“So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.” - Helen Keller

Today, as we celebrate the Memorial Day holiday, isn’t one of my “Last 100 Mondays” at work.  As such, I’m not posting a blog entry about my career. Instead, I’ll write a few words about remembering.

As most of you will know, the official purpose of the federal Memorial Day is remembering the people who died while serving in the United State's armed forces. The holiday was first celebrated as Decoration Day and people began observing it after the Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in that conflict. In my family, and many others around me as I grew up in the Midwest, this day was also informally one when we remembered family members who had passed away. I can remember going to the cemeteries where they were laid to rest to visit their graves and to leave flowers.

Today, I am especially remembering the friends I lost who served in Vietnam. These young men were older than I am and I remember how they left to fight in a war that would claim their young lives. I never served in the military, and I think of them, and all the others who have lost their lives in our wars, and I appreciate their service.  I am also filled with gratitude as I think of my father, who served in the Korean conflict, and my uncles and father-in-law who served in the Second World War. I am grateful for their service and especially thankful that they lived to be part of my life and to help shape the man I am today. I think of my mentor and co-workers who served in Vietnam and I am grateful they came home safely and glad to have learned so much from them.

In keeping with my family’s other Memorial Day traditions, I am remembering my mother, my grandparents, my mother and father-in-law and friends who have passed away. My memories of them are happy ones and I am lucky to have grown up around such loving family and friends. My mother was wonderful and her loving care, and acceptance, had so much to do with helping me find out who I am and what matters most in my life. My grandparents were loving and each brought something special to helping me learn and grow. My in-laws accepted me like another son and I’ll always be grateful for that. My friends who have passed on welcomed me into their lives and made my life so much richer for sharing theirs with me.

I also remember today the precious loved ones who share their lives with me now. I think it is important to remember, and honor, today what a difference they make in my life and to tell them how much they mean to me while I have the chance. There is something special in the power of our intentions. By intentionally remembering, and sharing, the good times and the times that matter most with those who are in our lives today we honor them, fill our lives with love and joy, and help pass on to our children and grandchildren life’s most important lessons. In the end, it will be the joy, strength, vulnerability, closeness, commitment, fun, respect, and love we shared that matters most. When the day comes that I am just a memory, I hope it will be these things my loved ones most remember.

“There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later." - Mignon McLaughlin

Today, I find myself thinking about how working for people different from me has been rewarding, challenging and usually valuable. These differences have come in many forms. I have worked  for people of different ages, genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, motivations, personalities and values. Almost always, these differences have enriched my work experience and sometimes they have enriched my life. Rarely, I have found differences to be a significant challenge.

One thing that has become clear to me as I’ve worked for, and with, a diverse variety of people is that the values I learned growing up are supported by my experience. I was raised to believe that all people share the same basic human qualities and have an equal potential to make valuable contributions to the work, and the world, that we share. My experience supports this belief. Differences in our gender, age, ethnicity, culture, religious and other values, and personalities make little or no difference to the potential we have to make valuable contributions. The greatest difference is in the impact of our choices and attitudes regarding our commitment to the work we share.

During most of my career, IT has been a field where men are over represented and older white men were over represented in many roles. Women and members of many ethnic groups remain underrepresented today. Early in my career, I worked for a woman whose patience as I learned about the field, and willingness to provide me new opportunities as I learned, were important to my finding a direction that allowed me to grow.  After this position, I worked for a series of other white men older than myself, and most of them helped me grow and improve the value of my contributions by generously giving me their time, perspectives and advice. A few of these bosses were less influential for me. They provided solid supervision but did less to help me grow.

Not many years later, I had the second female boss in my career. I grew up surrounded by strong, intelligent women in my family, and the experience of working for this strong, intelligent woman helped confirm for me that women were every bit as capable as men in leading and managing. I appreciated some differences in her perspective and approach to our work and she continued to offer me the opportunities to grow through new challenges and development opportunities. I’ve worked for a number of women during my career and I’ve come to believe that the differences between the ideas, values, styles and, approaches of the different bosses I’ve had are much greater than any difference I could detect between men and women as managers and leaders.

One man was very important to helping me form an approach to my work, and working with others, that serves me well more than three decades since I first worked for him. He saw potential in me and recruited me to take on new challenges. He became more than a boss and I consider him my first real mentor. This man set goals for me that stretched my capabilities and trusted me with greater responsibilities even when failure could result in a significant impact on the services we provided. He also offered me with training and development opportunities that prepared me for this role.

