May 5, 2008
06:16 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Hillary Clinton waged a negative campaign and it sounds like
John McCain is getting bankrolled to do the same thing. Barack Obama can be occasionally pulled down
to that level, but clearly he doesn't like to engage in dirty or negative
politics.
Is the guy chicken? Is he afraid to engage in a knock down
drag out battle? Or is something else
going on?
I choose to believe the latter. I choose to believe that Obama knows that
people who throw stones do live in glass houses and when people wage negative
campaigns it is more often motivated by a desire to draw potential voters away
from the scent of their own misdeeds and send them on a wild goose chase into
the foibles and human shortcomings of their opponents.
If you haven't noticed, Americans and especially "baby
boomers" don't age gracefully or graciously.
They have trouble realizing it is no longer their turn and that it is
time to pass the baton to the next generation(s), wish them well, help them if
they ask for it, and then stay out of their way.
Instead, they marry younger women, have (too much) plastic
surgery, live vicarious through their children (using them to get the extra
scoop of ice cream that they feel they didn't get and were entitled to) and in
many other ways "Rage against the dawn" instead of going "gently into that good
night."
Obama represents the next generations' hopefulness about
focusing on what is possible and what can be built together through cooperation
and synergy now that the world is flat and we are more global than ever in the
history of the world. He represents the
desire to turn away from the "zero sum" mentality of older generations, and
turf wars between Democrats and Republicans more concerned with staying in
office than in truly serving the people who elected them.
I am a baby boomer, and don't particularly like aging and
don't particularly like letting go of power and influence. Fortunately I like even less desperately and
bitterly holding on to something that rightfully belongs to the next generation
and the future.
Are you listening Hillary Clinton and John McCain…and
Congress?
April 4, 2008
01:34 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
It’s not what you can do (Obama) or what you will do (Clinton),
it’s what you’ve already done
that has made a positive, lasting and measurable difference
that earns you leverage.
I
was trying to figure out my mixed feelings after the Pennsylvania
primary and where my ambivalence towards Obama and Clinton comes from.
I
think it derives from the dissonance that both candidates trigger in
me. Dissonance occurs when what you see and hear doesn't match what you
feel or "What are you going to do FOR me?"/"What are you going to do TO me?"
I see and hear what both Obama and Clinton are saying, and I think the mixed feelings I have towards each are as follows:
Obama = Can do but hasn't done yet
Clinton = Been there, done what?
Obama
lacks the track record and experience. Clinton has the experience, but
lacks the track record of being effective in making a positive, lasting
and measurable difference.
So I guess it comes down to the Devil
you don't know (Obama) vs. the Devil you do (Clinton, and for that
matter McCain) which makes for a devilish decision come election time.
09:28 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
"This
Presidential campaign is starting to be a circus," my friend proclaimed to me.
Talk about
flashbacks. I immediately thought of the
O.J. Simpson criminal trial in which I served as an advisor to the
prosecution. I remember what started out
as the chance to showcase to the world how justice could be served by the
sequential and orderly presentation of indisputable evidence turned by mid-trial
into anything but that. Somewhere along
the way justice and rationality got lost in the daily salvos that Marcia Clark
et al and Johnnie Cochran and friends launched at each other. Just when it looked like one side was on the
ropes, they bounced back in a way that made you think, "Well maybe what they just
said was possible."
Back and
forth and then back and forth again. By
the time the trial was over, you just wanted it to be over. Despite the ordeal of watching it, Los Angeles and much of the country, if not
the world, stood transfixed reading newspapers and starting at televisions like people rubbernecking at
the side of multi-vehicle car crash. You
wanted to look away, but couldn't. By the end, justice had long been replaced
by just wondering who was going to win and who was going to lose.
Fast
forward to Election 2008. Hillary Clinton
as the annoying, aggravating, unrelenting, "nails on a chalkboard" and oblivious-to-her-substance-obliterating-style Marcia Clark. Barack
Obama as the mellifluous, velvet toned, easy to listen to but occasionally gaff laden and factually (or at
least experience) insubstantial Johnnie Cochran.
Are we
witnessing or at least experiencing a similar phenomena? If so, what was the lesson that O.J. taught
us and the one the current campaign is trying to teach us? I would posit it is that when you are in thrall
to your emotions, you need to resist with all your strength throwing logic and
common sense under the bus, where they become casualties.
