Category Archives: leadership

What The Best Teachers Do

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NaBloPoMo 2018:  What I’m Learning

The post last night was a long time coming, maybe.  It took longer than I thought it would to actually write, edit, and publish, but it poured out in a flurry of energy that has built up over several months.  I received immediate feedback from members of my Counsel of Wisdom, supportive and encouraging, gratifying.

As I thought more, I realized that my best teachers growing up practiced emergent design and strategy.  Imagine you teach the same subject, the same skill, the same content, year after year.  Your approach is to do it the same way, expecting the same result.  Would you not get bored?  And if you’re bored, no question your students may want to gore their eyeballs out with their writing implements.  In medical school my classmate and I met a physician in his office for a lecture on his area of expertise.  We sat across from him in his big armchair behind a mahogany desk piled high with papers in disarray, the sun shining through the window at his back.  He spoke in a slow, bass monotone.  The words that dribbled forth practically fused together, such that I strained to distinguish and make sense of them.  And I kid you not, he literally put his elbow on the desk and rested his face in his palm while he spoke, as if he may have a near death experience from the sheer dullness of it all. That was not his best teaching moment, I’m sure he would agree.

My best instructors, on the other hand, engaged us learners in real time, with rapt energy.  They asked us what we knew about the topic, encouraged us to consider and describe how core principles applied in real life situations.  In classrooms, my best teachers were both goal-oriented and open-minded.  They had a clear learning objective but held the map only loosely. They allowed space for the learning journey and path to unfold before the class, always with an eye on the destination. We learners all got to choose the way, and we still ended up where we needed to be.  And every time I bet it was a little different for the teachers, so it was fun for them and they always learned, too.  I know that’s how it feels for me.  That’s what keeps any of us engaged and improving, I think—the confidence of knowing we hold the reigns coupled with the excitement of not knowing which new trail our class will blaze to apprehend the learning.

My Counselor friend described it as, “The map becomes a new and storied journey with each iteration of participant-cartographers.”  Is she not eloquent?  I have invited her to write a post with me soon.

Coach Christine reminded me, “What you describe is coaching at its best – the fundamental philosophy of the coaching I’m trained in is, the client is naturally creative, resourceful and whole. Not broken, doesn’t need fixing.  Capable of digging deep to find the answers within themselves, and /or where to find the help they need.”  Creative, resourceful, and whole.  I had not heard or seen those words in this context in a long time.  So grateful for the reminder—Thanks, Christine!

What are you teaching these days?  How might you hold your leadership map more loosely and allow those you lead to point to a new or different way?  What might you all gain in the process?

I Hurt My Friend Today

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NaBloPoMo 2018:  What I’m Learning

Bummer, it’s no longer November 8.  Well, that’s the humbling kind of week it’s been.

I sat in a meeting with a friend today.  I expressed a perception and opinion about an issue on which she and I have divergent perspectives.  It was early morning (not my best time of day), and I was still emotionally hung over from yesterday.  I spoke up more and louder than usual and may have been a bit aggressive—not toward her or anyone personally, but about my opinion.

Afterward I asked her, “Was I too bitchy?”  I was querying her impressions of how my words and expressions landed on others.  Turns out I had really hurt her personally, and I had no idea.  The fantastic news is this friend shares my values of honesty, empathy, and open communication, so we talked it through in the afternoon.  Even though we had discussed the issue before, today we took more time.  We each listened hard and heard, more clearly than before, details about how decisions were made and how messages were received and perceived.  We dug deeper into underlying snags in relationships between groups, the culture and mindset of team members, and the dynamics that basically hamstrung everybody’s best efforts in the situation.

In the end we agreed that we’re all doing the best we can, and we also have a lot to learn from one another.  We acknowledged that there is room for everybody to own their shit a little more, and that calling a ‘my bad’ and ‘do-over’ of some parts may be the best way to make amends and move forward with more trust and cohesion.  We agreed that we could all benefit from more conversation, acknowledgement, transparency, empathy, attention to people’s feelings and mindset, and mutual understanding.  We brainstormed about what that all might look like; I got kinda excited.

