Category Archives: leadership

(Re)Learning

I have made time for playing my piano and am learning Bach’s Two Part Inventions. I’ve been working on the first Invention for awhile now using a version from an anthology of classical music. I was getting pretty good at it.

Today, I sat down to play using a new version from Alfred Masterworks. It includes a CD, and I was reassured at the speed and felt good that I was able to keep up. But, it also included specific ways to do the ornamentation and there’s where it got ugly. I had made up my own ornaments previously. This version includes the “official” ornaments, the way Bach would have played them. They were slightly different from my version. And suddenly, I couldn’t play it! NONE OF IT: not just the sections with the ornaments but NONE OF IT. The pagination and fingering suggestions were different, too. So, despite most of the notes being the same, all my practice seemed to be for nothing.

I think there is a lesson here for educators: we teach students one way to do something but how often do we challenge them to use that knowledge in new and different ways? If their learning is important and essential, then we need to be sure they can use the knowledge in new and different ways.

Meanwhile, I’ll be practicing…

 

Eclectic Reading: Leadership Lessons from Rebel Yell

I have been fascinated with the Civil War since first seeing Ken Burns’ epic documentary. Moving to Virginia fueled that fascination, and I have visited many of the battlefields.

One of the most intriguing characters that came out of a war full of intriguing characters was Stonewall Jackson, an odd stiff man who seemed to only come into his own when in the midst of the war. Beyond the battlefield, he was  unsuccessful in many ways. He often let his strong ethics get in the way of his relationships. His tenure in both the military and VMI was fraught with somewhat silly arguments with others. It was only when he found his place in the war that he began to shine as a strategist, warrior and, ultimately, a leader. After his death, even those in the north admired him for his tenacity and religious fervor. Abraham Lincoln, on reading a northern editorial about Jackson, wrote, “I sought my state-room, to weep there. Is it wrong, is it treason, to mourn for a good and great, though clearly mistaken man?” (p. 558).  And, Henry Ward Beecher, ardent abolitionist and editor of The Independent, called Jackson, “Quiet, modest, brave, noble, honorable, and pure. He fought neither for reputation now, not for future personal advancement.” (p. 559).

S.C. Gwynne‘s recent biography of Jackson, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, dissects the man, getting beyond the legend to reveal a loving husband and father and a loyal friend to those who get past the prickly exterior.

But Gwynne also highlights some essential leadership lessons that can be taken from Jackson’s life. One of those is the power of belief to drive men to do more or less than they might otherwise do. He speculates on why groups of soldiers might advance or retreat, writing:

Belief counted for a lot–in one’s general, in the caption in front of you brandishing his gleaming sword, in the bravery of one’s fellow soldiers, in the idea of winning itself…Though it is impossible to measure the effect of Jackson’s growing reputation as a winner on his men, it was undoubtedly strong (p. 321).

Often being a leader means having to influence people to do things they wouldn’t do naturally. When visiting the now peaceful battlefields, I find it unfathomable that soldiers on both sides, having witnessed the carnage of previous fights, were willing to continue to march into these battles. Yet, several times in Rebel Yell, Gwynne comments that the men of the Stonewall Brigade seemed, despite the deprivations and horror, happy as they followed the man who made them victorious against all odds. There is a lesson here for all of us who lead: build confidence by creating opportunities for success.

I am fascinated by the story about the demise of The New Republic because I think it prompts so many different threads of thought about how technology is impacting our lives. It is a larger than life demonstration of the clash of old and new, past and future, that is playing out throughout our culture, including our classrooms. There are lessons here for educators, both the innovators and the traditionalists, about how to make change in a way that preserves the best of the past and takes advantage of the best of the future.

For now, I just have a few random thoughts after reading the lengthy article in the The New Yorker and the shorter piece in The Washington Post.

1. I had trouble getting through The New Yorker article. It was well written, engaging and informative, but my attention span seems to have shortened for long form essays. Have I been impacted by the 140-character trend? Or is there just too much distraction from email and social media?

2. I wasn’t prepared for how young Chris Hughes looks. He is over 30 years old but that still seems too youthful to take over the helm of TNR, which just celebrated its 100th birthday. He does sport a history and literature degree from Harvard. Startled by his photo, I suddenly realized that I am the older generation with more respect for experience and longevity than youthful enthusiasm. But, I was wrong, since Franklin Foer is only 37 and was 31 when he first became editor. The battle of past and future isn’t always defined age any more than the clash of digital natives and immigrants depicted in education.

3. At its core, however, this is a story about botched leadership. Leaders are expected not just to have vision but be able to communicate that vision to others and be open to their ideas and input, showing respect for that experience and longevity I mentioned earlier. The two leaders overseeing the debacle remain mostly unrepentant, a further demonstration of their lack of leadership. Hughes has lashed out at the writers and editors who left while Guy Vidra, brought in as the new chief executive, was a little more conciliatory but still defiant. Despite his protestations otherwise, this seems very much a clash of cultures and the inability of a successful businessman to admit that just being able to buy the magazine doesn’t mean you know best how to run it. Vidra’s comment that Gabriel Snyder better shares their vision and ideas is a sure sign that they think they know best. Only time will tell.

 

Leader Or Team Player?

A colleague recently began work on a project with someone he hadn’t worked with before. My colleague brought a wealth of experience to this new project and was ready to dive in to help. He volunteered over 10 hours of his very precious time and came away feeling good about the work he had done. But somehow, he had managed to annoy the project leader by making suggestions about possible alternatives to doing the work. Throughout the days he worked, he heard the words, “That’s not how we do it around here,” several times in answer to his suggestions.

He was not invited to return the next week and through others heard that the project leader had decided that he wasn’t a team player. He was accused of being a leader who was unable to work with others.

For the project leader, a team player was someone who simply did what he was told. His expertise was not honored, and his voice was silenced. In a healthy organization, team players and leaders are not mutually exclusive. Project leaders make space for their team members to make meaningful contributions. They listen to alternatives, welcome advice, honor expertise. They worry when they hear themselves saying that they’ve always done it this way as a way of defending themselves.

Being able to recognize new ideas that can help strengthen the work is a mark of leadership. But it can be hard for someone in a long time leadership position to support those ideas, afraid that it will make them look weak as though they failed since they didn’t have the ideas themselves.

 

 

Happy Birthday, Wendell Berry

I just finished reading Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, which I bought, along with Farming: A Handbook, on a recent pilgrimage to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. I followed up with A World Lost, one of Berry’s Port William books. If I had to name one person who most inspires me, I believe it would be Berry. I have only been farming for a few years but I understand his love of the land and how it has informed both his politics and his philosophy. Berry turned 80 today.

In this paragraph from his 2012 Jefferson Lecture, Berry gives homage to others who have shaped his ideas:

As many hunters, farmers, ecologists, and poets have understood, Nature (and here we capitalize her name) is the impartial mother of all creatures, unpredictable, never entirely revealed, not my mother or your mother, but nonetheless our mother. If we are observant and respectful of her, she gives good instruction. As Albert Howard, Wes Jackson, and others have carefully understood, she can give us the right patterns and standards for agriculture. If we ignore or offend her, she enforces her will with punishment. She is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may think. She tells us in the voice of Edmund Spenser that she is of all creatures “the equall mother, / And knittest each to each, as brother unto brother.”7 Nearly three and a half centuries later, we hear her saying about the same thing in the voice of Aldo Leopold: “In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.”

I’ve been curating web resources related to Berry. Some great videos of him speaking and the terrific interview by Bill Moyers last fall.