I’ll never forget the morning when I reported to him after hours of late night work responding to a serious problem.  He read my incident report, pointed out the place where my choices began leading to a resolution of the problem, and told me the other choice I had at that point could have left major services unavailable for hours or days. Then he simply stood, reached out across his desk, shook my hand and congratulated me on my good work. His ability to see potential in others, train, trust, and give credit to them for their work had a major impact on me. He also started me down the path to volunteering, but that’s another story. I’m sure I will write more about that, him, and mentoring in the future.

In the early 2000’s I had my first opportunity to work for a younger boss and since then I have usually worked for men younger than me. These experiences have taught me that age per se has little to do with the ability to manage and lead. Some of my younger bosses have been excellent and others only fair. Their success had little to do with their age and more to do with their willingness to listen, to act, and to change direction when conditions called for adjustments in their initial direction. Again, the differences between my managers in general have been much greater than those between younger and older managers.

About five years ago, I had my first opportunity to work for a boss who was younger, female and a person of color.  This proved to be another of the most effective and valuable experiences I have had working for anyone. She challenged me like I have never been challenged before, and that was not always comfortable. She also listened, and communicated, very effectively. We are two very different people and we learned a lot about each other, and how to work together successfully. She was the boss and yet it felt that what mattered was what we could accomplish together for the university. I know from our time working together that her experiences reaching a position of great authority as a woman, and as a person of color, presented her with challenges like nothing I have ever experienced. I learned a great deal from her and came to respect and like her as a person. She is a great leader and further reinforced for me that our differences can help us succeed together.

Differences in age, gender, and ethnicity seem insignificant in my experience. I believe that differences in our personalities and individual strengths are more significant and provide greater opportunities for synergy or dysfunction. My experiences working with bosses with different personalities have represented much greater differences in the results, and work environment, they created. The best bosses I’ve had, like those mentioned above, have had the ability to bring out the best in people with different strengths and to help them work together, and to learn from each other, with respect.  The worst bosses, and I’m glad these have been few, have either failed to see the potential value of these differences, or been unable to bring diverse personalities together effectively. Despite their best intentions, the teams they lead struggled and suffered from lower morale and productivity. I plan a post on building teams with diverse strengths and personalities later in this series.

In the process of my career, I also met a man who had many personality characteristics that were essentially the opposite of mine and I learned that the two of us worked very well together in a volunteer leadership team we served on together. He was senior to me in that team and his approach was one of engaged collaboration. Our strengths complimented each other and I found that working with him lead to much better results than I could achieve on my own, or by working with people more similar to me. In time, this man has become one of my dearest friends. I’ve come to appreciate more completely over the passing years just what a wonderful gift it has been to have someone in my life who is different in some important, and wonderful ways, while sharing many common interests and values with me. With respect and communication, our different personalities can be one of our greatest sources of strength.

As I wrap up today’s blog post, I would point out one difference that I think may come with younger bosses. They have come to their leadership positions in a world that has evolved from the one that I experienced early in my career and they are shaped by their experience of this changing environment. I have reached a point in my career where everyone in more senior positions is younger than I am and it is unlikely I will work for an older boss again. I think there is great potential associated with the new ideas and experiences my younger bosses bring to bear on our work.  I look forward to learning from them and to offering my ideas and experience with confidence that we can find strength and opportunities in our different perspectives.

I hope these thoughts about working for different bosses are interesting and useful.  I’d welcome your comments about your own experiences. I’ll write in a future post about what it’s been like to be the boss!

“Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.” - Thomas J. Watson

As I continue reflecting on what has mattered about my work, how I feel about what I have done, and how the way we work together shapes our lives, I realize that much of what I write will be about what I've learned about managing myself. Much of this is about the choices I make. A good test that I use to help me choose wisely is to ask myself whether my actions will reflect my values and contribute to the mission and goals of the university.

I find it interesting that it is often easier for me to assess whether my choices seem right in terms of my values than to measure them against our mission and objectives. It is easier for me to see whether I can personally stand behind a choice as honest, ethical and conscientious of the needs of both the organization and the people involved. To understand how choices align with our mission requires me to consider information, emotional intelligence, and respectful engagement with colleagues.  While I have a clear sense of my own values, there can be a wide range of opinions about what will best serve the university.

