“God uses F.A.T. people – faithful, available, and teachable.”
This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part eleven in the series titled “Complementary Contradictions.” Here is the transcript of the podcast.
Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of the same coin, or at least differ from each other, and we are pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. Last week, in part 10, we talked about becoming a teacher, and this week, in part 11, is a reminder that before you can teach, you must first be teachable.
We started our discussion of this pair of principles last time when we talked about becoming a teacher. What I said was that you are already a teacher, even if you didn’t realize it, because you are modeling with your life, your actions, and your words, and others are learning from what they see you do and hear you say. I encouraged you, therefore, to be consciously intentional about those things. Own the fact that you are a teacher to your followers and do it with purpose. However, today, I want you to back up a little bit because in order to truly be an effective teacher, you yourself must first be teachable.
One of my responsibilities as a school administrator was to evaluate faculty and to provide guidance and support in their professional growth. The vast majority of teachers I have worked with were committed to personal and professional growth and were always pursuing ways to change, improve, and develop. They would listen to my feedback, and look for ways to incorporate that feedback, as well as look for new ideas from other sources, like books, conferences, workshops, or their peers. But that has not always been the case.
One of those cases was a teacher who had a number of years of experience at that school and in that subject, and I was new in my role as their head of school. As I took time to meet with parents (and employees) to learn about the school and started to formulate a plan for my leadership there, I kept hearing from the parents about the challenges their students would have with this one particular teacher. I began observing and meeting with the teacher to see if I saw the same thing that was concerning parents, and I did. So, I prepared a plan of growth to help this teacher. When we met and I started going through the concerns I kept hearing and what we could do to address those concerns (and, therefore, serve students well), I was met with denial and blame-shifting. I kept hearing about how it was the fault of the students, who didn’t want to learn, or the fault of the parents, who only listened to the kids’ side of the story, or the fault of the curriculum that the school had provided, or the fault of the administration who was not being supportive. There was no willingness to accept responsibility, and so there was also no willingness to learn, change, and grow. Ultimately, this teacher was let go, not because of the ability to teach, but because of the inability to be teachable.
The missing piece for this teacher’s ability to be effective as a teacher was teachability. That begs the question of what was needed to be done in order to reflect teachability. Think about what we talked about in the corresponding podcast and website article about being a teacher, which was the idea that we are already teachers, because we influence others by our actions and words, by modeling and giving feedback, so that we can help others learn and grow. It makes sense, then, that being teachable is simply the other side of those practices. The other side of modeling by example is observing what others do; the other side of giving feedback and instruction is receiving feedback and correction; and the other side of pursuing growth in others is seeking to learn and grow ourselves from what we see and what we hear.
That kind of teachability requires humility, self-awareness, and personal responsibility. You must be confident enough to acknowledge that you don’t know everything and that you have a lot to learn; you must become aware of your own deficiencies and growth areas, even if you don’t want to admit it; and you must own the responsibility for what happens even if you are not the primary cause. When you do those things, you enable yourself to become teachable. When you become teachable, you enable yourself to grow.
Here’s what you need to know: in order to grow, you must be teachable. That is often harder than it seems, because it can be so difficult for us to accept our faults and deficiencies, whether that be because of pride, shame, perfectionism, or a need to please. To be teachable, therefore, requires that:
- You must be willing to seek and receive feedback, and then see and accept where you need to grow, even if it hurts. Proverbs 15:31 says that “the ear that hears the rebukes of life will abide among the wise.”
- You must be careful to listen and self-evaluate before you jump to a defensive reaction. James 1:19 tells us, “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to get angry.”
The bottom line is that a great teacher is also teachable. You are already a teacher. If you want to be a great one, then you need to want to be teachable just as much as you want to be a teacher. So humble yourself, open yourself up to receiving feedback, and be willing to honestly self-evaluate. Then, take that feedback and self-reflection, and grow.
Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of a coin, or at least differ from each other and pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. Last week, in part 10, we talked about becoming a teacher, and this week, in part 11, is a reminder that before you can teach, you must first be teachable.
When I was a college student, I attended a seminar that was led by a graduate student as he presented the appeal and the opportunities in his field of study, which was theology. In the course of his presentation, he shared the viewpoint that, in order to become someone able to be used by God for greatness, you needed to be characterized by the acronym F.A.T.: Faithful, Available, and Teachable. I do believe that these characteristics ought to be exhibited by any and every Christian in their relationship with God, but I also think that they ought to reflect our growth in our leadership. Particularly, I believe that becoming teachable is absolutely essential to – and in direct proportion to – our level of growth and our capacity to lead.
