Advice for effective management has been showing up in some of the most unlikely places over the past several weeks, or in unexpected guises. Let’s take a look at some of these, leavened with some real advice from some of the best management trainers around.

Clues to communication. The range begins at The Boston Globe, for an excellent piece on “cognitive fluency” and what it means for anyone – from managers to marketers and beyond – trying to make a message connect. It then moves on to Steve Roesler’s piece on getting your ideas heard – note point numbers one and two, in particular. Then we complete the journey to clarity with a classic memo, courtesy of John Phillips.

Obvious places. Start with this WSJ editorial on the dangers of believing your own PR. It’s a political piece, but the lesson is there to be had, whatever you may think of the choice of this particular object for the lesson. In the same vein, next view this by Steve Tobak at BNET, about key lies managers deceive themselves with.

Now, let’s return to the WSJ for this Fouad Ajami column; again, a political piece, same target. But leaving that aside, consider this sentence from it: “A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.” How does that insight, and what follows in the essay, translate to what we see in business? But to return to the subject of communication for a moment, please see this item from The Economist about how some politicians aren’t getting – don’t want to get – this increasingly strongly felt and urgently delivered message from the electorate.

Staying motivated. You will definitely want to see this terrific book review by Aubrey Daniels – and why it’s key message drives him crazy. And speaking of insufferably irritating, please see why forced fun can be much more damaging for a company than you might think, in this essay by Grant McCracken.

Unlikely places. Much has been made, of course, of the late-night host debacle of recent weeks in the US. One WSJ piece argues that it is a rich source of management lessons. Another insists that our very effort to find these in it is a condemnation of our individual and cultural common sense. What’s your view?

Here and there. Before leaving the WSJ, you will want to see this column about how the drive to diversity on boards can actually be quite destructive. Next, please be sure to see what management coach Katy Tynan has to say about handling conflict – well worth your time. Subscribe to her blog while you’re there.

You will surely want to see this from Miki Saxon about the real message in the failure of a football team. This is definitely a transferable lesson.

And finally, please do see this BBC piece about why you might want to be slimed – and what unexpected lessons you can learn even from that.

Enjoy your reading, and have a great weekend – see you soon!

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Technorati Tags: management, advice, trainer, Boston Globe, manager, marketer, message, Steve Roesler, clarity, John Phillips, WSJ, Steve Tobak, BNET, Fouad Ajami, charisma, leader, insight, business, communication, Economist, Aubrey Daniels, Grant McCracken, Katy Tynan, Miki Saxon, BBC

One of the key problems with the notion of exceptional individual leadership is that it is inwardly focused. It is all about the individual, and the electric impression he or she is supposed to make on “followers” at all levels.

Only then, if at all, does the subject turn to what the “leader” is supposed to do with that. Even when it does, it is either dominated by techniques for maintaining and deepening the leadership persona, or formless generalities that are hardly actionable, but that are more than sufficient to fuel the equally shapeless dreams of those who themselves are less interested in messy, concrete action than in superficially self-referential status.

Let’s presume for the purposes of our current discussion that those of us engaged in it have resolved our midlife or other crises, and are maturely focused on contributing to the work we do now, for the benefit of the organizations we find ourselves in today. If that’s the case, then when we regard those around us in these enterprises, we are thinking about how we all might approach the work, not about how to get them to respond to us as leaders.

Neither are we thinking about how to empower or transform them. While that might not appear, at least at first glance, to be about us, a powerful problem with it is that it is also not inherently about the work. And, in fact, it ultimately is calculated to create a general atmosphere in which we play an enthrallingly prominent part.

That’s another problem with it: while looking after and developing your staff is both a genuine virtue and a practical necessity, the sad fact is that the great majority of us lack the discipline and composure to do it without confounding ourselves with the real organizational purpose for pursuing it. As a result, it – often with our never realizing it – becomes a patronizingly manipulative dance in which the beneficiaries of our self-congratulatory munificence play increasingly disenchanted and cynical roles.

After enough such of this, we find ourselves condescendingly turning to programs for overcoming resistance to change from these inescapably benighted masses, or the like.

It cannot be about us. Our relationships with others at work cannot center around us – their view of us, how they respond to us, where we fall on the leader/follower chasm with respect to them. It quite simply has to be about the work.

