{"id":31868,"date":"2023-03-15T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T03:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=31868"},"modified":"2023-03-15T20:23:14","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T03:23:14","slug":"words-are-very-unnecessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/words-are-very-unnecessary\/","title":{"rendered":"Words are very unnecessary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Enjoy the Silence - 2006 Remaster\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/1EjQRTG53jsinzk2xlVVJP?si=5f4fb82d5bd44f65&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Lately I have been working on saying nothing. I am chatty, I know that. I like to have conversations, I enjoy asking questions and engaging people in dialogue. I also enjoy being asked questions and sharing my responses to ideas or suppositions; the chance to insert my opinion is insatiable.<\/p>\n<p>This is my front stage as described by Simon P Walker in Leading out of Who You Are[1]. A confident and intelligent man who has something interesting and worthy to be shared. However, the same addiction to talking is what fills my backstage. When a client is unhappy, my immediate response has been to quickly lurch into action and solve the problem, even if it wasn&#8217;t my responsibility. When I am challenged by my children with regards to a direction I have given them, I feel the need to thoroughly explain my reasoning (as if that will then convince them &#8216;Oh well dad has done his research and given this a lot of thought, I will know certainly take the dog for a walk instead of playing video games.&#8217;).<\/p>\n<p>Often this just gets me into trouble. I over-promise, make a commitment I surely won&#8217;t be able to keep or inspire my client to think of more things they are unhappy about and if I&#8217;ve really gone overboard they might even aim their dissatisfaction at me.<\/p>\n<p>So instead of responding to someone&#8217;s pronouncement of joy I simply smile and affirm how great that sounds. Instead of filling the silence after a client&#8217;s rant, I look at them and wait for them to move on. It&#8217;s hard for me and Walker does a fantastic job or mapping out a way to reduce the negative impact of your backstage in chapter 11[2].<\/p>\n<p>In particular he describes four egos which all limit our potential because they represent some sort of fear. My backstage aligns with the Adapting Ego[3] which is worried I am not enough, that I don&#8217;t really deserve the successes and friends I have and topically, I am the dumbest in the room. By being silent in these moments where I feel the need to offer something I am challenging my own self-awareness of who I think I am and what I think others need from me.<\/p>\n<p>Eve Poole discusses this idea of practicing self-awareness in Leadersmithing[4]. She describes a leader who is so focused on efficiency they overlook the need to collaborate or taking the time to build relationships with their colleagues and ultimately leading to a lack of buy-in from their team, and in the end, poor results.<\/p>\n<p>Jan Myer and Ray Land echo this need for self-awareness in Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding[5]. In their example, students experience a gap between what they are actually learning and what the instructor is teaching because the instructor has taken for granted their own levels of knowledge and skills which results in a mismatch between what they assume is being communicated and what is being received.<\/p>\n<p>The cure, they suggest is to practice pedagogic reflection, &#8220;which involves reflecting on their own assumptions, expectations, and goals for teaching. This self-reflection can help teachers to identify areas where they may need to adjust their teaching to better align with the needs and understanding of their students.&#8221;[6]<\/p>\n<p>In the final class in my masters program, our professor shared with us that he hoped the greatest skill we had developed was that of self-leadership. He called it the hardest type of leadership because of how unaware we are of ourselves. Walker agrees noting that leaders often are unaware of the weight their opinion carries and cautions to use it wisely. While we have a right to our opinion, we do not have the right to throw it around carelessly so that it might hurt others or cause them harm.<\/p>\n<p>It is this idea of being intentional and using System 2 thinking[6] around overcoming your ego deficit that sets up an unexpected realization that the undefended leader is not vulnerable because they are without armour and protection, but they actually have a posture of greater success and achievement. Because they have stripped the barrier (their defences) away from what was between themself and who they are leading. This balance of front stage and backstage allows authenticity and vision to flow much easier and will cascade through an organization with ease. It will also allow others to inform them without the need to take special precautions \u00a0and without fear.<\/p>\n<p>My defence shows up as words when words truly aren&#8217;t needed. I&#8217;m trading them in for silence.<\/p>\n<p>[1] Walker, Mark D. Leading out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership. InterVarsity Press, 2018.<\/p>\n<p>[2] Walker page 101<\/p>\n<p>[3] page 109<\/p>\n<p>[4] Poole, Eve. Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.<\/p>\n<p>[5] Meyer, Jan, and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. Routledge, 2006.<\/p>\n<p>[6] Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lately I have been working on saying nothing. I am chatty, I know that. I like to have conversations, I enjoy asking questions and engaging people in dialogue. I also enjoy being asked questions and sharing my responses to ideas or suppositions; the chance to insert my opinion is insatiable. This is my front stage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2489,1718],"class_list":["post-31868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-walker","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31868"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31879,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31868\/revisions\/31879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}