Category Archives: Education

Leadership Insights

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After 17+ years in SE Olympia, Team Byrnes is moving nine miles to NE Olympia. Consequently, we’re in declutter overdrive. While culling my files, I came across an interview I did with my dad, Don Byrnes, during my doctoral coursework. At the time he was the President and Chief Operating Officer of Spalding & Evenflo Companies, Inc.

Like my brother, I was really thinking about my mom during our first Christmas eve service since her death. And almost equally about my dad even though he died 20 years ago. Probably because I’ve assumed more leadership responsibilities at work and wish I could talk to him about that. That’s why the rediscovery and re-reading of this transcript is special to me. Hope there’s a take-away or two for you too.

Selected excerpts [with commentary]:

Ron: When did you first feel you were in a position of leadership?

Don: Though I don’t remember feeling it at the time, it probably began when I was chosen to do the Easter and Christmas stories in our church programs. This was followed by serving as president of the service, drama, an student council organizations in high school. However, my first position, managing an insurance underwriting department, left me with a leadership feeling. [Had no idea he ever even attended church. Love imagining him ruling the roost on the church stage.]

Ron: What motivates you and what do you to do motivate others?

Don: Initially motivation was a combination and a desire to excel together with a need for financial security. Today, with financial security, I’m motivated by achievement—this is successfully getting to the end of the objective. As I believe an organization takes on the good and bad characteristics of its leader, I strive to set a good example by displaying industriousness, loyalty, and integrity in my interpersonal relationships. People will always follow you and help you attain a mutual goal when they believe in what you are doing and in you as an individual. The best definition I heard of a leader is: a person who finds out where people want to go then gets out in front of them and takes them there. [I like this twist on thinking that leaders should have a vision and then convince others of its merits. Finding out where people want to go probably requires more patience and better listening skills than many people in leadership positions have.]

Ron: What form of communication do you find most effective for obtaining ideas from subordinates?

Don: My personal communication style is an open door policy, with “management by walking around” in all areas of the business preaching the doctrine of what I’m trying to accomplish. You must be a good listener in order to read the direction, attitudes and morale of your employees. Once you have learned that a change or correction is needed, you must implement it so the organization will stay open and continue to contribute. [For a classic example of how NOT to do this, read this article,
“Washington State Patrol Chief takes issue with report on staffing issue“.]

Ron: What techniques for stress management do you follow for yourself and others?

Don: Stress to me is too often the result of poor performance, and is an excuse used by individuals who wish they were doing something else. I’ve never had much time for people who complain of being stressed out. My escape is riding a bicycle. After an hour of riding, I feel better physically and mentally. [Brilliant insight that needs no elaboration.]

Postscript:

Eldest Daughter: Liked your blog post today. Makes me think I should interview you sometime.

Me: Thanks, quite a legacy. If I work at it, someday I may be half the leader he was. I would’ve kicked his ass on the bike though.

 

 

 

 

Numbers to Ponder

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3. Bethel School District schools I toured today.

500. Excess number of students at both comprehensive high schools.

0. Number of libraries and cafeterias at the alternative high school.

$273,700,000. Amount sought by the school district in a February 9, 2016 bond vote.

$148. Annual increase in property taxes for residents owning a $200,000 home in the district.

60%. “Yes” votes the district needs.

62%. U.S. citizens who can’t cover unexpected expenses.

7 out of 8. The number of district-area families that do not have any children attending district schools.

9%. The percentage of eligible district-area citizens who vote.

 

 

 

 

 

Strange Math

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From Bill Gates’s: The Billionaire Book Critic:

Mr. Gates says he reads about 50 books in a year, eschewing digital readers for old-fashioned books on paper. When he is busy with work, he reads about a book or two a week but will consume four or five in the same period while vacationing with family.

Let’s say he works two-thirds of the year or 35 weeks and vacations the other 17.

That would be (35 x 1.5) + (17x 4.5) or 52.5 + 76.5 or 129.

[Related: The Math-Class Paradox.]

Paragraph to Ponder

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From Tyler Cowen, “The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality“:

Universal preschool, further experiments with charter schools, and higher subsidies or tax credits for children are among the policy innovations that might lift opportunities for children of lower earners. Even if those are good ideas, it is not clear how much they can overturn the advantage that comes from being a child of highly educated, highly motivated parents with lots of will and also money to spend on lessons, outings, travel and other investments in the future of their children.

The technical term is “assortative mating”. Read the New York Times marriage announcements for examples. In hindsight, I probably should have “married up”. My wife’s beauty blinded me to the fact that she rarely balanced her checkbook; planned to be a public school teacher; and owed more on her old, beat up Honda than it was worth. It’s a limit of the discipline that few economic models factor in “hotness”.

I suspect Cowen’s extrapolating from the present data too much. Sure assortative mating will continue contributing some to income inequality, but as I’ve written before here, academic achievement among female college students so dwarfs that of males that many female college grads will have no choice but to settle for partners with much more modest economic prospects.

North Korea’s Abduction Project

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From :

Kim Il-sung, in his 1946 decree “On Transporting Intellectuals from South Korea,” explained his desire to bring five hundred thousand people to the North to compensate for the mass exodus in the years leading up to the war. He envisioned an ambitious abduction project that would serve his regime while destabilizing other countries. It began with the South. An estimated eighty-four thousand South Koreans were kidnapped during the Korean War. For the first two decades after the 1953 armistice, the abductees were primarily South Korean fishermen whose boats had drifted too far up the coast. . . .