That is what enables us to develop our personal abilities to do the work as managers without destabilizing our sense of ourselves to the point that organizational dynamics begin to distort in our presence. And we will look at that tomorrow. Please join in.

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Managing life, work, and life at work

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Today’s tip: One corporate governance/management structure purported to either span or to widen the management/leadership chasm is the family business. But it doesn’t seem to be bridging the current financial crisis very well, according to this piece from The Economist.

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Technorati Tags: individual leadership, follower, leader, leadership, organization, enterprise, work, empower, transform, discipline, composure, purpose, resistance, change, manager, governance, management, leadership, family business, Economist

Yesterday we talked about the value of reading non-management books. Here’s an example of why that might be helpful:

A good part of Adam Nicolson’s gripping retelling of the great Naval Battle of Trafalgar, “Seize the Fire,” turns out to be an exceptionally insightful depiction of the complex and powerful societal undertows that threw the combatant nations together on that awful day in October of 1805. (And, by the way, if Michael Wade recommends a book, consider putting it on your list.)

On the one hand, the author seems to accept the traditional definitions of individual leadership generally, and of Admiral Nelson as a great individual leader in particular. But on the other, he goes to great pains to explain how essentially inevitable was the outcome of the battle.

This, as he explains thoroughly, engagingly, and convincingly, was due to the confluence of numerous cultural influences into broadly irresistible currents that overwhelmed the contributions of any single individual aboard any specific ship in the fight. Indeed, he seems to make the argument that the individual leadership, not to mention the heroism, that was on display during the battle was itself part of the froth and foam thrown up by the towering waves of national character and power colliding off Trafalgar that day.

As it happens, the management book I’m reading right now, which will be reviewed soon, also notes the depth and expanse of the sources of corporate culture. Thus, it neither originates in individual leaders (beyond, at least, the entrepreneurial stage) nor is it readily manipulated by them. So, he concludes, perhaps the role of the “leader” in this respect is not to pretend to create it and direct its flow, but to attempt to coax and nudge it appropriately as circumstances suggest might be possible.

This mix of history and management reading has certainly provided food for thought that is richer and more rewarding than it would have been otherwise – had it even attracted much notice. So, mix it up yourselves, and see what presents itself to you that you might find surprisingly and productively applicable to problems and opportunities at work. Why not start this weekend?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of drawing important lessons from unexpected quarters, please see what William W. Bowser, at the Delaware Employment Law Blog, has to say about football, the movies, culture, and HR practices.

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If you look at the contents section on the sidebar of the main page of this site, you will see a listing of the article series that have been published here. You can click through to view summaries of the pieces, and then read the full series or selections that are of most interest to you. Enjoy!

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Technorati Tags: management, Adam Nicolson, Trafalgar, insight, leadership, Admiral Nelson, leader, individual leadership, heroism, character, power, culture, history, William W. Bowser, Michael Wade

In nature, there are a variety of ways that organisms can disappear. There are those associated with predation and competition, of course. But there are two others that are integrally related to the processes of natural selection and evolution.

The more interesting of the two from the perspective of organizational design is called apoptosis, which refers to the phenomenon of programmed cell death. Wouldn’t you love to be able to design units within an organization that terminated themselves automatically, and resolved back into the larger organization, once their functions had been performed? Wouldn’t that be a wondrous thing to see in government?

That’s not likely, though, is it? So, let’s consider the more draconian of the two: extinction.

This is often viewed negatively, because it doesn’t represent the death of a limited set of cells in an organism due to apoptosis, or of an organism in a species due to predation or competition, but of an entire species due to cataclysmic disease or environmental transformation.

And yet it turns out that, in the larger scheme of things, extinction is not only an inevitable and natural force, but a powerfully creative one, as well. Think of it this way; if you are living in an environment of stasis – or even of relatively stolid, evolutionary change – most of your efforts to eke out an advantage over your competitors will take the form of incremental innovation.

But if the business landscape itself suddenly wrenches into a wholly new configuration, obliterating some competitors, leaving others to fade feebly away, and revealing gaping new markets yet to be filled, then you have the opportunity for truly transformational creativity.

