Category: Leadership

If You Have Not Taken A Leadership Course, Start Here
I’m grateful that a #leadership course was required in my PhD program*. It’s the ONE COURSE that I use EVERY DAY. Still, it doesn’t take a course to get your ducks in a row about leadership. It just takes listening and implementing a few key pieces of advice–that you’ve likely already heard.

If you get a chance, it would be a valid question to ask any leader, “Have you taken a leadership course?” and see what they say. If the answer is no, you might want to start surreptitiously dropping some leadership gems for them to pick up. Don’t worry that you are not their leader! How ridiculous! The “secret leader in the crowd” is a favorite human story! We’ve got lots of them! It’s no problem!

We’ve got:
- Bard from the Hobbit
- David from The Books of Samuel
- That guy that yells “You can do it” from the crowd in Adam Sandler movies. etc.
This will be my take on some key leadership ideas that I do use, yes, every day.

Heather’s (Made up) Leadership Manual

Hey, it can be made up and still be legit. Mr. Rogers had the Neighborhood of Make Believe!

Don’t tell me you never wanted to go through that tunnel and explore the castle!

Day 1, Page 1:

Every one is a leader.

Yup, agreed. I know some of you want to throw stones at this and say that being a lifetime follower (ahem, Independent Contributor) is OK. That’s not the point. IC is a job title. The point is to recognize that your decisions chart the course of your life. Taking responsibility for your own self is the start of taking care of your neighbor. Get that straight.

Want some backup on that? Find the research that says that Taking Responsibility is the #1 happiness precursor, culture to culture, time to time, across all disciplines and ages. And remember that the phrase says TAKE, not wait around until it’s OK. Reach out and grab responsibility. Is your neighbor hurting? Well, that’s YOUR problem, Mister! Get out there and do something!

Day 2, Page 2:

Pick a leadership philosophy or, just like a Last Will and Testament, one will be picked for you.

A leadership philosophy gives you the answers to questions in the dark, in unknown locations, in split seconds, and in heartfelt moments. Believe me, leaders are forged in these fires.

Yes, there are multiple leadership philosophies (she says, trying not to roll her eyes). There isn’t just ONE and no, you can’t just be “yourself”. You are likely a jerk. We all are. You really are the product of your experiences, culture, and upbringing. They all influenced your leadership style. If you want to do better, read up, buttercup.

Day 3, Page 3:

Pick the hill you are going to die on.

Isn’t there a Klingon equivalent? It’s probably close to “Today is a good day to die”^. That means: Pick your battles but…when you do arrive at the battle that threatens your life, you need to go forward. My career died on the battle hill of being a whistleblower. I refused to do something illegal and lost my job. Lost my income. Lost a LOT of power. But I would not change my decisions at all. I’m proud that picked doing the right thing over money.

I find that folks that want to be leaders often fail on this one. They think that if they embrace a truly make-or-break decision, they’ll lose their job and hence, lose their power as a leader. So..isn’t it better to live to fight another day (as a leader) on this one?

No. When we talk about dying and leadership, this aren’t chump change decisions. You’ve got to lay it ALL on the line, or nothing is on the line. A true leader who loses their job is still a leader.

Picking the hill you are going to die ALSO means don’t pick silly little fights! I knew a great faculty member once that advanced to leadership. In his first week, he started to take up meeting time with his pet favorite issue. I tried virtually kicking him under the table to say “Really, this is not worth fighting for! You just got here. Save your “OMG the wolves are going to eat us!” for when you really need it.” Long story short: he didn’t get what he wanted. And he’s a known cry-baby from the start. As a leader. That’s a disaster. I would never find myself in a fox hole next to him.

You’ve heard these before

Leadership is not a job title.

This is universal. Just pick an era, google it’s top leaders and you’ll basically find a nice helping of assholes. But the kindest person could be the garbage-pickup man, the nurse in the health center, or the IT help line person. Don’t mistake TITLES for being leaders.

Leaders don’t lead, they serve.

Get this one inside you too. Leaders are there to TAKE CARE of those that report to them, not to dominate, dictate, or demand.

I received a great piece of advice when I advanced to mid-level management in Higher Education (cough, Department Head, cough): I had 5 faculty that just before were my co-workers. Now I was their boss. I was so nervous to lead the first Team Meeting as boss that my knees were knocking together. I turned to my Mentor for her advice. She said:

You’ve got them. Now your job is to keep them.

True enough. There was no reason for them to just up and leave (and OMG, the work of 5 people would all fall on me, I’d be dead in 3 days). So..it was now my job to keep them employed. Over a little time, my Mentor and I worked our philosophy into this statement that we would training other Managers on and repeat to new hires on our teams:

It is my job to keep you employed, until such a time as you make it clear to me that it is not longer my job to keep you employed here.

