Thanksgiving Thoughts: Friend not Acquaintance -- Leader not a Boss

Friend not Acquaintance – Leader not a Boss

A friend is the kind of person you can know for a short time or a long time, but the relationship lasts forever; partly because you can pick up right where you left off. Connections like this bond us together whether by affinity, or common values, or even enduring trauma together. An acquaintance is just a weaker version without the loyalty, love, or forgiveness. A friend puts up with your foibles, short-comings, and vanity. They like you because of the failures.

Acquaintances use you for networking; a friend covers your back when you aren’t looking. To me, a friend equals integrity; an acquaintance is temporary. I’ve experienced this deeply over the past year in various “reunion” scenarios and have written about it here at the New Rostra, previously (08/05/2013):

http://rostranovum.blogspot.com/2013/08/open-letter-to-class-of-1983.html

but it’s a theme that cuts deep and red. Many complicated endeavors come down to relationships, because humans require trust and intimacy to interact as we do our eyes, ears, and tongues; it’s just how we’re wired.

A team works well together because it realizes each person works to complete an important part of the objective; and without each person it is likely the goal cannot be reached. Football is the ultimate team game; when the television replay shows the choreography of an offensive touchdown, each player’s performance works out in super-slow motion. Teams have fun together easily, but when meetings are serious, or the tasks ahead seemingly insurmountable; together they know there’s at least a fighting chance for victory.

A team may not all be friends, as I’ve described above; however, through their common bond of cooperation they can develop relationships much like a brotherhood-in-arms. Teams must have well-defined roles, strong leadership to steward the group through adversity, and a spirit of joy in the process that says, “I’d rather be here with you now, doing this job, than anywhere else along the line. Let’s do it!”

I’d rather have a leader than a boss. Someone who can keep vision and values intact, yet who has the grace and wisdom to let each team member exercise their God-given talents to the best of their ability; matching them to the tasks that need to be accomplished. Leaders inspire, bosses retire. Any leader will have to do the dirty “carrot-or-the-stick” work of being a boss; but they don’t have to slash & burn through the troops without understanding each teammate’s personal situation. To a Boss, you are a “direct-report” to be managed and manipulated. To a Leader, you are a person, a friend even; someone important enough to develop along the way in reaching goals because of the long-term perspective: leaders know there will be many more battles. Bosses look for the weekend, the vacation, or retirement, as their ultimate destination.

Valuing teamwork is easier said than done, and it’s one of the S.P.I.R.I.T. values my company takes seriously. My supervisor was a great example of a leader not a boss…

I’m thankful today for knowing someone in these ways every day for almost two years. He was more than a boss; someone I liked immensely as a person and respected inherently as a leader. I’ve survived some horrible bosses during other times in my career, many of whom were talented tacticians but challenging to work with. I considered this one a friend with the appropriate boundaries; the best of both worlds.

My current supervisor was special: capable, confident, affable, approachable, loving, funny, sincere, and most of all successful at leadership of our team; he was the rare talented professional who lived out corporate values in a real way, thinking of the team before himself and leading us into battle with all our respect. He will be acutely missed but we understand that he made this life decision with his family first, and the future of his career second; which meant he felt it best to move to another city. Commitment is really only permanent when it comes to family, I get that. Thankfully, the energy economy is so robust that such a move is possible; but it leaves a gaping hole in our leadership, turning a buoyant team-boat upside down.

I could write another post about the preeminence of change; how when you get comfortable doing something, watch out!? Change is coming; it’s the only constant in the corporate world today.  This broken-bone is going to take some time to heal; but I'm looking forward to the challenge 2015 poses. The best way to honor the memory of this two-year run is to imitate, replicate, encourage, and perform in the way that would make him proud; he would expect nothing more and ask for nothing less.

"God gave us a spirit not to fear others, but to be wise, bold, loving and sensible; enjoying our time with the people around us." 2 Timothy 1:7

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”

~Laozi (5th century B.C.)

copyright(2014)©Mark H. Pillsbury

#saraBmusic - song: Manhattan (Live at the Variety Playhouse) from The Blessed Unrest

The tender-hearted ballad of Sara leaving Manhattan:

"What's holding us together is simply fear of what's already changed."

 

Try to listen to this without thinking back on all the endings you've experienced?