There is a lot of talk about certain types of specially inventive, visionary leaders producing these new landscapes themselves. The truth is, though, that most examples of what we imagine to be such simply redirect traditional behaviors into new channels. And those that truly are – well, they do something else as well: they produce extinctions.

In the latter event, which is the essence of their creativity – the revolutionary new product or service that dramatically changes the landscape, or the widespread extinctions that sweep through the businesses that previously populated it, obliterating industries and jobs, but setting the stage for new opportunities and sources of wealth and well-being?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of extinctions and creativity – whatever happened to the Mouseketeers? The Onion News has a report on the matter that you won’t want to miss.

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Technorati Tags: organism, predation, competition, natural selection, evolution, perspective, organizational design, apoptosis, organization, function, government, extinction, species, disease, environment, transformation, change, advantage, competitor, innovation, business, landscape, market, opportunity, creativity, visionary, leader, product, service, wealth, Mouseketeers, Onion News

Have you noticed the uniformity, in recent years, in the must-have look for male actors – and, indeed, for celebrities in many fields? In this age of painstakingly politically-conscious and carefully market-researched entertainment, you can rest assured that this particular fashion trend clearly is intended to make a statement.

Without belaboring the tedious and really rather disturbing point, suffice it to say that the meticulously unkempt, spiky hair, and what we are expected to believe is an irrepressibly manly beard, frame a most peculiar patchwork of masculine and feminine features. Rosy, gimlet, pouty, firmly set, pink, forbidding, full, taut, round and soft, granite-edged, dreamy, icy, hinting at vulnerability, clearly displaying invulnerability – match these with the facial features that occur to you. The odds are good you will then be able to identify most or even all of them on nearly every young male celebrity face you see.

The prospect of these characteristics competing for prominence on the visages of contemporary celebrities is no less appetizing than the hermaphroditic personalities they are intended to represent, the grotesquely manipulative marketing they express, or, even, the unsettlingly inconsistent dialogue and acting that inevitably accompany them.

Today’s leader is often similarly portrayed as simultaneously all things to all people – available and aloof, open-minded and relentlessly focused, empowering and in complete control – comprising every possible strand of both traditional and fashionable leadership and organizational design philosophies. We will soon discretely review a recent management book which is only one sadly common example of this.

And the problem is not merely in the existence of those who promote the creation of these composite clones, but in those who strive to become them. The questions are: what is their agenda, or what culturally prominent philosophy are they writing into their scripts, or attempting to work into their roles?

Who is employed by who, or to what purpose, and why? Are managers and executives to give expression to presumed social yearnings, to strive to become the something-for-everyone idols of the “thought-leading” elites – or are they to do their jobs? We’ll be looking at what lies behind some of these questions in coming days, and hope to have you join us.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of agendas and consequences in both theory and reality, please see Cam Beck’s take on one way these play out in the current social climate.

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Technorati Tags: market, research, fashion, characteristic, leader, open-minded, focus, empower, control, leadership, organizational design, management, agenda, purpose, manager, executive, job, agenda, consequence, theory, reality, Cam Beck

From the beginning of the formal study of international law, one of its basic principles has been the concept of legitimacy of rule. And one of the key pillars of that is tolerance. That is, a government tolerated by those over whom it rules must be viewed as fundamentally legitimate by the international community.

The form of this government may be antiquated. Its establishment may have been arbitrary. The manner of its application may be incompetent and even harsh. But if its people do not rise up and remove it, it is presumed that it is accepted by them, that they prize whatever degree of order it provides over any costs – even those deemed unbearable by outsiders. This judgment must be respected by the rest of the world.

And that’s the problem with leadership. It’s not just that its mantle is assumed by so many frauds, but that we don’t care enough to do anything about it. Not we who are impressed into the immediate “followership” of these “leaders,” and not we in the general community who know perfectly well what’s going on, but feel it is not our place to interfere.

But there are two more interesting problems with all of this – and we’ll look at them over the next two days. See you tomorrow!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of fundamental principles, please do not fail to see Michael Wade’s list of general rules. You – we all – need to know these.

And speaking of timeless principles, please see Steve Roesler’s picks of some of the best from Peter Drucker.

