimpses of the role and the person, separate yet relating. Later that day, Obama displayed that skill, something I have seldom seen public figures do:. He said, “I tried to run a positive campaign. But I haven’t always been successful in that. It’s hard. When someone whacks you, you get hurt, and want to whack back.” There’s a human in that role. Are we ready for that? Meanwhile, the media say: toughen up, it’s part of the deal to be whacked, whack back, and the American public need to know their leaders can be tough and take it. Or do we? I’d like to ask Chelsea what she thinks. Her eyes, or what I project into them, tell me otherwise.