That meant I do EVERYTHING to keep you in your job and happy & productive in your job. When the time comes that you indicate you want to go, it is my job to help you get your NEXT job (via references, friendship, help with HR after your departure, etc.). If you act like a jerk, you’re making it clear that you don’t want to work here, hence I’ll bring out the counseling (See my 6 Days A Week post) and the ‘we’re gonna fire you’ words. But short of that, my job is to keep you employed, come heck or high water.

The days I felt like this protecting my team as their leader were plethora.

Never think that you can out-think your team.

I had one PhD. My team had 14 PhDs. How could I possibly out-think them?

This one is simple to activate. Watch how Captain Jean Luc Picard handles issues on the bridge in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

He always:

1. Confronts the issue via the viewscreen or audio message. Mutes it.

2. Turns directly around on his heels to look at his crew. He says one word, “Options.”

And of course, being ST:TNG, Riker advocates for aggression, Warf advocates to start shooting, Deanna says the enemy is being deceptive but she doesn’t know about what, and the Doctor, if she gets a voice, advocates for the health and rescuing of everybody.

That method gets you the MOST viewpoints into an issue, rather than one way into an issue.

BTW, there were a few times when I could see further down the road them my team. So I thought my way was best. But, I did NOT force them. I always tabled my viewpoint and just waited them out. They were such good folks that sooner or later, they’d usually arrive at a suggestion I’d made months earlier and they’d exclaim “Hey, let’s do it this way!” and I’d just privately smile and think “Yeah, lets!”

*BTW, this is why my blog is called Cogitate and Percolate. It was what I asked my team to do on issues that they were not ready to arrive at a good answer about. I’d ask them to ‘cogitate and percolate’ about it, think about it and drink coffee about it– both items that take time to do.

Bonus Points!

I’m going to squeeze in one more leadership section, the Bonus section.

In a battle, I’d rather have a historian by my side, than a general.

If you haven’t gotten the memo, I’ll tell you: Historians read minds.

They read the minds of people from the past–and they are good at it. They can almost always give you 2 reasons why something happened. Give them some time, they’ll come up with 10 more! But more importantly, on-the-ground, they can tell what your enemy is thinking.

I’d rather outmaneuver an enemy by having a more powerful mind on my side than any physical force. Brute force only points one direction: death. Live beyond the moment. Yup. Right here is where I put my Obi-Wan Kenobi point.

“You can’t win, but there are alternatives to fighting.”

Start Somewhere

If you have not had the chance to study leadership, start now. Don’t wait. Pick a leader and start watching videos, reading books, and thinking about the decisions you make.

My Jean Luc Picard reference isn’t fake or funny and I’m NOT the first to pull upon him as a leadership source. On Twitter, the @PicardTips account is a must-follow.

BTW, leadership is not always “First up the hill!” or “Last up the hill!” despite my quippy image. You see, if you took a Leadership Course (ahem, circling back to my first point) you’d get exposed to Situational Leadership–which means you do different actions at different times.

I have a “First up the hill!” story here. The point my image is trying to make is to really knock the “LeaDeRS ArE aLwaYS fIRst” storyline off the headlines.

Other sources I use:

1. Jesus. Hey, I have to pick the OG of leadership. ESPECIALLY #ServantLeadership. It all goes back to here, yos.

2. Walt Disney. Yes, the original stuff–the original ideas, vision, and feelings that Disney wanted to evoke. Definitely ‘bottom up’ leadership style with he walking the trenches and getting solutions from his employees on the front lines.

3. Daniel Pink. I guess I could sum up his influence as “It’s not always intuitive. Actually, it rarely is.”

4. Simon Sinek. This guy has the pulse of both military (where it really IS do or die) AND business leadership. Every video of his is a must watch. But bear in mind, this isn’t just mind decisions, it’s heart decisions.

5. Jeepers, all guys, Heather? Can’t you put ONE woman on the list? Maybe because I know women and because women have been the most cutthroat in my life experiences, I can’t raise them up this time. (OK,I know I worked a little Wonder Woman into this article. But I can’t 100% endorse her. Maybe 98%.)

#leadership #LeadershipCourse #LeadershipTraining #LeadershipPhilosophy #ServantLeadership #JungleLeadership #SituationalLeadership #EveryOneIsALeader #PickTheHillYouAreGoingToDieOn #BardTheBowman #TodayIsAGoodDayToDie #LeadershipIsNotAJobTitle #LeadersServe

#StartSomewhere

#Jesus #WaltDisney #SimonSinek #DanielPink #WonderWoman

* FWIW, this is almost the only positive thing I have to say about my PhD program. But most of my beef is wound up in the exorbitant price.

^ For more entomology on this phrase, start with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_good_day_to_die
December 28, 2025
Diversity training gone bad

I’ve been sitting on this blog post idea for awhile. But it’s St. Patrick’s Day and some good hearted self-deprecating humor has come before me. So while THIS story isn’t about being self-deprecating (I wish it was!), this story is about making fun of a culture.