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Technorati Tags: international, law, principle, legitimacy, tolerance, government, community, incompetent, judgment, respect, leadership, followership, leader, principle, Michael Wade, Steve Roesler, Peter Drucker

Books on individual leadership, rather amazingly, continue to come out, and continue to promise great things from the superlative leaders their secrets will help readers become. What they also all do, though, is assume that there is no controversy regarding the location of leadership: it is in individuals, and emanates from them into the organizations which they grace with their presence. Indeed, many of these observers go so far as to say that the organization exists to give expression to the leader’s leadership – or, at least, must re-form itself around the unique ways each leader exhibits that leadership.

William Tate, a consultant in the United Kingdom with extensive experience as a senior manager, offers some long-overdue questions about these assumptions in his new book, “The Search for Leadership: An Organizational Perspective.” It must be said that he neither denies the essential concept of individual leadership, nor the destructive contention that it is separate from and superior to management. Indeed, he, curiously, offers a fairly rigorous justification of it.

The value he adds, though, is in the context in which he places the concept. Tate asks with disciplined focus what, precisely, leadership in organizations is intended to serve, and how we are to make sure that it does so. In the course of this, he comes to conclusions regarding the modern leadership movement that echo many of those expressed on this site. He is concerned that it has produced not merely an understanding of leadership that is untethered from the purpose it might ordinarily be expected to pursue, but that also has generated an industry that perpetuates fundamental errors in perspective and practice that can no longer be tolerated.

For example, he argues that leadership, in a phrase found often in these pages, should be “thought of as a resource to be managed.” This observation is the inevitable expression of the heart of his argument: that it is well-past time to stop thinking of leadership as principally a personal attribute, but rather to understand it as a set of actions that take place within and for the betterment of the organization.

He is especially concerned with the problem of leadership development as it is typically conceived and undertaken in contemporary organizations. He insists that it must not be allowed to continue as a patchwork of personal improvement modules pursued independently of the needs of the outfit.

The first step in the creation of such programs, he laments, is ordinarily an almost eerie disassociation from the organization’s needs. Rather, developers turn earnestly but disconnectedly to the assemblage of boilerplate individual leadership components. He argues repeatedly that such programs should begin not with a discussion of what the attendees may need, but of what the organization needs from the leadership it wishes to generate and benefit from in its strategic and operational efforts.

Tate urges us to understand that “the organization is not a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it.” “The popular mistake made by executives and their coaches,” he notes, “is to assume or pretend that leaders have more control than they really do.” To underscore this, he quotes a colleague on the attendant attribution error:

The tendency [is] for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviours, while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences. In other words, people assume that what a person does is based more on what kind of person he or she is, rather than the social and environmental forces at work on that person.”

Tate is concerned not only that leadership should be conceived of as something in the service of and bound to the organization – rather than the reverse – but also that it should be supervised, held accountable, and redirected when necessary. As he says, “there is a need to manage leadership, however oxymoronic that may sound.”

But, of course, it’s not oxymoronic at all, despite the author’s curious presentation in sundry chapters of the standard patter about what leadership is, who expresses it, and how it is even presumably superior to management. At bottom, he rightly makes a strong case for the view that leadership is, at the very least, inferior to the organization.

And he does so in an engaging, readable manner, reinforced with vivid expression and memorable metaphors. This book represents an important full forward step in the right direction toward an effective understanding of leadership – and how to rein it in.

Buy “The Search for Leadership,” by William Tate. You will enjoy it, and find yourself considering questions that you may not have encountered before, deepening and enriching your strategic effectiveness as a manager.

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Today’s tip: Many think that the notion of raising a family and running a business is also oxymoronic. But the truth is that it most decidedly is a logical – and even a natural – proposition. Please see this Forbes.com column by Sramana Mitra for an excellent illustration of why and how.

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Technorati Tags: individual leadership, leader, leadership, organization, William Tate, consultant, United Kingdom, manager, assumption, management, purpose, industry, perspective, practice, development, executive, coache, Forbes, Sramana Mitra

Some years ago, at an early peak in the frenzy stirred up by the modern leadership movement’s gurus, doctorates in fields generally related to leadership began to appear in universities across the United States. Most of these were designed to create PhDs in something called “leadership studies;” the intent, presumably, to develop the field into a professional avenue of scholarly study.

