A500.9.3 Course Reflections.

This course is the cornerstone of leadership development, I recommend it to not only people seeking higher education but people seeking to sharpen their own toolbox.  It establishes the standards of behavior and critical thinking for the next several years while seeking out another graduate degree but a lifetime.  I am excited to see what other courses in this program have to offer and how much more I can learn.  

I thought that the interaction with other career professionals was incredible.  The adults in the class are all working adults, each with unique stories.  Each of the classmates I learned from and look forward to more classes together.  Each of my classmates, looked at the questions and dialogue differently, some really expressed their ideas and concepts, others were more reserved at beginning and then by the end really opened up.  This evolution is due in part to the class, the class is an field in which we are all equal, this allowed freedom of thought and open dialogue. 

Now that hard part, the work load.  At certain periods of time, my entire weekend was dedicated to the workload, certainly more then 20+ hours (sometimes 30+) a week dedicated to truly understanding the material.  There was no slowing down and it did not stop.  While I was working on my regular job, home life and school there was periods when I was up sometimes to 3 or 4 in the morning trying to work on the assignments.   I had to learn to juggle the workload with my AF missions and home life, at a great risk to both.

 During certain periods of the last 9 weeks,  I did not find many connections to the reading material for the workload required.  The workload at times seem to just skim the surface of what was required.  I would have loved to spend more time on the text, to go through more drills in the elements of reasoning.  This would have improved my experience.  I also would have loved to spend more time exploring the very short book "Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools", this book now literally lives in my daily planner and goes with me everywhere.  That material was so relatable, I would have loved to spend more time on that in the classroom.  However this is not a negative comment but more of an observation, as through my research project I learned so much about myself.  I explored my deeper flaws and made commitments to better my own fallacies.

All in all I am very pleased with the outcomes of this classroom and the professor.  In every case Matt Earnhardt made himself available for questions even on his sons birthday.  His leadership excelled and reflected in my performance.  I enjoy working with him over the past few weeks and absolutely look forward to more classes with this professor. 
  

A500.5.1.RB Critical Thinking about critical thinking

 

What have I learned?  What is the are aspects of critical thinking that I have learned?  How have my critical thinking skills improved? In this course?

I recently read in an article, in the Washington Post (2012), that in Texas the Department of Education did not want to teach critical thinking in schools, because it wrongfully proposed that it challenged traditional methods of student learning.  This article made me think, before this class would I have understood both sides of the opinion, would I have understood what is meant by critical thinking and its true purpose.  Would I have even understood why Texas did not want to teach these skills?  Could I have used my core competencies that I learned about reasoning and change my life for the better?  My story of leadership continues today as I took a vital step in becoming a better, mentor and leader.  I embarked on new a journey to actually learn new skills and way to look at problems through reasoning. 

I started this course with my own personal view on, with what I thought was the truth of critical skills. Right or wrong I believed that critical thinking meant to criticize others for the production of a non-reflective hypothesis.  I believed that written word, even peer reviewed work was never questioned.  This was not hard, so what was the fuss about critical thinking all about, most humans do it all the time.  We judge and criticize all the time.  We judge and criticize the Sunday night game and latest athlete caught in a drunken scandal.  My old way of “critical” thinking seemed to completely ignore all of the essential elements of reasoning, instead my behavior focused on my own opinions and points of views. For example, years ago, I held truth that my Southern Baptist was the only way to think about God and that Catholics are persecutors of the truth about Christianity.  This heated argument almost destroyed my marriage, as I was not open-minded to even active listen.  I criticized and summarized Catholic denomination from the Holy Father to my fiancé without looking at consequences or all of the information, or the purpose of the argument.  This problem took me years to work out and to understand that I was wrong for thinking like that.  Looking back on this example, with the tools of reasoning that I have found in this text, things would have turned out so much different. 

This is old way of thinking was nothing more that bully tactics and sometimes caused irreversible damage because of non-reflective judgment; which is not critical thinking at all. It was a personality trait that could have been at times a little, egocentric in all the wrong directions.  For example, the latest athletic scandal at the Olympics, I judged that athlete from the get go.  Immediately the media and myself demonized the athlete, calling him all sorts of names, the athlete was treated like a common criminal, nothing more than a thug.  The athlete behavior is not a reflection of his intelligence, meaning he is not an idiot (okay maybe), but there are other questions to ask: what are his points of views, what is the actual problem that needs to be addressed here, what are the implications and consequences if he does not get help for these problems, what background information can we discover to get the proper help…and so on.

