Adversity not University

Lessons on Change from Angola (the Prison, not the Country by Joseph Grenny ~ Courtesy Bloomberg

Accessed from Bloomberg/BusinessWeek on 16/4/11: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/apr2011/ca20110414_747192_page_3.htm

Lessons on Change from Angola (the Prison, not the Country)

Volunteers have transformed Louisiana State Penitentiary lifers into responsible fathers. So why can't you get your team to adopt new software?
By Joseph Grenny

Every leader thinks his or her employees have some special reason to resist change. In one organization I worked with, the justification was long tenure: "You just can't change the behavior of 8,000 good ole boys who've been doing it one way for 27 years." In another, it was education: "I've got 450 PhDs who can intellectualize you into a coma." In one it was organizational trauma:
"We'll be doing so much downsizing in coming months that no one will even pay attention—much less change."

I've heard it all.

Leader after leader lowers aspirations, believing employees have a highly evolved capacity to repel new ideas and habits.

For anyone who sympathizes with this modest view of influence, I invite you to join me on a trip to the toughest prison in the U.S.: Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola. For many of the 5,000 inmates, who are serving average sentences of 93 years, Angola will be their last residence. All are violent offenders: murderers, rapists, and armed robbers. Since most have no hope of parole, there is little incentive for pretensions of personal reformation. Which makes Angola a unique testing ground.

That is why I was so taken with what has happened at Angola every May for the past five years.

Breaking a Cycle

Statistics tell the broader story. Jack Eggar and Lyndon Azcuna refused to accept that a father's prison sentence meant a cursed future for his children. Studies show that the 2.2 million children of inmates in the U.S. are seven times more likely to end up in prison. Eggar, president and chief executive of the religious organization Awana, which serves some 12,000 churches in the U.S., and Azcuna, director of the Awana Lifeline ministry, theorized that the best way to give these kids a fair shot at life was not to work around the "father problem" but rather to work through it. Rather than compensate for a bad dad by offering kids resources or mentoring through other agencies, they posited that transforming hardened felons into attentive fathers would turn these men's influence from net negative to positive.

And the early evidence suggests they're right. More than two-thirds of caregivers report that the 1,500 children who have participated in Awana's faith-based program, Malachi Dads, are significantly better behaved as a result of engaging with their fathers. Many fathers similarly report that while they are still locked up, they feel much different about themselves as parents. They find a way to change their children's lives while serving life sentences.

Eggar and Azcuna have incorporated an abundant amount of social-science brilliance into their strategy. They have engaged all six of the sources of influence that our research and book Change Anything (Business Plus, 2011) show make change 10 times more likely.

1. Personal Motivation. Like all great influencers, Eggar and Azcuna engage the heart before addressing the mind. They help inmates reform via a purpose—their children. Malachi Dad's proposition is powerful: "You may be locked up, but you don't have to be locked out. You can stop the curse of the fathers from passing to your children." They suggest the best way to alter your children's destiny is to change yourself and become the father you never had. While the invitation is a bit awkward and even painful, hundreds rise to the challenge and find immense meaning in that difficult self-reflection, because they're doing it for their kids.

2. Personal Ability. Eggar and Azcuna know even profound motivation is worthless unless accompanied by ability. Most of us think change is all about motivation. If criminals wanted to change badly enough, they would. And we couldn't be more wrong. Just talk to these men and you'll quickly discover they're clueless about what it means to be a father. Few ever had one. Most were abandoned or abused, and those who weren't were mentored in felony by their father figures.

For example, Malachi grad Keith Morse, who is in Angola for first-degree murder, met his father for the first time in Angola. Dad preceded him to prison by a decade.

Before fathers gets face-to-face contact with their children, Malachi Dads puts them through a rigorous 11-month training on fathering principles and skills. They participate in hands-on workshops. They work toward their GEDs. And by the time that first contact arrives, their capacity to relate to their children has expanded.

3. Social Motivation. Learning in Malachi Dads is a social process with lots of encouragement, accountability, and feedback. Dads are organized into "family groups" in which they hold discussions, read letters they write or receive from their kids, and learn new norms for their behavior.

Accountability is strict: Skip a few sessions or otherwise slack off, and you're out. The group recitation of the "Malachi Dads Pledge" resets norms about fatherhood and reconnects individuals with the moral cause they've undertaken. It also leverages social support when these life-hardened men recite together the words: "As a Malachi Dad, I solemnly pledge to glorify God and build His Kingdom by prioritizing the raising of godly children, first in my family, then in the influencing of other men to do the same in theirs."

