"It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life ... that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Three phrases I keep working on using more often are “I was wrong”, “I don’t know”, and “I need your help”. I’d certainly be justified in doing that! Each one of these can be hard for me to say, and each for different reasons. Another important one is “I am sorry” although I’ve found saying that doesn’t usually make as much difference as I wish it would. “I’m sorry” seems to work better when combined with a very sincere “I was wrong” and best when followed by a genuine change in my behavior to prevent my making the same mistake again.

I’ve found that they best thing I can do when I make a mistake is to acknowledge it as soon as can and to own my responsibility for the consequences and for correcting them to the best of my ability. Sometimes, I will have provided wrong information, other times, I will have taken the wrong action. In any case, it is important for me to admit I was wrong. This is the first step to making things as right as I can and to finding ways to avoid a similar mistake in the future. Of these three important phrases, this is probably the easiest for me to say. It can be embarrassing to admit when I am wrong, and sometimes in the heat of disagreement it can be difficult to realize at first. Still, it is usually pretty clear when I’m wrong and the best way to move forward it to admit it. 

One day last week, I got a very nice, and gentle, email from a good colleague pointing out that there has been a typo in the greeting of the last four email messages I’ve sent to all our faculty and staff about some technology issues we’ve been having. Over the past four days, I have sent four messages to this group that included identified them as our “Faulty and Staff” Oh man, was I embarrassed! Fortunately, there was another update I needed to provide and I used that opportunity to apologize to all the faculty for this unfortunate error.

Over the next two hours, I received nearly 40 emails from people assuring me they were not offended, had done similar things themselves, and/or found the whole thing pretty funny. One of the messages was from the Director of our English Education and Credential Programs. I didn’t receive a single message from someone complaining! As mortified as I felt to have referred to our colleagues with the word “Faulty”, it was pretty great to see that kind of response when I apologized.

It can be harder for me to say “I don’t know”. For as long as I can remember, I have often been the one in my family, and groups of friends, who tended to know the answers to many questions. I admit many of these were pretty trivial! For quite some time, our boys referred to me as “The keeper of all useless bits of knowledge”. One day, our youngest mixed up this honorary title and called me “The useless keeper of all bits of knowledge” and that dubious title has stuck with me ever since! I’m glad to say that it always used with love and good humor and I think it’s pretty funny.

In my career in IT, I have amassed a great deal of knowledge and it has been important to know, or know where to find, the answers to many questions. I take pride and pleasure from being able to provide good information across a wide range of subjects and have enjoyed working to keep my knowledge current. While the scope and level of detail of my understanding has changed as I moved into management, it has remained critically important that I demonstrate a thorough knowledge of key topics.

I’m sure that the importance of my knowing, and the positive reinforcement I have received for this all my life, are important to why it is hard for me to say “I don’t know”. On some level, it feels like I’d better not have to say that too often! On another level, this phrase is one of the best keys to gaining a better understanding and can play an important role in building and maintaining trust with colleagues, friends, and family.

When I say, “I don’t know”, I give others the chance to provide the answers I don’t have, and I always have the opportunity to follow up by finding an answer or asking another colleague for the information. In the process, I can expand my understanding and give others the chance to demonstrate their knowledge. This process also helps me build trust with others that I will admit when I don’t have an answer, can be trusted to find one, and to demonstrate that there are other highly-knowledgeable members of our team that we can trust to provide important information.

“I don’t know” can also be a good first step to “I need your help”. When I don’t know, but I’m sure someone else on our team does, that is a great opportunity for me to ask for help. I think “I need your help” may be the hardest of these three phrases for me to say. I was raised to be independent and self-reliant and I tend to be proud that I can do it myself. I know that I have also suffered from a common issue I’ve seen many of my colleagues struggle with in IT careers. It often seems, and sometimes is, faster to do it myself than to ask for help, especially when the person I am turning to for help will need training and experience to complete a task as quickly as I could myself.

Asking for help is beneficial in many ways and I will keep working to do this more often. By saying “I need your help”, I can make better use of my time, achieve better results for my department and the university, give others the opportunity to contribute and grow, and build stronger working relationships with my colleagues. I also set a good example for the members of our team that struggle, as I do, with the temptation to do it all myself.

There is much that “I don’t know” and “I need your help” to learn. I ask you to share your thoughts and feelings about these essays through the comments on my blog, or Facebook, or Google+. I’ll do my best to admit “I was wrong” when I’ve got the wrong idea about something. I welcome your input!