To carry
the analogy one step further, what is at risk in Election 2008? What
corresponds to the desire for justice, following Rodney King, that was in short
supply in 1994-97 that fell completely through the cracks? The answer is
leadership. As we head towards November,
2008 there is a widespread perception that America is either being misled or
at the very least is lacking leadership.
If one of the measures of effective leadership is how committed
the
followers are and you match that against the current approval of
President Bush (72 % disapproval for 4/2-4/6/08), you get a sense of
just how much
leadership is wanting.
Clark
and Cochran may have been as much victims and extensions as they were causes of the
public's emotional state of mind during the mid- 1990's. And perhaps it's just as likely
that Clinton and Obama are extensions or an expression of the current American
psyche. Whatever the truth, the American psyche is every day
looking to leadership to solve the problems of a war without end, the
upside down economy, health care reform, education to enable America to
compete globally, etc. and unfortunately for which there are no
simple, easy answers (something that the public doesn't take too
kindly).
If
hindsight is 20:20 and the lesson from the Simpson trial was to keep our eye on
the prize of justice and to forcibly push aside anything that would detract
from it, the lesson for Obama, Clinton and
McCain is to keep their eye on the leadership that this country sorely
needs and is desperate for.
The
foundation of that leadership rest on three key abilities. First, the ability
to see and articulate a clear, compelling and convincing vision that all of
this country will want to be a part of.
Second, the ability to identify and recruit the talent to turn that
vision into a reality. Third, the ability to engage that talent so they will do
it.
The
greatest problem for all three candidates is the lack of that front end
vision. In its place is an opportunity
for each of them to reach the pinnacle of their political careers. But an opportunity for each of them
professionally does not a vision for all of us to embrace make. In the 1930's we had the New Deal; in the
1940's we had defeating he evil Nazis; in the 1950's it was living the American
dream after the war and being safe through the Cold War; in the 1960's it was
putting a man on the moon and after that it becomes a little iffy and to this
day, that lack of vision is something we all ache for. After 9/11 the reaction to retaliate and
defend our country against terrorism was temporarily a shared vision, but the
war has continued without a clear end in sight or even a clear notion that Iraq was the
enemy we should be fighting.
I don't
know what that vision would be, I just know that our next President needs to
know.
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston
08:25 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
(also at basil and spice and peoplejam)
Children get mannerisms and attitudes from both parents
but develop their inner calm and feeling of well being
from how much their parents like, trust and respect each other.
Increasing
research shows that a significant part of a child’s mind and
personality is influenced not by how their parents react to the child,
but by how their parents respond to each other.
What becomes
frustrating and at times demoralizing to children is not so much that
mothers and fathers disagree or argue (as they inevitably will), but
that parents continue to argue over the same things and never
definitively resolve them once and for all.
When children
observe parents arguing without resolution they see emotion and reason
locked in a “zero sum” fight instead of cooperating with each other.
When they then internalize into their personality that emotion and
reason cannot work together, their inner sense of calm and well-being
is replaced by restlessness. It is as if at any moment their own
emotion and reason are on the brink of doing battle in their mind
reminiscent of what they observe between their parents. And this
destroys inner calm and well being.
As the lack of cooperation
between the emotion and reason in their observed world can create chaos
in their life, the lack of cooperation between emotion and reason in
their own mind can create flaws in their developing personalities.
The
best example of how emotion and reason can work together between a
mother and father utilizes “tag team parenting.” This is when one
parent being better at logical problem solving tells the child to go to
the other for comforting if that is what the child seems to need. And
conversely when the other parent who is better at emotional comforting
tells the child to go speak to the other for help with solving a
problem if what the child needs more is good advice.
05:50 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
The three most important abilities of a leader are:
- to see and articulate a vison whose compelling, captivating and convincing qualities withstand the test of time and the assault from fear and greed
- to identify and recruit talent to turn that vision into a reality
- to engage that talent to want to carry out that vision
The dilemma for the Obama, Clinton and McCain and for us is that the presidency represents a great opportunity for all three to satisfy their political aspirations and ambitions, but none of them have a vision to fulfill.
They are so busy saying, "No," to the present visionless administration and, "Yes," to the voters they speak to along the campaign route that it is unclear exactly what they see.
