I've been doing the Gratitude Challenge for the last week. I've been posting them over at Tumblr, but I've also embedded them underneath the "Read More" break.
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I just finished a Master's in Education degree with an emphasis on "Leadership Studies."
So I should probably reflect on leadership for a minute. I don't have much leadership experience. In churches and church functions, I lead music for a few years and sat on a few boards. Since I got married in 2006, however, I've generally stayed out of volunteering and leadership roles. My home life has been too tumultuous to take any more time out than necessary. Even with my experience in churches and teaching, my leadership practice, per se, is out of shape. And I'm OK with that. I've always preferred to jump into the fire of assignments and roles. When I did my teaching practicum in 2005, I didn't jump on opportunities to teach in front of the class before I needed to; I saw no need to put on airs in a space where I had no authority. And when I stepped in front of the class on the first day, I knew I didn't know what I was doing, but I didn't regret refraining from jumping in front of a class before my time. I prefer the baptism-by-fire, learn-as-you-go approach. Since 2012, I have been studying Leadership at UVic, and I just received my credential to show that my degree is finished. Throughout the degree, I've read a lot of literature about leadership in schools and businesses and had a lot of organization-based discussions. I've heard quite a few leadership buzzwords: "transformative leadership," "instructional leadership," "vision," etc.. And, to be honest, I haven't cared for much of it. Jargon annoys me. Because I don't think successful leadership depends on a particular, singular, identifiable "style." I think successful leadership depends on making sure you, as a leader, can empathically thrive in your position in an organization. If people see you thriving, they will likely follow you. I am reminded of reading Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Blackberry a few months ago. That book highlighted an organization whose leaders could not empathize with their organization or market and simultaneously thrive. When they empathized, they felt blocked; when they thrived, the organization suffered. On the other hand, Arthur Nash found a way to thrive himself and empathize with his employees. He was a leader who garnered followers and loyalty and kept sight of his goals and market. He found a way to simultaneously maintain empathy and thrive in his position. I'd like to find a place where I can both empathize with people and thrive myself. I can't say I'm doing that right now. However, I am not a person "driven" by any singular ambition. I like to cast a wide net of interests and goals, and it's with that wide net that I thrive. I just need to find something to step into, something to be baptized-in by fire. For now, I'm at peace with austere self-improvement.
In order to maintain my monopoly over as many "jeffnords" as possible at major social networking sites, I've signed up for Flickr and Pinterest. I don't expect to use them very often, but they both allow embedding, so we'll see.
I've also highlighted in bold my primary social networking links (on the right-hand column) right now. Since my music has been on the backburner, I haven't been on Soundcloud or Bandcamp very often. But hopefully this coming summer will change some of that.
[UPDATED JUNE 5, 2016]
I believe enabling is a real phenomena. People "enable" behaviour in an attempt to mitigate various types of violence in the world. This, in my opinion, is common knowledge; most people can point to somebody who has enabled somebody else's behaviour.
However, over the last year I've seen the term appear more and more often in ways that make me uncomfortable with using it; I've seen it as a means to blame people and bypass empathy. I'm still unable to fully articulate this, but I'll try. Our well-being is a function of the quality of our relationships. If one person enables another's negative behaviour, this is a relational act. An admission of enabling, saying "I enabled your bad behaviour," only goes one way. If used as an act of blame, it is misplaced because it doesn't take the whole relationship into account. My concern is when somebody admits to enabling as an underhanded attack. When a person admits that they enabled something, that's fine. But it can also be read as "You were the problem. I just enabled that problem. But you, in the end, were the problem. I only enabled because...." In this sort of dynamic, the admission of "I enabled you" is an underhanded "You are the problem." It's a bit of violent communication in disguise. I think this is faulty because enabling, like codependency, is entirely relationship-based. I don't think blame should come into play when empathy is the goal. What matters is a rebalancing of the relationship so that both people can experience their own agency within the bounds of that relationship. Any semi-psychological conclusion in a relationship should lead to empathy; admitting to enabling behaviour, if it does not lead to empathy, is problematic. Enabling happens. We all do it. But empathy in relationships always, always needs to trump any sort of underhanded blame.
I am no visual artist; I have no delusions of artistic skill.
That didn't stop me from covering my UVic binders with terrible drawings between 2001-2005.
Why post these online?
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April 2024
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