RWL #196
talent v. hard work, innovation, & courage
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! The last several weeks have been so hectic, I haven’t had a chance to get out on the water, but I did yesterday. We had a day in the low 70’s and it was just perfect. One of the nice things about fall is it’s easier to catch the sunrise or sunset on the water.
Before school started, I was pretty sure we would not make it through to Thanksgiving, which is when UNH plans to go to full remote for the remainder of the semester. It is a credit to the students and the administration that things seem to be going well and now I would place my money on the probability that we will make it.
On a personal note, I have submitted my tenure application. For those of you who are not academics, it’s fairly standard in academia that you get hired as an assistant professor (just a rank, you don’t assist anyone), and you are on a probationary period of 6 years. During your final year of your probation you turn in an application to be promoted to associate professor and receive tenure. There are a series of committees who review your application, which consists of a narrative (mine was 50 pages), all of your publications (not included in the aforementioned 50 pages), and other evidence of service. Ultimately tenure is granted (or not) by the provost, who is sort of like the COO (in charge of all the academics) of the university. A few of you will be getting requests for input into my application from the committees - so thank you in advance for your responses. And thank you to those of you who filled out the survey for this newsletter. It’s a slow process, I’ll get the answer on April 1st, so it’s out of my hands now.
In the meantime, enjoy this week’s links!
Stay well and stay safe.
Read
What: NYT, Eddie Van Halen, Virtuoso of the Rock Guitar, Dies at 65
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/arts/music/eddie-van-halen-dead.html
Why: I remember reading somewhere that the music that happens to be popular when you are a teenager makes an indelible imprint on your musical tastes for the rest of your life. Van Halen’s 1984 came out when I was 14, right at the moment when I was defining my tastes. I remember being at high school dances and trying to do air splits like David Lee Roth when “Jump” would come on. Me and every other adolescent boy trying to impress the girls (who were not generally impressed). My girlfriend (I did eventually get one, and she later became my wife) and I saw the Sammy Hagar incarnation of Van Halen (“Van Hagar”) at Monsters of Rock in 1988 right after we graduated from high school.
My two closest friends in high school were trying to learn guitar and I remember many deep discussions in my basement about who was the greatest guitarist ever. Eddie Van Halen was always at the top, so it was really more of a discussion about who was second or third. Indeed, we were not alone. According to the article:
Mr. Van Halen was most widely revered by his peers for perfecting the technique of two-handed tapping on the guitar neck. That approach allowed him to add new textures, and percussive possibilities, to his instrument, while also making its six strings sound as expressive as a piano’s 88 keys or as changeable as a synthesizer. He received patents for three guitar devices he had created. In 2012, Guitar World Magazine ranked him No. 1 on its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”
I tend to think of innovation as coming from two machanisms. The first is cross-discipline appropriation, when the innovator draws on knowledge from another discipline and mixes it with her/his own discipline. The second is deepening in one’s own discipline, taking what is already there and exploring it, perfecting it, and making something old sound new. Whereas I think some earlier innovators like Elvis were engaged in cross-disciplinary innovation, it seems Eddie Van Halen was of the deepening kind. He blew through the limits of what people thought they could do with rock guitar to create something new and beautiful.
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What: The New Yorker, THE WHITE DARKNESS - A solitary journey across Antarctica.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness
Why: This is the story of Henry Worsley, a former British Special Forces officer, who attempted to solo walk across Antarctica unsupported in 2015. When I say unsupported, I mean he pulled a sled with all of his supplies on it for the 1,000 mile journey.
I think a lot about models of courage and leadership. Worsley was a fan of Ernest Schackleton who attempted a team crossing in the early 20th century and failed, but made a daring escape and later rescue of his team. He’s perhaps more famous for having failed and how he failed, than he would have if he had succeeded, mostly because of the courage and leadership he displayed in saving his men. Shackleton’s courage and leadership were examples that Worsley tried to live up to, both as a soldier and later as an explorer.
I think this article does a great job exploring the physically courageous leadership model. It is the model most commonly associated with the military (and action-adventure movies). Even if you don’t identify with this leadership model, it’s worth reading and contemplating, and comparing to leaders you admire, and your own leadership. How does courage and endurance play into your model of leadership? What about dedication to a singular purpose?
The whole article is worth reading.
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What: Outside, Why Experts Are Exploring Climbing as a Form of Therapy
https://www.outsideonline.com/2412558/bouldering-psychotherapy
Why: I worked in healthcare for 23 years and I had never heard for recreational therapy (RT) until I arrived here at UNH where I have colleagues who run bachelor’s and master’s degrees in RT. I think it is an underrated treatment modality for a variety of issues. Northeast Passage, a non-profit run by a graduate of our RT program and now part of my College, runs a variety of RT programs, as well as adaptive sports. One of the RT programs they have is flyfishing for veterans with PTSD. I think this is in the spirit of this article - coupling together an activity of interest to the patient with therapy. According to the article, there is evidence that the RT approach with bouldering is as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
From the article:
Climbing can bring about mindfulness, the in-the-moment focus that Pracki experienced, which is key to treating depression, explains Katharina Luttenberger, a psychology researcher at the University of Erlangen in Germany. It’s also objective—you either top out or you don’t. That makes it harder for those struggling with self-esteem to discredit themselves, as you can’t simply send a route because you were lucky. The sport is loaded with metaphors, too. “A depressed patient needs to find a hold again in life, or you have to climb out of your depression, you have to let go to move on,” says Luttenberger.
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Watch
What: TEDx, Forget Talent and Get to Work
https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_lucas_forget_talent_and_get_to_work
Why: I’ve been a fan of Suzanne Lucas, AKA, the Evil HR Lady , for a couple of years (kind of since I realized I do research in human resources development - that’s another story). I highly recommend her blog. I’ve shared at least one of her posts on this newsletter in the past. She has great insight for managers about HR problems.
In this short TED talk, she criticizes the trend toward “talent management” in human resources. She defines talent as innate, and makes the point that without a lot of hard work, talent is pretty useless. If you read the Eddie Van Halen obit, you get the idea that Eddie had talent, but worked relentlessly to take that raw potential and make it into what it became.
If our hiring processes over-emphasize talent, or at least current performance capability, rather than potential, we miss out on a lot of potentially great employees. That might actually be a little circular, because talent is by definition potential. But the larger point is recognizing that organizations should consider whether someone is willing to put in the work to become the employee they need, rather than trying to go out and find the exact employee they need, ready formed.
Listen
What: The President’s In-Box, The Road to a COVID-19 Vaccine, WIth Luciana L. Borio
https://thepresidentsinbox.podbean.com/e/the-road-to-a-covid-19-vaccine-with-luciana-l-borio/
Why: This is an excellent, non-political discussion of where we are with the vaccine process. There’s a fair amount of basic explanation of vaccines and how they work, which I found interesting as well.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
See you next Friday!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
'It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.' - Gandalf (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)