Author: Rick Bellingham
Rick’s Profiles in Leadership
There is no such thing as a generic profile for leaders. The right blend of skills, experience, knowledge, characteristics, and attitude depends on the requirements of the situation in which the leader finds herself. This post will look at several leaders who were successful in a variety of fields with totally different conditions and contexts.
THIS and That
After reading a plethora of books on science and spirituality, it strikes me that science attempts to explain things to us and spirituality encourages us to experience events within us. The real conflict between the two is the difference between explanation and experience. Scientists want to explain our experience and spiritualists want us to experience our explanations.
Development or Deterioration
As I turn 70, I’m sure the first thought that crosses peoples’ minds when they meet me now is, “He’s old!!” Most people associate aging more with accelerated deterioration than continuing development. But I think there is no end point for development. Growth may take a different form or shape, but it doesn’t need to end.
Symptoms or Systems
It’s easy to see the glaring symptoms of a problem and miss the underlying systems that caused the problem in the first place. Let’s take Ferguson as the most recent example. If we look at the situation as an individual problem, we could focus on Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, or Robert McCulloch. Michael Brown was clearly the victim – he was an unarmed man who didn’t deserve to be shot. He was also not a Read More
Wellness
In 1978, when wellness was still a strange term that few people understood, I was hired to direct one of the first hospital based health promotion/wellness programs in the country. Samaritan Health System (SHS, now known as Banner Health), the largest hospital system in Arizona, started this innovative program because health care costs were escalating and consuming a continuously increasing percentage of GDP. The Center for Disease Control had just completed a study showing that Read More
Leadership Lexicon
Leaders sometimes wonder why no one is following them. In most cases, the reason is because the leader does not possess all three essentials of effective leadership: Character, Commitment, and Competence. Leaders must be honest and ethical at their core, or people don’t follow. Leaders must also be committed to developing themselves and others. If people are not convinced of the leader’s commitment to their growth, they will not help the leader grow—and they will Read More
Free Will . . . or not
Copernicus destroyed the myth that we are central. Darwin destroyed the myth that we are special. Now, Crick and the neuroscientists want to destroy the myth that we are conscious. They suggest that all behaviors are simply manifestations of a conditioned brain – when the brain dies, we die. They posit that we operate simply out of habit. Essentially, they conclude that we are automatons with no free choice. Quite simply, our brain sends out Read More
Two-Dimensional Taoism
What a jarring juxtaposition. My wife and I had just spent 10 days hiking in the natural beauty of Yosemite, Zion, and Bryce National Parks. We ended this delightful vacation with a one-night layover in Las Vegas—the capital of decadent artificiality. It shocked our systems and sensibilities to move so abruptly from the real to the unreal. Ironically, I had also spent the evenings of our day hikes on the spectacularly beautiful trails of our Read More
Creating Organizational Soul
After publishing Corporate Culture Change, the Corporate Culture Sourcebook, and Ethical Leadership in the late 1980’s, I was retained by Lotus Development Corporation (now known as Lotus Software) in Cambridge, Massachusetts to help them align their culture behind a new network-centric strategy to better differentiate their company from its arch-rival Microsoft.
Abuse
We are hearing a lot of sordid stories these days about professional athletes abusing their spouses and children. As horrific and wrong as these cases are, they make us think that abuse is mostly physical and is contained within a small sub-section of the population. To me, abuse is more than physical, and it is practically universal. Let me explain. Abuse can be physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual. It can occur in blatant and obvious Read More
Ethical Leadership
One more time. In 1987, Barry Cohen and I wrote the book Ethical Leadership. We published the first version of the book when greed was still in its relative infancy and millionaires (much less billionaires) were still relatively rare. It thus preceded the economic boom of the 1990s, a decade in which market values escalated to what was then outrageous levels. In finance, Black Monday refers to Monday, October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the Read More
Leadership Myths and Realities
Over 25 years ago, Barry Cohen and I published a book titled Leadership Myths and Realities. Since that time we have held a variety of senior leadership positions and have continued to study the Art and Science of Leadership. This post will review the 10 myths and realities we wrote about in the late 80s, discuss their current relevance, and suggest any new myths and realities that have emerged. To be clear, myths usually contain some degree Read More
Transcendental Possibilities
My hunch is that we are all searching for transcendental possibilities, but what in hell does that mean? I have been on a long journey trying to figure out what those possibilities might look like and how I can have any real degree of assurance that what people claim can be true. Thirty-two years ago I co-founded Possibilities, Inc. with Barry Cohen, a PhD philosopher, as a discovery vehicle for this journey. I’ve covered a Read More
Integrated Educational Reform
If educational reform is going to be successful, we need to start with trust and healthy conflict. In my view, commitment is not the major issue. I don’t see a lack of teacher commitment as the biggest problem. To me, capability and culture are far more potent variables in the success equation.
