For 35 years I've prided myself on running pretty good meetings. I keep people on the topic, complete the task, ensure everyone has a chance to contribute (even those shy or anxious members), and focus on action outcomes with accountability. But it doesn’t take much for a meeting leave the tracks and plunge into the icy waters below.
In fact, all it takes is forgetting to surface the hidden expectations and assumptions that everyone is carrying when they enter. I had to learn that again recently when I led a meeting to make some policy recommendations for the Center.
On the surface the meeting went well. Everyone spoke, although some more than others. One of the members had written a memo that sparked the meeting, so that person contributed more than others, but that would be expected, wouldn’t it? We’d had over a week of a virtual data collection process in which a wide range of other professional staff had been invited to write their experiences or expert advice. I asked that each person open the meeting with any concerns they’d like to raise and then we proceeded on the basis of proposals. We got them all covered in the two hours allotted and I took the results and wrote a summary.
So, how did I know that the meeting was a flop? Every member of the group (and a few other colleagues) called or wrote me after the meeting with a proposal to either strengthen or revise the recommendations I’d collected in the summary.
Why weren’t these raised in the meeting? Of course, it’s possible some people hadn’t really given the issue enough attention in the days leading up to the meeting. However, when I questioned those who communicated later, I found that a whole set of hidden assumptions had sunk our little ship:
1. “Doug, I expected that you, as an expert in this, would have spoken up more.”
2. “I didn’t want to be seen as just pushing my own agenda.”
3. “I didn’t feel like getting into an open conflict with ______.”
4. “I don’t think I really understood what was being asked of us.”
They all seem reasonable issues to me. They should have been addressed in the meeting.
So, what are the lessons I’m taking from this?
1. When everyone’s attention is stretched thin, it may take two meetings: one to get participants to really focus and understand the issues and context, and another to knock out something that can stand.
2. Taking time to get clear about the purpose of the meeting, the roles to be played by each of the participants, and the group norms can save a lot of time later.
3. I should trust my gut. If I’m feeling hurried or anxious or frustrated, there’s a good chance I’m responding to something emerging in the group. Take time to figure out what it is and if I can’t figure it out, ask the group.
Why is it that the hardest lessons to learn are the ones we have known all along?
A number of us at CCL havethe pleasure of collaborating with colleagues at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Serviceat New York University. One question we have explored together is, How do we develop leadership for public service? Wagner sees its relationship to student through this lens of leadership development. Dean Ellen Schall's addressed this year's graduating class and talked about this relationship:
"We have always understood at Wagner that it mattered how we started to engage you, even as prospective students, that we were beginning a conversation, perhaps a relationship--one that could last for years. Two years ago, when many of you applied, we decided to add a particular twist to our application, in part to get your attention, in part to signal we were after a different level of engagement. We gave you the possibility of responding to a photo, a visual image, from a collection of images developed by colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. As you may remember, we use Visual Explorer, which is what CCL calls this approach, at orientation as well. The basic idea is that it’s easier to get the conversation started when you have an object in the middle. And we wanted to get a conversation started."
This "twist" has worked well.
“It allows us to get a deeper sense of the applicant’s passion for/commitment to an issue, and unlocks the depth of interest in a way that is not always achievable in a standard admissions essay,” says Tracey Gardner, Wagner’s chief of staff.
What does a swimming tiger suggest about public policy, or a pricked finger say about your goals?
Development of leadership in public service begins with engagement. How do you attract and engage students so that learning can be deeper? It can start with a simple question: What do you see?
"Too often," notes Ellen Schall, "applying to graduate school is transactional. We added Visual Explorer because we wanted to signal that the Wagner experience is transformational. Visual Explorer calls for people to slow down enough to reflect on their own experiences, connect their passion for public service to their professional goals, and offer their own perspectives on how to change the world."
