Skip to main content

The Slower Path

For an introvert I seem to have sought out a number of opportunities to stand up in front of people and talk. This is one of the fundamental tensions in my life. 

Because of my introversion I rarely speak in front of folk unless I am leading them, either formally or informally. Given a role to play I can sidestep my insecurities and do the job.

So I've had more than a few leadership roles. One of the things that I have tried to do (not always succeeding) is to exercise authority through my actions and not my job title. If I am willing to put the time into consulting with folk about issues, building their input into my plans, and then asking them to implement those plans, most of the time folk are willing to buy into those plans. 

It takes time, and so I am mindful that none of my interactions with others is intended to be the last, that every relationship is intended to be ongoing. This magnifies my trustworthiness and people tend to respond to that.

I can't will people into agreeing with me, nor force that agreement through words and deeds, thus the not-always-succeeding part above there. Indifference and apathy is the most common problem; sometimes jealousy and sabotage although fortunately that has been quite rare in my career. If needed I will stand on the fact that in a given role I will be the one making the decision. It is a concession that the outcome will be less than I wished but not taking the responsibility of making the right choice is even worse.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betrayal

I caught a student cheating on a final exam this morning. I had a line of sight on them and watched for ten minutes as they took their cellphone out of their pocket, kept it below their table, typed into it, read it, put it away, then wrote on the exam, repeating this cycle over and over again.  I was a bit surprised as the exam was open notes but this student had not attended many of our classes, just stopping by for exams, and I conjecture that they had no notes to open. I confronted the student who admitted that they had done wrong in an inarticulate non-confessional way. By the afternoon they had signed off on the honor code violation report to avoid further investigation and possible sanctions beyond failing the exam.  Is anger the right emotion to feel now? I had a working relationship with the student, although they had not contributed much to it. They had deceived me in order to gain unwarranted advantage over their peers in the class and that is not right. I don't wan...
1 comment
Read more

Standing Your Corner

I'm a long-term David Simon fan ever since I read his book "Homicide", detailing a year-long embedding with Baltimore homicide detectives. It was clear-eyed about all of the strengths and weaknesses, good reflexes and prejudices of everyone that he met.  I enjoyed the television show that followed that he wrote for, and then of course "The Wire" on HBO and a number of his other shows---only limited by my access to streaming services.  There was a histrionic moment in a later season of "Homicide" where he just let a character vent; a homicide detective who was part-owner of a bar frequented by cops watched a particularly violent drug criminal, responsible for many unsolved homicides, come into his bar with his associates, violating the detective's territory. The detective came around the bar holding a billy club in his hand and loudly discussed his first year as a patrol officer walking a beat. His supervising officer told him that he had a corner a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Momentum

In my youth my primary social justice commitment was through Amnesty International. As an affluent white male I enjoyed freedoms that I thought ideally everyone should share; in the 1980's we had had the vine of United States support for repressive regimes that were nominally anti-Communist bearing cruel fruit and I in my small part of the world wanted to do something about that.  It was a more active support Amnesty International sought back then; nowadays they just ask me for money. We members were encouraged to write to foreign government officials to urge them to take care of political prisoners that we named, the idea being that as long as they knew that they were seen the cruelty would diminish. One letter per prisoner, because they were all human beings, not just a faceless group. I have no independent way of verifying if the hundreds of letters I wrote eased any suffering; I know that they changed me. Selfishly I am grateful. At the time I made a point of reading journalism...
Post a Comment
Read more