Hello all! The weekend before Thanksgiving I got to attend the IEEE Women in Engineering USA East Leadership Forum. Here are my notes from some of my favorite talks at the event.
A) The Neuroscience of Inclusion
This talk was given by Dr. Asma Abuzaakouk, a neuroscientist at the Mitre Corporation. She started by stating that Inclusion + Diversity + Psychological Safety = Creativity & Innovation, and that there was hard science to backup the imperative to have a culture of inclusion.
She described how human brains "feel before we think", because the outermost layer of our brain is the Reptilian fight or flight response (it takes 8 ms for a response to be generated by your reptilian layer), followed by the Limbic response (which controls needs like hunger, thirst, reproduction, etc.) followed by the Neocortex (which takes 40ms to generate a response). She phrased it that human brains are hardwired to scan for threats first, and not reward, and a response to the perceived threat will be out of our mouths before our neocortex has processed the information.
She argued that social exclusion creates a state of threat, impeding the best possible thinking from employees, and showed some scans indicating that social exclusion lights up the same part of the brain as physical pain or threats. She described some ways to control the three types of chemical "brain messengers" - Norepinephrine, Dopamine, and Serotonin - to decrease the sense of threat:
1) Breathe intentionally - this slows your reactions and allows you to actually formulate a response
2) Engage in Appreciation/Gratitude - this produces positive brain signals, countering threat state
3) Engage in short tasks - this occupies the outer layers of your brain and gives the neocortex processing time
4) Shift your questions - ask what outcome you want and focus on outcome rather than threat input
She also noted that humans will mirror the neuron patterns of other humans when engaged in conversation, and that it's faster (i.e. easier) to mirror the neural pathways of your in-group, so bias is biologically inevitable - but that we can intentionally counter those unintentional neural shortcuts to create an environment where everyone can do their best thinking.
B) Leadership Secrets of an ex-CIO
This talk was given by Dean Lane, a four time CIO, military veteran, and book author (https://www.amazon.com/Chief-Information-Officers-Body-Knowledge/dp/1118043251).
He opened his talk by asking how many of us self-identified as managers, and when only about a third of the audience raised their hands, said, "you're all managers - you all managed to get here on time!" He then challenged us that true leadership would take it to a different level, and had ten characteristics that could move you from a leader to a manager. They were:
1- SPIRIT, a vital principle that gives life to organisms and decides temper, especially when animated
2 - MOTIVATION, the incentive to do well, to consistently play hard and rarely admit defeat
3 - INTEGRITY, firm adherence to a code of values, "doing the right thing even when no one looks"
4 - PROBLEM SOLVING, finding a solution by examining, assessing, advising, acting, and assuring
5 - TEAMWORK, work done by several associates, each doing a part but subordinating personal preference or prominence to the efficiency of the whole
6 - DECISIVENESS, inferring on the basis of evidence the final judgement on what to do ("she who hesitates is lost")
7 - SENSE OF HUMOR, the ability to say funny things and see the funny side of things
8 - ATTITUDE, a mental position regardless of fact, your feelings or emotions towards fact (Optimism vs. Pessimism)
9 - DETERMINATION, firm intention to achieve a specific desired end
10 - TIME MANAGEMENT, managing what gets done in a day and prioritizing what you need to do
C) Social Media - Toxic or Tonic?
This talk was given by Veronica Wendt, a researcher and educator at the National Defense University.
She opened her talk with a brief history of information exchange in human history, highlighting how the printing press (in the 1400s) changed communication from one-to-one spoken word to one-to-many with the advent of broadcast news. From then to now, mostly communication has evolved as a broadcast capability, built around trust agencies like the government or corporate news organizations. From home radios (1930s) to home telephones (1940s) and home TVs (1950s), all technological development had improved the speed with which you could have one to one or one to many conversations, and you could always assume you could trust the party on the other end (either because they were your friend or because they were a trusted organization given permission to broadcast). When home computers and web browsers were developed in the 1980s and 1990s, the nature of communication changed. At this point, we no longer had to worry about being in the same place at the same time to communicate (as with telephones) and could no longer trust the people on the other side of communication. The web shifted us from one-to-many to many-to-many communications.
