Moral Courage

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A man wrote me:

The seduction of the hiring process convinced me I had arrived in an organization that would embrace my methods. A place I thought my heart and talents could finally grow and flourish. I offered too much of myself unprotected and was “wacked” into reality.

I watched as the president of the company berated, humiliated, and then fired a good and stable sales representative. He did this in front of all the employees of the company. I sat and squirmed in my seat, metaphorically visualizing the owner shooting a hostage in the head to instill fear and ultimate control over the rest of us. The president noticed my discomfort. He asked, in a threatening manner, if I wanted to stay with the company. I felt compelled to quit on the spot, which I did. I managed to speak my mind a little as I left. I am now home, unemployed and recovering. (I wrote this man’s story in an essay entitled, Bearing Witness).

This story exemplifies moral courage: doing what you believe is right in the face of loss, criticism, rejection, or retaliation.

Over 18 years in many leadership and change agent roles at the Star Tribune newspaper and 13 years as a consultant to leaders of dysfunctional organizations, people tested my commitment to my values many times. The decision to stand up for my values was sometimes painful, and I wrestled with self-doubt at times. But I had vowed to live a value driven life, and I believed in value driven leadership. The values my parents had taught me were deepened and solidified as a young Secret Service agent where I experienced the might of ethics, excellence, and purpose and as a lost soul in a tough alcohol treatment center where I came to believe that my life depended on a value driven life.

I abhor rankism, dishonesty, disrespect, unfairness, mediocrity, and irresponsibility. I value respect, justice, fairness, integrity, excellence, and responsibility. I never thought of myself as having moral courage: I tried to be a good person and leader and fought through my anxiety and fears to do what I believed was right the best way I knew how.

Acting from our values often comes at a cost. I know well the fear of losing a job, and the loss of status and relationships along with humiliation and marginalization. It takes courage to stand alone in danger, to defy the unwritten rules, to illuminate the dark side, and to go against the cultural grain.

Why take the risks of moral courage at all? I do it to support values and to live an honest and authentic life and to do what I can to make the world  healthier and more ethical. And to stand up for those with less power and to go against the villains of our world. I do it so I can like myself. Aristotle said we become brave by doing brave acts. Think of moral courage as a muscle that grows stronger with use.

Robert Greenleaf, author of Servant Leadership, wrote that the problem in the world is not the evil, lazy, crazy, immature, disrespectful, and irresponsible people. They have been with us forever. The problem is the good people who have gone to sleep. We live surrounded by the need for moral courage to stand up to abuse, injustice, dishonesty, willful ignorance, the ism’s of the world, and the lack of compassion.

Moral courage may be the most needed courage in the 21st century and the mark of personal maturity and true leadership.

 

 

 

Fall Colors

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Colorado Aspen

Colorado Aspen

San Juan Mountains

San Juan Mountains

Ouray, Colorado

Ouray, Colorado

Grand Tetons

Grand Tetons

Minnetonka, MN

Minnetonka, MN

Vermont

Vermont

Vermont

Vermont

Jay Cooke State Park, MN

Jay Cooke State Park, MN

Eagle Ridge, Duluth, MN

Eagle Ridge, Duluth, MN

Plymouth, MN

Plymouth, MN

Plymouth, MN

Plymouth, MN

 

 

Abuse: A Symptom of How We Raise Boys

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The Adrian Peterson switching case led to a broad discussion of corporal punishment in America. The Ray Rice case led to greater awareness of domestic abuse. The recent story of hazing and sexual abuse in the locker room of the Sayreville, NJ boy’s high school football team shocked a community and led to the cancellation of the remainder of the season.

A deeper common theme resides below the surface in each of these stories: How we raise boys in America.

Joe Ehrmann, minister and former Baltimore Colts football star wrote, “All these problems I’ve been trying to deal with, they’re not just problems, they’re also symptoms. They’re symptoms of the single biggest failure of our society: We simply don’t do a good enough job of teaching boys how to be men.”

I grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s, a typical middle class American boy: Sports mostly, school less so, buddies, and later girls. I learned from family,coaches, teachers, neighbors, and older boys the rules of masculinity and how to create the false and unhealthy facade Joe Ehrmann wrote about in his book, Inside Out Coaching: Strength, silence, stoicism, and emotional denial and disconnection—warmth withheld, hearts disconnected from heads, and failure not allowed. Terrence Real wrote in How Can I Get Through to You: “I have come to believe that violence is boyhood socialization. Disconnection is masculinity.” Boys who resist the rules of masculinity get belittled, bullied, and beat up.

I began to drink in college and the disease of alcoholism moved fast for me. My dad got me into a tough alcoholic treatment center and saved my life. The counselors broke down my defenses. Staff and patients gave me painful feedback all day, every day, for a month. I explored my values, thought about my purpose in life, and shared my personal inventory with a priest.

I began to learn to be emotionally self-aware, how to experience and understand my feelings, and how to connect with others. I felt the power of love and a sense of community in treatment that I’d never felt before. I wanted to live and to feel alive and left the treatment center scared and committed to a value-driven life. Treatment rescued me from a false self and the unhealthy rules of manhood, and I began the life-long journey to greater authenticity.

I’ve spent the past 40 years on a quest to learn and evolve not as a man but as a human being. On this journey, I’ve wrestled with the beliefs I was taught—mostly subtle and unconscious–about money, career, success, control, conformity, competition, masculinity, and relationships. I realized that most of what I had learned about masculinity and being a man is wrong. Moral courage, excellence, authenticity, human connection, and personal responsibility became important values I strive to live my life by—always imperfectly.

Ehrmann wrote that life is about relationships and purpose. He encourages boys to ask, “What is the core purpose of my life, why am I here?” and to think about the kind of son, brother, husband, father, friend, and neighbor they want to be.

American is in dire need of mature and healthy men who can put violence aside: Men who know what they feel and are able to express their emotions appropriately. We need men of strength—even ruthlessness in honesty and decision-making at times–who can also be caring and compassionate. We need kind and gentle men with empathy who can lead with tough-love  and hold others accountable. We need men of great moral courage who can tell the truth and stand up to the evil and dysfunction around them.

To raise boys differently, we must become aware of the unwritten rules of masculinity and change them and the ways we engage with young boys. Grown men who find the old rules insufficient for a meaningful life must embark on a journey of personal introspection and transformation. Personal evolution to become a more complete human being is difficult. Those who deny the journey as “touchy–feely” are saying, “This stuff scares me.”  Courage is required.

The goal isn’t to turn men into women but for men to become more alive and whole.

 

I recommend: Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx and Inside Out Coaching by Joe Ehrmann.   Visit: CoachforAmerica.com

Red Rock

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(Click to enlarge)

Arches National Park

Arches National Park

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

Lower Antelope Canyon near Page, AZ

Lower Antelope Canyon near Page, AZ

Zion National Park

Zion National Park

Sedona, AZ

Sedona, AZ

Red Rock Canyon near Bryce Canyon

Red Rock Canyon near Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon

Rainbow Bridge on Lake Powell

Rainbow Bridge on Lake Powell

Lake Powell, AZ

Lake Powell, AZ

Wauweap Marina, Page, AZ

Wahweap Marina, Page, AZ

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

Arches National Park near Moab, Utah

Arches National Park near Moab, Utah

 

Trouble in the Secret Service

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This post appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune Sunday Opinion Page on October 12, 2014

Drunken Secret Service operatives bring prostitutes to foreign hotels, fight with them over money, and pass out in the hallways. A man breaches many levels of security and gets into the White House while White House police officers stand by with dogs restrained and guns silent. A man with an automatic weapon fires on the White House. Bullets hit its exterior and supervisors tell officers to stand down because the shots were gangs fighting. An officer disagrees but remains silent, afraid of criticism. A maid discovers the bullet damage days later. Such behaviors and incompetence reflect a complacent and fearful group of agents and officers without leadership and moral courage and an agency in decline that puts the security of the President and others at risk.