 

The words and music are simple and profound; beautifully sad, and sublime. Again, let me dedicate this to my classmates in HP 1983; with whom I shared so much back in September.

 

She is a a major talent, just waiting to break out.
Good-bye 2013... Auld lang syne. --Mark

Why We Must Struggle

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest,
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longer or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double, how
we can feed
as upon nectar
upon need?

Excerpt from Say Uncle, copyright ©1991by Kay Ryan

(Dedicated to my thinking friends in the HPHS Class of 1983)

Open Letter to the Class of 1983

See you in September

I can’t decide whether I'm more excited about college football starting again, or the few weeks until my 30^th high school reunion. Thoughts go back to those years when your age seemed frozen and the future appeared far off in the distance; the way you feel when you have plenty of time before a flight, checked-in and ready—no pressure, no hurry.  We were comfortable back in the 70s & 80s.

My class graduated in late May 1983, and although we had no idea about Madonna when her album debuted that summer, we launched out from there; lives moving rapidly from one stage to the next, unevenly aligned with decades, but furiously reaching one road sign after the next. Most of us went off to college, many stayed in Texas, some even settled in Big D to raise their families. Won't a few of you from faraway lands come to this reunion?! It would be fun to guess who comes from farthest away. London, Hawaii, Australia?

How can we be at the third reunion? Each celebration so far has been unique in its theme:

• 10^th was just another big party like many of the weddings I attended; pretty nervous walking up to Winfrey Point clubhouse, I pondered why I hadn't given the concept much thought?
• 20^th was the “Vice-President Reunion,” as everyone climbed the ladder of success rapidly and came ready to show off their progress. (How could everyone in the room be a Vice-President?). I thought it a fairly insincere bridge from the early reunion to the upcoming milestone of 2013.

My impression is that with this class reunion, all who attend will feel lucky to be there, and everyone by this time has taken some lumps:  suffered through some bout of death, divorce, disease, disaster, and/or depression. It will be something from which we did not overcome with the same pride and fervor thought to have come so easily at our 20^th anniversary.

"That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond." From Ann Voskamp’s quote there is encouragement to seek conversations and renew relationships in a sincere, transparent way; allowing friends to see through the thin, torn patches in one's personal tapestry, for they are the passages by which one sees the real insides of my being, and hopefully the beautiful light of God beaming through them.

I believe this time the grace of a group approaching their 50s outstrips our natural tendency to fudge, judge, or peacock in front of our classmates. This platform of life takes time and skill to climb onto; and so we welcome our friends to a wonderful point in which the pretense of success, status, and class, pale in comparison to the love and joy we will experience as we share each other’s foibles, struggles, and humility.

At first it will be difficult to peel the layers of the onion back; we’ll fall back to the natural, “I’m great, the kids are super; Yes, I do have it all put together just as it seems.” However, as we break through to authenticity, it's fortunate that we really made it here at all, considering what has happened; at this point there is hope for a renewed camaraderie among humble old friends. This reunion presents a rare opportunity to re-connect, review, and even de-construct some of the "archetypes" manifested in previous meetings. But how many of the graduates have the courage to show up and tell their (real) story?

My story certainly has some twists and turns too strange for fiction, and I know that your story will take my breath away at some point during its telling. It’s been such a long time since we thought of each other, but thankfully there’s still so much we have in common. There are strong mysterious links which enchain the heart to the regions where the morn of life was spent.

With all due respect to the writing of Gail Godwin in her novel The Finishing School, I am expecting to meet two kinds of people at my 30^th high school reunion:

“One kind, you can tell just by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves.

It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more surprises from it.” These people are doing just fine with themselves and I say, “more power to ‘ya,” or to be perfectly frank, and to use the phrase so enthusiastically used in the South when we just don’t quite know what to think: “well, bless your heart?!”

Godwin’s character Ursula continues, “Whereas, the other kind keeps moving, changing. With these people, you can never say, “X stops here,” or “Now I know all there is to know about Y.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re unstable. Ah, no, far from it. They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young.”

“In my opinion,” Ursula says, “They are the only people who are still alive.”

One unambiguous characteristic of this second group of people will surely be that they seize life with gusto. Contrary to the self-doubt that creeps into my mind sometimes when I think of the ups and downs of my career path; at least I had the courage to change, when the time to change was apparent. I will likely gravitate to and appreciate those who took on life’s challenges with passion, and I look forward to reliving some of my friends’ most perilous moments. 