But don’t take my word for it; listen to the wisdom of others. Albert Einstein is generally considered to have been a man of great genius, so it might be easy to assume that, in his brilliance, there was little else he could learn and much that he could teach. While it would be true that he had a wealth of knowledge to share, he strongly believed that he was and always would be learning. He is known to have said, “I have no special talent; I am only passionately curious,” and to have also stated, “It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.” More famously, Einstein is attributed with having said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying.”
He was not the only person to share that sentiment. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, once said, “I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, stated, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” John Rooney, American sportscaster, and radio announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals, reportedly said, “The quickest way to become an old dog is to stop learning new tricks.” And Jackie Joyner Kersee, world class Olympic athlete in track and field, claimed, “I maintained my edge by always being a student; you will always have something new to learn.” These individuals all reflect the same sentiment: in order to grow, you have to learn; and in order to learn, you have to be teachable.
The truth is, to be a successful leader, you must be teachable. If you are not teachable, you will not learn, and therefore, you will not grow and become a more effective leader. On the surface, it is that simple. However, this is actually more challenging than it may appear, because often those who are not teachable do not recognize it, and even more often, our own pride, competitiveness, defensiveness, or self-centeredness leads us to resist acknowledging our need to learn. Therefore, becoming teachable requires humility and a conscious and intentional effort, learning to exhibit specific attributes and incorporate specific behaviors that help us to learn.
At its core, the skill of becoming teachable can be condensed to a few necessary attributes and action steps, and these can be even more simplified to reflect the two more basic skills of looking and listening. Looking involves what you choose to see, listening involves what you choose to hear, and both are directly impacted by how you choose to interpret what you see and hear. Essentially, to become teachable, you will need to follow the rule you learned as a child about crossing a busy street (or the line from Elvis Presley’s Rubberneckin’) – you need to stop, look, and listen!
First, stop and look, and there are two things that help you be more teachable by looking: study and humility. We study by reading, watching, asking questions, and learning from the wisdom and experience of others. It requires intentional study of the what’s, why’s, and how’s of life and the world around us. In doing so, we add to our base of knowledge and gain a greater understanding of the practical application and use of that knowledge. Humility is our attitude, one that makes us willing to accept our own inadequacies, deficiencies, ignorance, and failures, so that we are then also willing to learn from those mistakes and willing to learn from others.
I saw this in myself in an experience years ago. My family was having a get-together at my parents’ home, and while we were sitting around the dinner table, my dad made a comment about someday wanting to build a deck on the back of the house. One of my two brothers suggested that we do it the next day, because there likely would be very few times that we would all be together at the same time again. So, my dad sketched out the plans, and the next morning we went to the lumber store, picked up all the supplies, and then the four of us proceeded to spend the next eight hours building a large deck. What a great memory! When we were all finished, my dad commented on how he could see certain attributes of each of our personalities throughout the process. One of the observations that he made about me was that I was constantly asking questions, trying to understand why we were doing things in a certain way, and learning from the experience. That observation was an accurate reflection; with an investigative nature, I have long known that you learn a lot by observing and asking questions.
Second, stop and listen, and there are also two things that help you be more teachable by listening: reflection and feedback. Reflection is an internal skill and habit in which we step back from our actions to think about them and analyze them, honestly assessing their effectiveness and appropriateness so that we can learn, adjust, and improve ourselves. Feedback is the input that comes from other people and from the consequences of our actions. It may be unsolicited, coming in both positive (like the complement you receive when you share a good idea at work) and negative forms (such as the words or gestures that are “shared” with you when you accidentally cut another car off on the road), or it may be intentionally solicited or provided, in the form of guidance, mentoring, and assessment. Either way, it is something from which you should learn (even the harshest criticism can potentially create some truth to be learned).
One particularly difficult experience helped me with this. My boss had called me into a meeting, and I knew that he had called for the meeting because he was unhappy with something I had done, and therefore this meeting would be a confrontation that I was not looking forward to enduring. As I shared my dread with my father, he challenged me to envision that God would be standing behind my boss, acting in much the same way as a ventriloquist, and to look past the angry words and tone and instead look for the message that God was trying to teach me. That’s not what I wanted to hear from my dad (I wanted him to affirm that my boss was all wrong and that I shouldn’t have to go through this), and his counsel did not make the meeting any more enjoyable, but it did change my response and allowed me to learn some things that I needed to learn in spite of the way in which the message was delivered. It was a hard lesson, but I learned some things that day about listening to feedback, both from my dad and from my boss.