When we lack the capacity to effectively communicate with one another, metaphor can provide the means. It has been said that leadership takes heart and requires a certain amount of verbal acumen. Well what happens when we can no longer find our voice and our hearts are literally ripped from our chests? Joss Whedon explores this struggle in his Emmy-nominated, Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Hush.”
Those not familiar with the Buffy lore (and shame on you), Buffy Summers is The Chosen One – the one girl chosen in all the world to fight the vampires and demons – all while attempting to survive young adulthood. She juggles the responsibilities of saving the world from certain destruction while trying to discover why she can’t maintain a healthy relationship with the opposite sex. If you thought high school was hell, try living on the Hellmouth.
In this particular episode, a pack of Brothers Grimm-like fiends known as The Gentlemen arrive in the dead of night and proceed to steal the voices of Sunnydale’s residents as they sleep. While it is obviously upsetting to wake and find oneself mute, the true horror of the situation is not made clear until the following night when The Gentlemen begin to collect what they are truly after - the hearts of the townspeople. Losing one’s voice may be unsettling and inconvenient, however terror quickly settles in when you realize that, scream all you want, no one is going to hear you.
But what does any of this have to do with the real world? How does a stake-wielding blonde make her way into a leadership blog? As the Buffy gang sings in another episode, “Where do we go from here?”
We hear time an again how effective communication is imperative. We’re coached on active listening skills, etiquette, and verbiage - yet we rarely discuss within the workplace the emphasis non-verbal communication has on the meaning of our message. Of course personal experiences will play a part in meaning-making, however it is sometimes what is left unsaid that imports the most impact. When a co-worker loses a close family member, the gentle squeeze of a hand can convey so much more than the mere, “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss.”
So where does metaphor come in? Metaphor is a vehicle. It provides us with a means of expression when words fail us or an illustration would better convey our message. Rousseau wrote “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” He is not implying that we are literally chained to our desks, our homes, and our families. Rather, he provides a metaphor that society has saddled us (another metaphor) with certain responsibilities and expectations that is virtually impossible to escape. In the Buffy episode, Whedon uses metaphor on several of levels.
When Sunnydale’s inhabitants literally begin to lose their hearts to the Gentlemen, the survivors find themselves reassessing their current relationships or lack thereof. Suddenly, conversations that seemed too difficult to broach in the past become less complicated without the need to “talk about it.” Actions become more accountable. Up until now, Buffy and her current love interest Riley have had one awkward conversation after another, each trying to conceal their hidden identity from the other. Coincidentally, it’s not until they loose their ability to speak that the characters make any real physical contact. It’s not until they are surprised to find themselves in the same room, holding their own against a common enemy that they begin to understand the depth of one another’s character.
We're fascinated by the reasons that things go wrong. And they go wrong quite often. Sometimes in spectacularly unpleasant ways; sometimes in a slow slide into irrelevance. Whole industries are devoted to the diagnosis of failure and there are some lovely, detailed models of organizational disaster. I'm persuaded that in many cases there is a simple, accessible common factor that affects us as individuals and as organizations. It's anxiety. Actually, it's rather the difficulty individuals and organizations have managing their anxiety. This lens has been helpful to me as I've watched smart, talented people and organizations drive themselves into the ground.
It happens when the whole focus of attention is on the risks and dangers of living in this difficult world. While I'm not so pollyanna that I think we should only focus on our strengths and opportunities, it isn't difficult to get into an obsessive preoccupation with managing risks, real and imagined. I used to think it was something we could blame on the corporate legal department, because it's their job to identify and hedge the organization against excessive risk. But now I think it has more to do with the way we react to potential risk: we let it control our business choices.
It manifests in a couple of ways in organizational life. One occurs when organizations begin to multiply their policies and rules to cover every potential problem. The paradox is that contracts and policies that build in protections from every type of malfeasance or negligence define the relationship as fundamentally absent of trust. That is, they communicate more than limits or boundaries; they also communicate an implicit expression of the relationship itself. Perhaps more importantly, the multiplication of rules and policies has a chilling effect on creativity and innovation. When there are many rules, it becomes the first responsibility of employees to check to make sure that they are not violating them.