It can be very challenging to balance the competing interests reflected in these diverse opinions. It is often necessary to choose actions that place greater demands on staff in the short term in order to achieve results that will benefit us all in the long term.  At the same time I must act as an advocate for those I serve in my role as manager and argue for priorities that respect the limits of our capacity. Often this means shaping what we are agreeing to so that we can serve competing demands. I’m not as successful in saying “no” as I wish I were!

I also find myself arguing against priorities advanced by other managers, and even senior leaders, where I don’t believe these will best contribute to our shared mission. In the best cases, these are discussions about how we balance limited resources with ambitious goals and they can result in changes to our priorities or help to identify new resources. In the more difficult cases, I find myself questioning whether the priorities being advanced serve our shared objectives or are aligned with the narrower goals of one unit or manager. These situations can require great tact and patience and usually lead me to reexamine my own position to ensure I’m not the one advocating for self interest.

Often, I find that I can move the various parties toward agreement by fostering a clearer understanding of our mission and goals and an open discussion of how the competing priorities would contribute to these. While some colleagues are most comfortable with decisions based on data and analysis, I usually find that there is an emotional component to these discussions. Even while arguing for a position supported by information, people are also motivated by fear of negative outcomes, discomfort with change, loyalty to valued colleagues, and other, entirely valid, feelings. I find that by bringing both the objective and subjective aspects to the surface can help identify where there are points of concern and opportunities to resolve these. It can be particularly satisfying to learn that two people who appear to be arguing for opposing views are actually arguing for the same thing from different perspectives!

Emotion is both a strength and a weakness for me. While being emotionally aware helps me see things more completely, I find that expressing my emotions is most valuable when used sparingly. Showing genuine interest, concern and passion can encourage openness and engagement from some colleagues. Even allowing my frustration to show can sometimes help express my genuine commitment to serving our students.

One of the most satisfying experiences in my work with one of our executives was their recognizing over time that my emotional awareness had value. At first, they were uncomfortable with this aspect of my personality. I think they feared that I would make unwise choices based on emotion. In time, they came to to value that I used my awareness to consider the emotional impact of decisions we make in the process of management and leadership. I appreciated their beginning to consider my input on these factors to help strengthen our decisions. I don’t think I’ll ever know whether the value of my contributions based on emotion is more of an asset or a liability as I am too close to see this clearly. I hope that it will have proven to be an asset and I know that my learning to balance the emotional with the pragmatic, and to trust others to take both into account, will have been key to this.

Respectfully engaging with others and ensuring that their input shapes both the pragmatic and emotional aspects of decision making is essential for me. I see the role of manager primarily as one of service to those we manage. Instead of seeing a hierarchy of power with the manager at the top, I see that pyramid inverted with the manager at the bottom acting as a steward of resources and seeking to facilitate the greatest energy, engagement and productivity from each member of the team. As a leader, I will set direction and my effectiveness can be measured by how colleagues choose  to follow that direction to deliver results. As a manager, I work to foster engagement so that we can move forward effectively together.

There is an ongoing dynamic tension between seeking input and choosing action. I have found that the best solutions often come from helping to gain a clear set of functional requirements that describe the needs of the university for service and then engaging the expertise of staff to participate in designing solutions. With good quality information flowing between the IT staff and those we serve, moderated by managers to help ensure clear communication, we can avoid the pitfalls of both top-down and bottom-up design. By fostering this conversation, we can decide to explore an idea, benefit from the result of that exploration, and then make an informed choice about how to move forward together in delivering results. In the process, managers and leaders can avoid wasted effort arguing for and against specifics until they have clearer information on the options for meeting requirements.

Coming full circle, this process of respectful engagement is more likely to support a positive emotional environment, positive attitudes, and quality information about alternatives. The results can inform more effective discussions of priorities and decisions by leaders and managers.

All of these can help me in managing myself and making choices that are better aligned with our mission, our goals and my values. Even in the most difficult situations, it is comforting to feel that I am doing what is right to the best of my ability.

"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?” - John Steinbeck from “East of Eden”

I am a man who has worked with information technology and, more importantly, with the people who provide and use IT services, for over 35 years now. Some of those years were spent in government and banking. Most of them have been spent in higher education.

I plan to leave this career in 2017 after spending my 60th birthday working here at the university. When I account for, holidays, I estimate that there are now 100 Mondays left in my professional career. I’ve decided to write once each week until those Mondays have passed and to use these essays to reflect on my career.

