Why We Do This Work | Robert S. Hartman - Past, Present and Future

The Wake Up Eager Workforce Podcast

Episode Description

This special episode highlights the 2023 Robert S. Hartman Institute's Wisdom Council Panel discussion, featuring three legends of the field in Art Ellis, Ph.D., Steve Byrum, Ph.D., and Mark Moore,Ph.D. This podcast also includes clips from my short interviews with many conference participants.

In this episode:

[00:00:01] Suzie Price: Today is a special episode. It is recording from the 2023 Robert S Hartman Institute conference was held in Atlanta, and it is a panel discussion with three legends. They are Hartman legends, they are Professor Legends. They are author legends, they are financial asset manager legends that all have the same thing in common is that we're students or colleagues with Robert S Hartman, who is the founder of one of the sciences in the assessment tools that we use. And it's a great discussion. You're going to learn a lot more about how to make better decisions. You're going to learn more about measuring your progress and being who you can be, how you use assessments, how you help other people make better decisions. You're going to learn from other consultants. Because I have short interviews with ten different conference attendees finding out more about them, how they use these tools in their work, why they use these tools. So if you are interested in any of that, you're going to enjoy this conversation. It's a very rich conversation. It's a very meaningful conversation. It's going to help you understand axiology and TriMetrix better. It will help you understand yourself better. Just lots of great insight here and I'm very excited to share it with you.

We had people from around the world and all over the United States. You know, it's not always easy for everyone to participate because of the travel. We've had virtual conferences where we've had much more than that at the conference, but it was great to have 50 or so people there, all of us calling ourselves heart maniacs. And basically what that is, is people who value and appreciate the work of Robert Hartman. And many of those people are consultants who use the tools like TriMetrix that we use, or they go by other names. There's other tools that use the same science. And this tool is the under the hood horsepower tool that we use in TriMetrix called acumen. The panelists are three of Hartman's colleagues and students, and I'm the moderator. The three voices that you'll hear. One is Art Ellis, Steve Byrum, and Mark Moore. They're all PhDs, and I'm going to share their complete bios with you. And when you hear them, you're going to say, wow, they really are legends. She was not overstating that. And then as I mentioned, we have these impromptu interviews with ten attendees, and they're talking about why they came to the conference, how they use Hartman's work, how that work has helped them personally and professionally. And what we did is we're inserting the clips of those conversations throughout the panel discussion.

Mark Moore: Well, I'm like everyone else. I'm no good at predicting the future, and I wouldn't pretend to do so. And and as you know, I don't think the future can be predicted anyway. However, however, we can prepare for a better future, and the way we do that is through, I think, understanding people like Robert Hartman. I go back to this as I think about the world, something I'll go back to time and time again. And I've even coined a little expression for it, uh, distributive justice, which is something axiology is wonderfully adept at talking about distributive justice, which means bringing the best justice you can for all peoples is not a zero sum game. In other words, you don't get distributive justice by taking from one group to give to another.

Steve Byrum: I think it's very interesting that we can't predict the future, but I would claim that Hartman was pretty prophetic about some of these things we're talking about right now, the title of this small book that we should be so proud to have in our possession, and we should make sure it gets in the hands of as many people as we can. The Revolution Against War is a kind of an ironic title in a way, because most of the writing that was done in that book was done after World War Two. When we felt like that, we had finally learned the lesson of where wars could take us. And for Hartman then to write a [00:20:00] revolution against war in the aftermath of of all the enthusiasm of this war coming to an end again may seem a little bit ironic, but I believe what Hartman understood was that the conditions that have maybe always led to war, but certainly had led to the Second World War were still there, and that the conditions may, in fact, have been there in the late 40s and early 50s in ways that were maybe more abundant than even in the times that Mark's talking about. And obviously what Hartman was talking about and what scared him passionately was the way that technology had exploded in scientific culture and given us a nuclear, given us a nuclear capacity, which of course has grown and grown.

Steve Byrum: I usually come with some kind of inane way of trying to explain how Hartman's hierarchy of value, and I can say systemically, the person I'm married to is a female. I can say extrinsically she's of a certain age and certain height, certain weight, certain hair color, although she can't remember what it originally was. But then I'll say, you know, she's the love of my life. And so suddenly you're able to get people on to understanding a simple way the movement from systemic to extrinsic to intrinsic. And when those words start becoming a part of people's conversation, you know, you've put an anchor down. Yeah. And I try to say to people and this makes a lot of sense today, I'll say, you know, your GPS systems that get you from one place to another are at least based on three satellites. It may be more than that, but at least three triangulate where you are. And I try to tell people, go out into the world and try to understand that you've got a lens or an eye that can look at things systemically. You've got a lens and an eye that can look at things extrinsically. You've got a lens, an eye that can look at things intrinsically.