Then comes the documentation. While documentation is important to preserve records of actions and ensure reporting, the need to document everything can mean that 20 to 30% of the creative energy of the organization is diverted from customer service, product development, or business strategy. Some businesses find that filling out forms is their new business model. New rules and requirements in HR policy or in contracts should be subject to their own rigorous risk assessment: do they add sufficient incremental safety to justify the additional negative impact on climate and workload?
Last week I met a consultant whose firm focuses on performance improvement through people policies and practices. She told me several stories of companies who had accelerated the aggregation of HR policies, thereby clearly communicating to the workforce that none of them could be trusted and they were expected to attempt to steal everything possible from the company. She said something that CCL believes most fervently: you can't change performance if you don't address the culture. She has proposed a single sentence HR policy: Every employee is expected to work for the best interests of the company and its customers and employees.
A culture of distrust (and its cousin: control) cannot spawn an organization where everyone gives their best. That kind of culture only comes where leaders believe in the capability and generosity of their follows. Unfortunately, when the market is down and the strategy isn't working all that well, it becomes easy to blame the attitudes of the workforce. Or when someone goes off the track, it's easy to clamp down on everyone. The multiplication of "zero tolerance" policies shows how quickly we accede to the hierarchical solution; even if the result is the arrest of 5-year-olds for carrying camping utensils for show-and-tell.
Compliance is not creativity.
Control is not commitment.
Passion, creativity, commitment: these are all freely given or they are not given at all.
Our culture is flailing in a sea of anxiety...about the economy, about jobs, about competing on the world stage. This is the time to reinforce our commitment to collaboration, to mutual trust, to shared goals. When anxious, our best escape is in a return to core values. We need to line up with people who are leading the way to positive environments, inspiring innovation, making high performance a pleasure.
Find them. Shine a light on their energy and grant others the freedom to do it, too.
It's an old question; how much of "you" can you reveal at work? I don't mean dress code, but acting and saying things the way you would outside of work. Where's the line between inappropriate and inauthentic?
With social networking, flexible schedules, and hip-mounted technologies that keep us connected to people and places all over the world – separation between work and non-work is no longer the default way of doing things. Most workers have to figure out and manage their boundaries – by reinforcing them, blurring them, or whatever makes sense in the moment. Switching from one’s “work-self” to one’s “non-work self” is something we have to do more frequently. Many folks blend work and non-work “friends” on social networking sites. That could be a good thing, but is it? The idea of an integrated self is appealing - it'd make life easier, but is it a equal option for everyone?
Being authentic is bound to be easier for folks who are part of the leadership “in” crowd (aka folks who fit the leadership mold – who look, walk, or talk in a manner consistent with dominant images of leadership). As we collectively embrace more inclusive images of leadership, I imagine the option for everyone to bring their full self to work will increase.
In the meantime, we may have to ask ourselves is this inappropriate or is it something that challenges our image of leadership - and thereby places an expectation that someone else has to be inauthentic in order to fit our leadership mold?
So, it's college football season again. I was watching ESPN one weekend morning, and Lou Holtz was being interviewed. I know of Lou Holtz from being a famous and successful football coach at the University of Notre Dame (where he won a national championship) and the University of South Carolina. Before that, he was also a successful football coach at Minnesota, Arkansas, NC State, William & Mary, and even coached professionally for the New York Jets.
When I was watching television that morning, he was being interviewed because he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. It really struck me as to what he said – it was very refreshing. He said he was thankful for his wife, thankful for his family, the athletic directors who hired him, the coaches who coached with him, the players who played for him, because without all of those people, none of his successes would have been possible.
