Dan Erwin

Old, But Still Exceptional Coaching Advice

It’s rare for a business book to be cutting edge more than thirty years after its publishing date. But one book is so valuable that I refuse to loan it, fearful it might get lost. There’s nothing comparable to Chris Argyris’ Overcoming Organizational Defenses.

It contains the clearest statement of coaching competencies you’ll ever find. In the thin little book, Argyris’ critiques the advice of Peter Drucker, the leading management theorist of the twentieth century. Argyris argues that sound advice—typical advice—like that of Drucker and 99% of business coaches, actually inhibits organizational performance.

An Age of Unreason?

Inauguration Day

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, It expects what never was and never will be.
  --Thomas Jefferson

"In current culture, where is wisdom to be found? If wisdom is a hunger in the soul, as Plato said, and if we are transfixed with true figures of wisdom--the man who has had time to think enough, the woman who has the chance truly to reflect, how do we now slake the need? It turns out that the problem of wisdom is an easy problem to solve. For acquiring wisdom is dangerous.  The individual who pursues true insight. . . is untimely. That is, he strives to be ahead of his own time in his perceptions, albeist basing his thoughts in the intellectual achievement of the past.

Is Your Communication As Effective As You Think?

The answer to my post title? You're prably not as talk-effective as you think.

And if you think your colleagues don't express themselves well, even in very important settings, you may be right.  Indeed, most of us seriously overestimate our ability to communicate effectively.  Those of us in the discipline of communication have known that for years, but now comes a study demonstrating how great the potential for miscommunication really is. 

Boaz Keysar and Anne Henley, psychologists at the University of Chicago, studied 40 pairs of listeners and speakers.  The talkers believed that their intended meaning was understood  "most of the time."  That belief, like a lot of other so called "soft skill" beliefs, won't stand up to the scrutiny of research. 

The research showed that nearly half the time that speakers thought they were understood, they were actually wrong.  In 46% of the cases there was a breakdown--the listeners didn't get it.  What's most surprising is that the speakers were warned that the info that they were to  communicate was ambiguous.  "Even then, even though they were warned," the researcher said, "they still thought they managed to convey their intention with intonation."

Violence: Everything of Importance in a Single Sentence

In her excellent article on the national response to the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Health Care, the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino nails it all in a single sentence.

Tolentino argues in the New Yorker that Thompson’s murder is “one symptom of the American appetite for violence; his line of work is another.”

The term “violence” is an original borrowing from the French, but its first uses date from the Middle English period (1150—1500). The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest evidence for violence is from around 1300, in St. Thomas Becket.

Why Am I Open About My Mother’s Dysfunction?

Or, to put it crassly, why share family shit?

On numerous occasions, I have noted that I grew up in a highly dysfunctional family. Some people would not want to share such information, others might not care. Recently, I have gotten more up-front, commenting that my mother exhibited a highly narcissistic dysfunction driven throughout her life by an abandoned child syndrome. The consequence was that she was mean as hell, leaving me on pins and needles from her interactions.

The highly religious people with whom I grew up would have been aghast at hearing me talk or write this openly. Plenty of therapists would suggest that I should have been very cautious about such personal information. And some other folk might suggest that such personal information should not be a part of ordinary conversation.

But during the years of my semi-retirement, I’ve confirmed my openness. From the time of my college days, I did not intend to be defined by a “mother-conflict.” And so, I want to take this opportunity to lay out the values of this openness. In sum, what I decided years ago is that I had a lot more important things to do than take care of a mother who had all the necessary resources for taking care of herself. And this blog will point out three of the factors supporting my decision.