I’m interested in exploring what has mattered about my work, how I feel about what I have done, and how the way we work together shapes our lives, the lives of our coworkers and those of our loved ones. I expect I will write some about what it will mean to me to retire and about how I hope the work may go on once I do. Most of what I will write about will deal with my 15-plus years working as an IT manager as this has been the most demanding work I have done.

I don't know whether these thoughts will be valuable or thought provoking for others. Ultimately, this blog is a public journal and an opportunity for me to reflect on the challenging, satisfying and troubling aspects of my professional life. I am sure some will disagree with my views on management and leadership and that is entirely appropriate. Even with all the best thoughts and advice of others, and the results of research and scholarship on these topics, we each have to find our own way. Hopefully, we can all look back on our choices with few regrets and make peace with our mistakes.

I will not be writing about the university or my views regarding the specific directions we have pursued, and will be pursuing, in delivering IT services for our students, faculty and staff. My thoughts here are entirely my own and not intended to reflect the policies, opinions, or positions of anyone at the university where I work.

I'll start my thoughts today by reflecting on one of the quotes I've used most often in talking with others about my work. Asked, “Are you a basketball player?” Bill Russell replied, "No. That’s what I do, that’s not what I am. I'm not a basketball player. I am a man who plays basketball." I think Bill Russell is a great man and his words have helped me again and again to keep in perspective this difference between what I do and who I am.

I do not work in my passion and I will write more about that another time. My career in IT has been a means for me to make useful contributions and to earn a salary that has allowed me to support my family. I am not, Jim Michael, the IT manager. I am a man who has made his living managing IT professionals. When asked what I do, I usually tell people my title and then explain that all it really means is that I take care of the people who take care of the computer services at the university.

I am glad that I have worked for over 25 years of my career in education. I appreciate the lessons I learned, and the colleagues I had working in government and banking. Still, looking out the window and seeing the students is a very real reminder of how the work we do here can touch lives and make a difference. I feel as though I am surrounded by peoples' children and by their hopes and dreams. I am also glad to be exposed to the thoughts, the ideas and the variety of opinions across the range of academic disciplines on campus. My work here has been many things, including rewarding and stressful, but it has never been boring!

I bring the man that I am to my work each day and that carries both benefits and liabilities. I am intelligent, caring and very emotional. My intelligence has been a great help in this work and has generally been appreciated by my colleagues. My emotional intelligence has been an asset and I believe it has helped me as a leader. One of the things I have most enjoyed in my work is helping people to come together by exploring how their diverse points of view can lead to better outcomes. It's great fun to see people who thought they disagreed discover that they have been arguing for the same ideas but from different perspectives.

Other aspects of my emotional connection, and commitment, to my colleagues, my values, and the work we do have been a mixed blessing. At times, I've been criticized for my choice to focus on how my colleagues, and those we serve, will feel about the consequences of decisions we make. At the same time, I have been looked to by others in leadership to help consider these impacts of our choices. One of the best days I remember in my work as a manager was the day I realized that my boss had begun to value my emotional insights and to see that these added value to the intelligent consideration I gave to the more pragmatic aspects of a problem.

My best efforts often derive from my caring deeply about the impact of our work but this is also the source of the deepest worries and conflicts in my professional life. I have learned that indifference is not an option for me. If I don't care, I cannot engage in the work. Still, I have learned that I must find ways to give my best and then let go. To accept that I have done my best and move on, or to rest before reengaging.

I am an optimist and this is both one of my great strengths and one of my great weaknesses. My glass is not simply half-full, it is often overflowing. My optimism helps me enter into my work with energy and a belief in what we can achieve. It can also lead to unrealistic expectations and to great frustration when seemingly senseless obstacles prevent our realizing the full potential of our aspirations. I have learned to value the insights of my more realistic colleagues and to listen for their calm voice of reason and to let it temper my enthusiasm. I have also learned to guard against cynicism whenever it appears. For me, it is poison

While the greatest part of my time has been devoted to my professional life, it is in the quiet of the morning and the precious hours after the day's work is through that I find my joy. In music, nature, reading, working with my hands and, most of all, in my relationships with my loved ones I find my passion and my purpose. I am grateful that my work has allowed me to live this most genuine part of my life and I hope that the retirement I have earned will be long and happy as I give more attention to what matters most to me.

If you have read this far, I hope you found something meaningful above. In future weeks, I will write about many other aspects of my professional journey including authority, discipline, mentoring, respect, communication and satisfying those we serve. I wonder what other topics I'll explore as I strive to find 99 more meaningful things to say! I welcome your comments. Please feel free to disagree. Thank you.