One of my very frequent job duties as a mid-level manager at a university was to translate directives that came from above down to the underlings. Sometimes that was easy. Sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was ridiculous.

In one of those moments where I was in a discussion with my team about what to do about some new directive, near the end of the phone conference discussion, I rolled off the line “You’ve got to do, what you’ve got to do” a riff on “Then I’ve got to do, what I’ve got to do” from Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire when he’s quitting a job.

The line in the movie essentially says that sometimes when you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you have to pick the right thing to do even when it isn’t easy. If you remember the scene, Robin Williams is mimicking Gandhi’s voice. To me, it immediately conjured non-violent peaceful protest. And it was the vibe I was leading with with my team. If we weren’t going to fully do the directive, we had our good reasons not to.

After that meeting, one of my team members wanted to talk about that during our 1:1 private phone call. They proceeded to tell me that that line was, essentially racist, because I said it with the Indian accent. She told me that it was inappropriate. I started to get the idea that they were really serious about what they had said (and had totally missed the movie reference) when they stopped talking and let out a big “wow, that’s done” sigh.

I was…flabbergasted. I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I thought the line was actually complimentary. I mean, Gandhi is a person that humanity reveres. We aspire to be like him. He was a good man. How could mimicking his accent be slurring him? It was a phone conference, I want to be clear on that point. I didn’t make any visible head shakes or any other references to Indian culture. And the line itself is about facing a very important, difficult choice and still choosing to do the right thing. But I had a feeling that none of these finer points would help at this moment with the person.

So I asked them a little bit more about WHAT exactly they found offensive. They quickly answered, “There were no Indians in the room.”

Oh, I said, so it felt like I was mocking Indians with the accent?

Yes, they said. When they are not in the room, you can’t do that.

I moved quick on my mental feet.

So anyone using an accent of a person NOT in the room is offensive.

Yes, they said.

I explained that accents are part of communicating online and verbally on phone calls. I find that they enrich the story and add depth (and I’d used them– infrequently — with students in the past for years) especially when the accent adds depth to the story. I find online teaching involves a great deal of performance and acting. But I kept at their point with them.

So you are from the Boston area and there’s a pretty distinct accent there. If I had used a Boston accent, it would be OK because you were in the room?

Yes, they said quickly.

OK. At this point, I wrapped the discussion. I apologized that no offense was intended and indeed, I never used that accent with that group ever again.

But I had the sudden and stark feeling that an attempted “schooling” had just happened to me by a person who attended Day 1, Hour 1 of diversity training and then no more training.

You see, their second example actually showed what the problem was.

You see, if accents are used derogatorily, it wouldn’t matter who or who was not in the room. Bad form is simply bad form.

But in their own example, they privileged their own accent as “OK to be made fun of” and I…actually…found that offensive. Boston isn’t where I’m from, but I do consider it a nearby city.

So it’s NOT OK WITH ME to make fun of anyone’s accent.

But I wasn’t making fun with my line. I was quoting Robin Williams who was quoting Gandhi. GANDHI. That’s far from making fun or speaking derogatorily. I went over this story with a lawyer friend afterwards just to make sure I wasn’t crazy and she reminded me of Gandhi’s human rights and lawyer background himself. His quotes are always about the betterment of people. It would be almost impossible to use a Gandhi quote in a slur. There just isn’t material.

I would have a severe problem with anyone making fun of their Boston accent of anyone else’s accent in or out of the room. Their allowance that making fun of their own accent showed me that they didn’t understand diversity and inclusion.

Sign. Bother. Face Palm.

I never did quite “get along” with that team member after that and (shudder) they went on to train others. I have no idea how well.

But I’ll leave you with the context of the line, where an actor quits because a cartoon shows a bird smoking.

Police! Civic authorities! ASPCA! ASAP!

***! Betrayal! Kidnapped!

No, birdnapped!

A cup of garlic, a twist of parakeet.

Eat your heart out, Julia Child.

Excuse me, but isn’t it customary

for the jailbird to get one telephone call?

In your case, I think not.

Afternoon snacks have few civil liberties.

But I’m not wholly without heart.

How about a nice soothing cigarette?

Pah! Agh! Ugh!

Oh, I will not do this. I cannot!

Oh, what a foul way for a bird to die!

I don’t want to get beak cancer.

No! My lungs are blackened!

Here we go again. Cut, cut, cut! Roll it back.

– Help me…

–

What are you doing? Daniel…

That line is not in the script.

Why did you add it?

–

I wanted to comment on the situation.

–

What situation?

Shoving a cigarette into Pudgie’s mouth

is morally irresponsible.

This is a cartoon,

not a friggin’ Oprah Winfrey Special.