You see, “teachability” – or, the ability to be teachable – is essential to your growth as a leader. Humble yourself, study, practice self-reflection, and listen to feedback; all of these practices will help you to learn, but they must be willingly embraced. If you will do so, you will become a more effective – and respected – leader, all because you made yourself teachable.
“Your walk talks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.”
This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part ten in the series titled “Complementary Contradictions.” Here is the transcript of the podcast.
Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of the same coin, or at least differ from each other, and we are pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. This week, in part 10, we talk about becoming a teacher, and next week, in part 11, is a reminder that before you can teach, you must first be teachable.
We are pairing together two sides of the learning process: the teacher and the student. One side is responsible for cultivating growth in the other, and the other side is responsible for receiving and responding in order to cultivate growth in him or herself. As a teacher, your goal is to help others grow and develop. As a student, or learner, your goal is to continue to grow and develop yourself. Both of these are significant to your leadership, because they impact the kind of leader (and person) you are, and they impact the people you lead.
In my first year as a teacher, I had tremendous enthusiasm and high hopes that I would be the kind of teacher who transforms students. In my mind, I was going to inspire them to love learning, run to my class, and engage with brilliant interactions and genuine, knowledge-seeking questions. And then, day one of year one happened. My image of myself as Edward James Olmos in “Stand and Deliver,” or as Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society,” crashed into the reality of a classroom of 30 teenagers who didn’t want summer to end and didn’t know me from Adam. In my struggle to engage and challenge them, I set high expectations and worked really hard at being enthusiastic and unconventional. When the time came for me to administer my first test, I was eagerly anticipating seeing my teaching brilliance reflected in their outstanding answers. That’s not what happened. The majority of them . . . bombed the test. And I felt like I was failing as a teacher.
Over the course of the rest of that year, I did become a much better teacher, and continued getting better each year. In fact, in my fourth year of teaching, I was recognized as the teacher of the year in my school. So, what happened between day one of my first year and the last day of my fourth year? I learned a lot about what it means to be a teacher.
Here’s what I learned:
- Teaching happens best in the context of relationship. I once heard someone say, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Truly impactful teaching most often happens when you have connected with the people you are teaching, have cultivated a genuine relationship with them, care about who they are, and they know it.
- People want to be treated with dignity and respect, affirming their value and worth. In actuality, that is the same as treating them the way that God wants us to. Every person has been created in the image of God and has value to Him, and therefore, should have value to us. So, we need to treat them as such. Don’t be condescending, sarcastic, or demeaning. Rather, be affirming and loving, and work to help them understand the why behind the what.
- Students won’t be willing to listen if they don’t believe you and trust you. That only happens when they see that you are sincere and genuine, and that who you say you are and how you actually live and act match up to each other. In other words, they see that you are a person of integrity. My dad would say, “Your walk talks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.”
- Trust is demonstrated when students are given the freedom and safety to learn and fail. Without that, they close down, as a matter of self-preservation. But when they are empowered to make choices and decisions and are supported and loved, rather than berated or rejected, when those choices turn out to be bad choices, it makes it safe for them to learn from their failure and try again.
When I made these things central to who I was as a teacher, my students responded, engaged, and learned. The way I said this in the website article that corresponds to this podcast was this: teach with your heart, teach with your words, teach with your life, and teach with your responses. The wonderful thing about these principles is that they don’t just apply to a classroom teacher. They apply to anyone who is teaching others, whether that is formally or informally.
Here’s what you need to know, then. You are a teacher whether you are aware of it or not. People are following you, watching you, and listening to you, and they are learning from what they see and hear. That makes you a teacher. It is therefore important that you do it intentionally, so that you, as a teacher, can have the kind of influence you want to have. Pay attention to what you say, how you say it, how you model it, and how you respond to and engage with others.
Deuteronomy 6 talks about how teaching happens all the time, both formally and informally. The fact is, you are already a teacher, even if you didn’t realize it, because you are modeling with your life, actions, and words, and others are learning from what they see and hear. Don’t let the lessons you teach with your actions, values, and words happen without conscious intent. Since you are already a teacher . . . do it with purpose!
Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of a coin, or at least differ from each other and pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. This week, in part 10, we talk about becoming a teacher, and next week, in part 11, is a reminder that before you can teach, you must first be teachable.
