Dan Erwin

What 4 New Skills Underpin Digital Business Success?

Digital skills alone are not enough for IT effectiveness. Business success demands a technology workforce that is skilled in new ways of working. This new game is about future-proofing the IT humanware. It requires interactional competencies that respond to role complexity and the kind of ambidextrous competency that few of the workforce can currently muster.

(**See references below.)

Business studies, even in journals like the MIT Sloan Management Review, are more and more emphasizing the need for rhetoric and communication skills—they just don’t use that language or understand that interface. So, in an astute article on reskilling in the Winter 2021 Review (The Four Competencies Every Workforce Needs, Ayse Karaevli, et al), the authors laid out the competency issue with clarity in a superb diagnostic study: “IT organizations must be able to exploit existing IT capabilities for operational efficiency while simultaneously identifying new IT capabilities to help innovate and create new customer value.”

My initial response was “ho-hum.” I was working on that kind of stuff for my Master’s in group/team communication at UC Boulder in the 1970s. The skills hadn’t been put into the business context, but we all understood that these issues were transferable to many different contexts. Yet I am immensely aware that a background in the interface issues of rhetoric and communication, in addition to presentation and influence skills, is still rare among business people the world over. Fact of the matter, many European business schools provide little offerings in the necessary communication and rhetoric skills. And American business schools, unless you’re in the business communication discipline, are giving short shrift to interactional needs. Intriguingly, the Asian Schools, Japan as a case in point, are ahead of the Europeans in recognizing the need for these so-called “soft” competencies.

My Inherent Racial Prejudices

An illuminating study of the acting of Rege Jean Page

On two occasions recently, I’ve written glowing accounts of the mixed-race actor, Rege Jean Page. I concluded one post, “The best business course I’ve ever had (March 9, 2021),” by noting that direct change in human behavior is best facilitated by subversive activities. I provided a description of RJP as a superb example of subversive behavior in the role of Bridgerton’s Duke of Hastings.

By subversive activity I refer to behavior which undermines an established cultural, political or legal system. In this study, I focus on the distinction between two-dimensional and three-dimensional characterizations in acting as subversive example.

In film and literature, three-dimensional characters are complex and unique with fully developed lives. They can be thoughtless and mean, unassuming and careful, ignorant, ordinary or wise, healthy or debilitated, poor, middle-class or wealthy. They can also be outgoing or reserved, friendly and gracious, distant and calculating, handsome or plain, aspirational or cowardly. Three-dimensional characters depict the richness and diversity of being human, even, as in the case of the contrasting emotions and behaviors from invulnerable to vulnerable, revealed brilliantly in Page’s Duke of Hastings.

Two-dimensional characters, in stark contrast, do not display completely developed human lives. They cannot fully engage our emotions. They have few attributes a viewer or reader can relate to. Seen from only one or two sides, they reveal a seriously limited, partial humanity.  As much as I love Eddie Murphy, he’s a typical Black example of limited characterizations. In Beverly Hills Cop, for example, he focuses almost solely on the comic. And even when an opportunity presented itself in a relationship with a woman, the character displayed little more than personal interest and warmth. Do not misunderstand: this is not the actor’s doing. Two-dimensional characterizations are always the writer and the studio’s doing, whatever the role. The worst form of two-dimensional Black acting I’ve ever seen was Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Sure, she got an Oscar for the role. But the Oscar confirmed only a less than human, two-dimensional role for Blacks. When you walk away from the movie, what you take with you is a Black woman as supportive, warm, inferior, over-weight—and subservient. Someone you might trust serving you and your family, but without full-blown human behavior, intellect and emotion.

Archetypes and the racist persona
Following Freud and Jung, many analysts in recent years view racism as primordial images that have been filtered through personal, social and cultural contexts. Tests of implicit bias are available on the web, though some results have been challenged. Students of bias indicate that though the bias is present in the unconscious, it need not control relationships. If personal bias can be identified, these images of racism can be revised and educated, creating a highly tolerant reality.

Re-education
As a result of RJP’s discussion of his mixed-race, 3-dimensional role in Bridgerton, I suspected my images might be racially biased. Very curious, I decided that a simple, unsophisticated analysis might yield some useful insights. Wow! I got a lot more out of my analysis than I expected. Clearly, I’ve got to make some attitude adjustments to have a more healthy, positive humanism.