Lou, millions of kids see this cartoon.

It’s like telling them “Light up.”

You can’t put words in Pudgie’s mouth

if his mouth isn’t moving.

It’s voice-over. An interior monologue.

Maybe even the voice of God.

(imperious voice)

Pudgie, don’t smoke.

–

Actors.

–

What? Let’s ask the technicians.

Do you think it’s morally right

to promote smoking to the youth of America?

(whistles)

They’re biased. That’s a mistrial.

Daniel, this session

is costing the studio thousands.

If you want a paycheck, stick to the script.

If you want to play Gandhi,

then do it on somebody else’s time.

(as Gandhi)

Then I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.

That’s very funny.

Where the hell are you goin’?

If you leave, you’re not comin’ back in.

I’m not takin’ any crap from you, pal.

Well, in the words of Porky Pig:

P-P-P-P-P-P-*** off, Lou.

March 17, 2024
In mourning

I’m half British. It is a purposeful decision of honor, not a cute decision, to be known on LinkedIn with my middle name, after Queen Elizabeth II.

A name can be a funny thing. As child, because Heather rhymes easily, I went through sing-song teasing. For many years, I didn’t really notice much about my name, other than relief that it’s somewhat easy for Americans to pronounce. Internationally, I know it’s difficult to guess the pronunciation (the ‘h’s and ‘r’s change), but I always happy to help, encouraging the breathy-ness of “Heather” and the z spelling for “Elizabeth”, and I desired help in return in pronouncing others’ names.

But lately, I feel the “time” of my name; “Heather” ties me to a time and now, “Elizabeth” to an Era.

Personally, I’ll be conducting minimal LinkedIn business in order to mourn. As a reminder, death is wrong. Our world was not created to work this way. I constantly pull my strength from my creator and loving God.

September 11, 2022
The Battle of Chrysler Farm (not about the Battle of Chrysler Farm)

See this place above? That’s the Visitor Center at the Battle of Chrysler Farm Historic Site at 13740 County Road 2, Morrisburg, Ontario, Canada and have I got a small story for you!

This story happened 10 years ago, today! I took a day trip over to Morrisburg but I knew I didn’t want to pay the full admission price to Upper Canada Village, especially since I set out mid-afternoon. That’s OK since the gift shop is technically outside of the admission area, and they sell their famous fresh bread in the shop. That’s 2 bonuses! Plus I was intending on visiting the garden and historical site area that is free just next door. I think Upper Canada Village had just installed paid parking so parking for the historical site was free and literally right in the same field.

I did have a nice stroll up to the gardens, which is just in front of the tree line, in the center of this photo above.

(The view back to the historical site from the Rose Garden.)

I wandered back and around the hill a bit but there were (as ALWAYS) aggressive Canadian geese around, so I had to give them a wide berth or they would honk and chase me.

So going up to the visitor center, I thought it was curious that the front door was open.

(This is the view from inside of the Visitor’s Center back out the front door.)

The door was sort of stuck open, or maybe propped. I thought it was big enough to get a goose through so whoever is inside must be living dangerously. But it was also open enough for me to slip inside without touching it. So I did.

There was the entry desk, a computer, an open water bottle, and not seen in this photo, some keys. But no person.

I’ve been here before so I know that the visitor center is basically 2 rooms. This anteroom that is long and narrow with artifacts in cases and then a larger room with a rudimentary fiber-optic display that re-enacts the battle.

But I could not hear anything. I walked down the room, looking at the cases; old guns, uniforms, that sort of thing. I remember seeing significant cob webs at the far end. Still, no one.

At the end, I turned on my heel to enter the other room. Immediately I saw a few dressed up mannequins (British solders), and the display area and wooden benches. It was closed in.

Then I saw her.

She was laying on her back one of the wooden benches– out of sight in my photo above– and she was sleeping; totally out. She didn’t stir.

It was one of those moments where you calculate all of the possible excuses you could make in under 2 seconds for how I got into the visitor’s center without her hearing (uhm, open goose door? I’m alone so not talking? I’m a creep?) I opted for Plan Z: I was never here and I’m outta here; just to get out without waking her now.

But first, I had one other emotion wash over me.

I was mad.

I was mad that she was obviously sleeping on the job.

I justified that she had a computer, and I guess from the photo I took, cookies and water. Since I worked at an online university, I thought “You could be going to college right now, not sleeping away your summer job!”

I managed to walk out doing that kind of walk when you want to be silent, letting your foot roll on to and off of the floor evenly.

I slipped back out the goose hatch and eventually left the site to go home. I thought about writing something up and posting it on Facebook, but I knew if I said anything, she’d be fired. The risk to the visitor’s center and to herself personally was way too high; her employment would not survive. It’s clear to me that she was a summer worker, just pulling a paycheck.

