There is so much to writing phenomenology and I’m a true novice. I keep gravitating to writing the “how” and “why” instead of the “what” of the experience. The interview narratives are rich and poetic. There’s almost no need to add much of my own text, yet phenomenology demands that I discover the themes or structure of the experience and add my interpretation of it all. Max Van Manen says “themes are the stars of the universes of meaning we live through” (Researching Lived Experience, p. 90) - I have post-it notes on my desk reminding me to “seek meaning” and “seek multi-layered meaning.”

Van Manen defines phenomenology as “the systematic attempt to uncover and describe the structures, the internal meaning structures, of lived experience.” Since consciousness is the way in which we have access to our lifeworld, phenomenology is the study of our consciousness of our lifeworld. My particular research project is about consciousness states through meditation experience. There are multiple circles or spirals of inquiry within my project.

I have now spent many hours reading and re-reading the interview transcription texts. I have also listened to the digital recordings of the interviews in a meditative state to allow meaning to emerge. I have written 30 pages already, winnowing the huge amount of material down into five major themes.

But I’m still not done with my paper. My intent was to understand the experiences during and after meditation and then compare them with several consciousness theories. This part has become tedious. I want to turn in my paper and get a grade for completing my course, but I want to do a good job understanding and applying these theories. OK - I’m whining - but some of the material I’m using is very dense and I hadn’t covered it during my previous overview reading work.

My paper covers theories by Hofstadter and Sri Aurobindo, previously covered in this blog. And I’m including references to the works of Jenny Wade; Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rich; and Ken Wilber.

Great news - I was awarded a grant from my school, Fielding Graduate University! See my previous post about the grant proposal process - I applied for a $1,000 grant and recieved a grant for $658.94!! The difference was due to books in my proposal budget that didn’t qualify for the grant. I guess I didn’t understand the “books” part of the equation. I still don’t really understand it. “Books that aren’t part of developing your research are not covered by a Fielding Research Grant.” I thought I had included only books that were needed to develop my research, but the ones I listed didn’t qualify. I included the books I needed to design the research - ones on research methods and techniques. Maybe I needed to include all the books on consciousness theory that I bought (see my Amazon store). I will need to question this for my next grant proposal.

Follow-up on my research abstract for the SPHS conference panel proposal. My professors edited my abstratct and sent it in along with the others. Their edited version is much better (and tighter scope) than my version. Of course, they have about 25 years more experience than I……

I’m conducting my hermeneutic-phenomenological research now….more to come…..

My esteemed colleague Wendy is about to embark upon her interview research and asked me for more detail about recording and transcribing interviews, so here’s what I’ve learned:

• Invest in a good digital recorder - mine is a Sony ICD-P520 and cost about $52 at Amazon. It comes with software that you load onto your laptop and a cable to upload your digital recordings. Once you’ve uploaded the interview, you can translate it to a .WAV file, which can be sent via email to a transcriptionist.
• If you are conducting the interview in person, make sure there is minimal background noise. If you can find a quiet room, that’s the best. Place the recorder between you on a table and don’t fuss with it once you’ve started the recording. If you have to be in a hotel lobby or other noisy place, adjust the microphone sensitivity setting to “Low” or “dictation.” Make sure you don’t “talk over” the other person as they answer your questions.
• If you need to conduct the interview over the phone, you can buy an adapter that connects a land line phone with the recorder. I used a TRX-20 recording interface. You need to have a phone that has a receiver connected with a cord - it doesn’t work with a cordless phone. So I sent my husband to Radio Shack to get a cheap phone that worked well.
• You may want to transcribe the interview yourself if you are a good typer and have patience. I don’t have the patience, so I had a professional transcriber, Marcy at A Better Type (better@san.rr.com) in San Diego transcribe them. They charge $20/hour and have more suggestions regarding making good recordings. They sell digital recorders too (Olympus).
• Test everything out before you do your interviews.  You don’t want to think you are recording and find out you didn’t record the interview.

I have learned so much during this research project. I highly recommend that PhD students engage in their own research early on in their studies. It makes the process so much clearer.

According to Merriam Webster, phenomenology is:

1: the study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness as a preface to or a part of philosophy or 2: a philosophical movement that describes the formal structure of the objects of awareness and of awareness itself in abstraction from any claims concerning existence

In simpler words, it’s about understanding the structure of lived experience.

My research is a phenomenological study of human consciousness states as experienced through meditation. So my project is the study of the self-awareness of human consciousness.

I have interviewed five of six participants so far. I recorded the interviews using a digital voice recorder, which worked very well. The recorder came with software, which I used to translate the recording to .WAV format. I sent the .WAV files off to a transcriptionist, who sent back MS Word documents of the interview transcripts.