4. Social Ability. You can't pool ignorance, so peer tutoring from other inmates won't yield great results. Instead, Malachi Dads draws on mentoring from previous grads and hundreds of volunteer mentors from outside the prison.

5. Structural Motivation. Rewards help motivate the tough slog of the program. One reward graduates look forward to all year is the Returning Hearts Celebration—a full day to play, interact, and reconnect with their children in a well-supervised but remarkably free setting. It's the highlight of the year. And a big payoff for engagement.

6. Structural Ability. Like any good influence effort, Malachi Dads helps participants make bad behavior harder and good behavior easier by giving inmates cues, reminders, and tools in the form of books, charts, and self tests. The regularity of interaction with those who have similar aspirations also distances them from negative influences.

That's a rushed description of the details of the influence strategy at Angola—but it's all academic until you see it in flesh and blood. I defy you to remain a skeptic about the possibility of change after witnessing one of these days.

It's Returning Hearts Celebration day. After months of preparation, hundreds of inmates wait for buses to arrive. Daryl Waters, a muscle-bound, tattooed, 250-pound lifer serving a 95-year sentence for murder, helped prepare more than 1,000 pinewood blocks that fathers and kids will later shape into derby cars for the race at the end of the day. Three thousand hot dogs are waiting to be grilled. Four thousand hamburgers have been lovingly shaped. Chips, cookies, and colas serve as refreshments during the warm Louisiana day as these fathers take a shot at redefining their relationships with their children.

Waters is waiting nervously. His tormented life trained him to stand his ground in the most violent of confrontations. But nothing prepared him for the sweet vulnerability he feels as he waits to see his children. As the buses finally pull in, he drapes a towel over his head to shade his eyes. He watches one dad after another trot, then run, to embrace his children. His hands knead each other nervously. He's not sure whether his kids will actually show. And if they do, will they accept him? Will they count the minutes until they leave or enjoy him as he desperately hopes they will? His most potent fear is they'll stand him up and he'll have to wait another year to say what he's practiced saying for 11 months.

At last the bullhorn sounds. "Daryl Waters."

Intimate Conversations

He hasn't seen 15-year-old Dafius, 17-year-old Akenke, and 18-year-old Lacoya for more than a decade.

They look equal parts familiar and strange to him at a distance. But the announcement was clear. These are his children. With a total disregard for macho dignity he flies across the prison yard and sweeps his three children up in his arms. He is not the man he was when he entered Angola. His children sense it, too.

The day passes quickly. It's filled with carnival rides, games, and the big Derby race. But crucial to the day are intimate conversations that redefine relationships. "My children want affection, to be loved and hugged," Waters reports. "I have a daughter who is a phenomenal athlete. We are able to share some intimate moments and deep heart issues that we couldn't share at a regular visit."

On seeing his son, Waters is surprised to have to reach up to tousle his head. "Boy, you're getting taller." Then "How are you living?" Again and again he collapses into hugging them, repeating "I miss you. I love you. I miss you."

After a tearful parting, a Malachi dad reports, "I have now cultivated a relationship with my daughter. I didn't know I needed to have a relationship. The other day I asked her if she was mad at me. She said, 'I forgive you. I know you made a mistake, and it cost you.' I told her, 'I didn't make my choice over you. It had nothing to do with you. I am sorry.'"

Malachi Dads has now spread the program to 40 prisons in the U.S. Others are seeing similar results. Life and death sentences are overshadowed by an intelligent approach to influence. Dads are changing. Kids are changing. Who'd have thought?

Overcoming Recidivism

But Awana isn't the only group to have discovered that well-informed influence strategies yield remarkable change. Another faith-based program, called Texas Offenders Reentry Initiative (T.O.R.I.), sponsored by the Potter's House, started with the same assumption: Bad habits as well as good are functions of identifiable sources of influence. Change those sources of influence, and people can change. Even those the rest of the world casts off as hopeless.

T.O.R.I. helps a couple of hundred former felons per year create a plan to change their lives. They set aside the naïve assumption that a severe enough prison sentence suffices to help someone mend his ways. T.O.R.I. assumes recidivism is the predictable result of a lack of skill, mentoring, social support, accountability, and structure. They operate on the sound assumption that change requires many sources of influence.