Given the true state of our understanding of leadership at the time – what it is, where it comes from, how it works – that was at once a problematic and perhaps an overdue ambition. On the one hand, who was qualified to teach it? On the other, it certainly does warrant clear-eyed, methodical study – to the extent to which that is even possible.

One of the problems, though, is that many of the programs were inspired, guided, or even headed by some of the more effusive proponents of grandiose individual leadership around. Aside from the foam-speckled bias this applied to the putative “scholarship” these assembly lines mass produced, there existed a parallel, unspoken presumption that these programs developed experts in not merely the study of leadership, but also in the practice of it.

And it was only a matter of time before this became the overt purpose of these doctorates. Now, you can go to a number of programs around the country and emerge as not only a leader, but a doctor of leadership. In a fit of unintended irony, the appearance of these appears to be timed to solve the leadership crises precipitated by those who followed the same prescriptions – and who were misled by the same fundamental conceptual errors – being taught to their newly capped and gowned successors.

What do you suppose these programs will look like? Will doctoral candidates attend lectures not just describing, but purporting to teach how to be, visionary leaders, or how to become charismatic? Will they take turns getting up in front of class to demonstrate it? Will they “learn” empathy, innovation, passion? How will they demonstrate mastery of these, thus earning their diplomas? Indeed, is it possible to reconcile the acquisition of a doctorate of leadership with the much heralded leadership trait of profound humility?

Some of the programs presumably include “learn by doing” modules. How will those look? Who will provide these students the opportunity to do this in their own organizations? Who will evaluate their performance, based on which criteria and against what standards? Will the graduates be hired a few months later over the organizations’ own employees who have actually been doing for a living what the former did for learning?

How will newly minted doctors of leadership present themselves to the world upon graduation? How will they be regarded by potential employers as they proffer the evidence of credentials specifically calculated to establish the fact of their superior learning, understanding, and ability over their presumptuous inquisitors? How will they fit in with their colleagues (decidedly not their peers), or with the corporate culture?

You have to know that these will come to be called clown colleges, because only merriment can ensue. Their appearance is merely the most obviously disturbing implication of the gravely ill-considered approach to leadership so widely accepted today.

We will return to some of the even more dangerously mundane ones next week. We will then take a look at what, after all, we are to make of all of this. Please be sure to join us.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of real people and titles, please see these pieces: by Steve Roesler on how roles can distort the people, and by Michael Wade on how people can distort their roles.

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Technorati Tags: leadership, guru, doctorate, United States, PhD, leadership studies, professional, scholar, ambition, scholarship, expert, leader, visionary, charisma, empathy, innovation, passion, trait, humility, organization, performance, employee, employer, credential, colleague, culture, clown college, Steve Roesler, Michael Wade

In ordinary daily life, we are encouraged to resist excess, to maintain well-rounded, healthy lifestyles physically, mentally, and emotionally. We go to experts when we find ourselves careening to one or another extreme of a vital characteristic, losing our equilibrium, our perspective, our effectiveness across many aspects of our lives. Those experts then prescribe medicine or therapy to help restore us to health.

But what if one of your doctors suddenly started encouraging you to cultivate certain of your abilities to extreme degrees – or even to develop extreme traits not previously associated with you? What if they even suggested that you should come to understand your life, yourself, on the basis of this or that peculiarity targeted for extra-normal growth? Would that make sense to you? You would probably avoid this expert like the plague.

You don’t, though. You read all the latest leadership books, attend the seminars, buy the CDs. You listen, enthralled, to one, and then the next, peddler to roll through town, claiming inside knowledge based on the latest “scientific research.” Then you buy their prescriptions for making you a 10-foot tall, iron-jawed, charismatic, visionary. You believe in their promises to make you so extraordinary that everyone else in the room will suddenly wheel around, regard you with new respect, and transform into your followers.

But maybe they’re actually regarding you with concern – alarm, even. Perhaps they’re following you around not to study your example, but just to see what you’ll be up to next. And that spontaneously generated communication system to inform everyone as to your thinking and activities – it could be that it isn’t a fan club, or a means of expanding the reach of your leadership, but an early-warning system; I’ve seen that happen more than once.