Critical thinking is about reasoning not rationalizing.  Reasoning through the athlete behavior, or the other point of view about the origins of Christianity.  The 8+ elements of reasoning provide tools to seek an understanding of the material and the author, through a more reflective lens.  This is why critical thinking begins.  It requires practice and time to be good at using the elements.  The elements do not presume to remove emotions but regulate them, it does not presume to criticize the author or the research but instead focus on reflection of the data and the deeper level of the author.  The long lasting impact of understanding the elements of reasoning will help me understanding critical thinking on a deeper level, it will not only help me at work but at my home as well.  I hope to learn more about this skill over my next few years in this degree program.  I wish that this skill was taught to me at an earlier age, maybe in secondary school?

Reference

Valerie Strauss (2012) Texas GOP Rejects Critical Thinking Really. Washington Post. Retrieved   from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects  critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html

A500.4.3 Ballet or Slippers (the American Choice)

Cajun Cultural choices. 

My narrative is as a unique story and continues with my choices made today.  As previously mentioned, the cultural norms of South Louisiana, Cajuns are vastly different from the many parts of the rest of Louisiana, the traditional south, and the United States. The language, the music and the food can be found nowhere else in the world.  This dying cultural assumption builds me into the leader that I am today. I agree with Dr. Lyengar impression (right or wrong) of the fallacies of the American assumptions of choice (2010). To elaborate on working on Dr. Lyengar assumptions of choices and applying this to my Cajun story, my story is atypical of my colleagues, and peer groups because of the isolated community.  I have learned different aspects of leadership through my culture and my story continues as I learn more about observing the differences in American assumptions.   

Exploring the typical American assumption choice is the “locust of the individual (2010).”  This is not the case in Acadiana (a collective of parishes where Cajun cultural is most present); the choice is the family, neighbors, the and collective.  This choice in the culture can amplified and was taught to me at a young age.  Growing up in a hurricane targeting area, my family experienced many floods and storms over my lifetime. After most storms we took our boat up and down the bayou’s checking on our neighbors first before we even looked at our own home. This was demonstrated again in the recent floods, a group of volunteers gathered to help their neighbors and the entire flood stricken area, even calling themselves the Cajun Navy.  Another example is the Cajun (French word), boucherie.  This is a tradition that butchers a hog, and no part is left not used.  While most of my adult friends would find this greatly disgusting, this unique process takes time and it usually done by traditionalist. The difference in the cultural assumption is that all the food is shared and distributed to local families, everyone.  This butchering is for the people not for the individual, the farmer is making the choice to share (sometimes for months) with his bounty.  It is during this example where I learned the assumptions that I have today.  The choice to help others outweighs the individual.  My leadership today is based in this value, many times over the past few years I have gotten up in the middle of the night to help my organization, my troops, or even take up missions abroad so that no one else had too for the benefit of the collective.    

The second assumption that she discusses is the choice that more decisions presented one has the likely choose the better choice.  I will never forget my first week in basic training, in the chow line.  I did not understand the choices presented, what was this food, and what do you mean I get to choose what I wanted?  I was so confused.  While my drill instructor was yelling at me at breakfast, I was trying to engage in a conversation with the cooks to understand the choices and the implications that I faced by making simple decisions.  What is “white” gravy, what was the differences in biscuits, what was a flat sausage patty, what was the differences in milk?  This funny story illustrates the cultural differences in choices, all these choices overwhelmed me, during my years in Cajun culture I did not have those choices and simply did not know what to do when presented with things I had never seen before. In my current job, I have to face major requirement choices every day and the wrong choice can end up with a flying Albatross, that barely gets out of the water.  As companies compete for the next government multi-billion-dollar contract, choices are made and sent up the chain of command. During my decision/choice matrix I go back to the first day of basic training, was the choice about the differences in milk or was the choice really was I going to eat that morning.  In my leadership technique of choice, I choose to focus on the larger problem instead of every details and ever underlying choice, if this is not done I will never leave the chow line.    

Dr. Lyengar third assumption is the ability to say no to choice.  She writes that “American’s are given the right to choice and that the world is limitless,” she then elaborates that this is not always true and goes on to say that “American could benefit by incorporating new perspectives in their own narrative (2010)".  This again I turn to my Cajun culture.  The Cajun food, its music, its festivals, the reviling, the lifestyle is a melting pot of cultures from the 1700’s.  It is a combination of Spanish, French, Native-American and African influences.  I was raised with this understanding, and brought up with a mixture of all of cultures in the small isolated community.  Take for example, in my public school, white was the minority and French was the dominate language taught, while track was the dominate sport and catholic was the religion.  I grew up in a part of the south were racism rarely existed in part, because the culture for hundreds of years was influenced by a melting pot of sub-cultures.  In my military career, I have learned that this is not the case everywhere and that not every sub-culture shares in these poor, rural, mixed culture of Acadiana.  When faced with these choices, I look back to those boucheires, where it did not matter who, or what religion you practiced, you are part of the family and the food will be shared to everyone.     