And to be fair about the present administration, George Bush's vision about a world free from terror was a pretty compelling, captivating and convincing vision; the flaw was in the poor preparation, management and execution of that vision.
Regarding points 2 and 3, all three have the ability to identify and recruit talent, but Clinton
appears to be negatively distinguishing herself with an inability to
continuously engage them.
I would posit that without a compelling, captivating and convincing vision it will be difficult in the long run to recruit and engage the talent to be successful as President. Charisma and charm is enough to get people pumped up temporarily (think Obama), but only when people see where they are going and like what they see can the mission be sustained and fulfilled.
What would be a vision that would compel, captivate and convince and continue to do so?
One I would offer is the vision of your and my children's children and grandchildren waking up on any day of their life with the abilities and opportunities for success, happiness and creating an even better world for their children and grandchildren without the fear of terrorism or corruption despoiling the landscape they look out upon.
What such a world look like and how we could reverse engineer it would then become our mission.
09:26 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Help Wanted: American President
Qualifications: Must be playing with a full deck
With
the media's teeth firmly embedded in the necks of the three
Presidential candidates, it's become increasing unclear what we can
truly believe or not believe about them. But one thing is clear. The
ambivalence that voters feel toward Obama, Clinton and McCain tells us
more about ourselves than about them.
The reason for that
ambivalence is that there is something that each possesses that appeals
to us, but there are other qualities about each of them that cause us
to pause and be wary.
In order to relax our guards, sign on the
dotted line, and put our faith in a Presidential candidate, he or she
will need to engender in us: Trust, Confidence and Respect.
So
here's the rub. Obama has inspired (unless the new spate of allegations
ruins it) trust and respect, but not confidence (given his lack of
experience); McCain has also inspired trust and respect, but not
confidence (given his lack of broad based experience and, sorry to
admit the obvious, his age); Clinton has instilled confidence (due to
her and Bill's combined experience, but sorry Hillary, you ain't very
inspiring), but not trust or respect.
Until a candidate
spontaneously evokes all of these three qualities, he or she will
continue to trigger dissonance in us. Dissonance occurs when what we
see or hear doesn't match what we feel, a.k.a. What are you going to do
for me?/What are you going to do to me?
These elements are equally important in a CEO, especially of a public company, where all eyes are upon them.
If a CEO doesn't instill all of these, how can they do so?
I
developed the PEP CEO Challenge to solve such a dilemma. But it is not
for the "faint of heart" or a CEO who in the words of Jack Nicholson,
from "A Few Good Men," "Can't handle the truth."
To use it as a
CEO, ask your people, directors, stockholders, customers/clients,
vendors to anonymously rate how much Passion, Enthusiasm and Pride they
feel about your services, products, company and YOU on a scale of 1 to
10. Then ask them to suggest what you and your company need to do to
increase their rating if it is anything less than 10-10-10.
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston
10:52 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
After the initial disappointment of not getting into their top choice wears off,
most college students feel like failures not from the rejection.
It comes from internalizing the feeling they have let their parents down.
These are the parents who were over-invested in the result from the start,
who can't get over their disappointment
and will have a hard time hearing and accepting this.
- Dean of Admissions, Ivy League College
In my blog, "Did Your Kid Get Rejected from College?" I talked about turning college rejection into an opportunity for poise. I spoke too soon.
"Mark,
you could provide a real service to students and their parents if you
could suggest two things to them. I can't do it, because I am currently
fielding the 'why not my kid?' calls that I am being flooded with. Few
of them are ready to hear it and certainly not from me," a Dean of
Admissions at an Ivy League college told me yesterday.
He
explained that most college students that don't get into their top
choice, feel deeply upset and disappointed at first. It is natural and
even healthy to feel those feelings and even vent to their parents
their upset. At that point parents should respond with: "Oh God, that's
awful I can tell how upset you are and I'm sorry." Then the parents
should stop talking and let their kids continue to vent. In most cases
they will get it out of their systems in a matter of one to several
days.
After their upset has peaked and is calming down, they
should say something like: "I'm really excited about the choices you
have from the colleges that did accept you and the next four years
you're going to have will be amazing in ways you can't imagine." You
don't want to say this too soon. If you do, it's as if you are trying
to talk them out of being initial upset, which they have earned the
right to feel after all the work they put in at high school and going through the application process.
