The Weld Principle - When a break is properly repaired, the scar makes you stronger.

By Rick Van Arnam

Northfield, Vermont

In the summer of 1976, my parents did something cool to our house. They started an addition large enough for an indoor swimming pool. Back then, a house with a swimming pool was as cool as any flat screen, home theater set-up available today and the fact that it was indoors made it an over-the-top project. I have fond memories of our pool, which was really a lengthy do-it-yourself project that was the vision of my dad, an architect. One early memory of the construction involves an excavator used to both build a road to the site and to dig the actual hole that would become the pool. In maneuvering the excavator in a tight spot, Fred the operator snapped the front-left steering rod making the tire swing freely and out of control. The excavator was inoperable. At that point, Fred hopped down off the seat and colorfully announced the obvious and optimistically declared that it could be repaired and made better than new. And that is exactly what he did. He brought in his welding torches on the same road that he had made and quickly repaired the break. It was the first time that I had ever heard that steel repaired by a weld is stronger at the weld than before the break. Welding can be a pretty sophisticated science, but it is true that if done correctly, a weld can be stronger due to the intense heat required in the process.

The idea that something can be made stronger through a healing or fixing process provides hope and that may explain why so many people choose to persevere through adversity and tough situations. Fred’s welding repair is the inspiration for the fifth of my eleven character principles titled, The Weld Principle, and states that, “When a break is properly repaired, the scar makes you stronger.” More important than the principle is the accompanying question, “How will you learn from mistakes or failure?”

Especially in the world of sports, who doesn’t like a good comeback story? Each of the major sports actually recognizes a Comeback Player of the Year with an award. It doesn’t really matter why a player was eligible for consideration – most fans respect and often pull for, a player who has undergone a major challenge, whether self-induced or not, and returns to excel.

This week, flying under and behind the radar of College Basketball’s Final Four, is College Hockey’s Frozen Four. Like the personal interest stories that emanated from basketball’s March Madness, there are stories associated with the hockey’s Frozen Four. The Fighting Irish may have a difficult time reaching College Football’s BCS, but the hockey program is strong and their fans hope that Notre Dame will reach the finals as they did in 2008, and win, for the first time ever. For fans who love to cheer against Notre Dame, they can hop on the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s bandwagon. The Bulldogs, of such famed alumni as Mark Pavelich (1980 Olympian) and Hockey Hall of Famer, Brett Hull, will also be looking to secure their first-ever national championship. On the other side of the semi-final bracket are Michigan and North Dakota. No school has won more national championships than Michigan and combined they have appeared in forty-three Frozen Four tournaments.

But The Weld Principle storyline that comes out of the Frozen Four this year rests with North Dakota senior Matt Frattin, who is a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award – college hockey’s premier award recognizing the year’s top player. A 2007 draft pick of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, he had been dismissed from the team by head coach Dave Hakstol prior to the start of the 2009 season after separate incidents resulting in two arrests. Skeptics will say that the coach’s decision in early 2010 to re-instate Matt Frattin was more about winning than anything else. Comeback enthusiasts, though, want to believe that Frattin learned from his mistakes and has matured his character in the process of becoming a dominant college hockey player as a senior – a year in which he led the nation with 36 goals and developed into a NHL-ready player. Either way, there is plenty to learn for all of us who face a point at which we have scratched, dented or broken our character.

First, coach Dave Hakstol cracked the door for Frattin’s re-instatement when he said in dismissing the player that, “But we also care about Matt Frattin and would like to put him in position to be able to lead a healthy lifestyle and resume his hockey career.”¹ Hakstol went on to say, “Frattin’s status with the team might be revisited.”² I have written before that the real need for purposeful character development is to close a gap that exists between skill, which can be developed in people younger and younger, and the maturity of their character, which takes much longer. Providing a chance to re-visit a player’s status provides hope and some mild encouragement without the promise of anything.

Second, Matt Frattin appears to have taken the more difficult road to the Frozen Four. A few of college hockey’s top underclassmen opt to leave school early for the pros. Frattin likely could have done just that. Had he done so, our last memory of him in the college ranks would have been his dismissal press release, not his appearance at the Frozen Four. There were conditions Frattin had to meet in order to be considered for reinstatement which points to the greatest learning related to The Weld Principle. When something in our character breaks, we need to have a plan – and follow it. Common components of any plan would include accepting responsibility and any punishment, seeking professional help for an area that may be at the core of the problem, avoiding all circumstances that could slow repair or create more damage, and establishing accountability by sharing the plan with a person or an organization that has genuine interest.

Why do fans enjoy comeback stories so much? I’m not sure there is a scientific answer to that question. But I think it has to do with the most important character trait of all – humility. Humility can grow out of humiliation and I think in most cases, an athlete who recovers from a character break, feels humiliated when he reads his name in the paper portrayed in a poor light. And facing the media at the Frozen Four and the Hobey Baker Award ceremony, you can bet that Matt Frattin will face at least as many questions about his past as he will face about his future. I’m hoping that under that stress, Matt Frattin will show us signs of being stronger reminded by the scars of his past – that is The Weld Principle.

