As Larry Gallatin, a fellow former Peace Corps Volunteer, and I walked from his car to the Thai restaurant where we were meeting Tariku Belay for lunch on March 16 in Minneapolis, I was feeling a trifle apprehensive.  I’d last seen Tariku in 1967, when I said goodbye to him and the other Ethiopian student, Tesfa Giorgis Wondimagegnehu, who’d lived with me and my Peace Corps housemates for two years in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was heading back to the States to get on with my life after three years of teaching at Tafari Makonnen School in Addis, where Tariku and Tesfagiorgis were seniors.  I’d been very close to Tariku and Tesfagiorgis, like an older brother, but that was 44 years ago, when they’d been 18 year-old boys and I a young man only five years older.  Quite a chasm to bridge in an afternoon! 

 So I’d  flown back to the States in ’67, and the years really did seem to fly: getting my masters degree, starting a career in nonprofit and public management, marrying, having kids, buying the first home, all those good and important things.  Once getting back in the swing of things in the States, I didn’t spend much time thinking about my Ethiopian odyssey, but I managed to stay in touch with my former students for four or five years, as Tariku embarked on a military career after Harar Military Academy, and Tesfagiorgis went to work for what became the national Civil Service Commission after graduating from Haile Selassie University.  But even sporadic contact ended in 1974, when revolution toppled Emperor Haile Selassie and the reign of terror under the brutal dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam unfolded.  Coming across former Ethiopian students in the US over the years, I’d ask about Tariku and Tesfagiorgis, but no one could tell me anything about where they were and what they were doing – or even whether they’d survived Mengistu’s campaign of mass murder.  I knew the odds weren’t favorable that we’d ever see each other again, in light of the estimated hundreds of thousands of educated young Ethiopians who died under Mengistu.  My “boys” would’ve been prime targets. 

 Fast forward to November 2007, not long before Thanksgiving, and I’m in Seattle to present a workshop for the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools.  Checking voice mail in my hotel room not long after unpacking, I hear a familiar voice asking if I am the Doug Eadie who taught at Tafari Makonnen School in Addis Ababa and, if so, to call Tariku Belay at this number.  What a jolt out of the blue!  Every so often over the years, I’d glanced at the photos of my former students on the bookcase in my study and wonder whatever happened to them, but I was resigned to never seeing them again.  Of course, I returned the call immediately, and was soon talking with the long-lost Tariku Belay.  It turns out he’d been in prison for two years in Addis, managed to escape and make his way to Sudan and eventually to the US, where he was a teacher in the Minneapolis public schools.  No, he knew nothing of Tesfagiorgis’ whereabouts and hadn’t talked with him for over 30 years.  We both figured he’d very likely not survived.

 For the next four years, Tariku and I talked and exchanged cards and emails every so often, and when the invitation came to keynote the conference in Minneapolis, I arranged to meet Tariku for lunch the day before, with my old Peace Corps buddy Larry.  Now, as if this impending rendezvous after a 44-year separation wasn’t dramatic enough, only a couple of days before I was scheduled to leave for Minneapolis, Tariku emailed to say that, after all these years, he’d finally located Tesfagiorgis, who was alive and well and living in Addis Ababa.  I dropped whatever I was in the middle of doing and called the number in Tariku’s email.  Tesfagiorgis answered – believe it or not, his voice really did sound familiar – but at first couldn’t figure out who I was.  When he realized it was the long-lost “Mr. Eadie,” on the phone, he was overcome by emotion.  He called our finding each other again after nearly a half-century a miracle, which struck me as a pretty accurate description.

 Tariku, Larry, and I spent a delightful afternoon in the restaurant in Minneapolis.  The only awkward moment all afternoon was when we first met at the hostess’s station.  How to greet each other?  After all, when we’d last seen each other, I was “Mr. Eadie the teacher,” and he was “Tariku the student,” and a handshake would’ve fit the bill.  But the minute we clasped hands, our handshake turned into a warm embrace.  The next five hours were wonderful, as we fleshed out largely blank 44-year canvasses for each other and even placed a call to Tesfagiorgis, who was still marveling at our finding each other again after nearly a half-century.  By the way, I learned that Tesfagiorgis had also spent two years in prison under Mengistu, which makes our re-connecting even more extraordinary.  That all three of us could be alive and well and together again – after 44 years, thousands of miles, and a reign of terror – that’s beating the odds!  That’s a miracle.

 I’ll share more about my former students in my next blog, but that’s enough for now.  I’m not sure what all of this means.  My gut feel is that I’ve been given a wonderful opportunity to write about Tariku’s and Tesfagiorgis’s separate journeys, and about the intersection of our paths, but I’m not sure exactly what or how to go about it.  I’m open to suggestions.