At the end of the conversation we congratulated ourselves on both our courage to give each other some hard feedback, and how we were able to listen with love and generosity of spirit.  Maybe it was easier because we are friends.  But it’s the practice when it’s easy that prepares us for when it’s hard, right?  I’m so proud of us; we really lived into our best relationship potential today.  We walked our talk.  Nobody witnessed it, but we know what we did.  [fist bump, high five emojis]

Here’s to friends holding each other accountable for the consequences of our words and actions, and upholding each other to be our best selves. I wish you all more friends like this.

Diversify Your Network

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NaBloPoMo 2018:  What I’m Learning

Are you friends with a plumber?  My friend Dennis is, or was, as of c.1997.  I forget his friend’s name, let’s call him Frank; they knew each other in high school.  Dennis and I were both medical students when I met Frank.  Looking back he must have thought I was a little strange.  I asked what he did for a living, and when he told me he was a plumber I interrogated him, hard.  “What’s that like?  How do you train, is there a school (I was a straight-through biology pre-med who knew next to nothing about trade schools)?  What are your hours like, are there days when you don’t work?  How do you figure out what the problem is?”  I was just so curious—I had never met anyone who did that kind of work, and it was so different from anything I knew.  He didn’t talk to me for long.  We were at Dennis’s birthday party and Frank quickly found other friends to connect with.

I’m so grateful to work in medicine, where I get to meet people from all walks of life every day.  In the exam room I have met coders, lawyers, teachers, construction workers, professional dog walkers, stylists, food critics, financial columnists, hedge fund managers, engineers, HR directors, leadership coaches, musicians, and myriad others…but I can’t remember any plumbers.  I love when I have time to ask, “What’s that like?” and “What do you spend your days doing?”  I always learn something new, and the best days are when I find some parallel between our work lives.  My husband the orthopaedic surgeon remembers patients by their x-rays.  I remember them by their social histories.

The Harvard Business Review sent an article to my inbox today entitled, “How to Diversity Your Professional Network.”  It cites studies that show “people who are connected across heterogeneous groups and who have more-diverse contacts come up with more creative ideas and original solutions.”  Reading it triggered an avalanche of memories and cognitive dot-connecting, hence my story about Frank.

First, I’m reminded of my first coaching call after accepting my new role at work.  Coach Christine asked about my ‘allies,’ the people whose counsel I value and who will hold me up and accountable through the growth process and pains that are leadership.  She pointed out that allies are not always people who agree with me.  They can be my challengers, my opposition, my rivals.  Through them, I am forced to grapple with my own integrity; they serve as the crucible for my values.  This idea helps me stay open to people whom I might otherwise dismiss.  Diversify.

Second, I remembered of The Big Sort, by Bill Bishop.  It’s thick with data and research, but the part that struck me hardest was the idea that our ideology becomes more extreme when we spend time with like-minded people.  I suppose you might think, well yeah, duh.  But when you consider how this affects decision making on the individual, community, and policy levels, it’s a little scary.  In his description of research by Cass Sunstein and colleagues, Conor Friedersdorf writes:

But for all the benefits of agreement, solidarity, and spending time with like-minded people, there is compelling evidence of a big cost: the likeminded make us more confident that we know everything and more set and extreme in our views. And that makes groups of like-minded people more prone to groupthink, more vulnerable to fallacies, and less circumspect and moderate in irreversible decisions they make.

Groupthink.  That reminded me of Originals by Adam Grant, a book I have listened to at least twice now.  As I have thought incessantly about culture and how to nurture a healthy one where I work, Grant’s advice on hiring for contribution rather than fit holds my feet to the fire:

Emphasizing cultural fit leads you to bring in a bunch of people who think in similar ways to your existing employees. There’s evidence that once a company goes public, those that hire on cultural fit actually grow more slowly because they struggle to innovate and change. It’s wiser to follow the example from the design firm IDEO, and hire on cultural contribution. Instead of looking for people who fit the culture, ask what’s missing from your culture, and select people who can bring that to the table.

So what does all this mean?  I have decided to take it as validation of my curiosity and desire to learn as much as I can from a vast array of different people.  Whether I know them socially or professionally, whether our diversity is race, culture, politics, religion, or music preference, there is always something that connects us.  The search and exploration are what make life colorful and fun.

I wonder whom I’ll get to meet tomorrow?