I served as a Special Agent in the U.S. Secret Service in the late 1960’s. I felt proud to be an agent and believed in the work I did whether chasing counterfeiters in Chicago or protecting the president in the White House. I stayed in the Secret Service for three years and always felt grateful for the experience of working with proud people who served a noble purpose passionately.

I was young and inexperienced and my time too long ago for me to be able to contrast the Secret Service then with the agency of today.

But I can raise concerns and questions as an organizational and leadership consultant:

I wonder what effect the haphazard creation of the Homeland Security Department had on the identity of the Secret Service and its purpose to protect the president of the United States. Should the Secret Service return to the Treasury Department to regain its focus?

I like to say, “It’s always about leadership.” What went wrong with the leaders of this once revered agency? Once an organization slides into decline, which the Secret Service has, leaders have lost credibility. The director has resigned. The top echelon of the Secret Service also needs to go and those leaders at the Special Agent in Charge level need to be evaluated.

The agency has grown by thousands of employees. Has the quality of special agents and White House police officers declined? What has made them fearful to act? Agents and officers need to trust and have faith in their leaders in order to be bold and aggressive in their actions.

What role does politics play in these humiliating failures? Do political folks in the White House tell the Secret Service when to turn alarms off, leave doors unlocked, and not to release the dogs because an innocent person may be hurt? I led many organizations in my career that were in decline. In each of them, the tail wagged the dog and that had to be turned around before the organization could be renewed.

Does Congress provide quality oversight of Homeland Security and the Secret Service? Does the dysfunction of Congress infect the Secret Service and other agencies?

People in the Secret Service deserve strong, tough-love leadership. The new leader, hopefully from outside the agency, must renew the Secret Service by reinvigorating the noble purpose of the Secret Service, regaining the trust of the agents and officers, and clarifying roles and responsibilities of agents, officers, and White House political staff.

Pride, strong leadership, and moral courage must once again flow through the ranks.

Don Tucker Interview Regarding Recent Troubles in the U.S. Secret Service

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Don and I worked together on the Chicago Counterfeit Squad many years ago. We sat across from one another in the office and did some socializing together.

We reconnected a few years ago through our writing.

Don spent 25 years in the Secret Service and in Narcotics before that. He was one of the great undercover agents in both agencies. He finished his career at the agent in charge of the Phoenix, AZ field office and then served as U.S. Marshall  for Arizona. Don grew up in poverty and gang territory in south Chicago and played football at the University of Iowa.  He has written two books available at Amazon.

His television interview is worth watching.

Don Tucker Interview Regarding the Recent Problems in the U.S. Secret Service

Sunrises & Sunsets

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(Click to enlarge)

 

Arches National Park

Arches National Park

Monument Valley, Utah

Monument Valley, Utah

Grand Tetons National Park

Grand Tetons National Park

Kenya

Kenya

Jackson Lake in Grand Tetons National Park

Jackson Lake in Grand Tetons National Park

Minnesota Summer.

Minnesota Summer.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park

North Dakota Sunset

North Dakota Sunset

Minnesota lake sunset

Minnesota lake sunset

Arizona Sunset

Arizona Sunset

Key West

Key West

Monterrey Sunset

Monterrey Sunset

Carmel, CA Sunset

Carmel, CA Sunset

Colorado sunrise

Colorado sunrise

Arches National Park

Arches National Park

My 2001 home in Colorado Between Ridgway and Ouray, CO

My 2001 home in Colorado Between Ridgway and Ouray, CO

Arches National Park

Arches National Park

Tanzania

Tanzania

 

The Story of Abuse Larger Than Adrian Peterson

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I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Last week it was Adrian Peterson all day every day on the local talk radio shows and in every newspaper sports column in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The sensationalized celebrity football player who whipped and injured his four-year-old child with a switch didn’t have a chance. On and on they went with pious demonization. Appropriate shock, anger, and thoughtful consideration were overwhelmed by the explosion of shadowy energy that brought him from adulation to contempt in a moment.