Tariku Belay

Tesfagiorgis Wondimagegnehu

Here’s a scenario that’s all too common.  The CEO of a nonprofit association takes a really well-conceived, handsomely presented strategy for launching the pilot test of a new member service to his board.  It’s a fine piece of work:  documenting the need, articulating the objectives, laying out the action steps involved in getting the new service launched, pinning down the projected revenue and cost figures.  This is finished staff work at its finest, and the CEO does a great job of presenting it at the board meeting, using very attractive PowerPoint slides to get the key points across.  

So what happens?  You’ve probably guessed it:  thumbs down.  Why?  Not because the CEO isn’t smart; his mama definitely didn’t raise a dumb kid.  It’s just that his smart is one-sided; logical, yes, but emotionally deficient.   A CEO with a well-rounded intelligence would have recognized that all people, not just board members, are far more likely to go along with something you’re recommending, if they feel ownership of your recommendation, and ownership has to do with emotion, not logical reasoning or well-crafted staff work.  So being smart means both being rational and logical, on the one hand, and being emotionally intelligent on the other.  In the hypothetical case I opened with, this means taking the trouble to involve board members in shaping the new service strategy early-on, not just giving them your finished work, as a way of transforming them into owners.

In his thought-provoking column in the Tuesday, March 8 New York Times, David Brooks calls the recognition of the need for a well-balanced intelligence the “new humanism.”  He points out that for some time “we have tended to define human capital in the narrow way, emphasizing IQ, degrees, and professional skills.”  He refers to recent research that “illuminates a range of deeper talents, which span reason and emotion and make a hash of both categories.”  According to Brooks, these talents include “attunement,” which is the ability to “enter other minds and learn what they have to offer,” and “sympathy,” which is the ability “to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.”

I’ve certainly recognized Brooks’ new humanism at work when I see emotionally savvy nonprofit CEOs pay close attention to the normal ego needs of their board members, taking practical steps to foster feelings of satisfaction and ownership, rather than relying on reason and logic alone to get their board members to take action.          

I really do believe that I’ve become more creative in my work since becoming blind for the simple reason that I’m not bothered by as many distractions. My gut feel is it’s because I’m not distracted by what I call “visual noise.” You know, sight is such a powerful sense that it can bombard you with visual sensations, which doesn’t happen to me, of course. I read a tremendous amount, by the way, using things like books and journals on tape, but because I’m not distracted by a lot of other visual input, I spend more time actually thinking and solving creative problems than I did when I could see. You and I have talked about how people these days seem to spend so much time texting each other that they’re probably writing and reading more and faster, and thinking less. I think that’s almost certainly true.

This is my co-author Virginia Jacko talking during our discussion of Lesson #3 in the last chapter of our book, The Blind Visionary: Act on Opportunities. You might be tempted to say to yourself, “Yeah, right. She’s definitely got on her glass-half-full hat, trying to put a positive spin on being blind, because it sure beats focusing on the down side.” To be honest, when Virginia shared the above thoughts on creativity with me during one of our interview sessions as we worked on The Blind Visionary, I was a bit skeptical, but the more I learned about her leadership as CEO of the Miami Lighthouse and the more I thought about the role of creativity in my own work as a governance consultant, writer and speaker, the more I agreed with her.

Being really creative (which among other things, I think, means being able to see possibilities for change – opportunities to do really new and different things – and to envision a future that is dramatically different in one way or another from the present) does take sustained concentration, in my experience. And merely acquiring more information faster is highly unlikely to foster creative thinking. I’m not saying that information isn’t important in the creative process; of course it is – but only up to a point. The real challenge is to set aside enough quiet time to do serious thinking, and also to allow enough non-busy time for ideas to bubble up from the unconscious (the proverbial aha! moment – the flash bulb going off).

Don’t get me wrong. I think advances in communication have been a real blessing, in terms of operational efficiency. Just this morning, I emailed an edited document to a client just half an hour after receiving her input, and she was able to send it out to board members all over the country this afternoon. That kind of information exchange, which wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago, represents a real savings in time and money. But operational efficiency is a far cry from significant innovation in programs, services, or products, which depends on the kind of creative thinking that takes a large dollop of uninterrupted time.

Virginia says that her blindness has helped her become more creative by freeing her from “visual noise.” I definitely believe her, even though I wouldn’t choose blindness to protect me from distraction. You probably wouldn’t either, if you’re sighted. But it’s really important that we take her lesson to heart, always being clear that processing information faster isn’t the same as thinking creatively, and isn’t likely to lead to significant innovation.

MaryEllen Elia, superintendent of Hillsborough County Schools (Tampa, FL)
discusses leadership with Virginia Jacko