Because of my background in rhetorical criticism, I believed I could assess the actor’s portrayal of the Duke of Hastings, even though an amateurish, simple study. And, I thought, if I compared the first episode with the last episode, which would normally provide the dramatic situation and resolution, I might surface a fairly clear picture of the Duke’s role dimensions. Even simple critiques can sometimes provide helpful insight. As I suspected, the results were not pretty. Learning theory reveals that simple studies like this are capable of extensive, attitude-changing insight and changed behaviors. Such studies can assist in the creation of alternative reality structures. More tolerant perspectives on Blacks. That is exactly what happened!

Because of the time investment, the depth of even this simple study, I doubt that I’ll ever look at Blacks and Black actors in the same way again. However, before you look at my conclusions, it’s important to understand my Black experience.

Background
My background may well be different than most whites of my age. I’ve had Black acquaintances and a few Black friends since I was in middle-school in suburban Detroit. Although as I reminded a Black classmate at our 50^th reunion (class of 1952), we split by color and class when we entered high school. Blacks ate at their lunch tables and Whites at theirs. Upper middle-class students ate at their tables and blue-color students ate at theirs. But at that class reunion, what was very intriguing was that when a Black classmate walked toward me, I put out my arms, hugged her and kissed her on the cheek and she responded similarly. And then she said, “thank you.” I was surprised and said “thank you?” “Yes,” she responded. “You’re the only white male that kissed me.” “What world do they live in,” I asked. “Obviously, not yours,” she responded. She was attractive, well-educated and had served as a high school principal overseas for the US Army. Unusual for that time period, more than half of the class of 225 people were at least college grads. That included actually nine—that’s right—nine PhDs, a couple lawyers and physicians, along with still more mechanical engineers (it was the auto-capital--Detroit), and those who had excellent work backgrounds, but little to no college experience. Since only 9% of Americans from the early 1950s had college degrees, the high school class was more than a little unique. But with all that educational background, I would have expected more tolerance and acceptance than I saw that night and the next morning. But I was wrong.

Understanding Relationship Barriers and Breakdowns

Communication breakdowns happen a lot more than most of us think. It may be obvious that with a wide range of organizational associates, relationship breakdowns are inevitable. But candidly, it also happens regularly with one-on-ones. The actual researched percentage of misunderstanding and breakdown in an ordinary work conversation is so high you won’t believe me without extensive explanation. So, I won’t share the percentage. But suppose a tech manager is relating to a colleague in sales. That’s a set-up for breakdown. Inevitably, they’re working on different timelines, based on different objectives. Furthermore, the rewards are typically conflicting, the techie on salary and sales on commission.

But add four or five more people into the mix, all from different organizational disciplines, and you’re not just adding to the potential for relationship breakdowns, you’re both multiplying and speeding up the potential for misunderstanding and breakdown.  Inevitably, conflicts over personnel, resource allocation, timelines and turf, surface.  Differences of objectives, strategies, measures of success and even values can escalate the emotions.  We have a “communication breakdown" is not just Led Zeppelin, it remains a common buzzword for these differences.  In a real sense, however, the above relationships are not, strictly speaking, "communication breakdowns."  The parties involved understand exactly what's going on and they are effective at communicating their differences, and hopefully, negotiating them.  They involve trust and competition, usually over scarce resources of one kind or another. What makes interpersonal breakdowns especially difficult is that resolution often requires behavioral negotiation skills, skills more complex than negotiating products and dollars.

Candidly, the above differences that we label "communication breakdowns" are neither the most common nor the most personally painful.  There are, instead, some very common barriers and breakdowns that get in the way of effective relationships that can be even more damaging than the above list.  The really damaging barriers are about misunderstanding another person's point of view.  Indeed, I've found that that the most common barriers and breakdowns in organizations are inevitably about relational breakdowns.  What makes these interpersonal breakdowns so difficult is that dealing with hard products is a lot different than dealing with the barriers posed by soft people feelings. So, when the breakdown is interpersonal, these breakdowns can require behavioral conversations and at least basic behavioral negotiation skills. Behavioral skill of either type is not always available, so the breakdown remains unresolved or pushed up the ladder.

Attribution theory
The best way to understand these breakdowns is through what is known as "attribution theory" which deals with the ways people interpret observed facts and explain others’ as well as their own behavior. What’s significant about attribution is that the causes we use to explain another’s behavior impacts the way we think about, feel about and behave toward that person. The practice is so widespread that attributions can be made of others’ behaviors without an observable cause. Of course, it takes very little thinking to realize that observed behaviors can be interpreted in numerous ways.  Furthermore, research also shows that once we've created our interpretation, right or wrong, it's very difficult to dislodge.

