The Tao of Bruce

"Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."  - Bruce Lee

I've been thinking about my role at work, and how it has progressed - sometimes without my even being aware - from a support function to sometimes encompassing a certain leadership element. This is not something that comes easy to me. I'm not self-assured, confident or assertive. I much prefer to be in the background most of the time, to blend into the scenery. I like to play Devil's Advocate in a discussion, and to say "I'm Switzerland" when asked to weigh in. There has to be balance.

Sometimes, though, I find that I'm the one who has to rise to the occasion and to speak up against one-sided arguments or to remind other members of the actual organizational leadership of the implications of their decisions on process and administrative support. At times I'm correct, while at other times my arguments are not as sound as they should be, coming from an emotional or under-informed perspective. And I could stay silent, keep low and not put myself at risk by possibly doing or saying the wrong thing...but inaction is the enemy of progress.

“Don't fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
- Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

Last week I was attending a meeting for the leadership team of the non-academic unit I support, and the topic of new staff and their "overwhelming" workloads was broached. It was broached in a way that was as subtle as that iceberg introducing itself to the Titanic. And my response was a torrent. I spoke up for the staff who have worked for years under a management atmosphere of "You can't afford to say no to a project in this economy." and "If you don't like it, you know where the door is." An atmosphere of steep budget cuts, where support staff was compressed and asked to constantly do more with less, while the higher administrative tiers expanded in rank and in compensation, where training was an afterthought and every day was sink or swim and there were not nearly enough lifeboats.

In the (technically) almost nine (but unofficially almost twelve) years I have been an employee here, I have had no less than seven supervisor changes either through reassignment or management turnover. I have been physically relocated five times up to this point, with more changes expected. I had to weather all of this because it was expected. Flexibility and adaptability were mainstays.

"Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick." - Bruce Lee

But we come out the other side of the particular rabbit hole that the last few years have been, and the newbies are special little snowflakes who want defined duties and want  guarantees of promotion and growth and to be able to complain about workload. No. NO. If I had to suck it up and shoulder on, so do you all. Not that I'm uncaring - let me make that clear. In many respects, the new staff have both my sympathy and a certain amount empathy from me. But I have very high expectations, and I will not waver. I'll support them to the best of my ability, but I expect that to be repaid with willingness to become self-reliant, make themselves into valuable resources to those around them, and to submit to a certain degree of mentoring and coaching, if not from me then from other members of the staff.

Basically, I won't carry you where you need to go, sweetness, because I am not a beast of burden, but I will show you the way through the mountains. Like a St. Bernard! I may even be carrying a little cask of rum for emergencies. Because I am always prepared. And also fluffy. But I digress...

OH HAI I CAN BE YER HERO NAO PLZ! 

Some people think mentoring is all about modeling. I think that's not the case, and trying to make yourself a carbon copy of someone else means you are not critically observing them enough. You can find that a mentor's style is not suited to you, or you can discover the hard way that they are a model for how *not* to lead. That has been my experience with more than a couple of my mentors. I think it also helps to have distance. Too many of those who attempted to mentor me (or who I decided to make myself their informal mentee) were my supervisor. That is too close of a relationship in some cases, because the lines can get blurred and this is just something that leads to confusion and probably learning some very bad lessons.

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” 

- Bruce Lee

Over the course of the summer I participated in a management certification program sponsored by human resources and talent management. While I didn't find the program as helpful as I probably could have if I'd had the time and opportunity outside of my job to devote to some of the coursework (some of the self-assessment tools were a lot of fun, if not entirely enlightening,actually), the fact that I attended every session and got my certificate implies that I am on the management track. Now, I've heard that here before, from the CFO and others, who assign me a higher title than I posses when introducing me to work-groups and the like, and I just mentally file it away. Whether I will progress beyond my current position is debatable.

I was also given the opportunity to take the StrengthsQuest assessment tool as part of a development initiative undertaken by one of the managers I support. This questionnaire determines personal strengths (called "themes" in this case) that one naturally defaults to, and my top four were no surprise at all, as they fit within the concepts that other assessments and tests consistently indicate: Input; Intellection; Ideation; Learner. The fifth, however, was something new and different. Maximizer. This is defined as someone who "focuses on strengths in a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. [They] seek to transform something especially talented into something superb." I had never thought of my tendency to highlight the unique strengths of the people I work with quite that way. But I suppose that is exactly what I do, and to me that is a leadership trait - projecting excellence outward instead of pulling it inward, so that others are supported and encouraged in their endeavors.

So that's the basic difference between a manager and a leader - basically, it's the same difference as between being just a boss and actually being a leader.

Just like this handy chart says...