This is what I learned about capturing narrative in order to study the experiential phenomenon of meditation:

• Keep the questions open-ended so the participant is free to expand their narrative
• Don’t respond with my own commentary or insights (that comes later during the analysis)
• Keep steering the interview toward the experience of the phenomena (what was it like? how did you feel? what did you hear, see, taste, smell?)

I’m now starting to analyze the narratives. More on the next post.

I was recently invited by my faculty adviser to submit an abstract of my research project to be included with a proposal to present on a panel at the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences‘ (SPHS) conference at Dusquene University. Of course, I’m thrilled that I was invited to participate in the proposal, especially since I’m only a first year student and the rest of the panel are close to or already have their PhD.

I submitted my first version of an abstract, at 550 words, and crossed my fingers.

Then, my professor sent back an email requesting that the abstract be revised to be “crisp” at 200 words or less. She attached a couple of examples of abstracts that had been submitted with success in response to “call for papers” at similar conferences and a one page summary describing the elements of a dissertation abstract. Though dissertation abstracts are usually around 350 words, the outline was helpful to me in creating my abstract.

Here are the elements of a good abstract (thanks to Dr. Valerie Bentz and Dr. David Rehorick at Fielding Graduate University for this summary):

• A statement of the purpose of the research.
• A statement of the kind of data or texts which provided the basis for the research.
• A statement of the relevant theory and research basis to which the research relates.
• A statement of the methods and techniques used.
• A brief summary of the findings and conclusions.

I’ve attached my abstract for those who are curious about my end-product.

dorianne-cotter-lockard-sphs-panel-submission-abstract-v3

Here is the reason for my temporary blog hiatus….my 18-year-old step-daughter left this planet on Easter Sunday. She was riding in a pickup truck cab with her boyfriend and a few other friends on the way home from the movies. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt (her normal choice) and the truck rolled off the road in the rain. She was ejected and the truck rolled over her.

Caitlyn lived a very full life, even if it was short. She affected many people of all ages. over 600 people attended her memorial in FL and over 100 simultaneously attended a service in CA. I was very grateful that she came to live with us in CA last year for a semester. She gave my then 13-year-old daughter Grace the gift of an experience of living with a sibling.

We had plane tickets to go to her high school graduation in May. Instead, the airline graciously exchanged them (without fees) for tickets last week to attend Caitlyn’s memorial. A memorial book, set up by the Palm Beach Post has countless pages of prayers and condolences and there are two MySpace pages commemorating her.

I believe that Caitlyn’s soul exists in some other dimension and that she’s free of the earthly encumbrance of body. However, knowing this doesn’t take away the sorrow and sense of loss around her leaving. We are bound to this physical plane of existence (except when we’re meditating or dreaming) and therefore feel sad that we won’t have the joy of seeing her graduate from high school, college, get married and play with her children.

I am particularly sad for my husband, who is a new thought church pastor, because his congregation looks to him for support and comfort, not the other way around. The outpouring of love and support from his previous congregation in FL and our congregation in CA have been absolutely wonderful. But he’s still in the “public eye” - and when it comes to grieving the loss of a child, lots of private time is required. I know, I lost an infant son 12 years ago.

A friend of ours who is a South American shaman told us that Caitlyn completed what she set out to do in her life. She was here to show people who they are (good or bad). She pushed everyone’s buttons (especially her mother’s) and told it like she saw it. Caitlyn was a party girl. She loved tatoos, body-piercings, racy clothing and anything with the Playboy logo. She announced one day that her ideal job was to work at Hooters. She had a pet snake that we had to feed with frozen baby mice. Underneath all that was a very sensitive and emotional girl.

Caitlyn influenced my life. I started co-leading our church teen group in anticipation of her joining our family in CA. Working with teens has been a joy and a fantastic growth experience for me. I also learned not to judge her preferences in attire. Caitlyn and her friend Alexis convinced me to wear low-rider jeans (because I’m in good shape - translated to “nice butt” for a Mom). Grace learned to share (something singletons don’t usually learn). The main rule we have in our home is to treat ourselves with love and kindness as we make choices in our lives. I wish Caitlyn had followed that rule on Easter Sunday.

One of my research topics is focused on:

Why do executives lose a part of themselves along the road to success and how does this experience impact the lives and careers of their employees? I would like to explore this to find out why this happens and how it impacts the lives and careers of their employees in order to raise leaders to a new level of leadership.

Today I had coffee and a delightful conversation with Bruce Heller, PhD. His area of focus and specialty is “executive derailment.” Bruce says derailment is the “Peter principle as it relates to emotional and social intelligence.” What happens is the executive continues to be promoted due to his or her success as it relates to profitability, sales, successful project delivery, etc. However, the individual has failed to grow their soft skills - - they can’t or don’t relate well to other people. They are abusive to or ignore the people in their organization. They demonstrate arrogant behavior - - they’re successful after all — so why should they change? These behaviors get in the way of future success.