She showed a clip from a 1999 (twenty years old!) David Bowie interview, where he predicted this future. She defined information (facts provided to learn about something or someone), disinformation (false information intended to mislead) and propaganda (misleading information used to promote a political cause). She then cited the MIT study "How Lies Spread Online" (https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/how-lies-spread-online/) and talked about cascading of different types of information/disinformation/propaganda occurs. This study proved that a lie spreads six times faster than the truth online, based on the following principles of disinformation: dismissing the truth as false, distracting from the truth with lies, distorting the true information, dismaying the audience, and dividing the audience.
At this point, she provided a series of countermeasures to disinformation:
1 - self assess your online behavior, how likely you are to click and why
2 - recognize what the space is, and what it can be, when online
3 - acknowledge the power of algorithms to sway you
4 - add some unpredictability to your digital patterns
5 - acknowledge the addictive nature of social media
6 - choose your platforms deliberately
She closed her talk with some stories of social media "bright spots", like the online WIE forums, and encouraged us to be the bright spot, realizing that as an individual, we should all view how our behavior (choosing to engage with someone online or not,) sets the tome of the whole ecosystem.
D) Connect to Lead - Human Skills for Future Ready Leadership
This talk was given by Rachel Druckenmiller of Unmuted Life
Rachel's talk started by highlighting how we are more connected digitally than ever, and how that leads to less overall human intimacy. She challenged us that our leadership needed to be based on real human connection, and stressed that was not possible with a phone or other devices. She then provided three simple steps to human connection:
1 - Be Conscious. Have self-awareness and be willing to let others expose your blind spots. Understand your skills and the skills or others. Understand how you show up when it comes to stress - are you a turtle (who retreats into a shell and needs some space to process) or a tiger (everyone knows when you are angry, and you need people to have your back and support you)? Be conscious of how you are wired, and buddy up with your opposite.
2 - Be Curious. Everyone you know is carrying an invisible backpack of experiences that effects how they show up to the meeting with you. It's up to you to be curious about what's inside. Notice their load without judgement and listen. Empathy is listening and accepting (without always agreeing) - understanding, recognizing their feelings, and accepting their perspective. She argued that the most under-utilized words as a leader are "tell me more about that?" and that leaders should also be asking about their own opportunities for growth (what's one thing I did well - to build confidence - and one thing I could do differently - to build competence without criticism)
3 - Be Connected. Make other people feel seen. Look for your opportunity to be the difference in someone's life. Bet on yourself - your skills, your humanity, your relationships and experience - and make a moment for someone else.
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Monday, October 7, 2019
On Discipline
I have been thinking a lot about discipline due to triathlon training. For the past several months, have been engaged in almost daily training, and felt a level of guilt when I miss training days. So what motivates me to be so dedicated and disciplined for this, and how can I apply it to other parts of my life? I've come up with three things that I think help with the triathlon discipline, and some examples of how it's helped with other things. It's performance review season at my job while I write this, so I'm thinking some about how it applies there as well.
1) There's An End Date
I think the number one thing that helps my discipline with working out in preparation for the race is that there is an identified end date. I have to be disciplined only up to this point, and a day that I skip is a day that I lose out on and can't make up later - because there's an end date. This can also be described as an exit point. Like when my husband and I were learning to ballroom dance, we took courses ten weeks at a time. At the end of the ten weeks, we'd say, OK, do we sign up for another class, or exit? I think this is most often the problem with commitments, is that we don't make the space to identify evaluation periods and end dates. And without those deadlines, things start to become monotonous and boring and so you skip it, and then your discipline is gone. With regards to performance reviews, setting expectations for someone new on the task - i.e. I need you to work this for at least six months before you make a change - helps set an end date and set expectations, and give you an exit point. It's possible that the end date will come and you'll decide to set a new end date with new goals - like I did my June triathlon and signed up for a September event - but the end date/evaluation point for exit, instead of the long, unending task, makes discipline easier.