When we think about teaching, our minds generally go immediately to the role of a classroom teacher in a school. We tend to think of it as an occupation rather than a way to communicate, as a job that someone does as opposed to how you interact with others in a way that helps them to learn something. However, while teachers play an invaluable role in the development of children, we are mistaken if we think that it is a job that is only relegated to someone in a classroom. The reality is that if you lead people, you are a teacher.
I personally have experience in the professional role of educator, having served as a junior high and high school teacher for a number of years, and having spent three decades in a school environment as both teacher and administrator. I had a subject matter that I was responsible for teaching, and my job was to help students learn necessary and relevant information and to develop critical thinking skills. But it also was a vehicle through which I sought to shape the minds and the lives of my students.
Leaders are also seeking to shape the minds and lives of those they lead, and so effective leadership can and should learn some things from the theory and practice of professional educators. Therefore, there is great value in understanding what teaching looks like and how it has an effect on people. Gaining an understanding of this can help us with a framework for how we also can teach others. If we want to become better teachers (and we all should), then we need to look at the learning process and at teachers.
In the book Blended (2015), authors Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker discussed the concept of disruptive innovation and its application to the world of education, especially as it applies to online instruction and blended learning. They made the point that modern schools were originally designed to standardize teaching and testing (the opposite of differentiation and customization), but in today’s global, information-based culture, the need is for student-centered learning, which is personalized (tailored to an individual student’s particular need) and competency-based (they must demonstrate mastery before moving on). As they researched students in the learning environment, they then sought to identify the primary motivators for student learning and found two motivating desires: 1) to feel successful and make progress, and 2) to have fun with friends, engaging in positive, rewarding social experiences with others. In short, they learned that students – the learners – want to successfully achieve, to experience good social relationships, and to receive individualized instruction whereby they can show what they know in the way they do best.
This research gives us some insight into what learners, in general, want to experience, but what about your own experience? Like most people, you can probably think of teachers who made an impact on your life, so we should be asking ourselves what they did that made them stand out to us. When you do that, you will probably find several core practices or behaviors that characterized those impactful teachers: 1) they cared; and specifically, they cared about you, and you knew it; 2) they were examples that you felt you could emulate, because they were models of how to live life effectively and with meaning; 3) they challenged and inspired you, pushing you to do more than you thought you were capable of doing; and 4) they gave you feedback, both positive and negative, to support, encourage, and grow you, but also to hold you accountable and correct you.
Now put these ideas together, those from research and those from your own personal experience, and it will begin to give you a picture of what it means to be a teacher. If you apply this to the people you lead, it will help you to see that they want to progress and achieve, they want to have positive and caring relationships, they want to do what they do well in the way they can do it best, they want someone to show them the way and challenge them to grow, and they want to know how they are doing. And the good news is that you don’t have to be in a classroom to do all of these things.
This provides us with a blueprint, a road map for how we can teach the people we lead, and there are four foundational pillars that make up this plan
- First, teach with your heart. Develop a genuine care for people. Build relationships by taking a personal interest in their lives and showing that you care about them.
- Second, teach with your words. Take the time to explain the why and the how, helping people to understand what it is that they are doing and how it connects to the other people and tasks around them in the organization.
- Third, teach with your life. Live in a way that is consistent with what you say, demonstrating integrity, and keeping your promises. Be an example they can emulate. Show them what you expect by demonstrating and modeling.
- Finally, teach with your responses. Empower them to act, and then give them support and encouragement, but also give them constructive feedback to help them learn and improve.
In essence, to be an effective teacher, you must care, tell, show, and respond. These are all behaviors that can and should characterize you as an effective leader. Perhaps you have already been doing this and didn’t realize that in doing so, you have been a teacher. Perhaps you need to begin to do them. Regardless, remember that good teachers help students to achieve, even beyond what they believed was possible, and so it makes sense that if you can be a leader who teaches, the people you lead will grow, and you will benefit. Become a teacher.
This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part nine in the series titled “Complementary Contradictions.” Here is the transcript of the podcast.
Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of the same coin, or at least differ from each other, and we are pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. Last week, in part 8, we talked about doing what works, and this week, in part 9, we will be talking about what to do when it doesn’t work.
