Week Two—Thoughts on Chapter 1

Dear Dynamics,

This was a heavy reading week, but I hope you are starting to get into our text. With Chapter 1 we begin our journey through Shackleton's Ten Strategies of Leadership. Remember that you are to blog on at least one chapter per week, and the "Expedition Log" at the end of each chapter provides good, thought-provoking questions for you to respond to.  For example, from Chapter 1 "Vision and Quick Victories” you are asked to define your Long-term vision and Short-term goals for getting there. Use the questions on pgs 27-28 for ideas, but essentially what you want to do is describe your hopes and dreams for the future, and the various steps along the way that will help you to achieve them.

As promised, I will do my best to do the same writing assignments as you.

In this case, as I consider a long-term vision and short-term goals, I would like to consider our course as an “organization,” with me as “leader” (although I'd rather see myself as "facilitator") and all of us together exploring terra incognita (unknown territory). Perhaps this can give you a better sense of what this course is intended to be and your part in it.

Long-term vision

Perkins talks about how Shackleton had to “be willing to find a ‘new mark’” (16) such as when he told his crew “So now we’ll go home” (16) when he lost his ship (and hopes of crossing Antarctica). This course, for me, is a new mark—I have abandoned a popular “Adventure Travel” course that I taught for many years in order to take an entirely new direction with this course.

My intention is to create a course that combines an interest in organizational development (how organizations and the people in them function, develop, manage change, etc) and such interrelated topics as leadership, negotiation, conflict resolution, team building, etc. as outlined in the description and syllabus for the course. But these topics interlink with a wide variety of other social behavioral interests such as interpersonal communication, emotional and social intelligence, group dynamics, human motivation, etc. —all of which are also fascinating. The problem is that whole books have been written about each of these topics. It is a challenge knowing where to begin and what to include, while at the same time providing a unifying theme for the course.

So…this course will offer a sampling of many of these aspects of human behavior in organizational settings, with an opportunity for you at the end (with your final presentations) to focus on an area of particular interest that you can present and share with the class. But to provide a unifying theme, we will focus on the topic of leadership throughout the course via our text and our blog entries.

Short-term goals

A big goal right now is getting us all on board with our blogs. We simply need to get in the habit of reading the text, making posts, seeing what others have written, and making a few comments. We are all linked together so we can work as a team sharing with each other our thoughts, dreams, goals, etc. Thanks to the many of you who are already off to a great start.

Another, related goal, is to get a better sense of what each of you wants so that we can negotiate our way forward with this course based on your input.

Perkins mentions how Shackleton was able to “create engaging distractions” (26) to keep his crew motivated. I will try to do the same. I will provide you with web links, occasional short web clips in class, some fun activities, guest speakers, etc. which I hope provides inspiration and motivation. 

This is enough for me for now (probably more than enough!), and I look forward to hearing from you.

Week Two: Thoughts on L@E "Preface"

As promised, I will make blog entries the same as you. This way we can all feel like we are all participating and working together.

As you remember from class yesterday, at the end of the "Preface" in the Expedition Log our author asks if we have ever been in a situation in which we were “stretched to [our] limits of performance or endurance” (xix). You discussed your situations and now I will share mine.

I do have a very dramatic survival story of an experience in Antarctica (Nankyoku Tairiku in Japanese) that involved trying to climb a high mountain and getting lost in a storm in extremely severe conditions. I’ll share this later, but you can click here if this interests you now.

But what I wish to share with you now is my own "survival story" of being Assistant Director of the ELA. 

Administering the ELA can be very challenging. The instructors all come from different nationalities and cultures and everyone seems to have a strong opinion about everything. For a couple of years we went through a reform process, and all these different points of view along with a great deal of factionalism created a highly charged political working environment.

What helped me get through this situation?

Empathy. Trying my best to listen and understand the various points of view was very important. Everyone wants to feel like they are being heard.

Trustworthiness. Creating trust involves being honest, protecting the confidentiality of others and trying always to do what I say I will do.

Optimism. Maintaining my optimism was critical to both success and my sense of well-being. There were occasional very bad days, and weeks, and even terms, but knowing that better times were ahead kept me focused on going forward.

These three qualities—empathy, trustworthiness, and optimism—helped me enormously. But these qualities do not necessarily come naturally, and I had to constantly work at it.

So that is my first text post. I now look forward to hearing from you your reactions to our text and other related experiences you wish to share. For a text related post, consider responding to the same question that I have above, that is, have you been in a situation in which you were “stretched to [your] limits of performance or endurance”? Or anything related to the Shackleton Saga and or Chapter 1.

Week One — Reflections on what we have learned so far

Hi all,

I haven't mentioned this in class, but perhaps you have noticed there is a Course Link on the right call Amy Cuddy Power Posing on TED. I very much urge you to watch this. The actual name of the talk is "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are" and it has become the second most popular TED talk of all time.

Amy Cuddy is the main Harvard researcher behind the study of how a couple minutes of power posing can increase our testosterone and lower our cortisol levels. She has also more recently focused on how we sleep at night can influence our power and influence during the day. For example, those who sleep on their back and all opened up tend to be more powerful during the day than those who sleep all curled up.

But this particular TED talk is about daytime power posing, and it is really, really interesting. Please watch it, and all the way to the end because she gives her own story about how a bad car accident damaged her brain when she was in college and seriously lowered her IQ. She was withdrawn from college and told she had no hope of returning. But over time and through a great deal of work and learning how to "Fake it until you make it" she was able to regain her intelligence and now she is a Harvard professor.

It is really a fascinating story and a very well delivered TED talk and a great inspiration to all of us about what is possible in our lives.

Week One—Self Introduction

"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste." 

from Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones

Unfortunately, that is not me as I have neither wealth nor taste. But I can tell you that I come from the US, specifically from Idaho State on the west side of the Rocky Mountains (I need to make that clear as many people, even Americans, think Idaho is a state in the middle like Ohio and Iowa).

My hometown was very small, just 1800 people or so, up in the mountains and famous for skiing. In the summer, we water skied on this beautiful lake in front of the town. In the winter, we snow skied almost every day (a school bus took us to the ski hill after school) and some of my classmates became world class ski racers. So I grew up in the mountains, skiing, hiking, climbing, river rafting, etc. That was my life, basically, and I loved it. 

But eventually I had to leave all that and go off to college where I studied English Literature and Business Administration, and later more college for linguistics, language acquisition, and teaching English as a Second Language.

Then, after traveling and working in several places and countries (including Antarctica), I came to Japan, and before you were born I began working at ICU doing what I do now: teaching wonderful ICU students.

As I mentioned in class, this course started with a focus on personal development and was called "The Dynamic You." Then I became interested in leadership as I spent several years as the assistant director of the ELA and the coordinator for ICU's Global Leadership Studies program. So now we have LILTDY, which is an opportunity for all of us to learn about both personal development and leadership.

I very much look forward to working with you this term. You seem like a great group.

So how about you? Tell us about yourself and why you are taking this course.

Making your blogs

This post has been moved to the course documents section on the right.