Bruce and I pondered the reasons that so many executives face this issue during their career. He offered that executives are rewarded and reinforced by promotions, bonuses and visibility due to their bottom-line contribution and the negative behaviors are overlooked or ignored. Corporation leadership doesn’t generally put a lot of attention to developing the interpersonal skills of fast-rising stars, yet these same corporations fall on their own swords when these stars take the helm (Enron, Worldcom, etc.). Stay tuned - Bruce is writing a book about this topic and I will let readers know when it’s available.

So going back to my research question, I think executives don’t actually lose a part of themselves, they just suppress or reject it. It’s the human, emotional, caring, loving part. This aspect of self is subordinated to the ego, which is supported by our corporate system. So it seems that a major shift would need to take place in our corporate system before we could nurture a different type of leader.

The type I’m thinking about is the “level 5″ leader described by Jim Collins in Good to Great. There were only a very small handful of this type of leader among the large number of companies in Collins’ study.

Maybe we have to go back further and look at adolescent and young adult development as it relates to leadership. A few studies have been done in this arena. The seeds of leadership and success are planted at this early stage. Perhaps we could look at adolescents who have been identified as leaders or those with high likelihood of success and learn about how their emotional and social intelligence develops over the span of their careers.

I have spent the past few days scanning several books on research design, qualitative research and interviewing techniques. Here’s a summary of what I have learned thus far - note that I already know that my approach to this research project is qualitative, phenomenological and hermeneutic.

In Interviewing: Principles and Practices (Stewart & Cash, 2005), I found the most value in Chapters 3, “Questions and Their Uses” and 5, “The Probing Interview.” The rest of the book is about various other types of interviews (recruiting, employment, counseling, etc.) and not relevant to research, except for a chapter on survey interviews.

There are four types of questions: highly open, moderately open, highly closed, and moderately closed questions. Highly open questions begin with statements like “how do you feel about…” or “Tell me about….” Moderately open questions start with “how would you react to…” or “what comes to mind when you see….” and their nouns are more specific. Moderately closed questions still allow the participant to fill in the blank, such as “what did you eat for lunch today?” Highly closed questions would be the type found on surveys, such as “on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the best, how do you rate customer service?”

This got me to really think about the types of questions I have on my question list for my interviews. My goal is to elicit the experience of different states of consciousness during and after meditation. My questions need to be as open as possible in order to allow a free expression of the experience. I don’t want to lead my participants, yet there are some types of experiences I’d like to capture, such as out-of-body or differences in sense of time.

According to Stewart and Cash, there are also Primary and Secondary questions. Primary questions introduce the topic and secondary questions dig deeper (probe) into a topic. There are several types of secondary questions: silent , nudging , clearinghouse , informational , restatement, reflective, and mirror probes. I will have to think carefully about the different types of probing questions I ask so that I allow the maximum freedom for my participants to express their experience, yet obtain answers to my questions. I will be revising my questions based on the above points.

There are sections in the book about conducting interviews, common pitfalls, etc. I’m a very experienced interviewer because of my 25 years as a manager, consultant and leader. This book was geared to less experienced individuals, and I do recommend this book for those who have very little experience in the interview process.

If you are interested in following this research project, I added a page: research project #1

Stewart, Charles J. and William B. Cash, Jr. (2005). Interviewing: Principles and Practices. 12^th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill

I’m taking a long time to finish my Human Development and consciousness knowledge area (KA 702). There are several reasons for this. I’m conducting a research project for my final in-depth paper. It’s a mini-dissertation. The literature review for the paper includes reading about ten books. So far, I’ve read four. I also have a lot of articles I want to reference. Haven’t started them. I have 4 of 6 interview participants lined up, but still need to receive the digital voice recorder that I ordered on Amazon almost three weeks ago (I think the P. O. lost it). Once I have that, I’m ready to go with the interviews.

At Fielding Graduate University, our coursework progress is entirely student-directed. It is up to us to contact faculty and negotiate contracts with them to satisfy our KA requirements. One of my roadblocks this past month was that the Fielding email system was capturing my emails to faculty and placing them in a spam folder. This wasn’t supposed to happen because my email is registered with Fielding’s email system as a verified email address. But it did and I didn’t realize it until I called one of the faculty members after waiting three weeks for an answer to my emails!

After that was fixed, I opened two new contracts: “KA753B - Research Design” and “KA717 - Organizational Studies.” The faculty member for my research design KA won’t be able to start working with me until the end of April because he has too many open contracts right now. This is unfortunate since I’m starting my first real research project right now.