It’s 10 years since that happened and I was thinking about that story. It dawned on me.

I have no right to be angry. I’m ashamed to say that I had a job once that was so lax that I could snooze while I was on the clock. The situation was that the work was normally significant and constant. But we had changed a procedure and my workload dropped off. My boss didn’t notice and still expected me to be just as busy. Part of my job required me to go offsite for a full morning 3x a week. I simply didn’t need to be gone for that long— but, instead of doing my work and coming back, I stayed out and snoozed in my car in parking spot.

It was medium-quality hooky; not top notch hooky because doing it was stupid. Top notch would be not working for a GD good reason, like I did when I sneaked away for my final dissertation residency and didn’t tell anyone at my online job for a day. I just kept my head really low and checked email constantly.

So I’ve been where she was. She was bored– I can see that now. And what she decided to do with her time was her business. I get that the Visitor’s Center could only be interesting so much and then it was boring.

Still, I wish she had made better choices. And that poor place, it looks closed now…I don’t see any listing of the Visitor Center being open.

The Visitor Center, current time (2022).

Oh, it’s a shame, but…the place was in decay.

The entire site is ripe for a nice AR history overlay…Standing on the site and looking around, one can think of the battle happening here and the strategic movement of troops to different places.

For the record, as a boss, I would advise the folks working for me that they were welcome to try playing hooky, but the key is to NOT GET CAUGHT. If I catch them, it’s not hooky anymore.

I hope that young lady has gone off to fantastical great things in her life. I change my anger now to a blessing for her. I hope she’s off somewhere chomping on some yummy bread, remembering that summer 10 years ago when she worked in a run-down Visitor’s Center, but at least she could get in a snooze on those hard wooden benches. You needed a nap before out running the geese.

August 30, 2022
Bizarro World Training

Photo by Christopher Machicoane-Hurtaud on Unsplash

I was given an assignment to go over good student appointments on the phone protocols with my online faculty. This was one of those “somebody’s done it wrong so we all need to be punished” training assignments.

I was pissed. My team was great on the phone. How did I know?

1. I trained them.

2. I observed them.

3. Better than #1 or #2, my team understood that our behaviors with students on the phone reflected upon all of us, not one of us. As the Disney song says “We’re all in this together”. You’re welcome for that earworm.😛

So I was mad and didn’t want to do the training. But I had 2 items in my favor:

1. We could design and run the training any way we wanted to. We only had to make “recordings” of the training.

2. My boss didn’t care to check on the deets. He just wanted to hear that I had completed the training with my team.

So…. I decided to do Bizarro World Training. That is, the opposite of everything that should be done, we were going to do.

Photo by Roméo A. on Unsplash

I directed my team to team into teams of 2 and they had a certain amount of time to make a recording of “The worst faculty – student phone call ever.”

They would make a recording – it could include video or not but everyone on the team had to appear at least once in a recording, being either the faculty or the student.

We would watch all of the recordings at one team meeting one week.

The results were PERFECT.⭐

I had faculty who started the video literally with her feet up on her home desk, doing her nails. She just casually called a student. She was completely oblivious to the student’s needs and had not prepared at all.

Another faculty gave off-the-cuff advice, dismissing everything that the student thought *might* be important and just said things like “yeah, whatever!” It was like the most un-clued-in faculty member ever.

But the winning entry was a faculty member who called a student and they arranged for massive interruptions by their kids during the phone call– on both ends. The student threatened their kids on the phone. Yes as online faculty we hear that a lot “If you don’t quiet down, I’m gonna [insert true reason to call DFS on the student]!”

But that was not all, the faculty member’s kids broke into the call too, explaining things they were excited about and playing the violin right next to the phone.

The call devolved into just a cacophony of the faculty member and student yelling at each other to barely be heard.

We were all dying of laughter, tears streaming out of our eyes, when we finished with this training.

I kept the recordings and used them to train new faculty.

Always with the qualifier, “Here’s how NOT to do it.”

#SomeOfMyBestTrainingEver

#training #elearning #OnlineLearning #faculty #leadership #edtech #InstructionalDesign #BizarroWorld #WhatHappensWhenYourLeaderIsAnInstructionalDesigner

Article also posted to LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bizarro-world-training-heather-elizabeth-dodds-ph-d-

August 15, 2022
Leadership Lessons
I’ve got a longer leadership post coming on (related to my own meme above) but I wanted to pause and talk a bit about leadership lessons.

One of the first lessons you learn in leadership is that

when you are in the middle of a storm, look for points of light.

That is, even under the worst of circumstances, given the diversity of human behavior, there usually is a person, a team, or a manager who is beyond surviving and even thriving. That’s not to laud superhuman work. No way. It just means that someone has found a way to make the set of conditions – which are- just as shitty for them as they are for you– work.

I was just talking about a leader in Higher Education that I’ve spotted that is doing that.

