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the uplift
Teaching is an Act of Love. So is Leadership.
Teaching is an act of love.
After thinking about this with recent guests and faculty Rand Park, Sidneyeve Matrix, and Stephanie Cawthon, I've come to wonder if we don't expect far too much of our educators and far too little from our leaders.
Teaching requires emotion: compassion, empathy, affection. Even love. These are necessary for learning to take place.
If colleges and universities are learning institutions, then shouldn't the same principles apply? Leading also requires compassion, empathy, affection -- and love.
Readings & resources:
Ken Bain, What The Best College Teachers Do.
Joan V. Gallos and Lee G. Bolman, Reframing Academic Leadership.
Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
Theresa Amabile, The Progress Principle.
Scott E. Page, The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy.
Other episodes you might like:
#65: Sidneyeve Matrix on Empathy, Learning, & Leading.
#38: Excellent Teaching, Excellent Leading.
#19: The Entanglement of All Things: Educating for Democracy
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Hey there, welcome to the Uplift podcast, where we explore women's leadership in higher ed by mashing up real stories, real feelings, real theory and the occasional f**k bomb, all to help you become the kind of bleeping awesome higher ed leader you would love to follow. My name is Carole Chabries and I'm so glad you're here. This is not the episode I had planned for today, but I've been mulling something over and I thought it was worth some time and I wanted to share it with you. If you were listening in during August, you heard three remarkable faculty talk about skills it takes to engage students in deep learning and how some of those skills translate to leadership. I've been thinking about this idea a lot.
Carole Chabries:Over the 25ish years I've been leading faculty development, I have read a ton of books on academic leadership For a while. They all felt remarkably similar. They talked about the complexities of campus life, the challenges of leading people who were once your peers, and the increasingly heated political climate, because even before the disaster of the 2016 election, we were seeing the systemic defunding of higher ed as a public good. The research talked about the swivel chair for department heads who are sometimes teachers and researchers and then sometimes administrators in how hard it is to swivel back and forth. They talked about the difficult personalities and the importance of culture and how slowly change happens in higher ed. In more recent years the work has become more diverse and therefore more interesting. More women's voices are present in the literature and more space is given for leaders from historically marginalized groups to talk about their experiences and to show us what leadership can look like when it's embodied differently. I love the new trajectory I'm seeing in higher ed leadership literature, but you know what I don't see much of? I don't see much about how the skills you develop as a professor and I mean professor as a calling, not as a job title those skills actually serve you really well as an administrator. So here's my thesis for the day Teaching, when it's done well, is an act of love, and so is leadership. Please just hear me out.
Carole Chabries:You're not a teacher because you stand in front of a room and talk. That's lecturing and that's a thing and has its place, but I wouldn't call it teaching. You're a teacher when the people you're working with learn from you. If you're a teacher, then you're focusing on whether the people around you are learning, which means fundamentally that you care about them. You have to actually care whether they're learning, to even notice if they're learning. You have to care enough to see their struggles, to give them support, to encourage them, to push them, redirect them, to cheer them on, to tell them what they're doing beautifully and also to call them out when they're falling short. And it's just not possible to do those things well if you don't care.
Carole Chabries:I don't mean caring in any mushy or inappropriate way. I mean it at a basic human level. If you're observing someone's growth and struggles and thrills and epiphanies, it's because somewhere inside you you are caring for them. And people need that in order to learn. And this is what I mean about teaching being an act of love. You have to love people, even just a little bit, and often teaching them will bring out that love. You certainly don't start with it and they have to feel loved. Once you care that your students learn, you will build into your instruction and your interactions with them the behaviors that help them feel seen and valued and heard. And it's in those acts of valuing them that you are expressing a kind of love and they feel that love and that helps pave the way for learning. That's what I mean that teaching is an act of love.