2) It's A Measurable Goal
Everyone's heard of making measurable goals. A triathlon is the ultimate measurable goal, because you can measure in distance, and in time to complete, and in how you complete it relative to the other athletes, and what you have to do to get closer to the fastest athletes next time. Three ways to be measurable. Measurable goals are the hardest thing in performance coaching at work, because "doing a good job" is not measurable. Trying to get people to see their goals relative to last year (like time in triathlons) or to stretch themselves farther/take on more work (like distance in triathlons) is helpful. I also have started asking "who is someone here that you'd want to be like in five years? What can you do this next year to get one step closer to where they are?" (like trying to be a triathlete who places in the top of your age group). There's a reason my workplace calls it performance "coaching" - because sport is a good metaphor!
3) Other People Are Involved
I post my triathlon updates to my Instagram stories. I've competed in a race with my friend Dave (though he's significantly faster than I am) and Dave also posts to his Instagram stories. Many of my friends follow me and ask about the training updates. Some of my co-workers are in on it too. This tie to other people is key to keeping me motivated, because I know if I don't, someone will know that I didn't do that thing. This isn't a new theme - I've heard about the power of accountability for years in my evangelical upbringing - but this is something more than accountability because there's an end date (as mentioned) and it's measurable. Also, the people you are involving have to be people you care about, people you won't lie to, and people who encourage rather than discourage you. These relationships are hard to build. They take time. As a supervisor, this is something I have to remember. I've worked for my boss my entire professional career, and I trust him, based on the relationship we've built over five years. I have to work to build that relationship with the people I supervise.
I haven't decided yet if I'm going to do another triathlon. I did three this year, which is two more than I was expecting to do, so I've stretched myself and that made me happy. But I'm achievement driven, and there's another achievement right over that horizon...I just have to swim, bike, and run to get there...stay tuned!
Saturday, August 10, 2019
On Weight Loss
I saw a photo of myself from five years ago recently and couldn't stop thinking about it, so I wanted to put some thought behind it. I had a conversation with my workout buddy on our recent bike ride around this as well. So here are my thoughts, with some photos sprinkled in to keep it interesting.
When I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, I was asked to step on a scale in the locker room at my high school and write what I weighed on a worksheet before the fitness challenge at the start of the semester long PE class. The scale was in a semi-private corner, but the number that I had to write (186 lbs) would then be passed to multiple classmates as they tallied how many sit-ups I could do, how many rounds of the pacer I ran, and other things. I wrote it in the lightest possible pencil strokes that I could, because I knew that it was a big number, and then proceeded to compare myself to each of my classmates. My high school arch-rival (who was really a very nice girl - I don't know why I turned things into a competition between us in my head) weighed 116 lbs, and I remember feeling totally awful about the 70 lbs difference between us. I was able to complete the minimum expected fitness challenge for girls my age, but left the class that day feeling shamed, and pretty much vowed that I wouldn't tell anyone what I weighed ever again.
By the time I graduated high school, I weighed 204 lbs. I know this because the week before school, I secretly went into my parents bedroom to step on their scale. I had heard about "the freshman fifteen" and wanted a baseline from before I left for school, but I didn't want anyone to know what my baseline was, because I knew it was fat. And college wasn't helpful with this. While I was in college, I met my now husband, and he kind of danced around the topic. I had avoided scales because I knew it wasn't going to be great, but finally, after spring break of my senior year of undergrad, I agreed to step on a scale and let him see. This was right after I'd gone on a cruise ship with two of my college girlfriends, and I weighed 231 lbs. I cried for hours.