P.S. If you’ve read this far and wonder about the picture above, it is one of our cat, Lucky, objecting to my harmonica playing. I don’t think I’m that bad, but he really doesn’t care for the harmonica! For some reason, this whimsical image fit today’s topic. Maybe I need help improving my playing, I don’t know what it is that bothers Lucky when I play, or maybe I’m just wrong to play when he is nearby!

“In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.” - Fred Rogers

As much as I would like to have found a way to avoid stress in my life, this has never been possible for me… so far. I am an optimist after all. Certainly, stress has been a significant part of my career in IT and learning to cope with it effectively continues to be one of the most important learning experiences in my working life. Remembering what really matters, the love I share with my dear ones, and the feelings inspired by peaceful places is a daily part of my life today and that is making a big difference.

From the beginning of my working life, and well before I got into IT 36 years ago, there were sources of stress. I’m sure this is true for all of us. From the speed and accuracy pressures associated with my work as a fry cook and bank teller, to the time management issues associated with working more than one job at the same time, and personality conflicts with coworkers, there were always opportunities to experience stress. As I began my work as an assembly language programmer in the banking industry, project deadlines became a part of my daily life. When I became a systems programmer the stress came from the possibility of affecting many people when I made a mistake.

The demands of working in situations where creative solutions to key problems must be found quickly can also be challenging and exciting in positive ways. As a young man, the times when I’d work all weekend with hardly a catnap to complete a conversion affecting two large financial institutions, or all night troubleshooting a major issue just in time to get the online systems back in operation before the branches were to open were exhilarating. Today, I still enjoy helping our staff think through difficult problems to find good solutions. Still, these high-pressure situations can create stresses that are unhealthy; especially when they are not well managed.

I choose to take a technical position at the university over staying in banking partly because the stresses associated with the job were less. I’m happy with that choice nearly 26 years later and I think I have avoided some stress as a result. Even so, project deadlines, system outages, and competing priorities can be a source of significant stress at the university. I am particularly conscious of the impact these can have on the managers and staff I have been leading. The years of the great recession, with their layoffs and tight budgets, put great demands on our teams at a time when the financial crisis was creating other stresses in their lives.

I have made a point of encouraging all the managers and staff I lead to look for ways to keep their lives in balance and helping them manage the stresses of our shared working lives. I’ve encouraged people to take time for important events in their family’s lives, to take real vacations where they can disconnect from work, and tried to help them keep the unavoidable work crises in perspective. I make a point of emphasizing how effectively they use their skills and experience in these situations and of remaining optimistic and confident about our ability to find and implement solutions. I encourage my colleagues to take advantage of the various wellness programs and activities offered by the university that can help manage stress and increase balance.

For me, the greatest stress began as I accepted a role in management. While I think I have been a good manager, and leader, I also think this requires me to work in ways that are not entirely aligned with my natural strengths and puts me in situations that I find uncomfortable, and stressful. As a manager, I feel I am called on to do work that directly affects the lives of the people who work for me and I take that responsibility personally. The pressure of change, and the increasing stress, as the scope of my role as a manager increased and I was responsible to some extent for the well being of many more people has been a real challenge for me. The difficult economy and limited resources added to that stress.

One way I tried to deal with this was to work more. It was not uncommon for me to work 50-60 hours a week as I tried to meet all the expectations of my vice president, and the needs of my managers and staff. This turned out not to be a very good strategy! I developed some medical issues that are directly linked to stress. Fortunately, most of these are more of a nuisance than a risk, but I know that poorly-managed stress over the long run can lead to serious consequences and that approach was simply not sustainable.

One of the stress-related health issues I suffered was more serious and I learned an important lesson the hard way. I won’t go into the details but this resulted in my missing months of work, caused some permanent damage, and it was over six months before I could return to work on campus full time. Only after the crisis was past did I learn that this condition could have killed me. To say this was a wake-up call for me would be a major understatement. Every crisis in my life has come with a gift, once I could recognize it, and the gifts from this one were some of the greatest of all. I realized more clearly than ever what really matters and I’ve changed my behavior.

I don’t work much more than 40 hours a week now and yet I manage to get done what really matters. I do a better job of asking for help, admitting when I don’t know and acknowledging when I am wrong. I got help from a therapist and have learned more effective coping strategies. I made the decision not to pursue any more responsibility and decided to begin planning for a specific retirement date. I also watch for the symptoms of stress-related medical conditions as I know these are the “canary in the coal mine” that can be my early warning system.