Case in point: Roderick Crowe entered a Texas prison at age 21 as a high-ranking member of the Crips gang. After adolescing under the tutelage of that potent group, he spent 18 years in prison receiving additional guidance from his incarcerated colleagues. On his release, he received $50 and a bus ticket. It's easy to predict Roderick's future.

Given our shoddy approach to influence, it's no surprise two out of three people like Roderick find themselves back in prison within three years. In fact, we should be shocked the number isn't higher.

With a complete view of human change, T.O.R.I. is beating those odds. Recidivism plummets with a little help with skills, guidance, structure, accountability, and encouragement. Recidivism for graduates of T.O.R.I.'s 12-month program hovers in the 8 percent range.

Luckily, Roderick was a T.O.R.I. grad, and instead of living the fate you assumed, he is happily employed, reconnected with his children and grandchildren, and living in a nice three-bedroom home. Something he, and the rest of the world, never thought he could do.

Can you really change everything that needs changing? Probably not. But you can change a lot more than most of us think. Angola hasn't just produced individual change. It has changed an institution. As a result of the efforts of a remarkable warden and through programs like Malachi Dads, it is now among the safest prisons in the U.S.

If change can happen at Angola, maybe there is hope for more mundane challenges, such as getting employees to use new performance management software. Perhaps the problem lies not in our people but in our model for change.

(Joseph Grenny is co-author of three New York Times bestsellers: Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. His new book, Change Anything, made its debut in April 2011.Grenny is a consultant to corporations and co-founder of VitalSmarts, a firm that specializes in corporate training and organizational performance.)

Feminism in a Nutshell - Courtesy 'manwomanmyth.com'

http://www.manwomanmyth.com/video/feminism/feminism-in-a-nutshell

John Terry and Luis Suarez May Be Victims of Stupidity But They Are Not Racist

It both amuses and angers me in equal measure when supposedly intelligent people, mostly politicians and those working in academia, contribute to establishing laws that are so ineffectual as to utterly skew life and experience, when those laws fuel rather than alleviate tensions.  As with most policies that lack substance, the ideas are without foundation and based on little more than a misplaced sense of optimism. 

First, as a nation, we are informed that all men are child abusers ~ not in so many words, of course, for those who make such pronouncements would argue that this is not so.  Indeed, there is no reference to be found in support of such a statement - only that too many people have been left with an uncomfortable feeling that all men are child abusers because this is what has been inferred for the past quarter of a century.   It matters not whether there is a grain of truth to such a consideration for as soon as they are uttered, words cannot then be unsaid.

Not content with wreaking as yet unrecognised psychological damage on those on the receiving end of such ideology, as a society, we are more recently informed that any child or person who exhibits more aggressive tendencies than their compatriots must be a 'bully'.   No attempt is ever made to determine what mitigating cicumstances there may be, if any, nor is there any distinction made between describing the behaviour of a child who may demonstrate aggression once, compared to a child who may act agressively more often.  The only explanation given is that the child is a bully. 

Except this simply is not so.  If an ideology that declares support for children can only achieve 'success' by first alienating some children, then the ideology is inherently unsound.  No attention is ever given to those who may be accused of being a 'bully' if judgement has already been passed.  It is like saying that anyone who walks into a bank and comes out with money must be a thief.  Yet by stating upfront that some children are bullies, rather than seeking to understand beforehand why this may appear to be so, along with failing to distinguish between a single act or continual aggressive tendencies, weak ideas have been allowed to perpetuate.  Like all weak ideas, they soon take hold as they are based upon fear.  Because people are afraid, and because people have an inherent sense of trust in the 'experts', such ideas take root.

What happens is that where once children were encouraged to walk tall, to stand up for themselves, this has been perverted and in some instances is perceived to be 'bullying', from which a child must be protected.  Yet the only people children ever genuinely need to be 'protected' from is those who say such things for it is they alone who commit the greatest harm by eroding a child's self-confidence, by undermining the familial bond that exists between children and their families, by inhibiting a child's ability to learn and to develop, which they can only do through play, sometimes aggressively.

We now also have to contend with 'racism' that is not racism, whereby Anton Ferdinand and Patrice Evra have accused John Terry and Luis Suarez of using racist language towards them.

Patrice Evra was at the centre of the France World Cup football team that led a rebellion when a number of France players refused to play during the 2010 World Cup finals.  Such an attitude is deeply contemptuous of authority yet he is allowed to continue playing for his club, Manchester United who remain seemingly oblivious of his actions.  Patrice Evra refuses to acknowledge that it is his behaviour that people rightly question and instead uses the race card in mitigation, thereby deflecting any criticism of his behaviour onto that of his opponent.