How AND Why
We hear a lot of either/or options in our lives. Either you can do this or you can do that. And how often is an acknowledgement of a different point of view accompanied, by a “but…?” Ya, but I think…! This post addresses the need to see the complementarity of differences and the need to ask “how” AND “why.” As the eastern philosophers would say, “there is a yin is in every yang, and a Read More
Possibility
As the world veers ever more perilously toward the precipice, it doesn’t seem like a giant leap to suggest that we need a major shift in thinking and relating. Essentially, we need to start thinking about ourselves as connected vs. separate and we need to start relating to each other interdependently vs. competitively. This post will address the possibilities of making that shift and the planetary potential if we can make it happen. I will Read More
Narratives
The power of belief is not necessarily related to the strength of evidence. People create different stories from the same set of facts, but the truth does not necessarily rest in the middle. In most cases, it rests wherever the science is, where the evidence is, where the facts are. That’s probably not in the middle. I wish we would quit having debates based on inferences, assumptions, beliefs, and stories and start having them on Read More
Positivity
In Shirzad Chamine’s book, Positive Intelligence, he refers to Sages, Saboteurs, and PQ, or positive intelligence. It’s a fascinating entreaty on the battle between our higher and lower selves and posits that PQ is the tipping force in winning the battle. It should be noted, though, that the ideas of Sage and Saboteur have been elucidated very substantively, in other terms, by others. Chamine suggests that a sage needs to empathize, explore, innovate, navigate, and Read More
Freedom
It’s a terrible feeling and a freeing experience to have your illusions destroyed. As I walked down the streets of Saigon and watched the army trucks full of terrified, tough kids purposely drive through mud puddles so that they could laugh gleefully as the brown, polluted water splashed randomly on the elegant, white, long dresses of the beautiful Vietnamese women I knew my view of the world had been irrevocably shaken. In the name of Read More
Interdependence
The featured photo in this post shows a polar bear in the Arctic Circle. This bear is at risk of extinction because we have failed to recognize that we are a part of an interdependent ecosystem. As a result of human behavior, the climate is changing so rapidly that the ice melt is threatening the bear’s ability to find food. In a recent article in the New York Times, “Capitalism Eating its Children,” Roger Cohen Read More
Building Trust
Trust is the foundational building block for organizational health. Just as diet and exercise are the key starting points for physical health, trust is the “must have” for building a healthy, productive, and innovative work environment. Without trust, you have no chance of creating the kind of organizational culture you may want to build. Trust has two components: indvidual and institutional. Individual trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or Read More
The History of Great Ideas
Great ideas have been piling up in history’s graveyard for 3,000 years. They are left unattended and largely forgotten. When these ideas are first introduced, they are usually met with laudatory excitement and abundant enthusiasm. Then, the ideas are gradually diminished and distorted through this four step process: Trivialization, Bastardization, Privatization, Commercialization
Getting Distance on Our Problems
Everyone has issues. They could be physical. They could be mental. They could be emotional. Or they could be a mix of all three. Some are minor annoyances. Some are major trauma. The challenge is to get enough distance on them, so we don’t get lost in them or identify with them. Our bodies may not work the way we would like them to work…but we are not our bodies. Our minds might not function Read More
Inequality
The featured image of this post is a picture of the downtown area of NYC—home of Wall Street. It’s a beautiful sight with majestic buildings, but there is a story unfolding that is as ugly as the buildings are beautiful. In those spectacular buildings, and in others around the world, evil lurks. Here are some facts: The highest percentage of ultra high net worth people (greater than $30 million) lives in NYC. Unfortunately, almost 50%