Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! Seven years ago today I arrived in New Hampshire to begin the second act of my career here at UNH - it’s hard to believe it has already been seven years. The kids I taught during my first semester will be turning 30 soon. That’s kind of crazy. It’s been an amazing ride so far - not without its ups and downs - but I do believe this is where I was meant to be. It took a long time to get here, but I’m grateful.
So speaking of figuring out where you are meant to be, I saw a bunch of you at least looked at the personal SWOT analysis I “assigned” you last week. So, did you try to do the exercise? I’ve made a couple of edits to the file, so if you haven’t checked it out (or even if you have), take a look again. There is a blank analysis you can use on the last slide.
I didn’t do a personal SWOT analysis before I decided to retire from the Army and come to UNH. But if I had, I think it would have supported the decision. I did do the analysis recently to help me think through what post-tenure will look like. When organizations go through a strategic planning process, an important part of the exercise is to get focused on what is important, and to set aside the things the organization is not going to try to do. One of my Read recommendations this week is for a Gail Golden’s book, Curating Your Life. More below - but one of her key points is you have to make hard choices about what matters and what you can accept being bad at. A personal SWOT analysis can help you with that.
If you don’t want to take time to do all five parts now, I’d suggest meditating on the Strengths portion. I thought I’d take a few words this week and talk about that part. I really like the question, “What do you keep coming back to?” Even as a college-aged person, I think I could have seen some of the patterns emerging in my life, and I suspect you can, too. Helpful here is to try the Sparketype personality test I talked about back in RWL #248. Were you someone who played competitive sports and thrived on pushing yourself and being part of a team? Maybe you played an instrument and thrived on pursuing perfection through repetition and practice? For me, I think it was a need to create experiences and connections for people, and through that, help people be successful. I really loved (and obviously still love) exploring ideas and sharing them with people. I can look back to when I was a kid in junior high, and I became obsessed with D&D and other role playing games (Stranger Things is my childhood, less the monsters). I most often enjoyed being the Dungeon Master - the person who created the world and facilitated the story that the other participants engaged in. There were books of rules you had to study and learn in order to play and I loved the research process, but also the endless possibilities. A great gaming session was when everyone felt they had been challenged and maybe grown a little. Fast forward 20 years, as a comptroller and chief financial officer, I was obsessed with rules and possibilities, and trying to figure out what was important. That’s pretty common with finance-types, but what made me effective was my desire to create connection - I spent a lot of time listening to the people in the operational departments and helping them to be successful. While I was working as a CFO, I also ran a leadership book club, and I taught classes on how to use Excel and Access to do analytical work to anyone in the organization who wanted to learn it. Fast forward another 10 years and I was teaching.
Looking back, it sounds inevitable. I think I’m good at analyzing complicated things and explaining them to others. I think I’m pretty good at making that process interesting. A big part of why I’m good at teaching is because I care about people’s success and I work hard to connect with students. Students can tell that about a teacher pretty quickly, and I think it helps them learn. But there were other ways I could have used my strengths, and if other opportunities had presented themselves, I might not have become a teacher.
I have heard it said that we have the causality between passion and success reversed. Most of the time we are told to pursue our passion, and success will follow. But in fact, success tends to breed passion. Success creates a dopamine hit for our brain - and we naturally want more of it. If you play to your strengths, you are more likely to have success. And repeated success tends to develop into a passion. We tend to come back to activities we were successful at, which is why the question, “What do you keep coming back to?” is useful for identifying your strengths. You probably already know what they are.
I think next week I’ll talk about weaknesses. Not as much fun, but important for doing the strategic work we all need to be doing on our lives.
Have a great week and enjoy the links!
(pic above is from College Woods on UNH. We had about 8 inches of snow Thursday night.)
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Read
What: Gail Golden, Curating Your Life: Ending the Struggle for Work-Life Balance (book)
https://www.amazon.com/Curating-Your-Life-Struggle-Work-Life/dp/B08CVTYFJZ/
Why: Golden is a psychotherapist who, after 20 years of providing therapy, transitioned to executive coaching. From the book, she says you have to do three things in order to have a “beautifully curated life” - learn to “say no” to things that don’t add value to your life, accept that you will be mediocre at most things, and pick just a few things to be great at. We have limited time, and limited energy. You have to focus that energy on what is important - and pour your energy into those things you want to be great at.
I really liked the book - it was a quick read, but I think most of her advice boils down to these three points.
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What: Ishiguro Kazuo, Klara and the Sun (book)
https://www.amazon.com/Klara-Sun-Ishiguro-Kazuo/dp/057136490X/
Why: I loved The Remains of the Day (if you liked Downton Abby, you will like this book), but had not read any of his other books. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017. His stories are about connection and service. His writing is beautifully understated. In Klara and the Sun, he continues to explore these ideas by creating a world where children have AI robots as “friends”. This is a quiet novel without a lot of external action, but it is a powerful reflection on service.
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What: Bronnie Ware, Regrets of the Dying
https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/
Why: Ware is a former palliative care nurse. She summarizes the things she learned from her time with dying patients in five points. This is a 5-minute read, but it will help you think about what is important. From the post:
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
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Watch
What: TED Talk, Warren Valdmanis: What makes a job "good" -- and the case for investing in people (10 min)
Why: Valdmanis makes the case that creating good jobs for workers creates firm value. His definition of a good job:
A good job is where a worker, one, is fairly treated. Two, has a promising future. Three, feels psychologically safe. And four, has a sense of purpose.
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Listen
What: Health Leader Forge, Anita Tucker, PhD, MSW, LICSW, Department of Social Work, University of New Hampshire
https://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2022/01/anita-tucker-phd-msw-licsw-department.html
Why: My latest podcast is with my colleague in the Social Work Department, Dr. Anita Tucker. Anita is a leader in the use of adventure in group therapy. She takes people into the wilderness, or on ropes courses, or even just other fun exercises to help people work through mental health challenges. She literally wrote the book on Adventure Therapy, and we talk about the book toward the end of the podcast. She’s really cool. I think you’ll really like this interview.
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What: Good Life Project, How to Accomplish Big Things | The 2022 Plan (70 min)
https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/how-to-accomplish-big-things-the-2022-plan/
Why: Good Life Project podcast is the brainchild of Jonathan Fields, who also created the Sparketype tool I mentioned above. I have been listening to his podcast since I first mentioned him to you back in RWL #248. If you have a big project planned for this new year, I recommend listening to this podcast. Even if you don’t have something specific in mind yet, he gives a good process for creating the scaffolding for success.
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://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next week!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Associate 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
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picaso