If another footballer knocked him to the ground in an excessive manner during the course of a match, would he not have something to say about the severity of such a challenge?  Would he not perhaps also demand that the guilty opponent be punished by the referee?
 
People may sometimes act foolishly, people may sometimes say things that are crass and sometimes people say things that cause offence to other people.  Depending on the circumstances, this may be intentional or it may not be.  Often, we are give an opportunity to make right a situation if we have wronged someone, and sometimes, it is pointed out to us that we should not have said something.  So my question for Patrice Evra and Anton Ferdinand is this: if *you* are unable and unwilling to exercise fairness and tolerance towards others, why should people afford *you* respect?

Understanding Who The Real Expert Is When The Subject Is Abuse

There are only two groups of people who could ever lay claim to being an expert in any field of study that seeks to develop a greater understanding of the human psyche ~ those who actively engage in it and those whose lives have in some way been irrevocably altered by it.  Unfortunately, this fact is conveniently neglected by those who currently label themselves as 'experts', when the subject is abuse, for the only people who can lay any genuine claim to possessing such an understanding are those who commit abuse and those who know what it is to be abused.

Everything else and everyone else is merely conjecture based upon opinion.  Like all herd mentality or group-think, such opinions have fuelled the explosion of interest in the field of psychology, allowing it to evolve into something that masquerades as truth.

Imagine just how much happier the human psyche would be ~ we all would be ~  without psychologists and psychology to lead us astray?

Bollocks to the Child Abuse Experts

There is a constant struggle when considering what to write in this blog, when the conflict mostly arises from a deep sense of having been antagonised ~ by the so-called experts.   The irony of this is that this reaction serves as 'proof' that they are 'right' with their analyses of people such as myself, further fuelling any antagonism.   There are many things though that experts do not understand.  For starters, there is always a sense of their being 'right' and everyone else is 'wrong'.  It is a perilous position to hold for all it does is to ensure that people take sides, whether intentionally or not.

This in turn leads to the scenario that if they are right, then I must be wrong.  Except the only problem I have with that is that if the experts have not been abused, how can they assert that my experience is wrong?  If we go along with their prognosis, I should most likely be dead by now; I should not be married - and to the same man for many years; I should not be a non-smoker or teetotal (almost), I should at least be an addict, or have several children by even more fathers, I should probably have killed someone, not only just wanted to, I should be a thief, a moral degenerate and banged up, locked up, six foot under and so on and so forth.

Except none of it is true for me.  So what I am supposed to do?  Apologise?  And for what?  For not conforming to their perception of what it is to be a victim?   'Up yours', to all who peddle such twaddle, I say!

Open Letter to Taylor and Francis Books

On 4th August this year, I wrote to Taylor & Francis Books by email.  The purpose was to bring to their attention facts pertaining to the veracity of one of their publications, facts that I knew had not been included in the work in question, that I knew to be true.   The publication was "Child Abuse, Gender & Society" by Dr Jackie Turton, a lecturer at Essex University in the UK.  Taylor & Francis provide little online contact details, so I used the only email address I could find.  It was orders@taylor&francis.co.uk.  In my covering note, I acknowledged that I was not writing to the correct department but asked if whoever received the note, could they please forward my note to the right person.

Whilst not ideal, I did believe that whoever was responsible for orders, would indeed pass on my email, and in time, someone from Taylor & Francis would make contact.

As this did not happen, a little over a month later, on 12th September 2011, I rang Taylor & Francis Books in London and explained what had happened.  The person I spoke to (Carol Mendes) was very helpful and supplied me with the contact details for the book's USA editor, Max Novick, his secretary, Jennifer Morrow, as well as the contact details for Gemma Walker, the person with responsibility for the book in the UK.  

When talking with Ms Mendes, I told her that I had first contacted Taylor & Francis some years previously and that I had been put in touch with the editor but that his name was not Max Novick.  The then editor had written to me in a most sympathetic manner but said that he could not do very much.

It was only afterwards when I questioned his response, that I thought that the reason for his failure to act must have been because I had not presented myself, or my story sufficiently adequately, as to be taken seriously.  It was certainly true that having found out who the editor was, it had taken so much effort to get to that point, that when it happened, I lost momentum somewhat.

And so I wrote to Mr Novick and introduced myself, and copied Jennifer Morrow and Gemma Walker, as had been suggested.  I explained who I was and what I wanted to do - namely to find out how to challenge the veracity of a book.

