And this has nothing to do with any kind of prowess as a teacher. It has everything to do with workforce management and the real challenges we face in business.
About five years ago, I took a post at Johns Hopkins University as an adjunct professor. With over ten years’ experience in sports, business, and management, I had many learned insights and many nuggets of wisdom to impart on my future students, eager and impressionable as they would certainly be.
At the risk of living out a cliché, however, I admit I learned more from my time in the classroom than I ever did in my office at work. Moreover, I fell in love with the classroom, the students, and the environment that exists to foster greatness.
But the average professional shouldn’t need a 10+ year career, an adjunct professorship, and long-awaited epiphany to understand certain basic, fundamental truths. Of course, it is only with experience that these truths are learned and fully understood, but perhaps you can get a head start by taking them at face value as more than mere banal platitudes:
- Get to Know Your Audience: In a classroom of fifty students, you’re bound to have a blend of people, just like you would in an office. There are different personalities, varied backgrounds and experience, preferred communication styles, and more. Before you engage in any conversation, you need to take a minute to recognize your audience and understand how to best adjust your message for them.
For example, guest lecturing for a graduate course is different than undergraduate. The difference in educational background and work experience altered how I approached my lectures, from timing and depth of material to references and anecdotes. With younger students, attention spans move quickly. The material must be quick, light, engaging, and digestible. Momentum is crucial. Compared that to business workshops with older teams, where methodical, dense material is an expectation, and where we unpack complex issues over a longer period of time.
These differences are even sharper in the workplace, where it is easier to make assumptions about someone’s experience or background. We use industry jargon or refer to specific models that make sense to us. Ironically, this hyper-specificity can cloud our clarity if we aren’t careful. Meeting your employees where they are is a demonstration of respect, which also provides results.
- Empower Autonomy with Direction: Responsibility can be a powerful thing, both good or bad, depending on how you deliver/provide it. In the classroom, the best results I’ve seen have come from striking the balance of just enough direction with the room to rise up to high expectations. I often assign projects with a desired outcome (e.g., we want to reach this in a negotiation), but leave the process of how we get there open-ended for my students to struggle with. This sort of freedom to think creatively and constructively teaches them the value of independence and the struggle of pushing your limits to reach a desired outcome.
Compare this classroom approach -- where freedom to learn can inspire new innovation -- with a standard workplace environment. The drive for process, efficiency, and end-results can actually hamper creative freedoms that could revolutionize the way we work. Ask yourself where you need to go; try to relinquish the strict paradigms for how you have to get there.
- Share the Responsibility -- for Failures: When a classroom full of students fail, the failure is the teacher’s. When they pass, credit goes to their hard work. The teacher’s success comes as the achievement of the students, not the result itself.
In business, managers are notorious for assigning blame when projects fail. But, when successful, they take the credit. Fortunately, more positive and affirming workplace practices are being adopted, and more managers are paying attention to this nuance. It cannot be understated. As a manager, executive, and leader at any level within an organization, you become a coach with an active role in somebody else’s journey. Their failures are yours, but you must hold up their successes unequivocally as theirs. Your success is their growth -- and the way it ripples into future learning, innovation, and more success on projects to come.
These three truths create a fundamental tripod for managing people well. But realizing them to the utmost comes from the fourth and final truth: Foster positive environments. I credit my epiphany to the expectations we have for classrooms and academia - the open curiosity and emphasis on learning. Too often, the market-driven need of a business organization is so hardwired to doing. We get things done quickly, cheaply, efficiently -- and we sacrifice something along the way.
If nothing else, ask yourself what you have sacrificed, and how you can reshape your environment in small, meaningful ways. It starts with people. But before that, it starts with you.