Even though so many of us are working nonstop just to survive, I encourage you to take a few moments and think about those who helped you get to where you are today, who helped you be successful, and why. If they are still alive, let them know. Your family, your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, your friends. Get in touch with that high school teacher or college professor who had an impact on your life and thank them. If they aren’t alive anymore, take a moment to think about them. Because without any of these people, deep down inside you know, you would not be where you are today.
If you feel inclined, leave a comment about who you are thankful for. Maybe people will be inspired by who inspired you.
And, by the way, Lou Holtz is also known for his motivational speeches and pep talks both as a football coach, and on television for ESPN and College Gameday, like this one, probably the coolest ever.
It was a long wait at the Department of Motor Vehicles to take my motorcycle driving test, so Bryan and I got into one of those conversations about our work. Bryan is the entrepreneur who was renting me a motorcycle and helmet so I could take my test. His day job is as a hospital imaging tech (CT scans, X-rays, and so on).
When I told him about the Center, he asked “Can you do anything for surgeons?” and then launched into a series of stories about the leadership of surgical teams. He said, “I was working with one surgeon recently and everything was going smoothly. He would ask politely for what he needed. He calmly asked for the reports from different members of the team. In the middle of it, it dawned on me that this was extraordinary! A surgeon was being polite and not freaking out.”
He went on, “On another occasion, we did one surgery with one of the intense, narcissists. The next surgery was with a different surgeon and when he asked for something, the whole surgical team scrambled frantically to get it. He looked around him and held up his hand, ‘Hold up there!’ he said, ‘Wrong doctor!’”
Bryan told me that there was a rumor passing around his hospital that there was a proposal that the team evaluations of the surgeons be eliminated. He didn’t have much confidence in the self-awareness or even willingness of these team leaders to take feedback. “But,” he said, “the teams where the surgeons treat the rest of the team with respect and maintain a professional attitude do better medicine.” He was convinced they had better outcomes too.
I asked Bryan what he did about it. “Well, three of the other techs got fed up with the behavior of one surgeon and they wrote a report to the hospital. I just deal directly with the docs. If I think a surgeon is crossing the line, I’ll tell him...try to make it humorous and not create a problem, but I’ll say something directly to the surgeon.”
He told me about one 25 year veteran surgical assistant who was dealing with a surgeon who began sputtering and waving his hand in front of her face. While quite sure that she actually knew what he wanted, she still challenged him, “What, are we five? Use your words!”
The fundamentals of leadership are still key. The more power lodged with the designated leader, the more is required of him or her: certainly self-awareness and respect for the contributions of others. It can be a matter of life or death.
We have been field testing Visual Explorer™ with development work in Africa, as part of ourLeadership Beyond Boundariesinitiative. We were delighted to get this fascinating report recently from Cheri Baker, a Peace Corp worker serving in the most rural areas of Ghana, West Africa.
What does it take to have a creative conversation about a challenging topic? The language and cultural hurdles to conversation here in this story are striking. It is true that words often fail us. If we don't share the same language how can we talk? We see versions of this story even in organizations with a common language and shared culture. It can be really hard work to understand and be understood in conversation. When we began studying dialogue and conversation as part of the CCL Leading Creatively Program, we discovered the power of images to provide bridges, and insights, and generally to "mediate" the conversation. Our theory about this is that images provide metaphors (metaphor is underneath language) in a visible way (we are visual creatures) in the form of cards which can be handled, examined and shared (the mind is embodied and playful, and revels in art).
Here's the story in Cheri's words and images.
From: Cheri Baker Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 5:44 PM
"Hello yet again! Of course, when I reached Tamale, not only was the Internet down but power all over the city was out for about 12 hours! I'm sorry for the delay, but it's an expected part of life here. Here's some information for your blog about the three women's group meetings I held in Kpendua using the Visual Explorer cards.
Work began soon after moving to a very rural village in the Northern Region of Ghana. As a Health/Water and Sanitation Peace Corps Volunteer, my work is incredibly varied and always interesting. Through constant interactions with the villagers in Kpendua, I have learned more than I ever imagined about another culture and its people.