He’s bucking the trend.

With most schools decreasing in enrollment, this dude has double digit increases in enrollment.

And this road is not an easy one. When I first learned of him, it was by reading an article that said he had let go 26 faculty in August 2020. A year later, many of the department heads and bosses that were at the college had gone on to other jobs (TRANSLATION: QUIT). I quietly asked some workers who had nothing to lose, “What happened?” They said that basically, they wanted traditional jobs and he was not offering those. He was offering high risk but tremendous reward and a completely new vision for the college.

Even the town the college is in (HEADS UP: NEW ENGLAND TOWNS: known for being close minded and elitist. READ: SALEM WITCH TRIALS) bucked up and said that

they were unhappy that any growth out of the college was now going to be online and NOT in the form of building buildings.

He simply replied that online was more environmentally friendly.

This gamble of his was BEFORE the hard punch of the pandemic.

Then the pandemic hit.

And his plan became gold.

He had plenty of room to expand. The traditionalists were gone (presumably in some other town washing hands, wearing masks, and going back into the classroom). The US mindset had moved even MORE towards environmentalism. People stuck at home had more time to:
- look at how much trash they generated,
- think about the gas they weren’t burning in commutes
- reuse that reusable water bottle
- get groceries in bulk rather than in little trips with large amounts of food waste.
In short, students wanted to cuddle their dogs and cats AND go to school. They want the respect that comes from knowing what they know AND being able to continue to be the best versions of themselves whether that was photographer, board paddler, or tree hugger.

So, when students find a private school (READ: tuition is one price for all) out of state that would allow them to both get the respect of a degree AND stay home, they bought in and they’re bringing their friends.

It’s really tough to look at a small town and say, “It’s not quite for me…there is more out there” and then follow through. This leader did the follow through.

And he’s beginning to reap the benefits.
August 11, 2022
Dr. Ellie Sattler, Jurassic Park, and Narrative Plot. Or It Wasn’t About Dinosaurs.
It’s a rare moment when I can bring 3 themes into 1 post:
leadership, XR, and design. Also, I’m going to be personal. Believe it
or not, I’m not really personal on LinkedIn. Enthusiastic, yes. Personal, hardly.

Over the weekend, I wrote a gushing sentence to a friend that I
realized I’d never written down before: I became a Biology major in
college because of Dr. Ellie Sattler.

A mentor of mine once said writing is thinking. Writing that
sentence lead me to do a lot of thinking and reading about her character
and on the impact of the Jurassic Park (JP) movie. I’m not alone as a
woman in deciding to go further in STEM because of the Dr. Ellie Sattler
character. So huzzah all the Paleobotanists out there!

We have to time travel to talk about JP. In 1993, we’ve just BARELY
broken out of the 1980s. For the first time in STEM history, scientific
breakthroughs are being accomplished by teams instead of white men. Think: AIDS breakthroughs & the Human Genome Project. Teams means women included. Prior to this point, women were the “also rans” in science. Sisters. Mentioned on the side. Or worse, they had their research stolen.
Strong women depicted in media? Disney’s top film of the 80s was The
Little Mermaid and Aladdin was just released in 1992. Strong women, not
so much. Video tapes existed; the Internet did not. If you wanted to see
a movie, you bought a movie theater ticket.

We arrive when the music was rises in cool, dark, air conditioned theaters. And then you see this:

Caption: A character who does not care what you think because she’s solving a problem.

A character who lays out this line while she holds a stare on the richest daddy around:

“Look…we can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back”

I took that to mean that women are better in survival situations (not equal, as others took it.) and my life was shaped for the better.

I bought a $5 ticket 3 times over the course of that 1993 summer. Now that’s saying something.
To this day, it’s the only movie I’ve bought multiple theater seats
for. But realize, I have older brothers that saw Star Wars, what, a
bazillion times?

Jurassic Park became the first movie to gross US$1billion.

Reading some commentaries and watching some videos over the past few
days, I picked up some tidbits below. Some I agree with, some not.

1. To this day, the scene of the T-Rex crossing the paddock fence
HAS NOT YET BEEN BEAT in movie history & you don’t need to try.
True disclosure: the raptor jumping up to the ceiling shot? I still
can’t *barely* watch that. I wince too hard.

2. There’s been some 2022 commentary on the age difference between
the Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill)
characters. It’s been confusing and I’ve decided to weigh in.

In the book, Dr. Ellie Sattler was written as a grad student (Age
23, no advanced degree) but also no relationship. It was apparently
Laura Dern’s own idea to give the character a full doctoral degree and
in the movie the character holds her own against dinosaurs. In real
life, I’m disappointed to say, Laura treats Sam Neill patronizingly
and actually “left the party” of JP with Jeff Goldblum, which I find to
be a big mistake. (I said this article would be personal, yo.)

