WAAL09: Tale (Tail) of the Tyger

Tale (Tail) of the Tyger
Rev. Dr. David Joyce, President of Ripon College

• What do you think of when you hear "Ripon"? Harrison Ford, Rippin' Good cookies, and now "The bike thing"

Goal: Appreciate the worth in yourself and others so that you can influence and create your own future

• We spend too much time picking things apart, and not enough time putting things together


• "Nothing endures but change" - Heraclitus (500 B.C.)


• The rules are changing in this economy - old ways of doing things don't necessarily work - can't just look to the past - it used to be that if stocks were down, then bonds were up - not right now!

Fear-based decision-making:

• We instill fear in others to control what they do or don't do


• How much do we do or not do because we're afraid of what might happen?

Transformational Process:

• May be considered "inefficient" because time intensive - I meet with senior staff 4 hours each week to do this process


• #1 Mutual Worth - Begins with belief that "you have worth"


• #2 Authentic Interaction - What's going well? - everyone tends to jump to problem-solving too quickly - sometimes what's going well might be in our personal lives


• #3 Appreciative Understanding - everyone has a skill set, and they have more skills than you know - if you only look at those like you, all you'll get is those like you


• #4 Progressive Integration


• #5 Continuous Improvement


• #6 Transformation

Decision-making:

• Motivation (memory, emotions, attitudes) > Decisions > Behaviors > Perceptions > Trust or Distrust


• Ask open-ended questions


• Listen


• Paraphrase


• Instead of "Yeah, but" say "Yes, and"


• Enablers: awareness, reason, freedom, skills

The Bike Thing (Velorution):

• Ripon College is growing, and we were running out of car parking


• 1,100 students; 7,800 town residents > unhappy with students parking on streets


• "Creative Interchange":


• #1 Wish statement - "I wish/I would like it if... we didn't need to pave more green space to create parking lots for cars"


• #2 Another person paraphrases, then offers an idea - "We could give all incoming students a bicycle"


• #3 Next person paraphrases, then offers 4 reasons why they like the idea for every 1 wish statement


• #4 Continues until solution arrived upon - give out about 200 bikes per year