The
second suggestion had to do with something so very painful and so very
unnecessary that he sees so often. Within a few days, children are
usually ready and able to move on past their disappointment. They begin
to envision and enthusiastically look forward to going to the
college(s) they were accepted to.
What gets in the way are
parents who can't get past their own disappointment in the college
rejection. Rather than the parents and children accepting that college
acceptance is very arbitrary and capricious, the parents continue to
look chagrined and downcast. They say they feel badly for their
children, when the parents are the ones feeling more upset and who
can't move on. He said that in such situations, students tend to look
at their parents and internalize their mother and father's
disappointment into feeling as if the child has failed them.
The
Dean concluded: "Getting parents to separate their own disappointment
from that of their child's is the single greatest obstacle to the child
getting over and past it."
March 3, 2008
05:17 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
(also at basil and spice)
A Presidential Prediction From the World of Emotional Intelligence
If
you haven't noticed, more people act (or more accurately react) from
emotion than reason. If you need evidence of that, you are not only out
of touch with the world at large, but out of touch with your
world. Just ask any of people around you, who find you to be so
logical, but oh, so out of touch (Hillary, are you listening? Probably
not).
And now for a prediction.
Neither Clinton nor Obama
will receive enough delegates to capture the Democratic nomination on
the first ballot in August. That will then throw the convention open to
nominating its ultimate ticket.
By that time, the Democratic
party will feel as the rest of the country feels that Obama is great,
but just too inexperienced to do the job. Clinton, despite being
married, will feel too much like that crabby, spinster aunt who comes
to Thanksgiving, because you can't find a way to uninvite her.
Given
those two powerful qualities, McCain will seem like the only grown up
for the job. And unless he self-immolates a la Howard Dean, he will be
viewed as a less lousy alternative than either Obama (for his
inexperience) and Clinton (for her negative personality). That said,
McCain will not be seen as someone that voters want, but merely someone
better than the other options.
Enter Nobel prize winner, Global
Warming (a.k.a. "visionary"), non-pushy, doesn't need the money or job
Al Gore. By the time August rolls around, the unattractiveness of
Clinton's ambition and to a lesser extent, Obama's, will have
negatively impacted people desire for either. What will be fresh is
someone that voters pursue and want instead of people they feel stuck
with.
At that point Al Gore will be approached as a possible
candidate and receive counsel from his family and friends to the extent
of: "Al, what do you need this for? Your life and influence has been
much more positive and wide ranging than anything you ever did in
politics? Why would you want to now re-enter the "zero sum" back
stabbing world of politics?"
Al will respond with: "My core
value and life has been to be of service. My daddy did and so have I
for most of my adult life. I like being an educator on the problems of
global warming, but I may actually have more leverage to help that and
other initiatives as President. And besides, I will agree if elected to
only serve one term, where one of my most important roles is to mentor
Barack Obama to be the real President who makes change happen after I
leave office in 2012."
And if this happens, as they say in fairy tales, "America will live happily every after."
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston
07:05 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Enough of “what was he thinking?” when Eliot and Bill did what they did, “because they could.”
The question that is on peoples' minds is “what the heck was she thinking?” when Silda Wall and Hillary looked on as their men went public about after being caught with their hand in the wrong cookie jar. Why so much curiosity?
Could it be that our salacious voyeuristic instincts are just getting off wondering what these women are thinking of their man’s behavior or could it be that the look is not that unfamiliar to millions of women who have looked that way at their men or to their men who have been looked at that way.
What has happened to marriage? Baby, baby where did our love go?
I remember a husband once saying to his wife in my therapy room: “What ever happened to my sweet little girl who used to adore me?”
Without missing a beat his wife responded: “You stopped being adorable.”
I have seen hundreds of couples where husbands have the same complaints: “She used to think I was funny and be so warm and so nurturing and now she looks at me like I’m silly and everything is a negotiation. I still love her, but I don’t think she likes me.”
What’s up? And what brought marriage down to its knees?
Wherever you go, you see it? Women directing, barking orders and men passive aggressively dawdling or sullenly muttering, “Get off my frickin back!” That look of adoration in her eyes had been replaced by annoyance, irritation and impatience. The men don’t like it, but since one of the
rules they still live by is “It’s not okay to hit a girl,” they take their hurt and anger out in other ways.