RVA

Credits

¹ Junior Forward Matt Frattin Dismissed From Men’s Hockey Team, FightingSioux.com, August 19, 2009

² Ibid

UMD, Notre Dame hope to join NCAA elite, by Bob Snow – NHL.com Correspondent, March 30, 2011, NHL.Com

CHN Player of the Year: Matt Frattin, by CHN Staff Report, College Hockey News, www.collegehockeynews.com, April 1, 2011

Want To Be A Leader? Be An Old School Thinker.

By Rick Van Arnam

Northfield, Vermont

On a Thursday night in Afghanistan back in 2003, a friend of mine stumbled across an inexpensive way to entertain Afghan recruits – he would show a movie on the outside of a building. It was not uncommon to have upwards of 700 recruits sitting on the ground, leaning forward fully engaged with a movie in a language that they did not understand. The challenge, knowing they wanted to see an American film, was discovering what movie we could offer respectful of Afghan culture and that could be generally followed without understanding the language. Arnold Schwarzenegger proved perfect – specifically, the movie True Lies. Other than one seductive scene involving Jamie Lee Curtis, the movie’s action could be characterized as a collection of stunts rather than believable violence with enough of an American backdrop to satisfy the curiousity of our Afghan partners who wondered what America looked like. But if you recall the movie, you will remember that Arnold is really an American spy who leads a double life. He can’t tell his wife what he does for a living so juxtoposes a thrill-a-day life with that of a yawner careerist living in a white-collar suburb.

As an Intelligence officer, I can somewhat understand his predicament. I don’t have to lie to my wife about what I do, but I can’t tell her the specifics of how intelligence work is conducted. So I was a bit encouraged to watch my family eargerly form around me when I offered to show them what I did as an Intelligence officer in Afghanistan. Exciting curiousity quickly turned to disinterest as I described the amount of reading and notetaking I did daily perusing intelligence reports, significant activity data and story-boards as well as following news from all media sources. It was if they thought I was going to show a 3D movie and instead opened book. The reality is that intelligence work is often defined by reading, analyzing, reaching conclusions and making recommendations that end up in print or depicted on a busy powerpoint slide. And that is the point in reminding leaders that a lot of the most effective work requires thinking and solving what I call complex problems – those problems that have second, third and fourth order effects. While the Army does deploy techno-gadgets to protect our soldiers and has even cooler techno-gadgets that can find bad guys, most of today’s intelligence work remains rather old-school. Leaders balance, or effective leaders should balance, time spent in solitude reading, thinking and forming thoughts and ideas with time spent around a table with others working in groups to solve problems that do not have a math-like, scientific answer.

“Working Group” is a relatively new Army term that I encountered overseas and is used as often as any staff planning term or acronym. Working Groups have replaced many traditional meetings and the title is self-describing. Early on in our deployment, our Commander reminded the staff that our meetings were our work – that unlike a lot of meetings that all of us attend and sometimes dread, we should look forward to Working Groups because it is in these groups where we engaged others who could help solve big problems. Some Working Groups, just like meetings, were more effective than others. But what I found to be different about Working Groups and that impacted effectiveness, was the degree to which participants prepared and arrived with formed ideas that could only be arrived at through some old-school reading, note-taking and thought.

I recently read a lecture given by author, essayist and former Yale Professor William Deresiewicz given to the Plebe class at West Point about a year ago. His lecture is titled, Solitude and Leadership, and it explores the irony that leaders who are often surrounded by people and rely on others for their effectiveness, need to find quality time alone in which to think. Deresiewicz’s audience was young –the average age of the freshman class at West Point is likely nineteen – and so his listeners, and especially anyone who has been deployed, take pride in being able to muti-task, receive volumes information from various sources and communicate simultaneously with multiple devices. The problem with this, to which he alludes, is that original thoughts can’t be formed in noise-filled environs that today we casually accept as normal life. Deresiewicz says, “…and for too long we have been training leaders….who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place.”

So while I think some of today’s most complex problems are challenging AND exciting on which to work, the methodology to solve problems can be boring. Single-tasking in lieu of multi-tasking, forming ideas on paper or white boards in lieu of a screen and pausing to assess ideas in lieu of launching to action can seem pedestrian. It is this discipline that often finds the solution – which is really the ulimate prize. This approach requires not only thinking, but our best thinking. And our best thinking, like the work of an Intelligence analyst, is done the old fashion way – in a quiet place without distractions and perhaps using simple tools such as paper and pen.

We are today experiencing an overwhelming amount of Earth moving, global change. Since just the start of 2011, we have been witness to catastrophic and policitically fracturing events in Japan, Egypt and Libya that will hasten change throughout the world. These new events have moved in front of simmering interests in Iraq, the upcoming summer fighting season in Afghanistan and a globabl economy that may or may not be improving. These events are huge – they dwarf any technological leap forward no matter the hype or coolness available in an iPhone or iPad. And I have to agree with William Deresiewicz that solutions will require leaders who are able to think deeply. Among the leadership skills developed over time, don’t pass over the need, and discipline, to become an effective thinker.

RVA

Credits

Solitude and Leadership, Lecture at The Untied States Military Academy at West Point, by William Deresiewicz, Spring 2010, Posted March 1, 2010, www.theaermicanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership.