a view of Worldview

Worldview is a popular notion used by scholars and practitioners to encompass individuals' and collective cognitive orientations of various aspects of our world, such as science, religion, government, business, etc. At its very core, worldview is no more than the sense-making people have of themselves and the world around them, the perspectives gained from perception and interpretation. 

While there are many influences on people's sense-making like personality, experience, beliefs, human biases, and culture, there is an interesting overarching dichotomy that seems to skew the influences of all the other levels of sense-making to one end of the spectrum or another. How anyone processes the tension between whether I am an individual or whether I am part of a collective will go a long way in determining worldview.

Interestingly, the influences on how an individual resolves this tension are both trait driven and culturally driven. Individual personalities differ in the need to be independent or the need to be affiliated. Ambient influences, such as culture, are also powerful forces for individualism or collectivism. Generally speaking, while both are contributors to sense-making, the one that will have the most influence on worldview is the one that is the strongest.

For instance, when you look at the picture above, do you primarily see a body and a tree, or do you see arms, legs, head, etc. and branches and leaves. The reality is that both exist and both have function. You can focus on your hand and make it stronger, better, well if it has been sick, and so forth. When we have to rake leaves we do not think much about the tree, but the presence of leaves or branches. Yet at the same time, the body functions and the tree has presence. The body accomplishes tasks and the tree gives shade.

Thus, the worldview of individuals will largely be shaped by their tendencies to focus on the parts or the whole. A good example is making sense of unity. If someone has more of an individual worldview, then unity is seen as equality of opportunity. If someone has a more collective worldview, then unity is viewed as equality of outcome. Unity is really exercising each individual part of the collective in its own unique way for the benefit (glory) of the collective. Neither extreme is better than the other. When your worldview comes closer to a perfect blend that you function as an individual and at the same time you function as a community, then your worldview will come closer to the truth of who you are meant to be. You have a personal identity and you have a social identity. Learning to make sense of yourself and the world around you through a lense that brings both into focus is the worldview you should strive for.

Just saying ....  

Sex and Motivational Strategies

Don't get excited yet, when I refer to sex I am referring to the male/female trait, not the act itself, With more and more females engaged in all kinds of enterprises, the question of whether one's sex matters in how individuals are motivated. If so, what should we know? Which strategies work better for men and which strategies work better for women? Keep in mind these are general tendencies recognizing that humans are quite complex and there are many factors that ultimately affect what we do.

Studies reveal that men are likely to be more competitive than women. While in individual cases this may not be true, the view of competitive achievement is still different for men and women. Men tend to want to have opportunities to compare their whatever to others. While women can be competitive, they are likely to focus more on whether they are included in the contest and how others view them than whether they actually are winning.

Within the broad sex influence on how individuals view competitive situations, there exist a personality trait that captures the competitiveness of the individual regardless of sex. So a male could be high or low in competitiveness and a female can also be high or low. Thus, what we have is a 2x2 matrix with four possibilities for motivational strategies.

A male who is high in competitiveness will give high levels of effort when there is a performance context in which his performance is compared to others and rewards are individual. It would be difficult for this male to be motivated to collaborate with others for team performance.

A male who is low in competitiveness will be sensitive to the fact that his performance is being compared to others and would likely withhold his effort if there is too much focus on competition. In this case this male would be more likely to put forth effort if emphasis was on team rewards.

A female who is high in competitiveness will give high levels of effort in a performance context when individual achievement is recognized but being a part of the competition is the major focus. A highly competitive female is more likely to be motivated by an "if one wins, all wins" strategy.

A female who is low in competitiveness is not motivated much at all in a context where individual performance is emphasized. This female is largely interested in just belonging to the team and experiencing the journey together. These individuals are motivated the most by rewards for cooperation and collaboration.

These individual differences based on sex and motivational traits are what makes leading a team so interesting. It certainly informs selection of team members based on the type of strategy to be used and shows why a "one size fits all" approach to motivational strategies is problematic.

This is .....

What's so great about winning?

Throughout history winning has had quite an appeal to individuals in society. Recently cynics of success and advocates for "everyone should win" has challenged the idea of competition. This perspective is in contrast to the principle that I grew up with, "if you cannot fail, then you cannot succeed." Individuals vary in their trait characteristic of competitiveness so everyone doesn't strive to win with the same fervor. Some compete with themselves while others prefer to avoid performance settings because they fear losing or being seen as less than competent. Let me offer an alternative view of winning - maybe its the inspirational story of a person striving in extraordinary ways and overcoming obstacles to win that makes success compelling.

Case in point.

Jason Day just won the PGA Championship. He won in historic fashion, but what caught the imagination of the audience? It was his story. His father died when he was a child and he struggled to stay out of trouble. His mother sold her house so he could attend a boarding school where he met his now friend, father figure, and caddie. His story includes many flirtations with winning major championships, finishing in the top 10 nine times. Had he not won the PGA, he would have been the first in history of golf to have or share the 54 hole lead in a major three times in a year without winning. People who do not even follow golf were drawn to his victory, not because he won, but because of his story.

We can conclude from this example and many others that chasing success is the story that matters. Obtaining success is just a validation of the chase. People soon forget who won what, but people remember the compelling stories of individuals overcoming obstacles to achieve in meaningful ways. Everyone can't win a national championship, but everyone can set goals and accomplish them. The story of winning for each individual always involves over coming obstacles to get to the desired destination.

Yet, how often is our story defined by good intentions, like short lived New Year's resolutions. Setting goals is the easy part, staying on tract in our chase is the tough part. Like Jason Day, the story that unfolds in chasing your goal has a better chance of success when their is leadership, an advocate or a coach to challenge and guide the journey, giving you objective feedback and advice that you can trust.

Everyone cannot always find or afford a coach, so my colleague and I have developed The Concierge to help you pursue your life's goals, whether personal or career. The Concierge gets to know you personally, how you are motivated and how you see the challenges of achieving a specific goal. From these insights The Concierge provides you and those who are helping you suggestions on how to overcome your obstacles. Your personality and the context associated with your goal become unique characters in your story. The role these characters play determines how your story comes out. Ultimately, this gives you more control to move past "good intentions." One thing is for sure, your story will become a better story if you have The Concierge by your side as your coach.

Check us out @ www.lmxconcierge.com

Making sense of Heaven and the Heavenlies

My cousin and others have recommended the book "Appointments with HEAVEN". This book is self told stories of Dr Reggie Anderson. Reggie grew up in a Christian family in rural Alabama in the sixties, but fell away from his faith in high school and college due to questions he had about God resulting from tragedies in his family. God never quit pursuing him and he came back to faith as he completed medical school, married, and began practicing medicine outside Nashville, Tenn.

As a physician his stories focus mainly on experiencing life and death of patients where he had personal observations of heaven and hell. In addition to his own senses of sight and sound as patients died, some actually related similar experiences as they had been clinically dead, only to return to life to share with him their own experiences.

He recalls occurrences of light, fragrance, and warmth as the veil opens and patients pass to the other side. In this context Dr Anderson sees Heaven as a destination of the soul of the believer, where it leaves this body ("shell") and is "birthed" into a body that is restored to perfect health and joy. In Heaven Christians are reunited with loved ones who had gone on before them. The details of Heaven as a destination are never clear and he admits they may be different for different people. These encounters with Heaven are real for Reggie and more pronounced than his experiences on this side of the veil. He contrasted the sights and smells of Christians with non Christians at death, convincing him of the realities of hell.

While Heaven as a destination is the book's headline, much of the book is how God provides Reggie with guidance and protection as he engages life and patients in chronic situations. His return from atheism occurred as God visited him in a dream providing him healing from his family tragedy, and a road map for his marriage and career. While his struggle with questions about God never were completely resolved, God continually provided him sufficiently for his faith.

These experiences is what i have called "the provisions and privileges of the Heavenlies," a notion i received from Dallas Willard's book "Divine Conspiracy" and my personal study of Scripture. I have been an advocate in my later years that Christians have access to Heaven before this body deteriorates and dies thru faith. I was pleased to see that eventually Reggie recognized this as much as he had been inspired to relate Heaven as a destination to the reader.

Late in the book he says, "When we are young, we often get the impression from adults that heaven is light years away, off in space somewhere, or at the very least, up in the clouds. ... We often think of heaven as an end point or a final stop on a journey. We look at life on earth as if it begins and ends here, thinking that heaven somehow lies outside all that. I view it differently. During our lives here on earth, I don;t believe we're walking toward heaven - I believe heaven walks alongside us."

I couldn't have said this better myself and certainly worth pondering ....

From Ephesians - where we reside as believers

"Blessed (lavish our affections) be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed (bestowed on) us with every spiritual blessing (provisions) in the heavenly places in Christ."

"But God. who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us, raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

Lessons on motivation from Fitbit

I have been rationalizing away my eating and exercise habits for several years with no real results. While I value good health and appearance, motivation to do the things I know to do has been lacking. The study of motivation finds that knowledge of what is right and the value of doing something are not enough to motivate behavior. Another facet of what makes something motivational is what we call saliency of the behavior. However, saliency is quite a difficult notion to explain and understand. Simply taken, the saliency of something is the extent that thing has one's attention. However, there are many ways for something to become salient. For a behavior to be salient it generally must be seen as relevant, useful, interesting, enjoyable, not risky, comfortable, or so on.

Recently my daughter gave me a Fitbit for Father's Day. I had never asked for one. In fact I knew very little about it and was not thinking about changing my exercise and eating practices. Here is what immediately happened.

I found myself taking walks when I would rather do something else.
I took a little bit longer walks.
I found myself running in place or up and down the stairs before bedtime if I didn't have enough steps.

Why? One reason is that simply measuring my behavior made it more salient to me in several ways. Accountability for my behavior became greater. My daughter and other friends who had it asked to be fitbit friends, which mean we could see each other's steps. Here comes more visibility, competition and challenge, another source of saliency. Then my son comes to visit for the summer and my excitement about fitbit was contagious and he goes and buys one. More attention (saliency) on my exercise because our bond in a mutual practice led to greater commitment.

My son then says he really wanted fitbit to track what he eats, calorie intake. I had not thought of that but working with him on how to use fitbit in that way made tracking calories appealing. Now we both were obsessed with measuring everything we eat. Immediately my eating practices changed. I cut out many different foods or eating occasions because now I could see the health risks and trade-offs.

Without seeking a change in my healthcare behavior, fitbit caused exercising and better eating to be more salient to me. While the value of good health thru exercise and diet hasn't changed, behavior has changed because saliency has changed. This example clearly illustrates the role of fitbit in saliency and the role of saliency in motivation.

If you can grasp the role of saliency in motivation, you will be considerably more effective at getting others to change their behavior. Hopefully the example of fitbit in my life can enhance your understanding and thus your effectiveness.

At least it is

Thoughts on The Summit

My grandson Lewis recently attended a fantastic conference called Summit. It involved more than 30 hours of lecture and even more small group discussion. The Summit covered many thought provoking topics that define Christian World View, such as the Church, comparative religions, creation, truth, Consciousness, good and evil, bioethics, economics, marriage, God's will, among others. The theme is that "ideas have consequences". The key point is that our perspective determines what see, so what shapes our perspective?

While the blue dots in this pic are the same size, the one surrounded by smaller red dots lots bigger. Such it is when we try to make sense of things. Our perspective is shaped by the ideas around us that we have. Our perspectives can create for us illusions if we do not have them anchored in what is true.

The Summit is a fairly exhaustive survey of the key assumptions that Christian scholars and theologians have developed over many years. While I cannot discuss each one, I will offer my thoughts on the ones I think are fundamental and where I believe the mainstream apologists are either incomplete or misguided. Below is a blow by blow critique of a few of these with order not expressing extent of importance.

John Stonestreet offers a discussion on "How we lost our minds". This is the classical depiction of history from pre Modernism (500 - 1700 AD), Modernism (1700 - 1960's) and post modernism (since the 1960's). While this is a constructive view of cultural influences on sense-making, I have found that much of what is explained about us in the New Testament is really no different from us today. This suggests a lack of progress or decay across time and speaks to a stable trait in human kind. I call this the Carnal Mind. Its not something we have lost. It is something that came with the Fall and exist until redemption. I wrote about it in my book called "Stuck in Stinkin Thinkin".

J P Moreland deals with "Knowledge, truth, and the Christian mind." He has some really good things to say about truth. he defines it as "the correspondence or matching of thought with reality." In this sense one is highly dependent on their thought in discerning truth (ex. if everyone thinks something is green when it is really yellow, the truth is its green.). He separates truth from reality (the actual attributes of something). I am a little disappointed it what I think he is saying about absolute truth. He gives an epistemological notion, "when one is 100% certain that one's view is true and there is no possibility of being mistaken". I would define absolute truth as a reality that is independent of our personal thought.

Moreland also talks about identity and consciousness. He says two things (A and B) are identical, then what ever is true of A is true of B and there is nothing true of B that is not true of A. He then distinguishes identify from cause and effect and co-dependence. These are helpful when we make sense of our identity in Christ. Moreland says our consciousness has 5 facets: feeling, thinking, choosing, beliefs, and needs. This is interesting because he adds two facets to what science says is our psychology (mind, emotion, and will). I do take exception to the fact he noted will as "free will". I have covered this ad nauseum. He then defines soul as our consciousness. I like this and it aligns with my definition of soul, anything in our self that cannot be discovered by a physical examination. I am now thinking why identity is not one of our consciousness facets. Good thing to reflect on.

 Greg Koukl discusses evil and suffering and the goodness of God. He positions this topic that for mankind, belief in God is kind of a Sophie's Dilemma, the best of two not so great options. I found this to be a major problem in our society where people are "evaluating" to choose Christ as whether its the best of many options. Paul found this in his ministries as ofetn he was met with philosophical debate. Koukl then makes some good points about evil and then some omissions I feel could be helpful. He first says "evil is something but its not some thing" (cute). The point is that evil is a reality. It has power and consequences. However, it is not a thing, but rather the absence of something, namely God. "Evil is where goodness is missing." So, if evil is not some thing, it was not created and not an explanation for is existence. Thus, it is error to say God created evil. I would have added to Koukl's presentation some thoughts about how we determine if something is "good". Basically, I would set forth the assumption (based on Scripture) that good is only "what is from God." The typical way we "determine truth" about good and evil is how it affects us or someone else based on our crtiteria. In other words, the worldly (carnal) perspective of "good" is circumstantially based.

Scott Waller discussed Economics. All I can get from the notes is his discussion of the impact of debt. This is disappointing in that there is a classic perspective about the intersection of Christianity and the free markets that young peeps really need to discuss. Within this discussion should be the role of various institutions in meeting societies needs (I discuss this in blog on purpose of business). In section on evil, Koukl claims God has given the institutions of family church and government to "lessen the impact of evil in the world." This is an interesting point in that evil is defined as a God void. I am not sure how these address evil. Institutions can address human needs (not evil), but there are others, such as for profit businesses based on economic forces, that God has ordained to meet human needs. of course, corruption hits all institutions and flaws their mission to meet human needs.

Jeff Myers includes some discussions on Leadership and being strategic. This is an area I have spend years studying and developing thought so i was naturally curious at his approach. I was fairly disappointed. He stated some myths about goals, which I found to be incomplete and actually incorrect. being strategic does not require goals. He states that being strategic is "organizing your life around God's plan." This causes people to keep searching for "what is God's plan for my life" and generally engenders guilt and frustration as we seldom can hone in on such a plan. I find being strategic is being committed to principles aligned with the truth that leads to success. Holding every decision captive to those principles in the moments we have to make them (decisions). I have found that being strategic is faithfully playing out what God put in us, without seeking the security or acceptance of the world.

One thing I found that was missing that I believe is fundamental to all sense-making about God and our relationship with Him - The Sovereignty of God was Collaborative destiny. This distinction has separated Christians throughout the Ages. An understanding of where a core assumption falls along that continuum has a significant impact on how an individual makes sense of most everything else.

I suspect many, if not all, of these scholars and I generally do not differ on the substance as much as how we choose to explain it and what we choose to emphasize. I found some great stuff that will be helpful to Lewis as he matures in his faith. However, I found a few spots I would love to have a shot at with him :-)

CSR: fact or fiction?

Wal-mart and Sears pull all products containing any image of the Confederate flag.
"We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer."     Walmart Spokesman

This is not a blog about the merits of the Confederate flag as a symbol of anything, but rather an opportunity to illustrate an important point about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The prevailing thought about CSR is that when a corporation acts in some ethical or moral way, then they are being socially responsible. I contend that when they are acting "moral". businesses are almost always being Politically Correct in order to maintain customers.

Here's the crux of the debate. Are for-profit organizations just an economic agent of shareholders or are they also moral agents of society. The famous Friedman Doctrine posits that for profit business have only a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders as long as they obey the law. Obama has made the statement that businesses are moral agents. Which is it? 

Business ethics is the framework within which society deems an action to be socially responsible, as opposed to being economically motivated. Here's the key to ethics that is often not noticed. For an action to be ethical, the actor must be motivated by the benefit of the action to others at a detriment to themselves. if it is beneficial to the actor, then its economic or self motivated. Further, for an action to be ethical, the action cannot not be governed by law or policy, only the character of the actor.

Applying this to CSR, an action by a business is being socially responsible when society (non shareholder stakeholders) benefits at the expense of the shareholder, otherwise its just a good business decision for the benefit of the shareholders. Conforming to the norms of society in order to be legitimate may be morally aligned actions, but they are motivated by the economic benefit of the investors, not the ethics of management.

So when Wal-mart says they do not want to "offend anyone", is that a moral action that benefits society but reduces returns for shareholders, or is it "good business". Is it a judgment of management that more people will think well of them and remain or become a customer than there will be people who are offended by the removal of the flag, seeing the flag as positive.

Ten years ago or so when CSR was the hot topic, I failed to read an article on a company's CSR that did not ultimately say it was good for the shareholders to take some action for employees or the environment or some other PC movement. Chic-fil-a is famous for not opening on Sundays. is this a moral stance or is it just good business. Truett Cathy used to say it was beneficial in getting good employees and essential to their appeal to consumers. It was not to the detriment of investors.

Its perfectly fine if a business wishes to make decisions based on what is PC in order to communicate the image they wish to the market. Its not OK to "toot their horn" that they are being morally responsible. The fact that these actions concerning the flag are all occurring around a highly publicized, emotional event somewhat supports that CSR is PC. SO, why don't "we" (the business community) call it "our PC policy" for branding rather than pretending "we" are something we are not (moral agents).

Certainly worth pondering for all executive teams ....