References 

Shenna Lyengar (2010) The art of Choosing [video file] retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing/transcript?language=en#t-584979

A500.3.3R.B Organizational Leadership as a system

Reflection on defining the organizational leadership as a body of systems, not a as body of information.

Reflecting on organizational leadership as a body of systems can be broken down into fundamental question: is the discipline of organizational leadership a system or simply a body of information? It is my opinion that it is a body of system.  Breaking down organizational leadership into a working definition indicates a body systems embedded in the discipline.  It is important to look at the subject into two parts (systems) that once combined demonstrates, a complex organism that moves towards a single goal.  To elaborate, use the definition of organizational leadership, that was previously identified in this weeks discussion, one can see that it is not just simply a body of information.  One of the best definitions for the first part (system) is leadership, the US Air Force 1948 definition of leadership, the “act of influencing others to accomplish the mission (Air Force, 2016).” The next key part of the subject is the organization itself, the easy definition for this part is, “a company, business, club, etc..that is formed for a particular purpose (Organization, 2011).” Putting the two words together as a single unit for organizational leadership, “the act of influencing the company towards a particular purpose.”  Illustrating the body of systems further, the art of moving an organizational to a purpose requires certain skills, development, logic, vocabulary, and internal systems or engines (Noisch, 2016) that keeps both the leader and the organization on a single track, thus this cannot simply be a just a body of information.    

Fields change and are diverse and the art of the organization changes with tide while bodies of information often remain data points and are not fluid and change slowly.  How does a company like Apple grow exponentially in ten years?  The company was guided through good leadership that used all of the systems to gain the competitive edge and evolved.  If we look evolution as not just simply a data of information, we seem to miss the newest change to the subject.  Arguably, everything changes humans, trees, and island are form, all of this part of the systems that make up evolution (Introduction, 2016).  An example to evolutions systems, are latest viruses, that have mutated past the point of known sciences (Evolution Resources, 2016).  There are so many systems (or sciences) that are used to understand how a simply organism can mutate to devastate a country.  Compared to a static body of information, the idea of a cure would never appear clearly.  The art of influencing a organization is very similar to this, how any systems are used to move the organization, and how has it changed since the inception of the organization.

Some of the systems that make up a successful art of the organization are: leadership, management and interpersonal relationships, to name a few.  Elaborating the Apple question further reveals how the later used his body of systems and the growth of the organization created a worldwide culture.  Apple was losing its competitive edge in the personal computer business and the stock was plummeting.  Steve Jobs one of the Apple creators, took a gamble and created a small device that a person can play music, game, talk on the phone and check email at the same time.  The amount of systems that were used in this, are overwhelming: leadership, marketing, communication, management, relationships, etc.. Almost over night the business sky rocketed.  Steve Jobs used his art of influence to move the entire body of systems inside of the organization toward a single goal, not just looking at the organization as bod of information.  

References

Air Force Doctrine (2015). Volume 2 Leadership. Retrieved August 17, 2017, fromhttps://doctrine.af.mil/dnv1vol2.htm (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)

Evolution In Medicine (2016) Evolution Resources from National Academies of Science Retrieved from http://www.nas.edu/evolution/EvolutioninMedicine.html

Introduction to evolution (2016) Understanding Evolution. Retrieved from http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_02

Nosich, G. M. (2012). Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the curriculum (4th edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Organization. 2011. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved August 16, 2016, from

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Fact (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)

A500.2.3 Your Story

My standard reliable.

         My story of reliable starts thirty years ago; growing up well below the standard of living in United States but perfect for South Louisiana, in a small double wide trailer, sitting on stilts against a quint bayou, if you wanted to eat it you grew it, shot it or traded for it.  My story of reliability starts on those banks and morphed into my steady standard, that exists in my life today. My self-sufficient family relied on each other to pick the crops, to hunt with my dad, to getting the morning eggs at a very young age.  To understand this story and how it has shaped me in the man I am today, we have to look past the idea of rich vrs poor, educated from non-educated, to concepts at the root of the bayou of family and culture.