The summer after undergrad, my then-boyfriend, now-husband started coaching me in running. I was miserable. It was June, I was hot, and I could barely make it a mile before I had to stop to walk. But we used the couch to 5K program to make it to my first 5K, a color run in November of 2014. By March of 2015 we were engaged, and I had a wedding date to aim for. By our July 2015 wedding, I had lost the 27 lbs of college weight and was back at 204. And that was good. And then I kind of hit a plateau, where I was still running, but I wasn't losing weight anymore. So I started lying about how much I weighed. I lied to myself, I lied to my spouse, I lied on my driver's license - because I didn't want to weigh more than 200 lbs, so I just docked ten pounds and pretended that'd I'd lose it eventually. I went through cycles of up and down weight loss during these years - up five, down ten, back up again, etc.
(Above photos from the November 2014 color run, and a May 2019 cancer research fundraiser run)
Around the time we got married is the time that my dad's cancer was determined to be "terminal". Through a variety of treatments, he extended his life from summer of 2015 to early summer of 2018, and a lot of things happened for my family in that time, and while I did some runs (my first 10K, etc.) I wasn't especially focused on diet and exercise. I set a goal to do a triathlon in 2018, but never really got motivated and failed to accomplish the goal. Then in May of 2018, my dad got worse and died, and I got a renewed zeal for embracing my own life. It sounds kind of dumb, but when I would go out on a run, I'd feel a renewed vigor because of the fact that I could be out running, that I was still healthy/still alive. My friend Emma set her wedding date for late 2018, and I made a goal - I would stop lying about it and actually be less than 200 lbs by the time Emma got married. Using My fitness pal to track things, by September of 2018 (when Emma got married), I was 196 lbs. Then this year my friend Christina asked me if I'd do a triathlon with her (since she knew about my previous goal). So I started training for that, and I kept tracking fitness pal, and I kept losing weight. By the time we actually competed in our triathlon event (June of 2019) I weighed 175 lbs (and this morning, I weighed 172, so I'm still on a downward trend!).
OK, my story is over. Here are some thoughts/points I want to make.
1) Weight loss does not mean you can't eat ice cream. I have lost weight, a lot of weight, but I don't eat different foods (just less). Weight loss doesn't mean depriving yourself. I hate dieting because it's always based on depriving yourself. In the years between 2015 and 2018 I tried deprivation dieting on and off and it always resulted in my crying about how I felt like I couldn't eat what I wanted. So I threw that out and I eat what I want to eat. What I cut out was the "eating because I'm bored" snacking. So before I eat something I ask "why". Am I hungry? good reason. Am I celebrating someone/something? good reason. Am I bored/there's just nothing else to do? Not a good reason.
1) Stop telling people they're fat. I promise you that they already know, and you are likely making it worse. I tell the story about when I was 14 because I decided there was nothing I could do, and just gave up. Most other overweight people I know say the same thing - it feels like what's the point, because even loosing ten pounds (which is a big win!) is such a small part of what they need to loose overall. So if someone overweight tells you they lost weight (even if you can't tell), celebrate it. On my journey from fat to fit, fat-shaming (most of which came from my own head) was my worst enemy. So down with that crap. If they're happy, and healthy (you can be healthy with a few extra pounds on your hips), then "fat" is relative. Technically, according to many standards, I am still overweight. According to the BMI scale (the most popular measure of "normal") a woman my height should be somewhere between 120-165 lbs. But I am the healthiest I've been in a long time.
2) Tell people when you've seen improvements. This is a sensitive area - don't say "you look like you lost weight" because maybe they haven't actually and then it's awkward. But tell people "you look good!" or "you look fit!" or whatever feels comfortable to you, because the encouragement of buddies has helped me tremendously. My girl friends Christina and Morgan who ran the tri with me, and who cheered me on through social media (Morgan) and in person training together (Christina) and my friend Alec, who has always been the first person to notice and tell me when I've lost weight (partly because he's on a pretty good weight loss journey of his own and we encourage each other). And of course, my husband, who kick-started this whole thing by asking me to be honest with him about what I weigh and loving me anyways when the initial number was much bigger than either of us anticipated, and getting me out in my sneakers, hitting the pavement with him.
