Mindset, Mindset, Mindset by Paul Bamonte, Federal Manager, Department of Homeland Security &
Key Executive MPA Alum

March 2020 will go down in the history books, hopefully, as lessons gained from the COVID-19 global pandemic that shook the world and touched every single person worldwide. A crisis so tragic, as of this writing, taking the lives of nearly 5000,000 people.

I say hopefully gained because a repeat of such a tragedy, be it in the realm of possibility, could again change individuals and societies, possibly in more significant ways we can’t imagine.

Take a moment now to consider who we were as a society in February 2020.

For many of us, myself included, we have been able to work from home, a luxury for which I have gained untold gratitude. With the time gained from this new work environment, I have thought deeply about the still disproportionately affected. Especially those who have had and continue to go to work, regardless of the CDC’s guidelines and the ever-looming uncertainty that will surely continue to shape our lives.

I was going to focus this blog post on the Spring 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer update, where global trust in the government is up from 54% to 65% (essentially pre and post-current pandemic). But more sobering, the second update has to do with the flip side of government trust, the rise in societal fears for “those with less education, less money and fewer resources are bearing a disproportionate burden of the suffering, risk of illness and need to sacrifice in the pandemic, and more than half are very worried about long-term, COVID-related job loss.”

This second statistic probably affects every one of us with a family member, friend, colleague, a friend of a colleague, your neighbor, bus driver, dry cleaner, or your Amazon delivery driver.

Then in May, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody, and the protests that followed, brought the juxtaposition of mass health and safety, people exercising their the First Amendment rights en masse, and the challenges of the political landscape.

Yes that’s right folks, all of these events in an election year. I am not saying similar events have never occurred on this scale, but with the added pandemic crisis, it tends to redefine many of our previous notions.

So now my fellow professionals, how do we interact with our teams as we reconstitute back into our physical work environment?

How do we digest the totality of what has occurred when presented with a new, uncertain environment, continue to build relationships, maintain and grow our self and social awareness, and yes, achieve the results?

Being mindful of what our employees and colleagues have experienced the past 3 months will ensure they feel invested and valued. Our mindset has enumerable impacts and is key in determining the level of success of our goals and remains one of the key capabilities we have as managers and leaders.

In this new and uncertain environment, tap into that personal courage to remain agile and open to new ways of thinking. Be there for those who need you. Engage with your teams in new ways while being an active listener. And as always, practice that continual learning every day.

About the Author

About the Key Programs

by Dr. Patrick Malone, Director, Key Executive Leadership Programs

Just before America found itself in the midst of a pandemic, three important pieces of research were released that gave us an indication of the status of the American workforce. And the results were quite sobering.

A Gallup survey released in late 2019 addressed the challenge of anxiety in the American worker. The findings were astonishing:

• 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress;
• US businesses lose up to $300 billion yearly as a result of workplace stress; Stress causes around one million workers to miss work every day;
• only 43% of US employees think their employers care about their work-life balance;
• and work-related stress causes 120,000 deaths and results in $190 billion in healthcare costs yearly. The average American stress levels are 20% higher than the world average.

And remember, this was pre-Covid.

Americans are also afraid.

Each year Chapman University performs their annual Survey of American Fears (CSAF). Here is where we stand. Three of the top 10 fears are directly related to illness, dying, and high medical bills. And American’s biggest fear? Corrupt government officials. So, to put that into perspective, in the biggest pandemic that any of us will likely ever see in our lives, Americans are afraid of everything related to health, dying, ability to cover medical bills, and government leadership.

And remember, this was pre-Covid.

Finally, people are lonely. Loneliness research is a fairly recent, if overdue, phenomenon. The Cigna U.S. Loneliness Index recently found that three out of every five adults, or 61%, report that they sometimes or always feel lonely. And of those, there is a greater feeling of loneliness among people who use social media more frequently, which is precisely what many of us are doing now. And for the Gen Zs, whom many of us consider to be super tech-savvy, well, they may be. But 73% of them report sometimes or always feeling alone, a 4% increase from 2018.

And remember, this was pre-Covid.

So what does this mean for us? It means that as leaders we will need to work harder to love those we lead, and let them know it.

This comes from our hearts. It’s a soul connection, not an intellectual one, not a technical one. Love transcends best practices, design thinking, strategic planning, and all things related. In the DC metropolitan area especially, there are a number of available outlets producing leadership reports, how to manuals, future of leadership, today’s leadership, tomorrow’s leadership, and on and on and on. We wait each year for the colorful, graphic laden portrayal so we can learn the latest on leadership. Yet woefully few, if any of these reports ever mention the word love.

Maybe the time is now.