Carole Chabries:Over the last month, as I've talked to Rand Park and Sydney eve Matrix and Stephanie Cawthon about how they show their students they care, I've come to an additional realization. I think we expect way too much of teachers and way too little from our leaders. So let's start with faculty. We tend to overwhelm faculty with unmanageable course loads. Yes, there's a ton of material to prepare, there's feedback to give students names to learn and remember, majors to advise. But there's also this even as we overtax faculty with those workloads just like the sheer amount of work, we are also expecting them to love all of those students, because if they don't love them all, at least a little bit, then those students won't learn. I think of my friend who teaches an intro to science course to 120 students every year. That's not even his full teaching load. Imagine being told to develop love and care for those 120 students over the course of 15 weeks to ensure that they are in an environment where they can learn. And you do that while you're teaching other courses, while you're conducting research, presenting at conferences and, in his case, even running a center. Oh, and while you're at it, try to squeeze in some time at home, caring for the people and the animals who live with you, having sufficient time to cook healthy meals, moving your body, quieting your mind, sleeping. We already know that for most faculty, the workload in higher ed is untenable, and a good part of the burnout comes from the simple problem that teaching requires huge amounts of love for dozens or even hundreds of people every semester. Sydneye ve is teaching a class in the spring that has 500 students in it. How do you show caring to 500 students? I'm exhausted just thinking about it, and so here's my real question why do we require all that of teachers, of faculty, of instructors, and not also of academic leaders?
Carole Chabries:I think about Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety. Her research is very clear. People at work need to feel safe to learn, they need to feel included, they need to feel valued. When they do, their work is easier, their projects have less friction. Physical environments are safer. Profits even go up. I think about Teresa Amabile's work on what she calls the progress principle, which is this People at work need consistent feedback on meaningful work in order to feel happy, fulfilled and committed to what they're doing. Her research is also clear when people get feedback on work that matters, they solve problems better. They have fewer sick days. They find their work more rewarding and more purposeful. They do it better. I also think about Scott Page's work on cognitive and identity diversity on work teams. His research is also clear cognitive diversity, which is different from but connected to, identity diversity, makes teams more creative, helps them solve problems better and faster, leads to more breakthroughs, but only on diverse teams where the diversity is valued and put to use. You know who's really excellent at creating psychological safety. You know who rocks at giving feedback. You know who's super skilled at helping people get to know each other and work productively in small groups. Faculty, that's who we expect faculty to do all those things, but they work in the workplace. Why don't we expect it of leadership?
Carole Chabries:When I think back on my career and the leaders and bosses I recall fondly. I can honestly say that I knew each and every one of them cared about me. I don't mean every boss cared about me, I don't mean everybody worked for or cared about me, but the ones that I admire and respect and who inspired me, I can tell you they cared. I didn't need to be the most important person to them, but I knew when I took problems to them, they would treat my problem as the most important thing in front of them at that moment. Those are the leaders who brought out the best in me and those are the leaders I worked harder for, and the opposite is true. I think about the President who gave me huge projects and refused outright to give me feedback, even when I asked for it. I think about the Vice President who told me that because I'm a woman and a mother, I should step off the career track. And I think about the Provost who told me privately I was excellent and then refused to support me in public. Those leaders did not bring out the best in me and my work for them was not inspired.
Carole Chabries:There's a way that this is fundamentally about human decency. Ken Bain even says this in his book what the Best College Teachers Do. Above all, the best college teachers tend to treat students with what can only be called simple decency. I know from my experience and my observations there's a lot of leadership grounded in decency, but as I thought back to these conversations over the last month, I really thought about the truth that there's a lot of academic leadership that is not grounded in human decency. I want more academic leadership to be grounded in the same kind of care, the same kind of love that really good teachers show their students. That's why I've been drawing to guests not only like Rand and Sidney eve and Stephanie, but also Nicola Pitchford, the President of Dominican University, California, or Elise Robinson, who's now working in the Women's Study Center at the University of Georgia. I want more academic leadership to be grounded in the same kind of care, the same kind of love that really good teachers show their students.
Carole Chabries:At the beginning of their book Reframing Academic Leadership, Joan Gallos and Lee Bolman write that thinking and learning are at the heart of effective academic leadership. Literally, that sentence appears on page one thinking and learning are at the heart of effective academic leadership. But by the end of the book by page 315, they've moved to this. The love at the center of teaching, research and learning is the love at the core of effective leadership. So if you're in a leadership position at a college or university, I ask you this what do you love about seeing students learn, and how can you bring that love into your leadership? Happy September, my friends.
Carole Chabries:You have two jobs now that the episode is over. First, choose one thing we talked about and put it into practice this week. Take action. Imperfect action, inspired action, scared to try this new thing out? Action, just take action. Second, tell me how it goes. Dm me on LinkedIn or Instagram or shoot me an old-fashioned email at carolattheclariogroupcom. Everyone who tells me what action they put into practice will be entered into a monthly drawing for a $20 gift certificate to bookshoporg. This way, you get to expand your learning and you let me help build your library. It's a win for both of us. So once again, you got two jobs Try something out and then drop me a note to tell me what you tried and how it went. I can't wait to hear from you.