This time, I was prepared.  I had created a blog and published enough material that anyone who chanced across it would be able to understand not just the facts, but the context in which they occurred.

To my surprise, this email also remained unanswered despite it having three recipients.  Initially, I was not unduly concerned as I knew that the information I had provided presented a number of complexities for Taylor and Francis to consider.  I did though think it was rather odd that Mr Novick had not even acknowledged my correspondence, whilst aware that he would not be likely to offer a fuller response for some time.

More than two months elapsed.  Then the questions started to come: why hadn't my email been answered?   I knew that it had generated a response if the the stats on my blog were anything to go by yet no-one from Taylor & Francis acknowledged this. 

So I wrote to Mr Novick again on 17th November, and asked for a response.  This time he did reply and I was even more surprised.  He wrote to me in an overtly friendly manner, that to any casual observer would have given the impression that we had been in touch for a long time, and that we were very friendly, on first name terms even.   But I found his patronising manner to be highly inappropriate and unprofessional and it made me feel very angry.  If Mr Novick wanted to antagonise me, he was doing a very good job.

I did not undertstand his behaviour.  Neither did I understand why he did not do one of three things when I first wrote to him.  What I thought would happen would have been one of the following: firstly, upon receipt of an email such as the one I wrote - the response might have been to assess it briefly; and to conclude that it could be dismissed.  Were that the case, should Mr Novick not have possessed sufficient courtesy to have written to me and said something along the lines of "thank you for your email Mrs Marsh.  After careful consideration of all the facts, we have decided there is no case to answer"?  He did not do this.

Secondly, a much stronger reaction might have been "I am going to sue this person for libel, slander and anything else I can think of".  Again, Mr Novick did not have this response, or I would certainly have been made aware of it by now.

Thirdly, and the response I thought would happen but did not: "thank you very much for bringing this information to our attention, Mrs Marsh.  We are very grateful you have done this and we would like to assure you that we will give your claims/allegations our most stringent attention and notify you in due course what the outcome will be".  Perhaps they would also have said "please be assured that we take your claims very seriously and will ensure that you are treated fairly and with understanding".

What did not occur to me was that there might be a fourth response: nothing at all.  This is truly astonishing and I can only fathom a guess as to what the reasons might be for such indifference.  If Taylor and Francis have concluded that I am not crazy (first response), or that I should not be sued for libel (second one), or that I was telling the truth (third one) - then there really is only one other consideration.  That Taylor and Francis is deliberately ignoring the fact that there is erroneous material in one of their publications and that by acting in a disrespectful manner towards me, they hope that such information will simply 'disappear'.

Words like 'cover-up' come to mind.  Or would do if I thought that way. 

So, if anyone from Taylor and Francis is willing to take responsibility for the publication in question, these are the facts:

This link provides the backdrop:  http://bollockstochildabuse.blogspot.com/2011/05/sin-of-omission-dr-jackie-turton-and.html

Followed by the correspondence between myself and Taylor and Francis to date: http://bollockstochildabuse.blogspot.com/2011/11/butterfly-effect-and-max-novick-editor.html


Please decide whether I am telling the truth, or not, or whether my story rings true, or not.  My own impression is that Max Novick chose not to act for a number of reasons.  Firstly, it is possible that as he is not the original editor of "Child Abuse, Gender & Scoiety" that he has not read it.  So that when my correspondence landed on his desk by way of a challenge to it, he was unable to establish whether any apparent discrepancies were true or not.  If that was the case, it still does not explain why he failed to respond to my original email, and only did so when I wrote to him again.

More likely, is that Max Novick did believe everything that I said, and claimed to be true.  That because of the difficulties this would have given him, and by definition Taylor & Francis Books, that he chose to ignore them and hoped I would just 'go away'.  That is the strongest impression he left me with. 

It would also explain why he tried to shift the emphasis of responsibility away from himself as editor.  His note makes clear that he considers the facts I have provided to be an issue between Jackie Turton and myself.   How facts that contradict Dr Turton's theories - facts that Dr Turton herself told me - can be perceived as only being of a personal matter is extraordinary.  Does Mr Novick consider that all people who have been wronged should confront their accusers?   What does he believe would be achieved by this? 

Apart from any other consideration, attempting to shift responsibility for his failure to act is tantamount to being complicit.  If someone comes forward with an account that contradicts the official version, and if the credibility of that witness can be established, then the recipient has both a duty and a responsibilty to investigate and if such claims can be established ~ to act.