Tuesday's with Morrie paper

Escrito em 19/junho/2001 por Lara Selem, para a matéria de Poder, ética e Sociedade, do Professor Peter Rea, Executive International MBA - Baldwin Wallace College (Cleveland, OH, EUA)

“Love each other or perish”. For me, this is the main teaching that Morrie Schwartz left before his death. This synthetize how exactly Morrie felt about the world, his family, his wife, his friends, himself, life & death, and so on. That was what he believed, and transformed Mitch Albom’s life.

After Morrie’s lessons, Mitch wrote: “I look back sometimes at the person I was before I rediscovered my old professor. I want to talk to that person. I want to tell him what to look out for, what mistakes to avoid. I want to tell him to be more open, to ignore the lure of advertised values, to pay attention when your loved ones are speaking, as if it were the last time you might hear them”.

The essential point of this fantastic book is the reflection about the simple things beyond life’s complexity, from the view of a coach and his player. Love, generosity, courage, friendship, sincerity, open heart, are key words on it.

With simplicity, Morrie showed how we all are dived into a capitalist culture, that stimulates consume, power, money, beauty and status. Those things make us more and more deviated from the values that really are important to our lives, completely contrary of those imposed by the market. Therefore, the values and lifestyles become confused, bringing few meaning, little joy, and little satisfaction to our lives.

Thinking about Mitch’s values and lifestyle before those Tuesdays with Morrie, I admit they’re almost the same of mine. I realized that I forgot thinking about what I really want of my life, what is the meaning I want to give to it. I’m so involved in selfish things, like career, having enough money, getting a new apartment, a new car, a new dress, that I forgot that.

On the other hand, I started thinking about myself, some years ago, in my childhood, adolescence and post-adolescence, and realized that I was lucky enough to get all the opportunities to prepare myself for the future: devoted Mom and Dad, good schools, music and arts learning, and two graduations (one in Arts, and other in Law). Later on, I received another goodwill when I married with a loving and mindful man. So, I’m sure that the mean I want to give to my life is closer than I thought it was. Morrie alerted me about that, as he did with Mitch.

I was really touched by Morrie’s words. He showed how meaningful life could be and how fools we are when don’t discern the values he described. I’d like all my values to be the same as Morrie’s. I’d like to see the world with his eyes. I’d like to do things differently. But I know it’s a hard work. For that, I have to believe I’m going to die. He said once: “Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. (…) The truth is once you learn how to die, you learn how to live”. Until that, I think I’ll walk around as if I was sleeping-walking, doing things I automatically think I have to do.

But, in a not so high degree as Morrie’s, two of his most important values fulfill my mind: love and sincerity. I try to put love and sincerity in most of my acts: with my family, with my husband, with my friends, with my job.

I know I have much to do and much to learn about life, and other important values. I’d like to show my fragility to people, instead of make them feel I can solve all the problems alone. I’d like to be taken care, instead of been so independent. I’d like to devote myself to the community around me, instead of been so self interested. I ‘d like to thank Morrie, Mitch and their “final thesis” cause they made me think about those things again in a way of change what is wrong.

Drawing a parallel between the strategy of a leader who was like Mitch before he was reacquainted with Morrie and a leader who was like Morrie, I imagine that the first one has a clear goal to achieve: to reach the best results in his job. And to get it, his strategy would be fulfilled of competition, stress, pressure, ambition, hard work, loyalty to career, individualism, and materialism. In other words, the strategy of a leader who was like Mitch, before he rediscovered his old professor, passes by Machiavellianism. An individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, keeps emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. I couldn’t name this person as “a leader”, but as “a boss” or “a manager”. Robert House of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania says that managers use the authority inherent in their designated formal rank to obtain compliance from organizational members. I agree with him.

Differently, the strategy of a leader who was like Morrie is based on flexibility, sense of accomplishment, equality, contentedness, inner harmony, self-esteem, forgiving, helpful, job satisfaction, balanced lifestyle, loyalty to relationships, open-minded, honesty, welfare of others, emotional stability, agreeableness, and charisma.

This is a “real leader” or a “transformational leader”, cause he possesses charisma (which provides vision and sense of mission, gains respect and trust) and has the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of goals and provide individualized consideration (gives personal attention, treats each employee individually, coaches, advises) and intellectual stimulation (promotes intelligence, rationality, and careful problem solving).

Accordingly to Stephen P. Robbins, from San Diego State University, “more recently, neocharismatic theories have gained increased acceptance. As we learn more about the personal characteristics that followers attribute to charismatic and transformational leaders, and about the conditions that facilitate their emergence, we should be better able to predict when followers will exhibit extraordinary commitment and loyalty to their leaders and to those leaders’ goals”.

Effective managers today must develop trusting relationships with those whom they seek to lead, because as organizations have become less stable and predictable, strong bonds of trust are likely to be replacing bureaucratic rules in defining expectations and relationships. That may be the view that Mitch missed. The value of his life is in the fact the he had challenged his society and its thought and proposed a new model of living. In the same way, Morrie saw the mistakes that an old paradigm would bring to a New World. Most likely Mitch had different view to be considered when he proposed his model.

The lesson left is that there’s a need of continuous evolution in the human thought. More then ever we can see many different points of view. More then ever the managers have the responsibility to create opportunities for new ideas, new models, and new realities. That now is clearly presented to the world and need to be addressed with the best of our capabilities. We all know we will die. We all know we change in one or the other people lives. Therefore, the choice is what kind of transformational interaction we will have over the others. What rules are we going to play?