About the Author

Professor Malone is an Executive-in-Residence in the Department of Public Administration and Policy where he teaches courses in public sector leadership, executive problem solving, organizational analysis, action learning, leadership ethics, and public administration and policy. He also serves as the Director of American University’s Key Executive Leadership Programs. He is a frequent guest lecturer on leadership and organizational dynamics in state and federal agencies, professional associations, and universities. He has extensive experience working with federal sector leaders from DHHS, EPA, IRS, USDA, HUD, DHS, and DoD among others. Professor Malone also regularly presents in international forums to government leaders from the Republic of Vietnam, Panama, Poland, Belgium, and Mauritius. His research interests and scholarship include work in public service motivation, leadership, ethics, and organizational behavior. He is one of only thirty researchers in the country certified to score the Subject/Object qualitative research methodology developed at Harvard University.

Dr Malone spent twenty-two years in the Department of Defense where he served in a number of senior leadership and policy roles including as a professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; Academic Director; and Dean of Academics for Navy Medicine. His most recent publications include “Thinking Up,” “Selfies in the Workplace: Narcissists and the Public Manager,” “Making Assumptions? Try the Power of Inquiry,” “The Challenges That Set Public Service Apart” and “Enhancing Your Leadership by Tapping into Staff Attitudes.” His TED Talk, “Thinking about Time,” is available at http://tedxtalks.ted.com and his co-edited book, The Handbook of Federal Leadership and Administration, was published in November 2016. He is also the host of the monthly podcast “Take It From Key.”

About the Key Programs

by Paul Carlson, Executive Director, Seattle Federal Executive Board

After directing a small federal agency, I am making the transition to teaching graduate students and I enjoy it immensely. However, I have been surprised to encounter profound cynicism among the students. They seem to have an overwhelmingly negative view, not just of government, but about our capacity for any significant social change in America as well.

The topic was homelessness. The class was virtually united in believing that homelessness neither could nor would be ended. Considering that we are entering the fifth decade of this prolonged crisis, this pessimism is hardly surprising. But the view of students went much deeper than that.

Homelessness, institutional racism, the perception of growing disparity between rich and poor, unbridled capitalism, neo-colonialism, the pervasive belief that only those born to privilege can succeed, bigotry, racism, and sexism are believed to be not simply present in American society but to define its very character. To many of my students, the overall view of decaying, dysfunctional American government is a foregone conclusion on the basis of overwhelming evidence in the news each day.

How to inspire students to consider public service, when they despair of the efficacy of most agents of political and social change, especially the institutions of government?

In our discussion I appealed to recent history and the dramatic changes wrought in the wake of the wars and upheavals of the 20th century. I do not think I made much impression. Historical reference points, as a means of measuring progress, seems dismissed as so many limited “constructs” of particular groups, usually from the dominant power group. I respond that truth can and does transcend the limited constructs of a point in history, or groups within history. We must avoid the fundamental error of believing the constructs of our particular time and ethos somehow stand out of history. There is no meta-construct; no post history prism through which we interpret current and past events.

Yet, oddly enough, this pessimism exists side by side with a kind of hyper-idealism; a stark contrast of the ideal versus real world. As it were, we can find only distorted shadows of the ideal world on the walls of our social order. This dualism seems Manichean: the light of high human aspirations is hidden only in pockets of resistance, while the mainstream social order grows ever darker.

Feeling no estrangement from high ideals, I ask myself exactly how I might share my faith in the values of a liberal society. Government’s function is not merely management of the social order, but to provide meaningful, humane and just service to our citizens.

I believe we want to open a horizon of government service, not merely because there are good jobs to be had (and there are!), but because we want those positions filled with civil servants who aspire to truly serve, who view their work is part of a wide net of services that supports and promotes growth, creativity and change in American civic, social and economic institutions.

I have been encouraged in recent years by my experiences with working with a federal inter-agency program that develops the talents of emerging leaders. This is a two year program comprised of two small cohorts of mid-career federal staff who overlap (1st year, 2nd year) in participation. Each year they choose a group service project, such as hosting a state wide conference on prisoner re-entry, building a tiny house shelter in support of the work of a local non- profit, or other similar projects. This peer led program is overseen by a team of five Advisors, senior federal agency staff. Our program structure is not unique.

However, the content of learning, while important, is subordinate to group process, the interpersonal encounters, friction and camaraderie inherent in their working together as a team of peers. Advisors mix it up in group discussion, candid with general opinions, though careful not to interpose their views in the peer decision-making process. Somehow this whole process becomes remarkably uplifting to spirit and morale, at least for most. Advisors serve less as teachers than co-learners.

To inspire the formation of new leaders in all levels of American government, current leaders obviously have to impart their own notions of service, their own beliefs, sense of duty and civic commitment. Our posture perhaps is that we are in leadership formation together with those we advise and teach. We owe as much authenticity of our character, beliefs and ideas as we can muster.

I do not want to have too ready a response to the students I teach in an academic setting. Their views are strongly held and worth listening to. I can, then, only share myself with them, my ideas and experience, and perhaps encourage them to place themselves within an experiential context of growth towards leadership. Will such an experience shake their cynicism, restore some faith in American society and civic ideals? A professionally intimate, personally engaged approach I believe may be the best way to impress a new generation of leaders, and help them develop a lens through which to find their own sense of meaning and purpose, and thereby to aspire to civic leadership.