Since I first moved to Kpendua, I have marveled at how strong and hard working the women are. Because I was so impressed with their dedication to their families, a group of village friends and I decided we should start a Women's Group. But at the first meeting, more than 65 women showed up to participate! In time, our one women's group became four separate ones, and our work together ever since has been very worthwhile.
"This is the Nyobilbaligu Women's Group having their monthly meeting on my veranda. Using the Visual Explorer cards, this meeting focused on thinking for oneself, creativity, problem-solving, and information sharing."
"[In these photos] three women at our women's group meeting trying to decipher what exactly is in each photo. When they weren't asking their friends for help, they were sitting quietly turning the Visual Explorer cards over and over in their hands.
At the majority of our monthly meetings, my Ghanaian counterpart and I teach interactive lessons on HIV/AIDS, nutrition, proper breastfeeding, hand washing, or a topic of a similar nature. For the two strongest and most active groups, we are also trying to create business plans for alternative livelihood projects like corncob charcoal and beekeeping. But the most interesting work I've done with them has been related to the role of a Dagomba (a tribe in Ghana with whom I live) female, gender equality in a village, and leadership development activities.
When I first moved to Kpendua, I used a well-known Peace Corps technique (specifically a PACA tool) in which you begin by posing a positive question to get the group comfortable and more receptive to information gathering, then following up with a more difficult one that makes the group think about some negative aspects of their life. After a meeting in the capital of Ghana with Lyndon Rego, Steadman Harrison, and Phillip Brady from the Center for Creative Leadership, I was able to bring some of CCL's techniques to a village in the North. In three separate women's group meetings, I repeated the same PACA tool--but this time with a very helpful visual aid: CCL's Visual Explorer Cards. And wow, what a difference they made! When I first posed the question to groups of villagers more than a year a go, I just got blank looks in response. When pried, I could get some answers out of the villagers, but the concept and reasoning behind my questioning was too unclear. They couldn't seem to fathom why I was asking them, "What aspects of your life here do you appreciate?" When pushed, they could only answer about tangible things. They'd say, "We like that we have a clinic in our village that serves nine surrounding communities," or "We like that we have a Primary School." I was disappointed to find that that was all I could get out of them. Frustrated at the time, I eventually moved onto other techniques. But this time around, using the same technique with the Visual Explorer cards made all the difference.
While it was still very difficult, the women were very chatty once they understood the concept of the meeting. I started by asking the women, "What is the best thing about living in Kpendua?" (Most villagers I live with trouble with the concept of the word, "best." They also have trouble with the concept of "goals," "improvements," and "future plans," but that's another frustrating story!) When I rephrased the questioning to, "What is already happening in Kpendua that makes you the happiest? What is successful? What is good about living here?"I was able to get a few very informative and interesting responses. The most impressive answer I repeatedly received was related to the Visual Explorer Card (VEC) that depicts a group of young boys standing with their arms around each other's backs.
Through that photo, the women talked about how it's great that everyone here helps each other, specifically to floor compounds (an amazing communal and very musical experience), plaster the mud walls (with a mixture of cow feces and mud), harvest groundnuts, and gather maize for naming ceremonies. Another group commented that they were happy that when a man asks other villagers for communal labor farming, men gladly ride their bicycles to farm to help weed. In addition, they were happy we have meetings and discussions so everyone's voices can be heard. The photo of the dilapidated house by a riverside drew murmurs of approval.
The women said, "The house is very beautiful; it is big and the landlord would be proud to own the house. We are happy that Kpendua has strong mud rooms for strangers (Ghanaian English for "guests") coming to visit because it's nice to have strangers." It was also interesting to hear a woman exclaim she was "happy because she has strong legs to do all the work that women do daily" and that "It's too hard for the women who can't walk well." All this just from a photo of small baby's feet held in an adult's hand!!
