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Podcast Episode 39 (part 12): Close Your Mouth and Open Your Ears

This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part twelve 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 12, we talk about the importance of using our ears more than our mouths, and next week, in part 13, we will talk about the value of using our words well.

It’s no secret that communication is essential to healthy relationships. Everyone understands that poor communication will damage marriages, derail businesses, and destroy friendships. And yet, so many people struggle to communicate in a way that is good for those relationships and contexts. If, therefore, we understand how important it is, and also understand how hard it is to do it well, we ought to be intentional about how we do it.  And at its core, communication is a two-way street that consists of sending and receiving. In other words, the two most basic components of the communication process are what we say and what we hear. Today, we’re talking about the importance of what we hear; or, the importance of listening.

 I’m going to share the same story I shared in the website article that coincides with this podcast episode, about an organization in which I worked and in which I made a spectacular blunder that loudly and clearly drove the lesson of listening home to me. Here’s what happened. I was leading a small group of event planners in planning for one specific event, and everyone in the group (except me) had been involved in that organization for several years. They knew the culture and traditions that had been part of the organizational history, and I did not. However, as the new leader, I felt that I should take charge of presenting good ideas, so I began the first meeting by taking charge . . . and by taking charge, what I really mean is that I began telling the rest of the group all of my ideas. I was so excited about it that I wasn’t even paying attention to how my ideas were being received.

My enthusiasm and lack of hearing, combined with the fact that I had not yet established trust or relationship, resulted in the rest of the group shutting down while giving verbal support to my ideas. However, over the next few days I began to hear from others that the entire committee was frustrated with me, and the event was now in jeopardy. When I realized what had happened, I had to go back to the committee and apologize for speaking without listening, and then I had to make it safe for them to talk; and not just talk, but feel heard. When I did that, I learned about the history and tradition associated with that event and could see that I had been on the verge of causing damage to the culture. I needed to take the time to listen, understand history, and get the whole story, but I had not done that.

In this circumstance, my mouth was open, my ears were closed, and I wasn’t listening. Because of that, I wasn’t hearing what I needed to hear. I wasn’t hearing with my eyes because I was only focused on myself, so I didn’t see the facial expressions or gestures that would have clued me in to their response. I wasn’t hearing with my ears, largely because my behavior made it unsafe for them to speak up. I needed to hear from them, but I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t listening, and so I nearly caused a complete break in trust that would have led to likely irreparable damage to our relationship.

That blunder that I made is a great example of something that many of us struggle with. Even though, as our grandparents likely said to us when we were little, “God gave you two ears and one mouth, so you should listen twice as much as you talk,” it seems like our tendency is to talk twice as much as we listen. We focus more on our own ideas, or on what we have to offer, or what we’re going to do, and then miss the signs from other people. As I talked about in a couple of the episodes earlier in this series, you tend to see what you’re looking for, and you tend not to see what you are not looking for. Applied to today’s topic, what that means is that we tend not to hear what other people are communicating because we are only paying attention to what we are communicating.

All of this points to the crucial importance that we learn to shut up and listen. One of my favorite verses in Proverbs is 18:13, which says, “He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.” In other words, we can appear foolish when we open our mouths to speak before we first open our ears to listen.

The bottom line is that good communication is essential to good leadership. Listening well is essential to good communication. As you learned in math class, if a=b and b=c, then a=c. Therefore, it makes sense that listening well is essential to good leadership. So be intentional about learning to listen. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Seek feedback, but make sure you hear it. Pay attention to what other people are saying, and to how they appear to be responding to you. Good leaders know when to close their mouths, open their ears, and listen.

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Complementary Contradictions (part 12): Close Your Mouth and Use Your Ears

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 12, we talk about the importance of using our ears more than our mouths, and next week, in part 13, we will talk about the value of using our words well.

Early in my experience as an educator, I heard my administrator say to parents (tongue-in-cheek), “If you don’t believe half of what your students say happened in the classroom, we won’t believe half of what they tell us happened at home.” Like many humorous comments, this contains a morsel of truth. People have a tendency to represent facts in such a way as to paint themselves in the best possible light, and children are no different. Often over the years, I have fielded phone calls from parents who were contacting me because of what their child said happened in class (things like, “My child told me that the teacher said this in class!”). I quickly learned to redirect their concern to the teacher, so that the parent could hear the whole story. Nearly every time, the parent has come back to me and said, “Now that I have the whole story, it makes a lot more sense.” (And most of the time, the story the child told at home was an effort to cover up or misdirect from wrong choices of behavior made by the student in the classroom.)

There are two particular passages in Scripture that have greatly helped me to understand this idea. One is Proverbs 18:13, which says, “He who answers a matter before he hears the facts—it is folly and shame to him” (Amplified Bible). The Message says it even more plainly: “Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.” This verse was first shared with me by a professor when I was completing a marriage and family counseling internship, as an exhortation to probe and question thoroughly before drawing conclusions in the counseling setting. For quite a while, I literally kept the verse written on a notecard, taped on top of my desk, as a reminder. I have since learned that this verse applies to many circumstances, not just to a counseling session. When you deal with people (and most of us do), you will have the experience of people telling you the story from their own perspective, which will likely mean that it may or may not be true. It is foolish and stupid to react or respond without first getting the whole story.

The second verse is James 1:19, which says, “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” As many grandparents have shared with their grandchildren, “There’s a reason why God gave us two ears and one mouth; we should listen twice as much as we speak!” This verse has been a constant reminder to me to be careful to listen first, although, in the process of my growth as a leader, it was a lesson that sometimes came the hard way.

In one organization in which I worked, I made a spectacular blunder that loudly and clearly drove this lesson home to me. I was leading a small group of event planners in planning for one specific event, and everyone in the group (except me) had been involved in that organization for several years. As the leader, I felt that I should take charge of presenting good ideas, so I began the first meeting by telling the rest of the group all of my ideas. My enthusiasm (combined with the fact that I had not yet established trust or relationship) resulted in the rest of the group shutting down while giving verbal support to my ideas. However, over the next few days I began to hear from others that the entire committee was frustrated with me, and the event was now in jeopardy. I had to go back to the committee and apologize for speaking without listening, and then I had to make it safe for them to talk. When I did that, I learned about the history and tradition associated with that event and could see that I had been on the verge of causing damage to the culture. I needed to take the time to listen, understand history, and get the whole story.

The added bonus of this lesson is that when you take the time to learn the whole story, you are much more likely to be able to discern what is true and what is not. In Deuteronomy 18:21-22, Moses provided some direction to the people of Israel to help them understand how to discern this, when he said, “And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.” He made the point that if you take the time to observe and get the whole story, beginning to end, you can tell if it is truth or not.

It is easy for a leader to assume that leadership means taking charge and giving direction. However, I believe that these principles from Scripture give us a very different picture: leadership should be characterized by listening. Ask questions. Make it safe for people to share. Validate. Make sure you get the whole story before you react. Close your mouth, open your ears, and listen.

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Quote Your Dad

“God uses F.A.T. people – faithful, available, and teachable.”

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Podcast Episode 38 (part 11): But First . . . Be 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:

  1. 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.”
  2. 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. 

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Complementary Contradictions (part 11): But First, Be Teachable

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.

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Quote Your Dad

“Your walk talks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.”

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Podcast Episode 37 (part 10): Become A Teacher, Because You Already Are

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!

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Complementary Contradictions (part 10): Become a Teacher

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.

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Quote Your Dad

“If it doesn’t work, do something different.”

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Podcast Episode 36 (part 9): If It Doesn’t Work, Do Something Different

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.

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