That might mean alcohol, gambling, cars, motorcycles. And sometimes it means looking elsewhere
for the adoration and respect that their wives once felt for them. It could be with an affair or using their imagination and attributing those feelings to a smile on a prostitute or the smile from a porn star on their computer monitor.
What happened? How did the strong foundation for love become a floor that drops out of a marriage?
The answer is that the love was flawed from the beginning. It turns out he never knew her or cared to really know her in the first place. He just loved the way she made him feel…about himself.
And when she discovered that she was being used and often made promises in the heat of passion that he never had intended to keep, she fired back and started to use him in return to father a child, feather a nest or support her career aspirations. What started out as unconditional love
deteriorated into “zero sum loving.”
And the solution? Couples need to realize and accept that true intimacy only begins when the
intoxication and illusion of early love and lust dies down and gives way to reality. They need to see that immature love is about loving the other for what they do right and mature love is about loving someone in spite of what they do wrong. If you look for it, there is much to love in spite of what each other does wrong. You just have to look for it.
Just because early love is an illusion, doesn’t mean you have to become disillusioned with later love.
(also at basil and spice)
12:44 am | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
(also seen at basil and spice)
My first reaction to Barack Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech was how utterly un-American it was.
My
second reaction is that I only hope that he continues down that path,
because if he does, he offers America a tremendous opportunity to move
out of and beyond the morass it finds itself in.
His handwritten
speech was not for American Presidents only; it demonstrated three of
the best qualities that any leader can possess and what constitutes
taking on the "real" special interests or shall I say cultural
proclivities that have got America and many American companies into the
morass in which they finds themselves.
Conflict Avoidance
– As a country and as a people we don't deal very effectively with
conflict. Instead we react to it by either "bunkering" and trying to
deny reality (such as continuing to believe we could go from supreme
creditor to deepest debtor, without negative repercussions for our
global standing and influence) or by becoming belligerent and hostile.
In his speech, Obama stepped into the fray, articulated and understood
without condoning the positions and points of views of the parties he
focused on and then took on another current and self-defeating American
tendency.
Transactional Myopia – America has
slipped from the high minded and highly principled mindset of figuring
out the right thing to do and doing it to a transactionally myopic "get
the deal, do the deal, next deal" way of thinking and behaving.
American culture has replaced relationships with transactionships which
are "zero sum" and always short sighted. George H. Bush was less myopic
and understood that if you break Iraq you own it, whereas George W.
Bush's leadership (or lack thereof) derives more from his M.B.A., a
degree not known for developing people who are circumspect. People's
conversations, even with their loved ones, have all but been replaced
with negotiations. Negotiation is about winning or avoiding losing;
relationships are about relating. Relating requires listening in order
to understand vs. listening in order to come up with your next
counterpoint. Obama senses the short sightedness and doomed-to-fail
transactional approach and this may explain his reluctance to engage in
"eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" banter with Hillary Clinton Clinton-and-Obama-Economic-Plans Mar-08 .
The effectiveness in that approach for Clinton garnering votes in Ohio
and Texas only speaks to how many Americans are stuck at that low
minded, low ideal, take vs. give state of mind (which one can
understand when surviving daily can distract anyone from high
mindedness). Obama enjoined and ennobled us to do better by
transcending out of transactional myopia and implied that in doing so
we would be able to transform America from where it is to where it
could be.
Object Capriciousness – "Object
constancy" is one of psychology's most awkward, but most explanatory
terms. It is the ability of a person to maintain a connection and a
relationship with another person, a goal, or hope in the face of
disappointment, frustration, hurt and injury. It is the single
greatest measure of maturity and its lack, the greatest indicator of
immaturity. That is why children and immature adults when upset with a
friend or a spouse, will completely lose their connection and throw
away a relationship by declaring: "I hate you, you're not my friend" or
"Let's get a divorce." Obama demonstrated this by asserting his
continued support and even love for the Reverend Jeremiah Wright while
decrying his statements and positions and confronted all of us with our
continued relationships with people we disagree with. Awareness of this
is also what caused a philosopher (whose name I can't find) to
conclude: "The measure of a civilization is how it treats those who
have hurt it."
Until and unless a leader, be it American
President or corporate CEO can enjoin, ennoble and empower his people
to overcome their conflict avoidance, their transactional myopia, and
object capriciousness a country or a company will be stuck wondering
what ever became of it rather than seizing the grand opportunity of
what it could become.