I’m really excited about the topic I have picked for my Organizational Studies KA - In-depth paper, which will examine ideas related to aesthetics within the organizational domain. I will explore questions and ideas such as:

• What can we learn about organizational dynamics and leadership from ensembles of musicians?
• Is intimacy between members of a string quartet required for performing together in perfect synchronization? Does this concept translate to high-performing teams in a business setting?
• Developing harmonious teams - using the symphony or string quartet as a model for leadership teams

When I submitted the idea to my faculty mentor, she invited me to present at a seminar that she is leading at Fielding’s summer session on Music, Consciousness and Society. Unfortunately, I have a conflicting conference on those dates and won’t be able to participate. Bummer…

For those of you who are curious about what is contained within a Fielding KA contract, I’ve attached the one for KA717 - Organizational Studies. You’ll see how much work is involved for each KA, since it’s for 10 credits.

ka717-contract-dorianne-cotter-lockard.doc

General Communication:

Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to an Organizational Behavior class at Cal State University, Northridge (CSUN). My former colleague, Debbie Glick, is the professor and she gave me a fantastic introduction - I hope I lived up to it. There were about 25 students in the class, MBA students, and we had a good dialogue.

Here are the key points from my talk. These all come from my experience as an executive of a Fortune 100 company during the past eight years.

§ Listen as much as talk “seek first to understand, then be understood” - Steven Covey. If you listen to others who are speaking during a meeting and then incorporate what they’ve just said into your comments, you engage other and also establish your credibility.

§ Watch body language - you can learn a lot about whether people understand what you’re saying or how they are reacting to what you are saying. If you see they look puzzled, stop and ask what you can clarify for them. If they look like they disagree with you on a point, stop and ask what they think about it. Being responsive to their visual cues will create a positive environment where interchange can occur.

§ Adjust tempo, volume, energy levels - you don’t want to put people to sleep, nor do you want to overpower them. Take care to adjust to the situation and people in the meeting.

§ Speak with calm confidence - do this especially when the topic is difficult or contentious.

§ See communication as a dialogue, not a monologue - this is one of my key success factors. If you want buy-in, there should be a dialogue!

Top 10:

1. Executives are humans like you - they have insecurities and worries; they want to feel good about themselves and the company
2. Understand interests and motives - this is key for successful negotiations. Are they fighting a turf war? Do they want more visibility? Do they really need a success? Are they positioning for a promotion? Do they want success for the company? Their division? How do they measure success? Short term? What are their values?
   By thinking about the answers to these questions, you will be better prepared to position your ideas so they address at least a few of your audience’s interests and motives.
3. Understand the audience and the venue:
   Status meeting – keep it interesting
   Strategic/business plan – focus on the highest priorities
   Problem solving – clearly articulate the problem
   Negotiation – create a bigger pie
   Selling an idea – use your passion and enthusiasm, but make sure you can articulate the benefits clearly
   Presentations – keep it relevant and short
4. Know when to meet one-on-one - Don’t argue with an exec in front of his team or peers. When selling ideas, it’s OK to bring one other person, but don’t bring a posse. Know when to have an expert on hand - when you aren’t the expert.
5. Brevity - Powerpoint should be 15 pages or less (write speaker’s notes for yourself), a Word document should be 3 pages or less. Use bullets, but no more than 5 per page and they should be short phrases, not whole sentences. Put detail in the appendices (keep them separate) and have them ready for reference.
6. Clarity - keep sentences short, organize your thoughts and your information. Include headings and footers with page numbers (you wouldn’t believe how many presentations and reports I recieved without these…). Ensure you have correct grammar and spelling.
7. Present alternatives when you are proposing a solution. I once had a manager propose a program for compliance with a $12 million price tag. I told her to come back with 2 to 3 options with different budgets. Executives know there are trade-offs and want to have an intelligent discussion about them. Never go in with just one way to do something.
8. Anticipate and ask questions - put yourself in the executives’ shoes and consider their worries. What would be the most important thing about this project or proposal to them? Clarify and expand your understanding by asking them questions and by making points by using statements like, “you may be wondering about….”
9. Know the details - bring lots of backup material, just in case. I always had two or three pages of notes for my own use to make sure I made the points I wanted to make and could answer questions. Sometimes I would bring an expert or have them sitting by the phone, just in case.
10. Be honest -Don’t cover up bad news. A very large portion of projects (over 60%) fail due to people suppressing the truth about project issues. Don’t bring a problem without some possible solutions – show you’ve thought about it. Also, give an executive a “heads-up” when there’s an issue so they aren’t blind-sided. You don’t want them to hear about it through someone else!

One more word about honesty. By admitting mistakes and failure without blaming anyone else, you demonstrate accountability. I have had to admit to some pretty expensive mistakes in my career as a CTO (technology failures cost a lot). Executives respect you more when you take accountability for mistakes and then provide the vision and leadership for a way out of the issue.