3) Promote health over numbers. I've put all of the numbers in this blog post because I want to highlight how dramatic the last five years has been for me (so I remember and stick to the patterns I've changed), but if you read the post, you'll see that what really made the change for me in the past year was not focusing on the numbers, but focusing on the fact that I am alive and that I can run and that I wanted to make the most of that. I haven't talked as much about how I changed what I was eating, but you can imagine the difference between college - where you can eat french fries every day - and now, where this summer Ryan and I are focusing on eating local veggies thanks to the Breezy Willow Farms CSA. The food choices were not based on trying to loose weight, but trying to eat better for the sake of the global and local economy - but I'm sure that has made a difference as well. I've mostly stopped the fitness pal calorie counting, but I'm still conscious of choosing things like dried seaweed crisps over potato chips, because it causes my skin to break out less - and the weight benefits of that are a side benefit. So don't stress about the scale, or the calorie count, or any numbers. Go with more days of working out than not working out. Go with more days of home cooked meals than store bought meals. Go with health over numbers, and see what happens. If you don't loose weight, but you feel better, then it's worth it. One of my co-workers has changed his diet, and not really lost weight, but he feels more energy as a result, and I think that's a win too.
This turned out WAY longer than I expected and also ended up touching on Dad's cancer again (I promise, guys, eventually this blog won't mention cancer), but I hope you start a conversation with me about weight loss/exercise/healthy eating based on this long ramble.
When I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, I was asked to step on a scale in the locker room at my high school and write what I weighed on a worksheet before the fitness challenge at the start of the semester long PE class. The scale was in a semi-private corner, but the number that I had to write (186 lbs) would then be passed to multiple classmates as they tallied how many sit-ups I could do, how many rounds of the pacer I ran, and other things. I wrote it in the lightest possible pencil strokes that I could, because I knew that it was a big number, and then proceeded to compare myself to each of my classmates. My high school arch-rival (who was really a very nice girl - I don't know why I turned things into a competition between us in my head) weighed 116 lbs, and I remember feeling totally awful about the 70 lbs difference between us. I was able to complete the minimum expected fitness challenge for girls my age, but left the class that day feeling shamed, and pretty much vowed that I wouldn't tell anyone what I weighed ever again.
By the time I graduated high school, I weighed 204 lbs. I know this because the week before school, I secretly went into my parents bedroom to step on their scale. I had heard about "the freshman fifteen" and wanted a baseline from before I left for school, but I didn't want anyone to know what my baseline was, because I knew it was fat. And college wasn't helpful with this. While I was in college, I met my now husband, and he kind of danced around the topic. I had avoided scales because I knew it wasn't going to be great, but finally, after spring break of my senior year of undergrad, I agreed to step on a scale and let him see. This was right after I'd gone on a cruise ship with two of my college girlfriends, and I weighed 231 lbs. I cried for hours.
(Above photos from our March 2014 college spring break cruise, and the June 014 triathlon)
(Above photos from the November 2014 color run, and a May 2019 cancer research fundraiser run)
Around the time we got married is the time that my dad's cancer was determined to be "terminal". Through a variety of treatments, he extended his life from summer of 2015 to early summer of 2018, and a lot of things happened for my family in that time, and while I did some runs (my first 10K, etc.) I wasn't especially focused on diet and exercise. I set a goal to do a triathlon in 2018, but never really got motivated and failed to accomplish the goal. Then in May of 2018, my dad got worse and died, and I got a renewed zeal for embracing my own life. It sounds kind of dumb, but when I would go out on a run, I'd feel a renewed vigor because of the fact that I could be out running, that I was still healthy/still alive. My friend Emma set her wedding date for late 2018, and I made a goal - I would stop lying about it and actually be less than 200 lbs by the time Emma got married. Using My fitness pal to track things, by September of 2018 (when Emma got married), I was 196 lbs. Then this year my friend Christina asked me if I'd do a triathlon with her (since she knew about my previous goal). So I started training for that, and I kept tracking fitness pal, and I kept losing weight. By the time we actually competed in our triathlon event (June of 2019) I weighed 175 lbs (and this morning, I weighed 172, so I'm still on a downward trend!).
(Above selfies from March 2014 at Harry Potter World, and June 2019 at Longwood Gardens)
1) Weight loss does not mean you can't eat ice cream. I have lost weight, a lot of weight, but I don't eat different foods (just less). Weight loss doesn't mean depriving yourself. I hate dieting because it's always based on depriving yourself. In the years between 2015 and 2018 I tried deprivation dieting on and off and it always resulted in my crying about how I felt like I couldn't eat what I wanted. So I threw that out and I eat what I want to eat. What I cut out was the "eating because I'm bored" snacking. So before I eat something I ask "why". Am I hungry? good reason. Am I celebrating someone/something? good reason. Am I bored/there's just nothing else to do? Not a good reason.
1) Stop telling people they're fat. I promise you that they already know, and you are likely making it worse. I tell the story about when I was 14 because I decided there was nothing I could do, and just gave up. Most other overweight people I know say the same thing - it feels like what's the point, because even loosing ten pounds (which is a big win!) is such a small part of what they need to loose overall. So if someone overweight tells you they lost weight (even if you can't tell), celebrate it. On my journey from fat to fit, fat-shaming (most of which came from my own head) was my worst enemy. So down with that crap. If they're happy, and healthy (you can be healthy with a few extra pounds on your hips), then "fat" is relative. Technically, according to many standards, I am still overweight. According to the BMI scale (the most popular measure of "normal") a woman my height should be somewhere between 120-165 lbs. But I am the healthiest I've been in a long time.
2) Tell people when you've seen improvements. This is a sensitive area - don't say "you look like you lost weight" because maybe they haven't actually and then it's awkward. But tell people "you look good!" or "you look fit!" or whatever feels comfortable to you, because the encouragement of buddies has helped me tremendously. My girl friends Christina and Morgan who ran the tri with me, and who cheered me on through social media (Morgan) and in person training together (Christina) and my friend Alec, who has always been the first person to notice and tell me when I've lost weight (partly because he's on a pretty good weight loss journey of his own and we encourage each other). And of course, my husband, who kick-started this whole thing by asking me to be honest with him about what I weigh and loving me anyways when the initial number was much bigger than either of us anticipated, and getting me out in my sneakers, hitting the pavement with him.
(Above photos of Alec and and I at graduation May of 2014 and at WELocal February of 2019)
3) Promote health over numbers. I've put all of the numbers in this blog post because I want to highlight how dramatic the last five years has been for me (so I remember and stick to the patterns I've changed), but if you read the post, you'll see that what really made the change for me in the past year was not focusing on the numbers, but focusing on the fact that I am alive and that I can run and that I wanted to make the most of that. I haven't talked as much about how I changed what I was eating, but you can imagine the difference between college - where you can eat french fries every day - and now, where this summer Ryan and I are focusing on eating local veggies thanks to the Breezy Willow Farms CSA. The food choices were not based on trying to loose weight, but trying to eat better for the sake of the global and local economy - but I'm sure that has made a difference as well. I've mostly stopped the fitness pal calorie counting, but I'm still conscious of choosing things like dried seaweed crisps over potato chips, because it causes my skin to break out less - and the weight benefits of that are a side benefit. So don't stress about the scale, or the calorie count, or any numbers. Go with more days of working out than not working out. Go with more days of home cooked meals than store bought meals. Go with health over numbers, and see what happens. If you don't loose weight, but you feel better, then it's worth it. One of my co-workers has changed his diet, and not really lost weight, but he feels more energy as a result, and I think that's a win too.
This turned out WAY longer than I expected and also ended up touching on Dad's cancer again (I promise, guys, eventually this blog won't mention cancer), but I hope you start a conversation with me about weight loss/exercise/healthy eating based on this long ramble.
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