Some of the coping strategies I have found most helpful include writing, spiritual practice, meditation, and  exercise. I write almost everyday in old-school letters to loved ones and in a more private journal. I take time for my own spiritual practice several times each day, exercise regularly and meditate. My nightly walks under starry skies with our dog Zoe are a great! I practice what I learned from my therapist about awareness, acceptance and action and I will write more about that in the future. I have learned to set better boundaries between my work and home life and I take time to honor these as I commute home. I have added more reminders of what really matters to my office and these help keep me on the right track.

I hope you learn to deal better with stress sooner in your career than I have. This is an ongoing journey for me, I expect it will be for you, and it is one that we can take a more active role in shaping. It is OK for you to choose what is healthy for you and to say no to things that are now. May you find balance that allows your work life to be productive and rewarding while ensuring that those things that really matter in life, including your health, remain the most important, and rewarding, of all.

“All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.” - moto on the sign under Peter Bailey’s picture in the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”

My good friends at SHARE (http://www.share.org) celebrated the 60th anniversary of that wonderful organization last week in Orlando. I enjoyed seeing their posts on Facebook and following along with some of the news from another excellent meeting of enterprise IT professionals. SHARE has been an important part of my professional career, I've written some about this here already and I’m sure I will write about my experiences there several times in the coming months.

Today, I’m thinking about the value of SHARE and volunteering there as a way to learn about management and leadership. The positive impact that my engagement there has had on my career, and my ability to succeed in increasingly responsible positions, cannot be overstated. I was fortunate that my first mentor in IT, Gary Sandwick, valued SHARE participation and encouraged me to attend and get involved. There is so much I owe to Gary. He trusted me, taught me, and gave me key opportunities. Of all his many gifts to me, his starting me down the path to a volunteer career at SHARE had the broadest impact on my future in IT.

I first attended SHARE in Anaheim in 1986 and found the broad, and deep, technical program there incredibly valuable. In one week, I could update my knowledge of the technologies I worked with, learn about new tools and concepts, and meet many other IT professionals with common interests. I came away from that first experience with the beginnings of a network that would serve me throughout the remainder of my career, with many new ideas I could apply back at the shop, and with a keen desire to get back to another SHARE conference as soon as possible.

I also had my first taste of volunteering for SHARE that week. One of the many things this organization excels at is giving people opportunities to get involved that allow them to feel welcome, to succeed at each level, and to prepare for greater engagement and contribution. For me, the beginning was to help with distributing and collecting session evaluation cards for the MVS Storage Project. At this point in my career, I was a Systems Programmer on IBM 370 mainframes and I found my first SHARE family in the MVSS Project.

Although I didn’t have a commitment to attend every SHARE meeting, I was offered the opportunity to be a project volunteer and work on analyzing the session evaluation data by working remotely when I couldn’t attend. In these days before email and the Internet, I’d receive the evaluation data in the mail and return my analysis in the same way. I was hooked and wanted to do more as soon as I could!

I served as a Project Volunteer for a number of years and the lessons I learned, and applied as I moved from banking into higher education, helped me secure a commitment to attend both SHARE conferences each year. My greater availability allowed me to serve as a Project Officer, and Deputy Project Manager with MVSS before being asked to serve as Project Manager for a new project. Recruiting volunteers and speakers, and participating in the logistics of scheduling and supporting the conference sessions, helped me gain skill and confidence in supervising people and managing projects. Applying what I learned to my work as a supervisor helped lead to my being asked to join the management team in our IT department.

Shortly after I first became a manager at the university, I was approached about running for election to the SHARE Board of Directors. I was surprised, and delighted, to be asked as I had great respect for the people working on the Board. From my first opportunity to work with the Board, as a nominee attending a board meeting, I felt welcome and included in the work of the group. Although I was not elected, I was appointed to serve as Director of Human Resources and the next phase of my SHARE volunteer experience began.  Each new role at SHARE provided me greater opportunities to learn and grow and my work with the SHARE Board was the most valuable of all. After my initial work in Human Resources, I served as Director of Strategic Relations and then as Secretary. Each of these roles helped me grow in ways that were valuable at my “day job” and the experience I gained working with policies as Secretary has been especially valuable.

I served as SHARE Treasurer and then as Vice President and Director of Strategic Development and the experience I gained working with budgets, investments, and strategic planning has proven very valuable to me in my work at the university. I had a number of other opportunities to chair and serve on various committees and each provided me the chance to learn and grow. Unfortunately, I was unable to continue my SHARE career by serving as President. I would have had that opportunity, but I lost support from my then Director at the university during a time of difficult budgets. I regret that I was unable to complete my service to SHARE, and to keep the commitment I had made to serve as their president.