When a woman holding the card of crayons asked the translator if it was a picture of bowls, he explained to her that it doesn't matter what the photo is and that what matters is what she sees.
As she grew more comfortable with her thoughts, she made a long speech about how happy bowls make her. She clarified that female villagers use bowls to eat, and food is important. After pushing her to continue, she answered that bowls make her happy because it's nice to serve and share food at baby naming ceremonies and funerals. Though the inevitable tangible answer did come up repeatedly, it was great to hear what the women thought was going well in their communities. They realized they were lucky to have a competent nurse who could take care of them when they were sick at our clinic, which serves the nine surrounding communities.
Another woman's photo reminded her of mosque, and she explained that Fridays made her very happy because everyone was "praying very seriously." Another woman said she was happy we have a road big enough for lorries to pass through our village. Yet another said it made her happy when there was a full moon because people could walk around freely and see at night. (Kpendua has no electricity.) A woman who said it made her happy to see development in Kpendua discussed the photo of an old woman's eyes. Kpendua has a school, a clinic, a mosque, and light poles waiting for electricity. (Though the district has been claiming that "the electricity will certainly come soon" for more than two years, we do have light poles lying on the ground in the middle of the village!) And in a response that portrayed a major tradition in the tribe, a woman said she was happy that the elders here are respected and make the major decisions for the rest of the village after looking at a VEC of an old lady.
After this question, I asked a new series of questions trying to pry answers out of them about they want to happen in Kpendua. I asked questions like, "What do you see in the photos that makes you sad about living in Kpendua? What is difficult? What can we improve on in Kpendua?"This part of our meetings consistently proved very interesting. I have been here for almost two years, but I can rarely get any concrete answer out of this type of question. No matter how patient I am and how many times I explain that my role as a PCV is not to give money, most people just answer this question by saying that they want me to help them buy a tractor. And get more money. This was the first time I was able to hear what the women really want. The VEC cards really helped them open up. With the VEC, I now know that the women with whom I work want a special grinding mill to make shea butter. And on a related note, they want bulk traders to come directly to the village to buy the unprocessed shea nuts. I also learned that they want more Moringa Oleifera trees, a major nutrition project I have been working on with them for about a year. And they want more water, since there are currently only three working boreholes for 3000 people. (There is supposed to be one for every 300 people.) By looking at a VEC of an overturned shopping cart, a woman said she wanted to learn how to do beekeeping. (Apparently word of one of my potential upcoming projects has spread!)
They don't want any more lorry accidents (we had a very serious one a few months ago killing seven people from Kpendua and injuring literally everyone else.) And they don't want people to "grow lean" and suffer without enough food. After gazing at the VEC photo of a pile of skulls, a women said she didn't want any more warfare within the Dagomba tribe. (An ongoing chieftaincy dispute has split the tribe into two major sides.)
But the most exciting answer for me was when each group mentioned that they want latrines!! In the entire village, I still have the only latrine while everyone continues to go to the African "bush" to use the toilet. The women all agreed that they want latrines so they don't have to go to toilet so far away anymore. This answer made me so excited because my counterpart and I have been talking until we've felt like we were blue in the face trying to desensitize the village to the need for latrines.
Overall, the use of the VEC was a huge success. Though one of the women's groups kept asking my counterpart to direct them more with clearer directions, he kept refusing for the sake of the activity. We also spent a great deal of time stressing that there were no wrong answers. They didn't have to know what the picture was of; instead we wanted to hear about anything that they saw. Admittedly, it was also sometimes difficult to get the women to say how the photo related to Kpendua instead of just explaining what they saw in the photo. Even so, I heard more about what aspects of life they want to leave the same and what they want to improve than I have heard in a long time. It was pleasant to hear the women interact so freely with each other, and I enjoyed watching them work together to try to figure out what was on each card.