To quote Jack London’s credo as told by a reporter named Ernest Hopkins:

“I would rather be ashes than dust!

 I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

 I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

 The function of man is to live, not to exist.

 I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

 I shall use my time.”

For those of us who make it back to HP in September, may that credo be the cry of the class of 1983.

©Mark H. Pillsbury

Introducing Timeline -- a New Kind of Profile - YouTube

Introducing Timeline -- a New Kind of Profile - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

Who the heck is Andy Sparks? 

Whereas the old #fb might have been healthy narcissism-lite, within the next few weeks, whether you have the time to review whatever you have previously put on Facebook, you will be asked to change to a new feature. Timeline is what Facebook would have you believe is a beautiful, powerful, compelling, fulfilling, innovation that appears to me as really just narcissism with a capital N!

The Timeline interface is Facebook’s most radical change thus far, and should help differentiate Facebook from other social networking programs that hope to compete with it, such as Google®

photo credit: freefoto.com


Would you like your whole personal history laid out by month-by-month, all the way back to your birth, like Andy Sparks? I am not sure the traction my life has in the marketplace, but maybe Timeline will rev-up interest in the “new” slicker, packaged, Mark Pillsbury. But when are they going to make me do it? That is the important question!

If you voluntarily decide to switch to Timeline now, you’ll have (7) seven days to make changes to your profile before Facebook pushes it live onto the worldwide platform. You can make it public yourself anytime within the one-week period. These guys from Palo Alto don't mess around.

Timeline is like a digital scrapbook with OCD, collecting every detail, no matter how trivial, in chronological order; however businesses pay Facebook to feature posts and activity mentioning their brands within your timeline with priority, amounting to “product placement” in the movie of your life. That is how Facebook will generate stacks and stacks of advertising cheddar.

Trust me, the ads that currently pop-up over on the right are getting smarter because of this feature and Facebook is very powerful even though it seems to be free.

Let me know how you like it, friends: www.facebook.com/mark.pillsbury

Herman Cain steps up attacks on Occupy Wall Street protests - latimes.com

quoted from the article: Nancy Pelosi and I agree on something:

Herman Cain steps up attacks on Occupy Wall Street protests - latimes.com: (Nancy Pelosi)"“I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen,” she said “We cannot continue in a way that does not — that is not relevant to their lives. People are angry.”"

'via Blog this'

Hope and change must be relevant to the voter's life. 7 out of 10 Americans believe that the President has not handled the economy correctly and now Nancy Pelosi says that change "has to happen." I agree with her. The next general election is a great place to start.

Stimulus Package a/k/a TARP and "shovel-ready" jobs

I heard President Obama joke: "Shovel-ready was not as . . . uh . . . shovel-ready as we expected..." The problem with that is . . . uh . . . he wasn't very funny!

Why does the POTUS just get a pass on this type of behavior? When the previous president would have been eviscerated for such an insensitive joke/comment.

No sir, the whole "shovel-ready" scam did not even occur; not even sure that GAO could measure what it turned out to be, but jobs did not spontaneously arise out of the vaunted stimulus package.

Was it a way to appeal to the old FDR notion of the WPA work creation on public works and infrastructure projects that admittedly need some work? Even construction jobs are much too sophisticated to just hand some out-of-work-dude a shovel and solve the economy's problems. It was immature and naive to think "shovel-ready" was a viable alternative to the economic woes of the country at that time.

What we need now is not the absence of uncertainty, which is so often written about in the newspapars. The economy needs a rolling-back of much of the Obama legislation and the freeing up of small business to start hiring again. Small business is not "afraid" of uncertainty, in fact, on the contrary, they are afraid of what the anti-business administration has accomplished since 2009.

http://tiny.cc/78ae5 (article link)
By CLIFFORD S. ASNESS (Wall Street Journal)
Suggests that drag on the economy in such legislation as Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare, is what actually slowed down hiring, which is still our most pressing problem, and something that POTUS still is not acknowledging. The economic engine will not run smoothly without full employment. Could the POTUS acknowledge that Keynesian solutions have not worked in the market and work with Congress to throw off the fetters on small business? Either he will, or the voters will force the point.