About the Author

Paul Carlson’s career in housing homeless persons and working on national homelessness policy spans three decades. From the earliest days of the homelessness crisis in the 1980’s he worked to house homeless person with severe mental illness and substance abuse issues. He held key positions with the City of Seattle and later with the federal government developing strategies to end homelessness.

For nine years he represented the federal United States Interagency Council on Homelessness in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The focus of his work was on organizing community strategies to end homelessness and to create an adequate supply of housing and services for disabled persons and impoverished families.

Before entering federal service he was a special advisor on homelessness for the City of Seattle, directing the operations of the Sound Families Initiative, a housing production program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Paul worked for many years as the Director of Housing Services for Harborview Mental Health in Seattle, where he developed the housing program for chronically homeless persons with severe and persistent mental illness.

He currently serves as Executive Director of a federal agency called the Seattle Federal Executive Board. His duties involve working with federal agency executives to organize special inter-agency programs and initiatives.

He received a BA from Dickinson College and a Masters of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary. He has also attended St. Andrews University, Scotland, and Princeton Theological Seminary.

About the Key Programs

Federal Leaders Need More Opportunity for Inner Development

By Bob Tobias, Former Key Programs Director

Federal leaders want to increase the performance of those they lead but many don’t know how. Teaching them to fill out proper annual evaluation and performance improvement forms is not enough. It takes much more.

When Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, was asked whether Level 5 leaders are born or can be developed, he said there is no chance to reach Level 5 unless the aspiring leader engages in “inner development.” What is inner development?

We know it when we experience it in the behavior of others. When I ask federal leaders to identify the behaviors that induced them to give their unconditioned energy to a boss, they always identify the same behaviors: they spent time helping me develop; had my back; empowered me and allowed me to fail; listened; accepted my advice and respected me. In short, they engaged intellectually, and, more important, emotionally with me.

The “inner development” of a leader described by Bill George in Truth North is a shift from “I” to “We;” a change in focus from the leader’s success as an individual to a genuine concern for the mutual development and achievement of the group.

The data is clear. A “We” workforce, one where the leader is engaged with the led and the led with each other, is far more productive. Gallup has discovered work units in the top quartile of employee engagement outperformed those in the bottom by 21 percent in productivity. In addition, they saw a decrease of 37 percent in absenteeism, and a 48 percent decrease in safety accidents.

It is the responsibility of a leader to create a “We” workplace.

Gallup found that 70 percent of variance in team level engagement is based on the leader. This is mirrored by the finding of the Partnership for Public Service that the “key driver” of employee engagement is effective leadership.

Why is it so difficult for federal leaders to emulate that which they so admire, when the data shows it is so necessary for success?

Inner development demands dedicated time and focused attention in a fast-paced work environment. For example, it requires the time and courage to engage in self-reflection to define my true purpose and the decision to live it, and challenges whether my habitual reactions to situations continue to be effective. I must learn whether my perception of the quality of my relationship with those I lead lines up with their perception of me, identify the specific actions I might take to create a workplace where it is safe to say “I don’t know,” coupled with the willingness to ask for help, and cultivate the humility to identify and remove my personal barriers to do what I now know should be done.

A leader’s inner development also requires an agency investment. Most leaders need a group learning experience built on trust and mutual respect, where they are supported by colleagues as they unlearn old behaviors, identify new desired behaviors and take one step forward and two steps back. They need to experience their failures as learning experiences and learn to regularly celebrate success. They need the confidence of practiced experience in order to apply what they learn in their workplace.

Federal sector leaders want the opportunity for inner development to increase productivity.

They recognize that accumulating power and directing others is not sufficient to inspire knowledge workers to engage with each other to solve problems for which there is no known answer.

Those they lead are entitled to the best possible quality of leadership, and the public demands better results. It is time to invest in the inner development of federal sector leaders.

About the Author

Robert Tobias teaches courses in public sector leadership in the Key Executive Leadership Programs. He also teaches facilitation and team development, conflict management and alternative dispute resolution, and managing labor management relations. Finally,, he is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation which brings together members of Congress, political appointees, career federal executives, union leaders, consultants, and academics for the purpose of resolving difficult public policy implementation issues. President Clinton nominated and the Senate confirmed him for a five-year term as a member of the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board. Tobias received the Paul P. Van Riper Award from the American Society for Public Administration “In recognition of his outstanding contributions to both the theory and practice of public administration” and the Warner Stockberger award from the International Public Management Association for Human Resources for “outstanding contributions in the field of public sector personnel management at the federal level.” He has also been elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Tobias was selected by Thomas Ridge, secretary, Department of Homeland Security, and Kay Coles James, director, Office of Personnel Management to the Human Resource Management System Senior Review Advisory Committee. In addition, Comptroller General David Walker appointed Tobias to the congressionally created Commercial Activities Panel. Tobias is a frequent contributor to Federal Times, Government Employees Relations Report, and Government Executive magazine on current federal sector public policy implementation issues.

About the Key Programs