We started our discussion of this pair of principles last time when we talked about the importance of figuring out what works, starting to do it, and continuing to do it. It’s been said that there is no need to reinvent the wheel, and what that means for you as a leader is that you don’t need to create a new plan and a new way of doing something every time you have to repeat the task or program. You may want to tweak it to improve it, but you don’t need to start from scratch. You find what works and do it repeatedly . . . until you find that it doesn’t work. And that’s today’s discussion.
When I left one school as the guidance counselor and assistant principal to become the head of school at another school in another state, I had lots of great ideas of what I would do. I knew that it would be my first experience as the senior leader in charge of it all. However, I had been responsible for coming up with and leading new initiatives and had overseen the summer school program in my previous place, so I felt like I had an idea of what I needed to do in this new place and how to make things happen. I had taken the time to think through and prepare a plan (see part 6 of this same series for more on that). With my plan in hand and a vision in my mind of where I was going, I had rolled up my sleeves and gone to work. Unsurprisingly, I ran into obstacles and challenges, and not everything worked the way I thought it would in my head. Some of my best ideas couldn’t even seem to get off the ground, and plans that had been communicated to me before my arrival seemed to become derailed.
For example, the school I was coming to had a plan for constructing a new school building (they were currently renting space across town for the upper grades in a less-than-ideal learning environment), but shortly after I arrived, I could see that this plan had stalled, and wasn’t moving forward. I was left with a logistical challenge and a blow to the morale of stakeholders. It was then that I began to communicate what became my unofficial motto for the next couple of years: “If it doesn’t work, then we will do something different.” From that point forward, every time something wasn’t working the way I wanted it to work, or wasn’t working at all, and I could sense the anxiety around me, that would be my response. I would say it with joyful and calm confidence, and then that’s what I would do. I would look for something different that I could do. In this particular example, I did not renew the lease in the building across town, and instead leased some classroom portables and put them in the parking lot of the church and school. This put all the students on one campus, which was good for everybody, but it also made people uncomfortable because of the space it took in the parking lot. The combination of the benefits and the discomfort reignited the building plan, and a year and a half later, we moved students into a new school building all on the same property.
You see, the school had a plan for facilities, but it wasn’t working. I had a plan for growing the school, but because of the complications that came from the facility issues, it wasn’t working. So, I changed the plan and did something different, and it changed everything. Unity was strengthened, morale improved, public image also improved, movement began to happen, and momentum started to roll. What we were doing before wasn’t working, so we did something different.
That’s the point for you in your leadership. The flip side of the cliché that I referenced earlier (“You don’t need to reinvent the wheel”) is the saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” If something is not working, rather than continuing to do it, find out why it’s not working. Then, maybe you can simply make some necessary changes to what you were doing to get it to work, but maybe you need to do something completely different instead.
Here’s what you need to know. Don’t change something just for the sake of change, or because you think you know better even though you don’t have any data to support your idea. But if what you are doing didn’t work, is no longer working, or has never worked, it’s ok to scrap it and do something different. Don’t exercise insanity. Rather, step back onto the balcony to reassess the big picture, then zoom back in to make changes (another pair of principles we talked about in parts 4 and 5 of this series). Then, make changes or start over.
The bottom line is that you need to do what works, so if something is working, don’t change it (but make sure you evaluate it periodically to ensure that it is continuing to work the way that it should). However if, or when, it is not working, the best answer may simply be . . . do something different.
Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of a coin, or at least differ from each other and pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. Last week, in part 8, we talked about doing what works, and this week, in part 9, we will talk about what to do when it doesn’t work.
In the 1993 blockbuster movie Jurassic Park, actor Jeff Goldblum played a character named Ian Malcolm, who was a “chaos mathematician.” His character’s role was to apply the ideas of chaos theory to the operation of the dinosaur-themed amusement park, with the hope of being able to give approval so that the park could move forward. However, in his view, chaos theory purported that everything is unpredictable, because tiny environmental factors and influences mean that nothing ever happens the same way twice. The result was that he believed the forces that the Jurassic Park scientists were trying to control were, in fact, uncontrollable.
While that was a science fiction movie, the reality is that life is unpredictable and constantly changing, and those changes are uncontrollable. Sure, we can maintain some semblance of control with planning and structure, but there are always circumstances and factors that are unexpected and that we can’t control, like when you drive over a nail and get a flat tire, or you get in an accident caused by another driver, or when severe weather cancels your plans, and so on. These types of things force you to change in some way, but if you cannot adapt to change, you will live a life of eternal frustration. So, since you can’t avoid it, what you must do instead is learn to navigate it, by learning to become flexible, and there are three things you can do to help you with this.
