Engagement. Lee G. Bolman

energy? How do you know if repair is even possible? Not every relationship works – and not everyone can succeed in every situation. It's merciful for all not to prolong shared misery. You are ahead of the game when you have clear rules for determining when it makes sense to continue to engage, how to assess if things are evolving in productive and positive ways, and when it's time for separation. Rules of engagement 1, 2, and 3 get you started on the right track. We'll probe other factors that can inform your decision and what to do in the face of uneven power dynamics as the book's leadership story unfolds.

      Figure 1.1 SURE: Four Rules of Engagement

      How to Use This Book

      We have chosen to present our SURE rules of engagement through a leadership fable with interludes and an epilogue that underscore lessons and key points in the story. Storytelling has long been a vehicle for reflecting on human nature and the choices people make in responding to life's challenges. Storytellers paint a world of action with words. As you savor their descriptions, you slow life down: study it, think about your reactions, compare your solutions with others, and view events through multiple perspectives – your own, the writer's, and the characters in the story.

      We recommend a thoughtful and deliberate read. As is always the case in human affairs, much is happening in each short exchange. As you read, compare your thinking and actions to the characters in the story. You may sometimes see the characters making mistakes that seem all too familiar. At other times, their successes may suggest new possibilities for expanding your options and becoming a better leader or collaborator. The book's power and impact depend on your ability to reflect on the issues and to use its story to better understand yourself, respond more effectively in your workplace, and handle challenges in ways that bring out the best in you and others.

      Think about how you want to approach the book and how you like to learn. There are at least two paths: straight through, or story first, then interludes and lessons. If you read the book straight through, the periodic interludes offer scheduled breaks in the action for reflection and emphasis. This approach lets you cut to the chase and focus on the bottom line – what you can learn from this book. You'll digest new ideas as you go and see how they play out over the course of the story.

      A second approach is to read the story itself first: skip the interludes, follow the story line, and draw your own lessons. You can reflect on what you see as most important, how well you think Vicky and others handled things, and what each of them could have done differently. This strategy keeps you focused on you – your thinking, reactions, understandings, and interpretations.

      If you choose this approach, you may want to take notes as you read – what you see as most important, how you feel about each of the different characters, how you might have responded if you were in their shoes, how well you think our fictional manager is handling things, what you see as her strengths, how she uses her mentor, what you think about his advice, and so on. Then, read the six interludes. You can then compare your observations and reactions to the issues and strategies we suggest and see where we expand your thinking – or you, ours. The Skills of Engagement section becomes a handy reference for digging deeper into the suggested actions and strategies for success.

      1

      Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos, Reframing Academic Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, chapter 10.

      2

      Michael Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

1

Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos, Reframing Academic Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, chapter 10.

2

Michael Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

3

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (The Poetry Foundation, 1834). www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173253. Accessed October 4, 2015.

4

Michael Housman and Dylan Minor, Toxic Workers (HBS working paper 16–057, November 2015) (Boston: Harvard Business School, 2015). The authors studied more than 50,000 workers across 11 different firms and concluded that toxic workers are expensive and destructive. Their impact runs the gamut from potential legal or regulatory costs for a company to more local impact, such as declining unit and organizational morale, damage to a firm's reputation, and driving others to leave the organization faster and more frequently, thereby increasing training and turnover costs, and loss of vital institutional history and experience.

5

Harry Stack Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: Norton, 1953.

6

Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert, “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind,” Science 330, no. 6006 (November 12, 2010): 932. [DOI:10.1126/science.1192439].

7

Randy L. Bucknew, “The Serendipitous Discovery of the Brain's Default Network,” Neuroimage 62 (2012): 11–37.

8

Amit Sood, The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2013), 2–12. Sood distinguishes ruminations (repetitive, undirected thoughts about the past that trigger stress and negative emotions) from worries (similar, unhelpful, and automatic thoughts about the future). Both predispose the brain to depression, and depression makes it harder to stop further ruminations and worries or to engage in productive and adaptive thinking.

9

Amy Morin, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success (New York: HarperCollins, 2014).

10

Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster, Working with You Is Killing Me (New York: Warner Business Books, 2006). A summary version of the authors' model is available at http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=1796805&page=1.

11

Robert Sutton, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't (New York: Business Plus/Hachette Book Group, 2010).