Kim Jong-il, who would go on to take over his father’s position, expanded the program outside the Koreas. He diversified and expanded intelligence operations, abducting native teachers to train North Korean spies to navigate the languages and cultures of Malaysia, Thailand, Romania, Lebanon, France, and Holland. Japanese nationals were especially sought after, because their identities could be used to create fake passports. . . .

People began to disappear from Japan in 1977. A security guard vacationing at a seaside resort two hundred miles northwest of Tokyo vanished in mid-September. A thirteen-year-old girl named Megumi Yokota, walking home from badminton practice in the port city of Niigata, was last seen eight hundred feet from her family’s front door. Dozens more went missing from other parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. A Thai woman living in Macau was grabbed on her way to a beauty salon. Four Lebanese women were brought from Beirut. A Romanian artist, having been promised an exhibition, was abducted. Some were lured onto airplanes by the prospect of jobs abroad; others were simply gagged, thrown into bags, and transported by boat to North Korea. Their families spent years searching for the missing, checking mortuaries, hiring private detectives and soothsayers. Only five of the Japanese abductees were ever seen again.

Sentences to Ponder

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From Three Reasons for Those Hefty College Tuition Bills:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014 the median worker with a bachelor’s degree (and no advanced degree) earned $69,260, compared with $34,540 for the median worker with only a high school diploma.

From Federal Health-Insurance Exchanges See Nearly Six Million Apply for 2016 Coverage:

Analysts said lackluster enrollment that trends toward sicker and older consumers could prompt some carriers to leave the exchanges: The biggest U.S. health insurer, UnitedHealth Group Inc., said last month that it is re-evaluating whether to sell plans on the marketplaces because of losses on policies sold on them.

From The home-grown threat:

Since 9/11, over 400,000 people have been killed by gunfire in America and 45 by jihadist violence, of whom half died in two shootings: one carried out by a Muslim army doctor in Texas in 2009, the other in San Bernardino.

[Highly recommended. The single best ISIS-related thing I’ve read in recent weeks.]

 

An Unfortunate, Delicate Dance

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Consider this short New York Times essay by Allison Wood, “‘Get Home Safe,’ My Rapist Said.”

As a writer, the essay’s potent, unadorned intimacy impressed me; as a human being, I was disheartened by the harsh reality of how routinely crimes like Wood’s rape go unpunished; and as a father of two young women in similar life settings, I was left with a sense of dread that anything remotely similar would ever happen to them.

But also a sense of appreciation for what is in fact a teaching tool. However, one problem with thinking about it as a teaching tool is that when your “children” are in fact young adults of 20 and 23, they’re unlikely to take parental advice unless it’s solicited. And I’m not expecting them to ask my thoughts on sexual assault at Christmas dinner.

But I feel fortunate that they read the humble blog, so the rest is with them in mind. Feel free to eavesdrop.

The part of Wood’s essay that jumped off the page for me was this:

“Looking back, I blame myself, in that typical victimized woman way. I never should have let myself be alone with him. I should have run the second he stood up. I should have grabbed a knife and started screaming.

Of course Woods shouldn’t even think about blaming herself, nonetheless, her thought, “I never should have let myself be alone with him,” is an important one. It would be understandable if any woman who reads Wood’s essay overcompensates and begins thinking about every male semi-stranger as a serious threat, thus limiting their prospects for life-enhancing friendships with caring and kind males, of whom there are still many.

The challenge is two-fold, to trust some males a lot less than at present and others more. That requires working together to develop threat-detecting antennae by initially erring on the side of safety by doing everything in your power to avoid being alone with strangers while simultaneously assessing that acquaintances are, in fact, in the caring and kind majority.

An unfortunate, delicate dance.

 

The Cold, Hard Reality of Teaching’s Artificiality

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Yesterday a colleague said she thought about “just canceling everything” this week, the last of the semester before final exams. “I thought I’d just tell them we’re through. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

That brought “I feel you” laughter from others. So when I told another colleague that today was the last class session of the semester, she said, “I bet you’re happy about that.” “No,” I explained, “I’m going to miss this group.”

My thirteen first year writers this semester were amazing. They were from Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon, and different parts of Washington State. They were funny and kind and they listened to whomever was speaking. They thoughtfully embraced the questions inspired by the course theme, “The Art of Living”. They shared their differing perspectives on the need for a philosophy of life; on gratitude and empathy; on money’s relative importance; on friendship, family, and romantic love; and on spirituality’s relative importance. They liked one another, they liked the course content, they tolerated their teacher.

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve had a group of randomly assigned students gel with one another and me in unexpected ways so I have a feel for what our future holds. I’ll see them in a few months or years somewhere on campus, probably walking across Red Square. And a fair number will pretend they don’t see me. I have a sophisticated phrase for this phenomenon, “That was then, this is now.”

I remember the Good Wife experiencing this her second or third September of teaching. Much to her dismay, her third graders whom she had poured her soul into, quickly bonded with their fourth grade teacher. She was lucky to get sheepish hand waves when she wanted hugs of continuous gratitude. Their subtle head nods conveyed “That was then, this is now”.

This semester I instituted a social psychology experiment of sorts. Mid-semester, after bonding with my thirteen writers, I explained the “That was then, this is now” phenomenon. Of course they didn’t need it explained, but my figuring them out brought smiles of appreciation.

Then, occasionally, I would begin class by reporting on brief interactions with former students elsewhere on campus. “Saw three students on my way to and from the pool at lunch yesterday, two made eye contact and said ‘hello’.” They enjoyed my scorekeeping.

So today, my parting words were a request, “When you see me on campus, don’t look past me, say ‘hello’.” They said they would, but I’ll settle for subtle head nods.