Near the end of each meeting, women were answering the questions very clearly without using the cards. It was the first time they were so open and forthcoming with their responses. It was an amazing change. I will certainly be using these cards again soon!"
The Center for Creative Leadership reaches out to young leaders throughout the world through efforts such as our Leadership Beyond Boundaries initiative. Recently, we were happy to donate our Visual Explorer™ (VE) tool to Jane Goodall's Global Youth Summit, which brought together 100 young people from 28 countries to acquire "a toolbox for changing the world." VE was used in the closing exercise, to explore the question "What is one of the most important things that you learned about leadership at the Global Youth Summit?" The video above wonderfully captures the essence of the activity. The facilitator, David Shurna, the Executive Director of Global Explorers, describes it this way:
I used Visual Explorer at the conclusion of the week long summit as a way for students to share what they had learned about leadership throughout the week. I have attached the PowerPoint presentation that represents all of the images chosen by the students coupled with words about their action projects and their leadership lesson.
I was particularly struck by how well this work across cultures. We had youth ages 16-24 from more than 20 countries involved in the activity. Many were from developing countries and English was their second language. The images helped them open up and share powerful lessons and ideas in ways that we had not seen the rest of the week.
I was particularly struck by the variety of images selected and the creative ways in which students expressed their thoughts. One student from Kenya selected an image of a burning house [see below] and described the way in which this photo represented the destruction of his country that was taking place right now. Yet beyond the fire, he saw in the image something that represented his hope that he could inspired change when he returned.
Another student from Hong Kong selected the rugby image and discussed the ways in which he felt that he was often beat up, pushed around and discouraged by the lack of progress he was making on environmental issues in Hong Kong. Yet, he said the conference reminded him that we all get beat up at times and we need to have persistence and hope.
Not too many dry eyes in the room after these moments. Thanks so much for being willing to share this incredible resource with our organization.
I'm supposed to be a Big Thinker. At least, that's the excuse we use when I've forgotten to fill out some form or other or have conveniently missed a 5 am meeting. "He's a big thinker," someone will say, gently implying I’m not capable of dressing myself without help. “He’s not that good with the details.”
This caricature is beneficial to me insofar as it presents an image of a kindly, if doddering, ivory-tower intellectual. It has saved me from a number of lengthy meetings on structuring internal processes so as to preserve the sovereignty of one group or another. I’ve even bought into it myself along the way and make occasional self-deprecating comments designed to imply someone else had better tackle the details if we don’t want to starve.
However, like most identity-statements, it is true some percentage of the time and in some percentage of circumstances. For instance, when it comes to language, I’m a raging OCD-driven traditionalist. For some reason, which I could probably blame on my parents, I’m personally offended when the language I grew up with undergoes changes. (You have no idea what it took me to adapt to dangling participles. Only regular doses of the PBS radio show “Way with Words” allowed me to write “I grew up with” instead of “with which I grew up,” for example).
My current obsession is the new British Invasion. Of course, I’m as taken with accents and dialects not-my-own as the next guy, but why must we now pronounce “collegiality” as if the “g” belonged at the beginning of garage, not at the end? I remember the shivers I felt the first time I heard one of my fellows talk about call-eeG-ee-a-lit-ee. In good-old American english (note the small “e”), the combination “gi” within a word always is sounded as if it were “ji” or “jee.” You will note that all American dictionaries recognize the soft “g” sound as the first pronunciation and most note the hard “g” only when making reference to the college of cardinals. Did we need to change collegiality to conform to “colleague” once we had decided we no longer had "co-workers"?
Now, in the interest in beating my critics to the punch, I will confess I’ve been caught describing my cell phone as my “mobile” (moe-bile) instead of (moe-bl) and, when in London, I adapt. However, here I take my stand: when in the United States of America, I will practice collegiality (coll-ee-jee-ality) with my colleagues, although I expect most of them to turn up the torture now that they know my secret. That’s true collegiality (pronounce it how you will).
