One of my recent posts entitled “Discover Your Own Wisdom,” was inspired by something I read on Dr. Anne Perchel’s website, Germane Consulting. Anne has written what I think is a fascinating and insightful account of how she reacted when she read my post, which I would strongly encourage you to read right now by clicking this link.
Now I’m going to tell you very frankly how and why I constructed my post and what I was thinking at the time. Then Anne and I would both invite you to share your thoughts with us in the form of comments either here, on her blog, or better yet on both! Here goes…
I found Anne’s blog that day through my Twitter steam. The term “power” in the title caught my attention and prompted me to click the link to read more. The first two sentences pushed my buttons in a way that my brain narrowed its focus and I only skimmed the rest of the post. This dog had found its big, juicy bone. As a reminder, her first two sentences were:
I spent many a lecture in graduate school waiting for the sages to utter pearls of wisdom. It happened twice, and both times the statements were profoundly simple.
I deliver those lectures in graduate school that were the target of Anne’s lament, so I have a different perspective. Every semester I advise my MBA students to assume full responsibility for themselves, which includes their learning in my class, and every semester I witness very few of them take my advice to heart. Their words and behavior convey their true locus of control. I was more sensitive than usual when I read Anne’s post because I recently had an MBA student use the word “victim” to describe how she felt about being held accountable to one of my course policies.
Inspiration for blog posts is not always easy to come by. Frankly, I was looking for a way to build on a point made by Vineet Nayar in his book “Employees First, Customers Second,” that one of the responsibilities of a leader is to help others find their own wisdom. My strong response prompted by Anne’s observation was framed by both my own experience and Nayar’s counsel.
I did not use Anne’s name in my post, and I made a point to briefly say something positive about her before I moved on to my real point. In my mind, the article I wrote was never about Anne. It was for me always about the issue and not about the person behind the issue. As an academic, not only do we never ask permission to challenge ideas, we expect those challenges and in my classroom I invite them from my students.
Respectful challenge of ideas is also one of the beautiful ethics of the blogsphere. The key here is how different people perceive and operationalize respectful challenge. My interpretation of this concept is influenced by my personality (INTP), attitudes, values, professional specialization (management), national culture, and organizational culture (B-school academic).
Does the fact that I am a white, middle-aged male also affect my interpretation of respectful challenge, or for that matter the concept of full responsibility? Most definitely; however, because I am part of the power majority, my race and gender and are largely transparent to me so I am rarely forced to consider how they might affect my thinking and behavior.
I could be mistaken, but I think that might have been one of the points Anne was trying to make in her blog post that I did not bother to fully read.
What do you think? Please leave a comment for me here, on Anne’s post, or in both places!
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Hi Bret
I may be going where angels fear to tread here, but in the end I really think that you and Anne are agreeing to agree.
The main point I’m getting from your post is that adult students cannot expect to blame the teacher if they have failed to learn or meet their own expectations. In fact, to hold ourselves accountable for our own learning is part of the maturation process and if we fail to do that in college, then that is a pretty sad commentary on our readiness to navigate through the rough and the smooth of the rest of our lives.
Anne’s quote “the consultant sees and names what’s missing such that the clients find it for themselves” could also, I think, be applied to the role of a teacher.
In other words, I don’t see her suggesting that the teacher’s role is to find the way to wisdom for students, only to help them “see what’s missing” and provide possibilities, challenges and thought-provocation enough to undertake their own explorations. Of course, once in a while we encounter someone who triggers a new thought, a new perspective that points us in a direction we hadn’t expected but, in the end, we still have to choose which door to walk through.
With respect to the notion of valuing the combination of feminine and masculine approaches and perspectives I agree that one is not better than the other. In fact one compliments the other. Sometimes, though, we can both be saying the same thing and fail to recognize it because of differences in our delivery systems..
Thank you both for giving me some food for thought.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Welcome back, Gwyn! You are right, and I appreciate your contribution. I never saw myself as disagreeing with Anne. I took her quote out of the context of the rest of her post and used it to make what I thought was an entirely different point. What is interesting to me is it never occurred to me when I did it that I might in any way have offended Anne. That’s what makes her perspective so interesting to me. We are using different processes. I now see her’s better, and she might see mine better. Thanks!! Bret
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Gwyn & Bret – Thank you both for engaging in the conversation. I’ve been smitten these past few days with the idea that the letters in “both and” can be reformatted to “both hand(s)” almost. Two hands are better than one?
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Multiple perspectives always make things more interesting and almost always better. Thanks for doing this exchange, Anne! Bret
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