First, relinquish control. It begins by accepting the fact that you cannot control everything that happens. It’s foolish to think that you can. This truth has been reflected often in the financial industry, where unpredictable events impact the value of stocks. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book What the Dog Saw (2010), discussed this in one of the book’s articles, entitled “Blowing Up.” In this article, he discussed the financial practice of investors and suggested – according to his interview with one particular advisor – that you must accept that you can’t predict the unexpected event. Therefore, you must always be prepared for losses.
A number of years ago, I read a book by Peter Schwartz called Inevitable Surprises (2004), in which Schwartz made the claim that certain future surprises were actually inevitable and, therefore, could be predicted and harnessed. One of his primary examples was the “inevitable” impending increase of retirees from the large baby boomer generation, which he then identified as a resource to be tapped into. However, what he could not predict was the change in longevity of life, combined with later retirement ages, which meant that the expected volunteer force of retirees had not emerged (ironically, an increase in volunteerism had occurred among the younger generation, not the older). The point is, you cannot control unpredictable events, and therefore, you must be willing and able to accept that lack of control in order to keep it from defeating you.
Second, be willing to try something different. If you know that some things will happen outside of your control that change your plans, you need to be willing to change your plans and do something different. This is a lesson I learned early in my administrative experience, in the first school in which I served as a headmaster. There was an expectation that I implement noticeable change, because the school had been struggling, and so I began to develop and initiate a strategic plan. However, as you might expect, some of my plans did not work well, because unexpected circumstances would influence the outcome, or people would resist, or it simply didn’t work the way I thought it would. I could tell that people were watching me to see how I would respond to these obstacles and unpredictable events, and so I got in the habit of saying, “If it doesn’t work, we’ll do something different.” This was not only for their benefit but also for mine, to reassure both them and me that it wasn’t an end, only a change. It helped them to be willing to try something different, and in the process of trying something different, we learned, improved, and found the best solutions.
As I discussed in the previous related podcast episode, Jim Collins, in Great by Choice (2011), addresses a similar idea when he talks about firing bullets and then cannonballs. The idea, he explains, is that effective leaders spend a small amount of resources trying out a variety of ideas (firing bullets), dismissing the ones that don’t work well, and pouring more resources into the ones that do (firing cannonballs). We often don’t know with certainty what is going to be effective and produce the desired outcome, and we also don’t know what unexpected factors will hinder our plans, therefore we ought to be willing to try ideas and test plans with the understanding that, for various reasons, it may not work (either at this time, or in this place, or under these circumstances), and so we need to be able to let it go, change, and do something different. It may mean changing the time, or the place, or the circumstances, or perhaps even throwing it away and starting over, but regardless, it means being willing to do something different.
Third, develop creativity. We are not all naturally creative in our thought processes or in our expression, but we can all do things that help us to become more creative. When we develop creativity, looking for new ways of thinking, doing, and expressing, we begin to startle people (in a good way), helping us to get and hold their attention. I learned a little about this when I first became a history teacher. I felt like I had had history teachers in the past who were very boring, and so I wanted to get the attention of my students and make history an enjoyable and valuable class. I remember early in the year, in an American History course, when I was teaching about Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the new world, trying to explain what it felt like to be on his ship sailing across the ocean with a hope but not a certainty, when I suddenly leaped on top of my desk and yelled “Land ho!” as loud as I could. The class jumped, laughed, and then engaged in an active discussion. By being unexpected, I helped to develop an interest in the course.
Daniel Pink, in his book, A Whole New Mind (2006), discusses the value of creative thinking and its importance to leadership and progress. He proposes that those who can learn to think creatively will have an advantage in a global marketplace. He then offers six “senses” that are necessary for cultivating creativity and provides practical advice on how to develop these skills. The main point is that creativity is a skill that can be nurtured and grown and is necessary for growth and leadership in the world of information and concepts in which we live.
We cannot ignore the fact that life throws curve balls and that much of what happens around us and to us is unpredictable. Try as we might to prevent it or avoid it, change happens, and if we are not willing and able to have a degree of flexibility, we will be frustrated, disappointed, and defeated. To be an effective leader, then, you must be able to be flexible. Doing this will require that you are willing to give up control (specifically, over those things that you can’t control), willing to do something different with a positive (not a defeated) attitude, and willing to learn to become more creative. Developing these characteristics will help you to have the flexibility you need, in order to lead well in a changing world. Because if it doesn’t work, you may just need to do something different.