Many dynamics played themselves out without reflection in the rush to judge and be done with it all: abuse, parenting, Texas justice, corporal punishment, cultural differences, the tearing down of heroic athletes, and the dissemination of illegally obtained police reports and invasive photos of the child.

Finally they drove him out-of-town.

I didn’t think a criminal indictment was necessary: Peterson cooperated with authorities without an attorney present. He voluntarily testified before a grand jury. Based on what we know right now, I think he needs help to unlearn what he experienced as a child more than he needs constant public humiliation. Appropriate shock and anger were understandable and necessary. But a humbled Peterson also deserved our empathy and compassion–not our self-righteous vilification. He will make a plea deal or go to trial before a jury of his peers in Texas. His punishment will be insignificant. I don’t care about his punishment; I care that he demonstrates that he’s learned better ways to discipline children, and I care about his future behavior.

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about the tragic death of four-year-old Eric Dean professionally chronicled by Star Tribune reporter Brandon Stahl. Eric’s stepmother murdered him. Over many months before his death, people reported 15 instances of child abuse to Pope County, MN child protective services. Only one was investigated and wrongly dismissed. Citizens of Minnesota expressed their outrage but not to the level of the star athlete.

How could that be?

A violent and soul-destroying story underreported as much as the Peterson story was overblown goes on without end every day in the midst of those so upset last week.

Some Minnesota facts:

  • In 2013, men murdered 25 women in Minnesota in domestic abuse situations.
  • Women murdered seven men.
  • People made over 18,000 domestic violence calls to 911 in Minneapolis alone in 2009.
  • Child services in Minnesota does not investigate 71% of reports of child abuse.

Some national statistics:

  • A man batters a woman every nine seconds in the US.
  • An intimate partner has assaulted 25% of US women.
  • Police spend 1/3rd of their time responding to domestic violence disturbance calls.
  • Women of all races are about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner.

Emotional, physical, and sexual abuse permeates our society. I never consulted in an organization where emotional abuse wasn’t prevalent. In addition to domestic abuse, some athletes—professional and amateur–bully those perceived to be “soft,” demonize gays and lesbians, and demand silence and conformity in the locker room. Reporters often observe this behavior and their silence colludes with the abuse. Newspapers report ugly stories of bullying and abuse in our schools. And what’s left to say about the Catholic Church? Abuse surrounds us.

Have we become desensitized to what is around us? Do we only react to what is new and sensational?

We need to wake up and see the reality of abuse as it is—not just the celebrity cases that poke our dark sides and gin up dumbed-down anger that is dangerous and unhealthy. Then we need to take on the challenges and with an anger transformed to a relentless determination eliminate abuse of all kinds in our lives, neighborhoods, workplaces, and national personality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking to Students about Emotional Abuse

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Wahpeton Daily Post

Wahpeton, MD & Breckenridge, MN

Posted: Thursday, November 8, 2007 12:00 am

By Jennifer Johnson, Daily News

Emotional abuse begins as a control issue and can spiral into physical abuse. Tom and Melanie Heuerman visited North Dakota State College of Science Wednesday to speak to students on how abuse affects everyday life.

Tom Heuerman, Ph.D., is currently a consultant who has devoted the past 14 years of his life to coaching the impact of abuse. Melanie Heuerman is the administrative officer for the U.S. Department of Justice in Fargo, and also volunteers her time at the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center in Fargo-Moorhead.

“At one time or another, and sometimes more frequently, all of us have been made to feel like ‘nobody’s’ in our life,” Tom Heuerman said, speaking to roughly 50 students in the Plains and Prairie Room. “That includes the most successful and least successful of us.”

