Micah!?!? Who Knew!

Remember my study buddy, Micah? (see HERE). Well, turns out she's a novelist as well! I know I'm making that sound like something I just found out, but it's a lie. Micah and I have been writing buddies for more than 6 months. But the surprise is genuine. I just had that surprise like a year ago. 

Regardless, Micah and I, who are both in the College of Education at KSU (me in a PhD program, she is getting her Masters), were recently talking about the difference between writing for school and writing for fun. 

As you all know, I'm in the middle of getting my PhD. Tons of writing,  . . . every bit of it non-fiction, research papers. I wrote three novels over the last ten years or so, several short stories, and many many drafts that have yet to go anywhere. I had to put my fiction writing on hold to focus on all these research papers. 

Well, my classes for this semester are done now (for the most part . . . see HERE) and I'm back into writing for fun, noveling. I had forgotten how fun it is to write novels. I had also forgotten how hard it is! 

When I write a research paper the longest they tend to ever get is 10K words. Most are around 3K. Heck my dissertation when I'm done will probably be only 25K. My novels are all 85K or more! My first drafts of my novels all started at 50K. I've written NaNoWriMo about 7 times and each of those is 50K words. (I've written about this before HERE).

Taking a year or two off to focus on my PhD has shown me that I should have given myself alot more credit for having written and (self) published 3 novels! It's a much bigger achievement than I had given myself credit for.

More with Micah

 As a part of my budgeting presentation (see here) I included a micro-learning spaced reinforcement exercise (see here, here and here for ore on that learning technique). But I had the chance to discuss this with Micah in another in my series of conversations with Micah (see more here and here).

It’s a fun tool. It’s not ideal in that it’s only text. The last micro-learning tool I used we were able to develop in Articulate Rise. That gave it a far sleeker look.

Text alone isn’t the best and is very limiting in terms of transfer of learning. The best model would be a hybrid model that delivers to the trainee via text or via micro-learning app so that they are reinforcing between the two. Haven't quite figured out how to make that happen yet, but it’s still early. Something will come up.

At work we use it to augment and reinforce learning objectives for our eLearning, our instructor-led classes and our virtual classes. It's just one more thing that helps get the message across and sticks in the learner's mind. We use "Mobile Coach" to create them. We hope to have our own system built and set up to use soon. 

At the moment, the most effective way we use the tool, is in using it to gauge how well our Virtual Reality training is doing (see here). We test the learner directly after the training then again a week later to determine if their memory after virtual is more resilient than the memory after traditional training. 

Great to be able to provide a tool to augment even the most simple presentations that I have. 

Ah Ha Moments with Micah

This week I got to have a long talk with Micah. Micah is an art teacher and is working her way through classes as I am. She posed a question regarding connection and engagement that I loved, "The idea of building a connection on a foundation of your insecurities and difficulties diminishes our accomplishments, makes our ah-ha’s seem less special, and (I think) can lead to a cycle and habit of negative self-talk."

For me, there can be nothing more pernicious and undermining to our ability to move forward positively as a learner, teacher, and humans than that tendency for "negative self-talk" that you describe in that passage. I don't know if I have it in me to re-write rule #4 specifically, but that passage resonated and made me think of a couple of rules that I promote within my teaching and leadership teams. 

The first I learned in the military and anyone in the military should be familiar with it. "Complaints only go up, positivity goes down." There are many variations of this with more colorful language but to boil it down, never complain about things to your troops, only show the positive side of things. If you have to complain, complain only up the chain of command. This has served me well both in and out of the military. Complaining down the chain of command starts a vicious circle of kvetching and a spiraling disgruntledness that is hard to slow. This could be one of the first things I promote within my new leadership cohort whenever I train a new supervisor or trainer.