     At five years old my dad and I went hunting, as I walked with him carrying the hunt for the day.  Fast forward a few years and my mom would relied on  me to pick peaches or blueberries for the pie that night. I did these things out of necessity and because she knew that I would do them with gratitude and thoughtfulness.  It was during my teenage years that I learned even more about reliability, I would spend my weekends working on the farm, not because I had to but because it was the right thing to do.  Giving up my freedom to spend time feeding my family, instead of playing with school kids I drove the tractor or picked up pecans and sold them for money for my family.  During my years in high school, I was the team captain at my local track team and got up earlier then most and drove the local high school bus (sometimes without a proper bus driving license) to pick up the team to head to the track meets or drop people off after school so that they could have a ride.  Most people would say that I would give my shirt off my back to help, and relied on me to do so.  My team and family relied on me.

     Almost seventeen years ago my reliability evolved rapidly, when I walked into the recruiters office.  At first my story was about starting a small Cajun family with my Air Force money.  There was some limited critical thought, but this changed on 9/11, my thoughts got deeper. I wanted to serve, I wanted to help, I wanted to get involved any way I could.  I believed that my family depended on me again, this time to defend the greater good.  I volunteered for the first assignment to the Middle East that I could get.  This was at the sacrifice of a best friend, she tried to talk me out of it but understood the standard I had to do it, it was part of my culture.  After that experience in Afghanistan in early 2002, there was a deeper desire to do more to reach out.  I transferred jobs to selective manned counterspace unit and spent the next decade and a half being that "guy", that a squadron commander could call anytime for any trip.  I ended up going back overseas to a variety of places for thousands of days, sometimes on less than a day's notice or a gratuitous smile.  Seven more times I went because they depended on me to do it.  There was never a "no".

             Eventually this "no" wore me down and my reliability was taken for granted.  The commander's knew I could be counted on to take all the missions, anywhere, anytime all the time away from my family, any and everything I would do for the Air Force, for my brothers in arms, and my nation.  My reliability had to evolve again, after those trips, I sat down and starting thinking on a much deeper level.  I had to learn to say no, I had to learn to let go of the persona of that " go to guy".  I had to learn that it was not about the actions one takes but by the strength inside to understand what is most important, yet another evolution from reliable; steady.  I need to be "steady" in my friendships, in my job and in my life.  All those years of been the dependent now I needed to be a constant and continuous to myself, psychologically and physiologically.  I went back to school, several times, I got a nice window desk job, and now represent high levels of Air Force Space Command and report straight to General officers'.  I even got my own phone that I do not have to share or wait for a satellite connection.  This hopefully displays a visual for my life, for my standard and the how it has evolved over time, after I reflected on what direction the standard needed to take in my life.  Demonstrating to the younger generation and my family how reliability can evolve from dependable to steady.  Hopefully in the long run this standard and its evolutions will help me transition to my next life evolving along the way.                               

A500.1.5 RB_Mosley

The traits of quite reflection of intellectual traits.

During the past few days, I have had to reflect on traits of intellect for critical thinking.  Critical thinking is a way to purposeful process to solve problems from everyday life to complex problems.  Paraphrasing Richard Paul, he further elaborates on critical thinking as a process that analyzes, assesses and transforms to reach higher thinking (Paul no pg 2007).  The highest order of thinking is thought that is explicitly reflective and effective resulting in transformation (Paul. ELder, “Three Level of thought”).  This requires common virtues that hold true throughout the reasoning process to ensure decisive quality results.  Take for example admiring great art works, like Van Gogh’s Stary Nights or Esher’s Stairscases, key values are needed to understand what the definition of the work means.  It does not mean looking for fault like a critic but instead removing biases and opinions to understand (Noisch pg 13). 

One of those key values to understanding the higher order thought is intellectual perseverance (Paul Elder, “Intellectual Perseverance vs Intellectual Laziness”). Standing firm in intellectual principles and truths even faced with difficulties and challenges from critics, from faulty reviews, or insufficient data.  In my current occupation there are many that will dissuade me, or challenge without rational thought.  I have been persuaded by other opinions, fell into operational conformity and group-think.  These fallacies do not lend me to be a higher thinker, to solve real problems or concepts.  In order to reach the highest level of thought, I must understand how to preserve my own thoughts through perseverance.  My educational challenges of a career Airmen, is a good example of this.  I could stop trying to learn more and stop sharpening my leadership skills but instead I preserve through preserving my goals of understanding and defining the art work of my life.  

References
Nosich G.M. (2012) Learning to think Things Through; Critical Thinking across the curriculum. (4^th ed) Columbus , Oh Prentice Hall

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Paul, Richard (2007). The Critical Thinking Community; The 27^th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking. Retrieved August 14, 2016 from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-in-every-domain-of-knowledge-and-belief/698

Paul, R. Elder L. (2014) Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concept and Tools (7^th ed.), E-Reader Edition, Tomales, Ca. Foundation for Critical Thinking