{"id":6098,"date":"2015-10-17T12:39:33","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T19:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=6098"},"modified":"2015-10-17T12:39:33","modified_gmt":"2015-10-17T19:39:33","slug":"rational-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/rational-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Rational Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rational behavior\u2026<\/p>\n<p>I have often asked myself, \u201cWhat in the world are you doing?\u201d\u00a0 Or, \u201cwhat did you get <b><i>done<\/i><\/b> today?\u201d\u00a0 I can\u2019t count the number of times that a person has asked me (quite innocently enough)\u00a0 \u201chey, so what do you do?\u201d and almost immediately I feel the anxiety creeping up the back of my neck\u2026\u00a0 I gulp a little, start with \u201cwell\u2026 ummm\u2026 it\u2019s kinda\u2019 like I help people be better\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Truth is, sometimes I have no clue what I do!<\/p>\n<p>Tina and I have talked about how much more simple my life would be if I just went over to the Lowe\u2019s distribution center 5 miles down the road or the Shaw carpet mill 7 miles North and just got a real job!\u00a0 Imagine that!\u00a0 Wake up, eat some breakfast, drive to work, punch a clock, do my job, punch a clock, go home, play with the kids, watch a little tv, go to bed, actually get PAID REAL MONEY at the end of the week\u2026.\u00a0 sigh.\u00a0 Life would be great!\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 A very normal, <i>rational<\/i> kind of existence.<\/p>\n<p>Go ahead and just shoot me now.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve come to accept, no, <i>embrace <\/i>the reality that as a leader, I \u201cdon\u2019t necessarily engage in rational behavior (or better, behavior <i>perceived <\/i>as rational), [I] don\u2019t necessarily know why [I\u2019m] doing what [I\u2019m] doing\u2026\u201d1 and I am deeply grateful to Manfred Kets DeVries for helping me articulate that last sentence.\u00a0 I am understanding more why my stress level increases when people ask \u201cJon, what do you do?\u201d\u00a0 Simply stated, I am feeling the pressure to provide a rational answer within a blatantly irrational context.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it\u2026\u00a0 I &#8211;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>start the day sending emails to people about stuff that I don\u2019t really have any business emailing about but I do it because somehow I\u2019m aware that they might be stuck on something and in need of a fresh perspective to get them jump started.\u00a0 In general, they are appreciative.<\/li>\n<li>-Skype or Google hangout with a person or two in entirely different geographies than me and ask them questions\u2026\u00a0 that\u2019s right, I ask questions.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even really <i>tell<\/i> them anything useful!\u00a0 I don\u2019t demonstrate techniques or show them how do stuff that they don\u2019t already know how to do.\u00a0 I don\u2019t sell them a product or make anything tangible, I ask them questions.<\/li>\n<li>Recently, sell coffee (OK, NOW we\u2019re starting to swerve into the world of rationality!) but even that really isn\u2019t about selling a product, it\u2019s creating space so I can talk to people about\u2026..\u00a0 well, I\u2019m not really sure (BACK to the irrationality!) what about.<\/li>\n<li>go away overnight with other people and play corn hole and watch football and drink beer all the while talking about how they develop and deploy new pastors.\u00a0 It seems like they learn from each other but at the end of it, I didn\u2019t really show them how to do anything.<\/li>\n<li>introduce people to each other so they can feel the benefit of knowing each other and help each other out but they don\u2019t really help me get anything done\u2026 After all, <i>what do I do<\/i> that they could help me get done?!?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My dad built houses for a living.\u00a0 He bought building supplies, assembled them into livable dwellings and sold them to people for money.\u00a0 How do you imagine I would explain to him how I feed my family?\u00a0 Yet at the end of the day <b><i>I can\u2019t imagine \u201cdoing\u201d anything else!<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 Because I am a leader.\u00a0 That\u2019s just who I am, I can\u2019t help it.\u00a0 Turns out, <i>I\u2019m really good at it too.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Without crossing the line into unhealthy pride, I can honestly say that the list of people who would say <em>(and have said)<\/em> that my presence in their lives has made them better at whatever it is that they do is a fairly substantial one.\u00a0 Very few of them work \u201cfor\u201d me <em>(actually, I\u2019m NOBODY\u2019S boss nowadays, hallelujah!)<\/em> but all of them have worked <i>with<\/i> me at some juncture and I hope I have served to elevate them and their organization.<\/p>\n<p>Is that what we would call \u201cleadership mystique?\u201d\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 But what do I know?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong><em>Remember, I can\u2019t even tell you what I do for a living!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<ol>\n<li>Manfred F R. Kets de Vries, The Leadership Mystique: Leading Behavior in the Human Enterprise, 2nd ed. (Harlow, England: Prentice Hall\/Financial Times, 2006) 65.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rational behavior\u2026 I have often asked myself, \u201cWhat in the world are you doing?\u201d\u00a0 Or, \u201cwhat did you get done today?\u201d\u00a0 I can\u2019t count the number of times that a person has asked me (quite innocently enough)\u00a0 \u201chey, so what do you do?\u201d and almost immediately I feel the anxiety creeping up the back of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"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":[1],"tags":[704,475,705],"class_list":["post-6098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-kets-devries","tag-lgp5-2","tag-rationality","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6098","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\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6099,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6098\/revisions\/6099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}