The process has become so questionable that in response to the potential for erroneous conclusions social scientists speak about the “fundamental attribution error.” The attribution error is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others--while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people are almost inherently biased to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind of person” that manager or worker is rather than on the business context.

Let's say you're the manager of a technology team.  Noticing that one of your employees seems to be working particularly hard over the past few weeks, you wonder why.  You might conclude that his project timelines are causing his behavior.  Or maybe he is angling for a raise.  Could be that he's attempting to suck up.  Maybe he's just bored and wants to keep busy.  So, you decide he's angling for a raise, but a colleague tells you he's just sucking up. Whatever. You've drawn a potentially fallible conclusion based on observable fact. And, in spite of all that's been said, once you've decided he's angling for a raise, you'll reject most any other interpretation. And your relevant behavior will follow.

We also make positive inferences.  You might think your employee genuinely wants to see his team succeed.  Or perhaps, you decide, you've just never realized what a hard worker this guy is. But more often than not, it’s the negative attributions that follow, resulting in the relational breakdown. Bad is always more powerful than good. So, it’s rare for us to ask what’s going right about a situation? Instead, it’s what’s going wrong?

Those dangerous inferences
People draw their conclusions both from the work context as well as past history with a person when they come up with interpretations.  But. . . underlying those interpretations are just a few basic assumptions that drive most of them (I prefer "inferences" even though "interpretation" is the more familiar.  Getting used to the term "inferences" will support some other cool, problem-solving and decision-making skills.)   Anyway, these wrongheaded inferences cause us to flare up, get disgusted, get angry and frustrated, be ashamed or even walk away for another day--or week—or even years.  Some families have had major breakups merely because members interpreted the behavior of another using one of these inferences. Inferences, like conclusions are nothing more than opinions. The language just sounds more intelligent.

Thankfully, attribution theory provides us with a lot of insight into human relationships and communication.  Here are three recurring and dangerous assumptions...

10 Key Behaviors for Learning in Organizations

Learning behaviors are all tied together by just one thread: learning with other people.

Gaining new competencies through “deep learning” is not the same thing as the way you learned in school. Nor is it the same result that you gain from doing a lot of research on a problem and developing an understanding of the problem. Furthermore, there is no real correlation between understanding a problem and being able to resolve it. In contrast, deep learning lasts and is a way of being, a mindset and an orientation. It’s absolutely necessary to put deep learning front and center because the internet has increased close-mindedness and made profound, deep learning very difficult and sometimes impossible. In Chris Argyris’ well known HBR article, “Teaching smart people how to learn,” the author points out that success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning (even more today than when he wrote this), but most people don’t know how to learn.”

What starts you on the way to learn a new competency is the experience of “constructive disorientation.” The strong sense that something’s wrong, not working, could work better—or just very frustrating. And you believe there must be a way to resolve that issue. That “something wrong” has your brain ruminating, focused on the issue and working hard. In short, frustration is the spark for learning, critical reflection it’s engine, and relationships are the fuel.

Of these three issues, the one that’s often ignored is the role of other people in making learning happen. There is a terrific amount of theorizing and research about learning with other people. Jon Wergin of the University of Nebraska has focused on all the major learning issues in his fascinating new book, Deep Learning in a disorienting world. Since this is the kind of book most business people, except for the HR folk, won’t pick up, here are the 10 key behaviors—with my brief notes added...

The Best Business Course I Ever Had

It was nothing you can take in business school.

The most useful business course I have ever taken was not marketing, info tech, strategic management, or any of the courses you can get in business school. It was 1984 and I had just turned fifty years old when I went into the consulting business, having just finished a PhD in communications and rhetoric and left a university position. I had never taken a college business course, but a couple business executives who had observed me in differing situations had pushed me to go full-time into management consulting. They believed I could help them solve some serious people problems, and as soon as I agreed to their idea, they lined up to work with me, eventually hiring me for their subordinates as well—and then recommending me to colleagues and others in their network. It was clear that a number of senior managers at major firms were far more aware of what I could bring to the party, than I. I’d get a phone call from an exec, saying he’d gotten my phone number from so and so—and wanted to talk about some needs he had. It didn’t take long to figure out that there was some kind of hidden network promoting my services, a network of major business leaders that knew far more about my usefulness than I.

