Dorrier Underwood

Forwarding the Action means empowering others to succinctly address the matter at hand so the next thing can happen. Fundamentally, forwarding the action often means knowing when to shut up. That is a “big ask” of the average human being! I was going over a Vision document with Gary and Nancy, so they could critique it, add to it, and help me take it to the next draft. When they suggested I take out a part or say it a different way, I reflexively began explaining why I did it that way to begin with. “Well, what I had been thinking was...” “I know, I just thought when I wrote this that...”          I forgot that the purpose of the conversation was not to uncover my motives for writing it the way I did. It was nearly impossible for me to simply shut up about that, and get clear on the new suggestion or addition. How much more useful to ask more about their suggestions than to defend what I had already writ...

On Tuesday Doug and I led the half day follow-up for one of the Transforming Leadership Intensives we have led this year to an operations team in the health sector. Many of the participants are hourly workers whose positions have them experience themselves as somewhat “less than.” This group was lively, engaged and very much in the conversation to impact their own leadership and to contribute to the company. For example, one man in the group has definite opinions that he willingly expresses about their supervisor and he saw, in the two day, that there were different possible interpretations he could have, even in the face of a lot of agreement for their point of view. On Tuesday he shared that he has been different with the supervisor, and he has seen a difference in how the supervisor is being with him. At one point during the afternoon he caught himself slipping back into his   old way –   he has an expressive face with includes a well-developed eye-roll – and...

His whole job is creating a new possibility. He creates it in the listening of others, whom he has never met, yet with whom he claims and creates a profound sense of kinship. And he does it by acknowledgment. Talking about a populist, a man who obviously lives for those moments in front of people, in front of the cameras, in front of the whole damn country, willing to be ridiculed and to expose his flaws, for a cause he believes to be a mighty one. Talking about Joe Biden. He got me, in person, in a way I wasn’t expecting. His message was predictable, about protecting Medicare and looking out for the middle class, but his authenticity was not. Politician. We spit the word out with disdain. Joe gives back the luster to the profession by demonstrating it: he was informed (lots of facts and figures which he openly challenged the assembled press to check, saying “they ought to!”); he was funny, by noticing what was going on, not by reciting jokes; he was PRESENT and di...

As we again celebrate the birth of our nation, I think of how unlikely it was. By "it" I mean our nation. A bunch of men got together and declared that we are free of governments that do not allow our participation. And that all men are created equal. And that we have rights not from a king but from God. They got a guy to write it all up in a word doc, which at that time was just some big piece of paper, and then they all signed it. And what they said was in present tense. Not the day after the war all men are equal, not we WILL be free if all goes well. No, they said WE ARE FREE, now, right now. That is the power of a declaration. I make a declaration every year in Late June. I put out a sign that says a parade will occur in our cul de sac at 9am on July 4 th .  I do not check with anyone, ask permission, call the town or the HOA. I made the sign, it is my sign and it says... I don’t check to see if others will be there, or if we should move it to Saturday instead o...

It's not a decision, it is a bunch of coordinated choices. I did NOT want to run today. First I go eat pasta at lunch with CREAM SAUCE. The conversation is good and the food is amazing, but as I come home on the belt-line I notice I am only going 50 and on the side of the road. I will nap. But you were going to run this afternoon, But I am so tired and I am only running a 5k. I have been so good, I deserve it, I will not eat the pasta again, just let me nap this time and I will be good. Choice, I take the exit towards the gym. But that exit also takes me to my house. Choice, I go straight at Kildaire. But I could just ride by, and I am PRETTY SURE I WILL. Choice, I turn in. I sit in the parking lot and listen to Hunter Thompson, in the worst throes of a pasta coma. As he describes his drug induced escapade, I drift in and out of consciousness. I wake up, it has been 10 minutes since I parked, and I have been passed out, I should just go home. Choice, I get m...