The second one is "Celebrate and advertise your own wins because you might be the only one doing so." For a long time I worked behind the scenes and things got done and no one seemed to know how or why. It was only in the last few years in my career when I saw my direct reports acting in a similar manner and not getting recognition for their work that I realized they were modeling themselves after me and how I worked. I changed the model to ensure our work was recognized. If you can't recognize your own successes who's to say others might? It's important to be able to promote and advertise the positive aspects of your work whether through quick elevator pitches to the CEO in the hallway, at lunches or even at end of project parties. 

Perhaps not the best rewriting of rule 4 but what you wrote really hit me as something I saw in The Skillful Teacher as well, a tendency to navel-gaze toward the negative without the promotion of and illustration of all the positives that might be out there. Great post Mica!

Never Complain Down

My friend and colleague Micah asked me about a mantra I use . . .  and it's a worthwhile subject to continue forward with. Her question was: "Do you think if leaders only show the positive side to those they lead, that the people under them will feel less connected with the mission/vision/goals? Or would you saw that this is more situational?"

In the military, the rule to only complain and push positivity down was somewhat set in stone and was primarily there to help with motivation. Why have the privates in an infantry fire team hear the complaints from their leaders and have absolutely no capabilities to make any changes, either with the mission or with their careers and lives? We were all kinda stuck there for four years, best to make the best of things. And as leaders, we shielded our teams from the negatives they couldn't change. 

Now that I'm in the business world I've kept that mantra around although its a tad more nuanced. I think it's more about sheltering and shielding my direct reports from the negative and emphasize the positive, rather than excluding them from mission, vision, and goals. I think now, I may express the negative to my teams, and help them craft their own message to the troops beneath them, but I always try to keep a positive spin on things. Who wants to work for a place that's filled with negativity and drama?

As Micah mentioned, it's probably more situational. It's a rule of thumb. Now that I'm a senior leader at my organization I find myself being more realistic with my supervisors than I was with my teams when I was just a supervisor. I feel certain my direct reports do the same and will probably follow in my footsteps. I'll say that my leaders tend to follow the same mantra. They might be realistic in their threats, opportunities, and weaknesses but not to the point that it's complaining to me. Price of leadership perhaps?

I'm Not the Best Program Planner

I'm in the midst of Program Planning, and after another discussion with my good friend Micah (see here), I've decided that I'm not into this class as much. 

I’ve decided, Program Planning isn’t my milieu. I’ll do it, but I’m not going to enjoy it. I think it comes from my foundational business and operations experience in the Army. I was in a unit that excelled at fast raids and attacks. We rarely ever held ground. There are plenty of units that advance, secure, and hold. We didn’t do that. We hit then we left. We carried very little with us. There was a planning phase, a recon, an infil, the attack, then an exfil. All those phases of the operation usually took place within a day or two. Some units plan for weeks and months in advance, that’s just not what I was trained to do, and certainly isn’t something I’m comfortable doing, nor do I like doing it.

There is a saying, by General Pershing who was the American leader on the Western Front in WWI who said, “Infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars.”

Folks who specialize in logistics are very much the program planners of the military world. They obsess on the details and every iota of the plan. We have folks like that at work too. People who will dwell on the mot juste. We have one of those in my project team. She is an EXCEPTIONAL project manager, but she could spend hours on the proper definition and delineation of “is this an objective or a goal.” 

Me? I don’t care if it’s an objective or a goal, I just want to get moving. We have another young lady here at work who has that same issue, although she seems to have a bad case of  “paralysis through analysis.” She refuses to get her butt in gear ever. She can linger on a project for years, whereas I, have to move forward. I hate being stagnant.

If I had my way I would not have worked in a project team. I’ve gotten used to doing my own thing and working on my own deadlines, so it’s been killing me to have to work with others. That being said, so far I’ve been blessed by having great teams. Andrew and Daron are terrific for our self-reflection group meetings. Anna was a terrific counterpart for the partner project in our last class, and right now I’m working with Emily and Anne, who are both amazingly competent and fun to work with. So I’ve been blessed in that regard.