Of course, one consequence of a built-in network is that I have no intense, fearful stories of struggling to build a business, figuring out my product, marketing or even selling my services. And little concern from the start about income. In those early years, the marketing was largely done for me, behind my back and outside my awareness—until I got a phone call or a recommendation that I should contact this director or VP at a major firm, this architectural manager, that law firm HR person, this consulting firm, or that university physician. I talked minimally about the few things I’d done, and they quickly took over the conversation about their needs. Recognizing my formal naivete, several of them talked about framing the project, strategy and even fees. Occasionally, they pointed to a project format that could provide a lot of cachet and would be useful for my future business.  One UCLA marketing specialist took me out for lunch a couple times to check on my personal progress, advise me on interpersonal marketing and suggest future clients. Several different officers educated me on fees, indicating they were too low for executives, and that I should raise them significantly. One vice-president actually handed my bill back, saying he was worth more than that. Naively, I asked how much. He talked about billing philosophies for a few minutes, told me to cross out the figure, replace with a higher figure and initial it. I followed his instructions, tripling the figure. He signed it, handed it to his secretary and told her to get me a check while we talked. I doubt that the fee actually crossed his mind. I used that time to talk about his agenda, telling him I needed to think about his development and would be back the next week. I went back to my drawing board, made a few simple process adjustments, and got his verbal confirmation. Based on the huge amount of business I got from him, his colleagues and his relations in other firms, I was evidently quite successful. One East Coast CEO related that my client told him I saved his life—and so, he, too, wanted to work with me.

What I knew I didn’t know
There were a lot of known unknowns that clients were always more than willing to explain, educate or warn me about. Of the more than 500 single clients I worked with over the past twenty years, about a third were in the various fields of information technology. In my first consult in that field, three or four years into business, I was called by the CIO of a multi-billion-dollar agri-business firm. It was, I believe in 1990, when intranet use was burgeoning—a few years before the web really took off. He had a $100M project, but there were very few experienced managers in his field. First, he wanted to know why I, a former minister, was being recommended by his trusted HR exec. Before answering, I asked whether he’d been churched as a kid. Since he responded positively, I asked about the differing political, social and religious attitudes in his Methodist church. Without answering his initial question, he responded, “oh, I get it. You know how to deal with all kinds of people??” But what I don’t know, I responded, is beans about info tech. If I had that info, I said, we could probably figure out what kind of development a manager needs. He remedied that problem immediately, sending me off to a three-day workshop for execs in the field. 

So, one thing about executive consulting was clear: when you don’t know the context, discipline, politics, and people, you’re going to have to ask, a discipline I got very good at. Including stuff both on top and under the table. Questioning is a major discipline in the field of communications and I knew how to build trust and ask questions. Besides, I’d had years of jobs that required a great deal of interpersonal trust. And clients always respected that. I never lost a job by asking questions—but there were several jobs I refused because I didn’t really understand—at first. In all but one of these situations, the potential client came back and pushed and educated until I was comfortable. The process was ass backwards. Supposedly, when you turn a person down, they walk away, but that’s not what happened. I found that when a consultant rejects an opportunity, it’s so unusual—a shock to the system--the potential client is so intrigued that he (or she) wants to get to know this consultant. And so, clients willingly educated me for the purposes of what they believed I had to offer.

What I didn’t know I didn’t know
Perhaps 50 of the 500 or so execs I worked with had hidden agendas. I’m no intellectual slouch, but I’ve worked with a lot of really brilliant executives. . . execs who take their time before explaining their real agendas. Graduating with an MBA doesn’t necessarily mean an exec is really smart. But I also learned rather quickly that if it’s Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia or Wharton MBAs, or one of the great public schools like Berkeley, UCLA, Wisconsin or UMN, they’ve usually got the gray matter. BTW: I’ve consulted to MBA execs from all of the above schools.

Several months into one exec (Northwestern), he revealed that the firm was changing the management process and he feared losing his vice-presidency unless he made some personal changes. I doubted that was the case, but I never revealed what I knew, believing his ignorance would motivate him still more—nothing wrong with an occasional bit of fear motivation. Having been a pastor, I’d learned that strategic duplicity can be valuable. My client was still at the firm several years after I left—and had been promoted to SVP, validating my duplicity, a behavior I never revealed.