Art Ellis: It should be possible for every one of us to use value science in our own lives, without calculus and without complicated formula. We need only learn how to apply the yardstick, he says, of intrinsic value. And then he's talking about the hierarchy of values to life around us and within us, which is exactly what Steve just said. And that's what you may have heard me. If you've been around me any time in the past several years, that's what I rather hear religiously called informal axiology. Not formal, but informal. It's when it is at work in people's lives, and it doesn't really matter whether they know it's axiology or not, if it works. And so, you know, that's really the golden thing. We want that out in our world. At the same time, we want not to forget that we need to also develop. We don't want Hartman to get lost in this. You know, we've got to keep Hartman some vein of what we do and what's carried on into the future has got to still be connected with him.

Mark Moore: Well, I first of all, I want to thank Steve for his wonderful story and Art for his wonderful story. I don't have a story like that. I wish I did, but I'm happy I don't. Bob wanted me to take the profile I was happy to do so. I don't care, but what the hell? I'm. I'm really. I'm really interested in this man. I'm interested in his science. But my dream was to become an academician, and I wanted to study. I was a physics major as an undergraduate. I cared about science, but I was not more interested in the philosophy of science than I was actually laboratory work. And so my major professor is my my undergraduate school said, you know, you really should study philosophy of science. I think that'd be great for you. Uh, and you might even be able to get a job teaching it or something. Who knows? So I was doing that, and and I was studying formal logic and some advanced mathematics because, you know, science requires the, the systemic tools in order to do things. And, uh, uh, so I was very interested in, in formal axiology. So Bob gave me the profile. He and he put it aside after going over it and he said, Mark, you can do whatever you want to do. Uh, you know, you've got one of those profiles that you can you can do things. What do you want to do? And I told him what my vision was, and he said, well, why why are you studying here with me? I said, because I think your science is really special and it really can be a science, but it's got some problems.

Suzie Price: So how did you like the episode? Did you feel like you got to know Hartman more? Could you see how many people around the world are using the tool as a consultants? Talk about how they used it and some of their passion. I'm not the only one who's passionate about about the assessment, so I hope you got what I wanted you to get from it, which is a deeper understanding of who Hartman was, the impact that he had. And so I'm going to the next thing I'm going to do, I'm going to give you a few little things about my favorite parts that I want to just highlight. I always do the Susie takeaways. I want to make sure you capture those because I heard all this, I was present, but I sure did like seeing the audio and then actually wanting to reremember some of these insights. So some of the key points that I think are great takeaways for life and for consulting. After I share these things, then I'm going to go into axiology what it is and more about Hartman's history so you can understand that. But a couple of key points. One thing that Art talks about and I think is so important to remember is all progress is progress forward, even if it's a little bit, don't discount it. You are still moving forward. That is from a book factfulness that that Art quotes a bit because it's a it's a great book.

Suzie Price: It's part of explains why it's it's a measurement of judgment, and it's a measurement of how we think, feel and make decisions. Mark Moore talks about that. Hartman was a magical, magical figure whose memory not only deserves to be revered, but his presence needs to be perpetuated. And I would say that they're doing that in the work that they do. The way each person shows up, their humor, their kindness that is perpetuating what they saw in Robert Hartman.

Suzie Price: And I can remember Hartman using the terms x ray of the soul. And it really, you know, revealed a great deal of. The structure of my internal and external life. That's what Axiology does. And so he said, and I thought, this is the kind of probably a good closer on this is that the Hartman value profile represents those three dimensions in axiology, which is the systemic, extrinsic and intrinsic. It's how we think, do and be.

Links & Resources:

Related Podcasts:

Episode #114 Unlocking the Power of Practical Axiology: Making Better Decisions for a Better World - Art Ellis, Ph.D. - https://www.pricelessprofessional.com/unlocking-the-power-of-practical-axiology.html

Episode #75 Axiology Influencers: Why Robert S. Hartman's Work Matters Today - A Discussion with Steve Byrum, Ph.D. - https://www.pricelessprofessional.com/axiology-influencers-steve-byrum.html

Episode #74 Axiology Influencers: Why Robert S. Hartman's Work Matters Today - A Discussion with Licensed Professional Counselor Art Ellis, Ph.D. - https://www.pricelessprofessional.com/axiology-influencers-artellis.html

Episode #73 Axiology Influencers: Why Robert S. Hartman's Work Matters Today - A Discussion with K.T. Connor, PhD - https://www.pricelessprofessional.com/axiology-influencers-ktconnor.html Hartman Institute Journal of Formal Axiology: https://www.hartmaninstitute.org/journal-of-formal-axiology Hartman Institute Bookstore: https://www.hartmaninstitute.org/bookstore 2024 Hartman Institute Conference: Empowering Transformation with Axiology https://www.hartmaninstitute.org/2024-annual-conference The Life of Robert S. Hartman: https://www.hartmaninstitute.org/life-of-robert-s-hartman

Connect with Suzie:

Priceless Professional - https://www.pricelessprofessional.com/

LinkedIn: Suzie Price - https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzieprice/

LinkedIn: Priceless Professional Development - https://www.linkedin.com/company/priceless-professional-development

LinkedIn: Wake Up Eager Workforce Podcast - https://www.linkedin.com/company/wakeupeagerworkforcepodcast

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