Think back to some of the recommendations made in even the best-selling leadership books of recent years – even now. The thing is that the descriptions they provide of what a leader is – and of what they encourage you to be – are not far removed from those that can be found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s worth noting that many of the experts who commend those descriptions to you are trained psychiatrists and psychologists, whose key reference – scientific research – is that very manual. That’s worth a thought, isn’t it?

Does the brand of superlative individual leadership promoted by the modern leadership movement merely amount to a peculiar sort of personality disorder? Or, might its self-referential, inwardly-directed focus on the lop-sided development of exaggerated personality traits lead inevitably to accompanying dysfunctional afflictions?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the flip side of this question. The plan, then, is to return next week to complete the previous series on the implications of all of this. Then, we will move on to look for evidence of immunity to these afflictions – and how to develop those. Looking forward to your visits!

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Today’s tip: You’ve always suspected this sort of thing about many of the putative leaders you have to endure, haven’t you? Well, you’re not alone. Please see this item about sheeple, at Chris Blattman’s always worthwhile blog.

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Technorati Tags: excess, well-rounded, expert, characteristic, equilibrium, perspective, medicine, therapy, health, doctor, trait, leadership, seminar, knowledge, research, charisma, visionary, follower, communication, leader, individual leadership, Chris Blattman

We tend to throw words around a bit carelessly when we talk about leadership. One example of that is the common habit of equating leaders with heroes.

Without hesitation we ascribe almost any positive trait that comes to mind to our hallowed concept of the superlative individual leader. Surely, we think, heroism is rightly one of those. The hero has vision that others lack, making him or her vulnerable for standing out from the crowd. It takes courage to stay the course in the face of criticism, discipline to remain focused amid all the discouraging feedback, strength to bear the imposing risk all the way through uncertainty to success.

That sounds good – very persuasive. But the thing is, it’s not necessarily the case that those characteristics make a hero, nor that a hero possesses them.

I’ve known some genuine heroes – in the military and in civilian life. Certainly not all, but just as certainly many if not most of them were completely at the mercy of their heroism – not the masters of it.

It is a kind of madness that comes over them at the wild and whirling intersection of time and space, emergency and opportunity. They don’t always express it – rather, it takes possession of them and makes them do things that fill all who witness it with awe.

Some of these heroes describe themselves as witnesses to it as well, just as awestruck as everyone else at what they find themselves doing. Others disappear into it, and emerge out the other side quite unaware of what has happened. They can be rather uncomfortable, even dismayed at how they are regarded once the madness has passed.

This does nothing to diminish the heroism displayed, nor the heroes who display it. But it must be said that while this heroism – real heroism – inspires the respect and admiration of those who observe and benefit from it, none of these people ordinarily fall into the instinctive error of confusing what they’ve seen with leadership. Even if the crucible through which they’ve all passed may have entailed their following the hero’s lead, as it were, the person becomes everyone’s hero – not their leader.

That’s not to say, though, that leadership wasn’t present. It may have been in the moment itself, rather than in the men and women who lived through it. It may have risen from the bond between them, sparked into action under the stress of the emergency, and released its energy into each participant according to the strength of their needs, their aims, and their relation to the flashpoint.

Different situations can produce different heroes among the same group, depending on the differing unfolding of these dynamics. Have you not seen them produce different “leaders,” as well?

That’s not the same question, nor precisely the same consequence of the hero-generating dynamics, and will not produce quite the same answer. But it is relevant. Leaders, too, appear at the intersection of need and opportunity, as these are perceived by group dynamics.

Leadership is a part of those dynamics. If one person emerges as that “leader” of the moment more frequently than another, that does not alter the underlying phenomenon: the leadership itself, and the larger factors from which it springs, emerge from the purposeful group, not from the individual of the moment.

Manage that.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of consciously wielding influence, please see this piece from the always-intriguing PsyBlog about newcomers and the process of becoming productive.

And speaking of exercising influence right out of the gate, please see how Eclecticity handles a dead heat. There should be no question of a photo-finish in this race.

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We appreciate your visits here very much, and would love to have you as a regular reader. Please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or via an RSS reader, using the options available just below or at the upper right. And welcome aboard!

Technorati Tags: leadership, leader, hero, trait, individual leader, heroism, vision, courage, criticism, discipline, focus, feedback, risk, uncertainty, success, characteristic, military, civilian, dynamics, group dynamics, influence, PsyBlog, Eclecticity