Another marketing executive (Chicago) asked me to interview more than 20 colleagues at different levels throughout the firm. His stated objective was to work on strategic thinking and to confirm his expertise with these colleagues. I commented that I’d usually have redundancy with 10 -12 interviewees, but it’s “your nickel.” When I gave him the feedback in an extensive, confidential, summary format, I learned that what he really wanted to know was whether his colleagues could think strategically. He didn’t frame the issue openly, but he got the answer he wanted from his framing to me. Most couldn’t think strategically. I could have told him that without the interviews, but he wanted the confidential research. I got another project from him as a result—focusing on how to coach executives into a strategic thinking model. But I warned him about the difficulties latent in such a project, a warning he appreciated deeply.

Some of the hidden objectives are on the ethical edge, and some are capable of reframing with less ethical constraints. But it’s a given that politics and ethics are always involved in group and organizational contexts--that goes with the turf. Although you can expect executive individuals to be ethical, you can’t expect that of organizations or when the individual is representing the organization. In my business, you come face-to-face with ethical issues quite often, though they don’t surface early—sometimes not for months or even years. In such settings, you recognize the world as it is and the world as it should be. And you learn the dance of compromise on such distinctions or you lose your client and your family’s livelihood, a far higher priority than always operating on the basis of simple ethical considerations.

Sometimes ethical issues were on the table, not underneath. One potential client interview with a well-placed senior executive in a multi-billion-dollar international firm revealed ethical limitations. Knowing that I had been a former pastor, toward the end of the interview, he got around to asking about my ethics—obviously a question about religious rigidity. I stared at him a minute, and then responded eloquently, with a pornographic salvo and a smirk, “that’s a fucking, stupid question.” He howled with laughter and hired me on the spot. Over the years he referenced about a million bucks worth of projects at his firm and several other firms as well. A few months into his project, I learned he had a seriously negative ethical reputation, but a positive reputation as a wordsmith. So, my comment couldn’t have been more apropos. And yeah, he really tested my ethical maturity—more than once.

What I didn’t know I knew
When I left my faculty position and went into the consulting business, I assumed that much of my background in religion, theological studies and history would be of little value. I was certain that my communication studies would be of value, but that my expertise in rhetoric would not. I could not have been more wrong, but it took time to figure the error of my ways. The most significant business course—including a week of finance at the Chicago Business school (my only formal business education). . .

Change Your Intelligence: Change Your Life

The facts are in! You can grow your intelligence.

I continue to be shocked about the thinking on intelligence. Just the other day I was reading a new post by a leading business scholar and he commented that business people are (permanently) limited by their general intelligence. It's as though the growth mindset doesn't exist. Yet Carol Dweck, Anders Ericsson and their colleagues have done hundreds of studies revealing that intelligence is not fixed: we can grow our intelligence. Their research puts the lie to the notions of fixed intelligence.

So why is it so easy to fall back into old thinking and old habits outside the new growth model?  Here are five reasons:

1. For more than 100 years society has said that success is about being more gifted than others.  It's emphasized the notion that failure measures you.  Effort, we've heard is for those who can't make it on pure talent. ..

Bravo Bridgerton and Rege Jean Page

I have been an unabashed, naive lover of romantic comedy for years. Still, I was surprised by how much I learned from numerous interviews of the male lead of the Bridgerton romantic comedy, Rege Jean Page. He has a lot to say about culture, literature, drama, movies—and Bridgerton. So much that I decided a blog was in order. But an analysis, not a review. With the added interview input from Rege, a new video paradigm is both confirmed and enhanced. So, here goes.

First, let’s dispose of the notion from several critics that the Bridgerton series is escapism. Saying a movie is an escape is different than saying it’s escapist. Chris Van Dusen, the writer-producer said the series was a “great escape for the holidays,” not that the series itself is escapist. Calling the series escapist is a sign the critic is either attention seeking or a certified ignoramus. At its core, escapism is the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.  Escapist behavior typically involves things like substance abuse, compulsive gambling, reckless driving, or dangerous sports. Generally, they are behaviors that put your health or wellbeing at risk, things you wouldn't normally do, and might regret later. Rather than escapist, in some ways, Bridgerton is, among other things, a social statement. And Rege emphasizes that point.

