Stop… Trying to Be Right.

…trying so hard to be right. Of course, being right isn’t a bad thing in itself— knowing stuff and having correct answers can distinguish you and win you the opportunity to lead— but fixating on being right can distinguish you too and lose the very credibility you were desperately seeking in the first place.

There’s no denying that it feels good to be right, and it’s easier to lead when you are. It feels lofty, leaderly, like you have a clear mandate to command. It’s intoxicating. No wonder so many of us start thinking it’s something to be maintained at all cost. But be assured, none of us is actually right all the time, and trying to look like it comes at a high price indeed. Leaders who fear being wrong…

…have fragile and one-directional relationships because they never apologize and meaningful reciprocity disappears. They perpetually reframe and reinterpret reality instead of simply acknowledging their missteps. This might keep their personal record clean, but at the expense of the vulnerability and interpersonal connection that fosters genuine trust.

…don’t take risks or innovate because it’s more important to them to prove their infallibility than to go boldly where none have gone before. They need to know that the journey will ultimately affirm their choices before they will take the first step.

…keep everyone else small because smarter or more capable people threaten them. They wnat to know that relationships and interactions will prove their prowess even if that confidence is purchased at the expense of the greater synergy and capacity of engaging the best and brightest.

…are brittle and break when leadership matters most. The resilience and personal efficacy we need most in trying times is borne in our acceptance of our imperfection rather than our absolute or unrealistic expectations of ourselves.

It’s awfully easy to think that your leadership depends on your perfection, but this is a dangerous delusion. People choose to follow you for many reasons, but not usually because they think you’re perfect. When you try too hard to look like it, you’re not fooling anyone but yourself and they get irritated, suspicious or disillusioned and decide it would be safer and more meaningful to give their allegiance to someone else. So stop trying so hard not to be wrong, and make the most of it when you are.

Prize Learning over Simply “Doing School”: The Question of Commitment

 [Part of Contrarian Choices & Critical Questions, a series of reflections on educational excellence developed for a keynote address at Lenoire-Rhyne University’s Celebration of Academic Excellence.]

“Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” (2 Corinthians 9:6)

Here’s a scary secret about college that we don’t put in the recruitment materials– its possible to put in vast sums of money and significant quantities of time and still leave without getting the Good Stuff… Oh, you can sit through the necessary classes, churn out the required papers, skim the essential books, etc. and by just managing to last long enough, you can leave with a diploma, but not necessarily an education.

And it’s tempting to do this because it’s easier, less risky, and more comfortable and the natural forces around us always seem to encourage us toward such things. But getting an excellent education takes more than simple endurance because you’ve got to be changed by the experience, not merely outlast it. An excellent education requires learning not just “doing school”; learning is about fostering transformation, “doing school” is about managing transactions.

We all know how to “do school”. Students, you don’t get to this point in your education without these skills. “Doing school” is about working the system. Learning what to neglect, which books you don’t need to buy, how to give professors and administrators what they want; and how to choose, channel, and charm your way ahead. It’s less about learning anything than simply negotiating requirements and connecting information so that you make the grade and keep moving forward.

Some students have become masters at working the system because from elementary school on, the natural forces in American education pull hard in this direction, and that’s what school became for them long ago—a system. Not a learning experience or a developmental opportunity, but more of a riddle of competing expectations, deadlines, and policies to be solved as painlessly as possible. This fundamentally alters their investment. “Doing School” requires them to play the part of mere conduits—retrieving and reporting data, connecting information and individuals, but ultimately remaining unchanged themselves. When you’re good at doing school, you’re adept at manipulating the givens and employing a sort of brutal minimax mentality to get through everything unscathed and unchanged.

And faculty, we’re masters at “doing school” too— after all, we’ve felt the pull of these forces and practiced the skills even longer than our students. One of the reasons we’re successful in the Academy is because we “get” its peculiar systems and exchanges. We make our own minimax calculations and have our own versions of managed neglect, our own ways of working the system to get the job done or make the wheels turn appropriately.

This isn’t all bad, because the skills of Doing School are essential in the Academy and life, but they’re also hopelessly insufficient when it comes to an excellent education because education is ultimately about learning, about being changed, about meaningful transformation, not managed transactions.

The fundamental difference between learning and “doing school” is commitment. You can’t simply sit in the right chairs and check the right boxes and expect to leave here with an excellent education. You’ve got to be more than just involved, you’ve got to be committed. A friend once described to me the difference between being involved and being committed as “ham and eggs”… In ham & eggs, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed!

Students: You’ve got to have some skin in the game. It has to matter. You have to be “all in” and put in the stuff that really matters to you: your aspirations, your hopes, your insufficiencies, your emotions, your relationships. There’s just no shortcutting real transformation because your education is a tight economy in which return depends on investment. If you’re just dabbling, you shouldn’t expect anything substantial in return. So go for it. Be “all in”. Do the thing that scares you, risk failure, chase the interest or opportunity that’s important to you. This experience can powerfully define and refine you, but only if you look at your classes, your relationships, your leadership experiences, service opportunities, etc. as YOUR opportunities, YOUR tools for transformation, YOUR laboratories for learning and only if you have the courage to put your real self into them.

Faculty: An excellent education requires us to have skin in the game as well. This tight economy of transformation I’m describing demands our genuine investment as well. We can’t expect such courage and vulnerability from our students without modeling it ourselves because of what I call the “Reciprocity of Influence”

It’s a fancy academic-sounding name for a simple principle I learned recently playing Paintball…

I went with some friends to play paintball, and I had visions of being Rambo, or a super commando, or some similarly impressive and heroic figure charging across the battlefield, but to my disappointment I discovered that I am simply a coward and a sniper at heart. I discovered that what I wanted more than anything was the ability to hide safely and pick off other people with impunity. Unfortunately, when we rented our paintball guns, the company clocked each of them and adjusted them so that they all shot the same speed and distance. So, though I wanted to find some way to hit others without endangering myself, I found it wasn’t possible. The heard truth became obvious: if I wanted to get close enough to hit them, I simply had to get close enough to be hit in return.

This principle is enlightening for educators as well as Rambo wannabes. Try as we might to impact students from a safe distance, we must grapple with the reality that getting close enough to influence them meaningfully requires us to get close enough to be influenced in return. There is no safe or untouchable place for any participant in an excellent education  and this is not a job for the faint of heart. This Reciprocity of Influence produces potent relationships, fosters vulnerability and respect, and blurs the line between teachers and learners wherever academic excellence is found.