Although I had to step away from my role on the Board, SHARE never stepped back from me. Instead my colleagues there stepped up to help me find new ways to remain engaged. I continued as a “virtual volunteer” for a number of years, helping to develop some new offerings, have attended SHARE’s ExecuForum event and continue to participate with their Archives committee. I also enjoy returning to SHARE conferences for a visit with my old friends there whenever I can.

They say that what you get out of your experiences, depends on what you put into them, I certainly found this to be true in my work with SHARE. The organization offers many wonderful volunteer opportunities, and the secret to making the most of these is to accept that offer and give your best while remaining open to learning and growing through the experience. I know there are other great volunteer opportunities with many fine professional organizations and I hope you will each find a way to engage in these.

I’ve often said that my involvement with SHARE has been the best experience in my professional life and I remain as certain of that today as I ever have been. The spirit of sharing that is fundamental to this great organization fosters an energy and openness that allows us to give, learn, and grow together that is beyond anything else I have found in our profession. During the most active phase of my engagement with SHARE, from 1988 to 2010, I learned things that have made all the difference in my ability to contribute to the university. Even more lasting are the friendships that started there. I have many dear friends that I stay close to across the miles and I met my best friend of more than ten years at SHARE. These friendships will enrich my life and bring me joy always.

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” - Carl Sandburg

During most of my career, I have lived relatively close to where I worked. I could drive to the office in 15-20 minutes and, at one point, I was even riding my bicycle on days when the weather was fine. For a bit more than three-and-one-half years now, I have lived an hour’s drive from the university and I have adjusted to the life of a commuter. Today, I write about how I use the time that wraps around, and is embedded within, my work day.

Each day I have two hours spent commuting, 60 minutes for lunch and could have two 15-minute breaks during the day. In practice, I don’t always manage to take those breaks and I don’t always manage to take my full lunch hour. There is always plenty to do, and often I get some of it done when I could be taking a break! I encourage others to take time for lunch but don’t always follow my own advice. I’ve gotten better at taking these breaks from work and I find it helps me manage my stress and bring my best to the work I do.

By being more mindful of using my breaks, lunch and commute time in ways that help me stay physically and emotionally healthy, I am better able to bring my best both to my work and to my loved ones. Almost every day, I take time during my morning break to do some simple exercise that helps me stay strong and healthy, and also helps reduce stress and increase my patience and resilience. When I don’t manage to do this in the morning, I make an extra effort to make time in the afternoon.

Most days, I take at least some time during my lunch hour to write to my loved ones and I still send these old-school letters through the mail. I write about the fun and interesting things going on in our lives, about challenges I am facing, and about my thoughts and feelings. For at least a while in the middle of each day I am with these loved ones in my thoughts and in my heart. Spending time with them this way helps me keep my balance, stay close to my dear ones, and refresh myself so that I return to my work with renewed energy.

Writing this way is also a bit like keeping a journal and has the benefits of that good practice in helping me reflect on my thoughts, feelings, accomplishments, and concerns. It also helps me remember how grateful I am for the love in my life, how fortunate I am to spend special times with family and friends, and how strong the connections are between me and my loved ones. When I look back at the letters I’ve written, I am reminded of how rich and rewarding my life is, and of how my loved ones have been there for me when times were tough.

The greatest amount of personal time I have that is part of each work day is my two hours of commuting. I am very lucky that I spend almost all of this time driving about 40 miles through the mountains and foothills of California and very little time sitting in traffic.  As I look back on my father’s commute in the LA basin, I know I’ve got it easy!

With an hour before work each morning, and another as I drive home in the evening, I’ve found that there are many things I can do to use this time to learn, relax, prepare, create, rehearse, and wind down. When my day includes an important meeting or key project, I can use this time to focus my thoughts and review important aspects of the work ahead. If the day has been especially difficult or frustrating, or has ended with an unpleasant surprise, I have time to sit with my thoughts and feelings, find my way to solutions, or to peace with things I cannot change, and to let go. This helps me arrive home more ready to make the best of the precious time I have to spend with my wife and family.

I’m glad to say that most of my commute time is spent on things that I enjoy! I find time for one of my favorite pastimes, reading, by listening to books on CD from our local library. I think through ideas for new songs I am writing, essays I am working on, and other creative projects. I listen to songs I am learning, sing along, and try to sing them through from memory. I listen to podcasts from favorite authors and on topics I that interest me.