Romantic comedy, like Bridgerton, is fiction—and all good fiction is rhetorical. Good fiction, like Bridgerton, influences—it persuades and creates. It does things to its audience. The Bridgerton series is a fascinating, and—yes—superb romantic comedy. It’s romantic in the sense that the plot circles around feelings of excitement and mystery in love. It’s comedy in the technical sense: the plot moves along by the wit and wisdom of the characters in the story. In Bridgerton, uniquely, a terrific number of characters move the plot. And it is also fantasy in that it creates images that are on occasion unrealistic or improbable. Images that we might desire in our dreams—what some writers label “magic.” This is the background for Shondaland’s new video paradigm.

By starting out with the notion of fiction, I’m emphasizing my belief that stories have the power to pull people together—or push them apart. Stories can also make relationships possible and even better. The genre of comedy, which Bridgerton is filled with, inevitably forces us to redo our values. Revaluing those underlying assumptions that guide our lives and behaviors, sometimes obviously and other times unconsciously. At least a third of the population is completely unaware of the impact of comedy, unaware of what it’s doing to them. Consequently, when people trust a power person, they can easily put themselves at the mercies of stories, stories that are going to unconsciously impact them. Very clearly, Trump’s stories, even though nutty, crazy and dead wrong, did it to several hundred non-thinking people—largely by mutual osmosis. Fiction can pull readers out of their heads. And we suffered on January 6 as a result.

So, in the following, I’ll analyze Bridgerton and call your attention to a number of important issues in the series, indicating that Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton is actually a new video paradigm.

Rege Jean Page
One of the things that caught my eye in the first episode was the fierce intelligence of the male lead, Rege Jean Page. As an exec coach, I’m always assessing the intelligence and abilities of a client. After more than fifty-years of assessing intelligence, these antennae are always up. Of course, a player can just be using the script he was given. But in this instance the actor’s verbal ability, accenting language, inserting verbal commas, subtle nonverbals, pauses, the ability to reflect feelings on the end of his consonants, the slight pause before punching the most important word in a sentence, the language not only with a glance, but evoking communication with his positioning, dance, hands, a simple ice-cream spoon (that hit Twitter and the internet like a bomb) and even a wine glass, all scream a rare dramatic intelligence. He’s Simon Bassett, Duke of Hastings and very much the societal heartthrob. “Darcy as a 21st century fuck-boy” is Page’s immortal description. Such dramatic intelligence focuses attention perfectly on his characterizations, suggesting there must be more to life, reshaping sensibilities and offering triumph over the challenges we inevitably face. His Bridgerton persona is so well developed, not just with his love partner, that what is offered through his dramatic intelligence drives the immense viewership of this Netflix blockbuster...

David Brooks' Unusual Smarts

Just one sentence:

"Democrats, God put you on this earth to spend government money on the disadvantaged.

Now, please go do it."

Should We Regulate Business Coaching?

Can psychological therapy provide the competencies executive coaching actually requires?

It’s not the first time that a psychiatrist has written about credentialing business coaching. Over the past twenty years there have been at least two articles in the Harvard Business Review by other psychiatrists pointing to the need for credentialing in psychology or psychiatry for the business coach. My hackles inevitably go up reading these articles. The current article, which appeared in Psyche Ideas, is a critique of business coaching by a Stanford psychiatrist, Dr. Elias Aboujaoude. His conclusion is that coaching must be “defined and regulated so that mental health interventions can be offered by the experts trained to deliver them.” What adds fuel to the issue is the loosey-goosey goal of the Coaching Federation “to inspire the client to maximize potential.”

The conclusion that managers need a mental health intervention is a serious error—and an obvious power grab. Having worked extensively--one-on-one--with senior managers and executives for nearly 35 years, I’ve found that mental health has almost never been the issue. The psychiatrist and Coaching Federation not only misunderstand the needs of most executives, but they lack any awareness of the personal drives and psychological health of all but a very few managers.