Caption: The look of faithfulness.

Don’t be like this guy and not see the sexual tension in JP: https://youtu.be/jSPxu3WprSs
As far as the age difference? The problem came in when, in the book,
the “relationship” was not there but in the movie it was. Laura was in her late 20s playing early 20s. Sam (then early 40s)
continues to feel the (physical) burden of the age difference. If you
need help to see what was happening, Deshi Basara has collected these gifs. Notice in gifs 2, 3, and 7 how his body immediately reacts to hers when she touches him. This is chemistry, folks.

I had to wade into all that because the point was that regardless of
an age difference (which, arguably could be *less* than 23 years),
there was a *quality difference* between Dr. Ian Malcolm and Dr. Alan
Grant.

I will concede this one point (I disagreed with so much here
that I couldn’t read more than 2 pages of this commentary) that Ellie
holds her ground just fine (and doesn’t move despite Alan’s come here
gesture) with a metamessage at the Raptor pit:

Vogue got an interview with Laura Dern
where she points out that the Dr. Ellie Sattler character went on to be
an activist and whistleblower. Interesting!! I’ll just leave that right there.

But most I really enjoyed watching these video analyses of the plot of Jurassic Park here and especially by Mike Hill here and why the movie worked when all subsequent versions of JP have not worked. The key was that Steven Spielberg worked in narrative plot. He carried a story all the way through that was human, basic, and emotional. Dinosaurs just happened to be there.

But that shows up in my VR/XR consulting work to this day.

The famous quote about rushing into things by the Choatician character Dr. Ian Malcolm:

Ian Malcolm: Don’t you see the danger, John, uh,
inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power’s the most awesome
force this planet’s ever seen, but you wield it like a kid who’s found
his dad’s gun.

Donald Gennaro: It’s hardly appropriate to start hurling accusations–

Ian Malcolm: If I may, if I may. Uh, I’ll tell you
the problem with the scientific power that you’re, that you’re using
here. It didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read
what others had done, and you, and you took the next step. You didn’t
earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any
responsibility… for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses, uh, to
accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew it,
you had, you’ve patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a
plastic lunch box, and now (bangs the table) you’re selling it, you
wanna sell it, well.

John Hammond: I don’t think you’re giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody has ever done before.

Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied over whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

I fight this battle every day.

Industry and indeed some in academia want to use XR liberally in
education. Yet, the power of XR is still unknown. Our early research is
pointing to one thing that seems firm:

The mind believes what the eye sees.

That means that the XR experiences we put our children into will be real for them.

What power are we wielding in the classroom? Everywhere?

There are those that say “XR is the Empathy Machine! We can create empathy, soft skills in the workplace!”

Oh yeah?

The most recent research I saw (from 2018) says that empathy coming from XR is a 50/50 gambit. That does not mean that it causes empathy for whatever you want half the time.

It means it causes empathy half of the time and causes the opposite of empathy the other half of the time!

So, would you like your employees to don a headset to be more
empathetic towards race, age, body size? Oh really? How would you like
results that say that half of the time, those employees are going to
take off the headsets and quietly say to themselves “Thank God I’m not
black” 50% of the time? That’s one hell of a bet you are willing to take
with XR.

XR is dangerous.

People say “Look at how you can look all around you! 360 degrees! A
sphere! Isn’t this cool? Isn’t this new? Just think how this will reach new learners!”

I can take a learner into a new real physical space (for example on a field trip) and have them be overwhelmed. We’re all on the spectrum, remember? Was that cool? Were they reached
in a new way when they cried? Would you like for me to even mention
harassment events in VR that have already happened? We haven’t yet
arrived into market saturation of haptic bodysuits, but it’s coming.

XR is dangerous.

I’d rather have a low, slow, plodding walk into an XR for education
experience than every bell and whistle thrown at them the first day. The
line “spared no expense” gives me chills.

XR is dangerous and if we aren’t careful, we will damage learners
along the way. Jurassic Park should not have been built or opened. Dr.
Alan Grant refused to give his endorsement. That was the lesson of the
movie.
- I’m proud that I don’t endorse some forms of XR (Dr. Alan Grant)
- I’m proud that I throw water on some XR ideas (Dr. Ian Malcolm)
- I’m proud that I tackle problems that no one else can survive. (Dr. Ellie Sattler)
But the parallel lesson of JP was “Build for story. Because the dinosaurs are not real.”

When I encourage XR design, I build for narrative plot.

I build for emotions,

because those are real.