Each day, I spend some time on my spiritual practice as I commute and this helps me in many ways. It helps me stay in touch with the essence of myself, my values, and beliefs. It gives me another moment in each day to honor the connection I feel with my loved ones and the love the joins us together. It is a time of mindfulness and heartfulness that feeds my soul and helps me bring my best self to the people I encounter each day.

If you are a commuter like me, or if you find making some time available for yourself during the workday beneficial, how do you use this time? I’d be interested in hearing your creative ideas for making the most of these precious hours of our lives.

“Presume love in the other” - Søren Kierkegaard

This paraphrase from Kierkegaard has been a favorite of my for a very long time and It is on my mind today because I spent an enjoyable hour or so yesterday talking, over a slice of cold pizza, with a young friend about books, authors and ideas like whether people are basically good or basically evil. This young man has a keen mind and a stronger foundation in good books and scholarship than I do and it was delightful to spend time sharing our thoughts. Even when we didn’t agree, I gained a great deal from our conversation and it was also great fun for me.

I’ve wanted to find the original source of this paraphrase for some time, and our conversation inspired me to action. I found that Kierkegaard wrote "But what then is love? Love is to presuppose love, to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving."  in his book “Works of Love” in 1847. I’ll keep using the paraphrase as it is shorter and carries the message well but it is nice to find the source.

The connection between these thoughts from Kierkegaard and my career is that I have used this idea often in my work as a manager. I’ve often shared this thought with managers and staff who work for me, and other with co-workers. I’ve also frequently used a variant of this idea where I ask that we “presume competence in the other”. While I wouldn’t expect all of the people I work with to embrace the idea that they should approach their colleagues with love, I do think it is useful for us to presume that we are all competent.

If we will approach our work on the basis that our colleagues are competent people of good will who are seeking to do the right thing to advance our shared mission, then I think we will make a greater positive impact together. This mindset can help us favor collaboration, a shared exploration of the best ideas, and trust that our colleagues are striving to make useful contributions. I think it can also help foster respect for differences in our ideas, approaches to work, strengths and weaknesses.

I hold myself accountable to this same standard and I am not perfect in meeting my own expectations. Any of us can be tempted, in situations where we are frustrated by challenging circumstances or feeling pressure to deliver results, to respond to a colleague in unproductive ways. Even if I don’t speak or act to demonstrate my momentary disrespect, those moments when I feel that a colleague is acting out of ignorance, incompetence, or self interest don’t often find me at my best. I try to remind myself to reset my perspective and adjust my attitude.

I try to remember those times when I’ve had to say “I don’t know” or “I don’t know how”, and the times when I have been tempted to do what was best for me over what is best for us. We can meet honest ignorance or a lack of full competence with opportunities to learn and develop. We can respond to situations where someone advances an idea that benefits them, or their group, at the expense of the organization and its mission, with an open discussion of the results we will achieve based on our chosen course of action. We can work together in mutual respect and with an understanding that each of us will have moments of strength and weakness.

I acknowledge that I have confronted genuine instances of incompetence or ill will. I’ve even had to address threats of workplace violence and instances of dishonest or criminal behavior. Working from a basic presumption of competence and good will doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to these situations. In fact, a key responsibility of management and leadership is to address these problems effectively so that we can avoid or mitigate the negative consequences they have for the people we work with and serve.

Dealing with these difficult situations can be trying and difficult. That experience carries the potential to undermine the presumption of competence and good will. When working through the most trying of these situations, I sometimes had to fight against the pull towards cynicism and work to maintain my belief in the basic goodness of my colleagues. One of the best techniques I have found is to seek out examples of the great work the best of my colleagues were doing. By remembering to see and appreciate the best, I can work to address the worst and preserve my positive attitude.

Another thing that Kierkegaard wrote in “Works of Love” is “Love is not a being-for-itself quality but a quality by which or in which you are for others." This resonates for me in my work as a manager and leader. Whether or not we choose to call it love, I am sure we are at our best in our work together when we are acting for others and with their best interests at heart. This applies to our colleagues, those we serve with our work together, and the loved ones for whom our work helps provide a living.

Acting together, we are much stronger and more creative than we can be acting in isolation and the presumption of competence, or even love, helps create a foundation for collaborative action toward our common goals. I believe this approach is also the most likely to help us in finding our work rewarding and to bring us home to meet our loved ones with energy and open hearts.