My experience and education
Though neither a psychiatrist nor a registered psychologist, I hold a PhD in communications and modern rhetoric and an MDiv, along with the equivalent in post-doc course hours of a master’s in psychological foundations, including highly relevant subjects such as tests and measures, practice theory, abnormal, clinical, adult learning and informal supervision by a psychological mentor. In addition, my background includes extensive counseling as senior pastor for an eleven-year period in two university related churches, and eleven more years teaching and coaching preaching and communications for both Protestant and Catholic seminary students. Uniquely, I also coached maximum-security prisoners at Oak Park Heights, Minnesota.  An additional 35 years were spent as executive coach of more than 500 senior managers and executives from more than a dozen industries in Fortune 100 and 500 corporations across the country, as well as in Latin America and Europe. Among my clients (with typically a year or more of personal coaching) were MBA grads of Harvard, Chicago, Northwestern, Tuck-Dartmouth, Wharton, and yes, Stanford—as well as others from major public universities.  That also included major experiences coaching clients from the fields of law, medicine and architecture as well as Continental and Brit Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners, Israelis—and members of the LGBT community. Most importantly, my background in rhetorical criticism, an extensive competency providing exceptional tools for both diagnosis and development of various forms and contexts of personality and relationships, brings profound insight to executive coaching. For example, with rhet crit you become a better “noticer” and can observe and then coach in ways simply not available to psychology—feeling the end of a person’s consonants and getting at meanings and subtexts reverberating in emotions. That competency lies outside the awareness of psychologists and those from other disciplines. The fact that major firms recruited me on a recurring basis over the years, points to their belief in the validity of my various approaches and insights. My point? The proliferation of differing tools in the social sciences and varied approaches for business coaching, the size--and what one executive called the “weird diversity” of my client base--meant that client need determined the necessary tools, a need that was never purely or even largely psychological.

What’s my beef?
Begin here: We now know that in any kind of problem solving the way you define a problem determines the way you resolve the problem. But still more important—and rarely mentioned—is that the tools you bring to the problem determine the way you define the problem. Until physician’s insurance rates skyrocketed as the cost for malpractice, it used to be said that if you take a medical problem to a surgeon, he’s going to recommend “cutting.” That’s why today’s surgeons need a clear rationale for Insurance to be willing to pay. Similarly, if you take an executive’s needs to a psychologist or psychiatrist, you can be damned certain they’re going to recommend a psychological resolution for the issue. And though psychologists regularly reject the notion of “medical model,” they are controlled unconsciously by its power. That’s true whether or not there are better and more efficient non-psychological ways to resolve the issue.

Dr. Aboujaoude is an example of this problem, writing that the common topics for leadership coaches are the “bread and butter of many a therapy session.” That’s simply not true. Obviously, the writer has little experience in business. If, for example, you take DSM-5, the standard set of diagnostic criteria for the American Psychiatric Association, nothing, absolutely nothing in all those psychiatric categories fits typical business requests for help, nor are executive needs satisfied by “bread and butter” therapy. In the psychiatrist’s attempt to create a semantic world bounded on all sides by psychology, he got caught up in his psychological shorts.

Common development issues
The common developmental topics for executive coaches are determined not only by the basic performance needs requested by a client—even when off-base and wrong, but also by the organizational strategy and the cultural emphases of a given time period. For example, the 1980s were strongly oriented to basic management vs. leadership competencies, team skills and, I realized early on, the often, profound needs of significantly introverted IT people with a deficit of interpersonal competencies. The 1990s were oriented to working with flattening hierarchies, more interactional conversation, ordinary exec needs (like time-management or small-talk) and internal client-based, cross-cultural teamwork. The early 2000s, to more cross-disciplinary communication, complex teamwork, more technology management, decision process, business empathy, and—as the research and my experience reveal--ever more profound interpersonal deficits. 

No-Asshole Policy at the White House

Bob Sutton must be enjoying this. I certainly am.

At the virtual swearing in of his political appointees, Biden essentially told his appointees that if he catches “anyone of them treating someone else poorly, he’ll drop-kick them off the roof of the White House.”

Here’s his statement. “I am not joking when I say this, if you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot,” No ifs, ands, or buts. Everybody, everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity. That’s been missing in a big way the last four years…. I’m confident you have the capacity to do it. We’re gonna be judged. We are gonna be judged whether or not we restore the integrity and competency in this government…. I need your help badly. We have to restore the soul of this country, and we’re counting on all of you to be part of that. It’s not hyperbole. The only thing I expect with absolute certitude is honesty and decency—the way you treat one another, the way you treat the people you deal with. And I mean that sincerely,” he said.

He clarified that even further with a letter to his staff, telling them, “I would like to take a moment to make something clear to everyone. I do not expect nor do I want any of you to miss or sacrifice important family obligations for work. Family obligations include but are not limited to family birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, any religious ceremonies such as first communions and bar mitzvahs, graduations, and times of need such as illness or a loss in the family.” Trump, on the other hand, expected aides to skip important family functions to sit in the residence with him while he binge-watched Fox News...