#XR #Design #JurassicPark #NarrativePlot #InstructionalDesign #DrEllieSattler #DrAlanGrant #DrIanMalcolm #Dinosaurs #VR #VirtualReality #EmpathyMachine #Leadership #WomenInMedia #FemTech #Sexism #BestMovieSceneEver #Whistleblower #Scientist #PreoccupiedWithCould #SparedNoExpense #Emotion #DesignForXR

Article originally posted same day to LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dr-ellie-sattler-jurassic-park-narrative-plot-wasnt-dodds-ph-d-
June 15, 2022
Leadership should be simple and confident

Photo by Justin Clark on Unsplash

“For a large organization to be effective, it must be
simple. For a large organization to be simple, its people must have
self-confidence and intellectual self-assurance. Insecure managers
create complexity. Frightened, nervous managers use thick, convoluted
planning books and busy slides filled with everything they’ve known
since childhood.

Real leaders don’t need clutter.

People must have the
self-confidence to be clear, precise, to be sure that every person in
their organization—highest to lowest—understands what the business is
trying to achieve. But it’s not easy.

You can’t believe how hard it is
for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry
that if they’re simple, people will think they’re simpleminded.

In
reality, of course, it’s just the reverse.

Clear, tough-minded people
are the most simple.” ~ Jack Welch

June 11, 2022
Do not worry about the numbers

For many years, I worked at an institution that prided itself in its competency-based model, which then drove data-based decision making. It’s easy to draw the A to B on this one. Faculty were held responsible for the completion data of their students: how many students completed the course within 6 months. The data was direct and succinct. But my leadership policy was to not hold my faculty responsible for this data. I would de-emphasize this when the topic came up.

Actually, nearly every year, I was known for saying this:

There was a reporter once that asked Mother Teresa, “We always seem to have the problem of poverty. We never escape it. What can we do about it?” She replied “Turn to the person closest to you, and love them.”

Of course, this is a story, based on her lifetime of interviews, actions, and what she shared of her beliefs. But I find the story rings true so I don’t blush in sharing it.

And I would encourage my faculty in this way…

“Don’t worry about what your completion rates are. Students will be students.

But the email at the top of your Inbox–that is the person closest to you. Help them. When your phone rings, and it is a student struggling and they can’t understand how to be successful, that is the person closest to you. Help them. When it is your turn on a Help Line and a call is routed to you, take the call. Help them. Help them like they are the only student you’ve ever met. This is how you approach numbers. If you do this with each student that appears in front of you, I’ll provide cover from every other force at this university. I’ll provide resources, time off, and respect for your work.”

And none of my faculty were ever fired or let go for their performance numbers.

Indeed in the 14 years I was at that university, the Satisfactory Academic Performance rate (SAP) never moved from 72%. Students always completed, on average across the entire university, about ¾ of their work each term.

And I’ll share this tidbit with you–just to show you that it’s all fine to boast but…was there really any danger?

Yes. Every year I was a leader, I only met half of my goals. 50%. Every year I submitted my own performance evaluation, I’d laugh and feel like I was tossing my own “oh well” paper into an inbox of some class I just would not master. That 72% held firm. We weren’t going to move it and I wasn’t going to make my faculty die on a battlefield that we were not going to win. It was an infinite game and I played to keep my faculty going (to stay employed) so that they would keep helping students, so that students would keep being successful. Yeah, not every student, we could not save them all. But we did not fall on our swords so that performance numbers would go up. The courses were hard and we were teaching math and science to non-majors. Said another way, our student could not have cared less for the material. Just passing was their goal and I respected that.

(Another leadership rule, after EVERYONE IS A LEADER and GROW UP MORE LEADERS is PICK YOUR BATTLES. Don’t fight all of them. This one—the numbers, the data—wasn’t worth fighting. So I refused.)

Want to learn more? I suggest you research The Infinite Game, by Simon Sinek, research the phrase “deficit thinking” (and if you like, the short rabbit trail of “growth mindset”) and of course, there is much more about this in the Holy Bible, if you care to venture in. Oh, and do the math on what I just wrote; I was doing this years before the 2018 video I just referenced. I was doing the Infinite Game play before it was called that. In my book, it’s just called leadership.

Photo by Ahmet Sali on Unsplash

March 9, 2022
You gotta suit up for them all

Photo by Brandon Mowinkel on Unsplash

Heather’s Book on Leadership*, Chapter: Leadership Lessons from Sports, page 297:

“You win some,
you lose some,
and some get rained out,
but you gotta suit up for them all.”
~ J. Askenberg

Book
does not exist, but if it, it would have this chapter and another one
dedicated entirely what can be learned from Captain Jean-Luc Picard
(Yes, I know he has a leadership twitter account).

But THIS quote, I
used to think about when my faculty were beat up by students over and
over again. Students would push every button my faculty had, bringing
them to the edge. And the next day, I needed my faculty to get up and go
to work again. Suit up again. Those were the faculty I
hired. I hired 30 of them in my time.

The point here is to put the right person in the right job. The right person is the person who will get up and go to work the day after they’ve just had their worst day at work.

January 27, 2022