The Group Dynamic Primer. Chapter Zero: Rock-Bottom

1996

I was despondent. Poor me. “My people” weren’t engaged.  They didn’t get me; they weren’t loyal, they weren’t receptive, they were leaving me, and it wasn’t my fault.  They just needed to give me more time, to get to know me…

Except…

My boss, Fred, said “They are fighting you.”

My colleague, Jo, said “They’re tired of you acting like their ‘King’.”

I even called a predecessor, Jim, to ask  “What’s their problem?”  Jim was too diplomatic to hold up a mirror.

I started reading, and researching, to solve this problem. Their problem? You know what it was-

Me.

Even more despondent.

I started reading anything I could get my hands on.  Thank God the first thing I checked out of the library was The Leadership Challenge.  I also read some other weighty stuff (Senge, Greenleaf), some popular fluff (Pitino, McGinnis), and some trendy “repackagers” (Covey, Carnegie).

I took notes, outlined, highlighted, and made charts to track what the commonalities were between all of these thoughts.  Rigorous in some ways, and nerdy as all get-out. Regardless, those notes, and charts, and scribbles evolved into a model that saved “my people” from me.

Passionate, motivated, and cheered by the success of that model, it became a curriculum that I started sharing with others.  After about 12 years, I started doing it full time as a vocation.

This blog started out as a supplement to that curriculum; it’s readership has increased over the last couple of years, though, and many readers are only getting glimpses of it through these posts.  While that’s just fine – my goal is generally just to share a useable concept each week – it’s become clear that I need to be more explicit about the guiding philosophies of Group Dynamic.

So, over the next several weeks, expect the “Group Dynamic Primer” – an introduction to the 8 concepts that drive my work and define the curriculum.  And I’ll be open – no suspense – here they are:

Service
Vision
Integrity
Communication
Modeling
Stretching and Growing
Positivity
Passion

I’ve hinted at these elements before, and every one of the 111 previously published posts belong in one of these categories, but over the next two months, I’ll focus on the basics for you.

Stay tuned.  🙂

2 Responses

  1. Cecelia Munzenmaier
    | Reply

    “Chapter Zero”–what a great title. It suggests a mindset where pretense is stripped away and humility allows new possibilities to emerge.

  2. Alan Feirer
    | Reply

    Thanks, Celelia — you had a part in inspiring this set of posts, by the way. 🙂

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