Tom Heuerman is a former agent in the U.S. Service and worked for 18 years at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. When he was 52, he received a Ph.D. in leadership and organizational change. In his experience working under corporate management, he found that the male-female dynamic in relationships can be applied to the workplace.

“I’ve never been in an organization where you can’t find abuse,” he said.

Emotional abuse can cause tremendous damage in a work environment, such as money loss, poor employee work efficiency and high turnover. Part of his desire is to help those in the corporate world and in schools to recognize the multiple forms of emotional abuse and the measures individuals can take to prevent it.

Emotional abuse is characterized by body language, words and actions that can hurt or frighten others. While a number of adjectives are associated to each element of abuse, such as rejection, humiliation, anxiety and withdrawal, there is only one element consistent in all definitions.

“It’s an ongoing process,” Tom Heuerman said, “But the core point of the relationship (for abusers) is to hurt and frighten for the purpose of control.”

Other forms of abuse include maltreatment of pets, which is sometimes a precursor to abusing people, and in family settings, an example might be one parent treating a child nicely to emphasize their anger at the other partner.

Abusers tend to be predictable, manipulative and charming, which is a method used to draw the victim in. They have a tendency to always give excuses during arguments and blame others for their troubles.

As a result, victims of abuse typically lose all sense of self, living their life in fear and deny their own needs to avoid furthering it. They suffer from low self-esteem, depression or start abusing drugs. When someone feels consistently put down, ignored, or that their partner is withholding approval or appreciation, these can all be signs indicating an abusive relationship. And while men experience abuse in their life, the great majority of victims are women.

In 2006, roughly 2,800 people passed through the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center in Fargo, Melanie Heuerman said. One thousand six hundred of those victims reported domestic violence and the remaining 1,200 were sexually assaulted.

“In a small community like ours, to hear that there were 1,200 sexual assaults in the Fargo-Moorhead area, that’s a lot,” she said.

One issue that specifically faces women is economic exploitation, where they earn a portion of the family income but it is either taken away or they have little say in where it is pooled. But whether men or women suffer from emotional abuse, the scars run deep and cause the greatest harm.

Tom Heuerman told the male students to stand up for women and get involved.

“The greatest problem is indifference,” he said. “Unless we start holding ourselves absolutely accountable, organizations like the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center will only help the wounded. We have to get on the other side of it.”

The Dark Side of the Public Reaction to Ray Rice & Adrian Peterson

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Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

Aristotle

I too am bothered by the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson stories. My wife and I completed 40 hours of training as volunteer speakers at the Fargo/Moorhead Rape and Abuse Crisis Center. Our eyes were opened to the pervasiveness and destructiveness of abuse in our society. We did many projects for the Center, and I did many hours of consulting at no cost. I wrote several commentaries on emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Rice and Peterson will pay a dear price for their actions.

I am also bothered by what feels like excessive, misplaced, and poorly expressed anger in some newspaper columnists, readers who comment on articles, and radio talk-show hosts and their callers. They come across as politically correct, self-righteous, harshly judgmental, and self-promoting:  “The more I damn Rice and Peterson, the better person I am.” Their rush to judge and to punish without due process, information, understanding of context, or a sense of proportion scares me. I have thought, “This is what a lynch mob is like.” I’ve been guilty of these things too.

Some feel upset that the team management didn’t instantly punish Peterson as they want him to be punished. People should break away from their paternalistic relationship with organizations and quit looking to owners and executives to meet their need to strike out.

These folks and the good people who remain silent might channel some of their anger in more constructive ways: People who condemn Peterson and the Viking’s management should live true to their own values, put their anger to constructive use, and do what they can to model their convictions: don’t go, watch, or listen to Viking games. Don’t buy team merchandise. Columnists might illuminate abuse and educate readers. Talk-show hosts could turn the spotlight on the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that surrounds us just below the surface of our awareness.

All should get angry at the vast abuse that permeates our society, not just the celebrity cases.

And everyone should speak up when they witness abuse in the family, neighborhood, and workplace.