(Image credit: Harvard Business School)Some years ago at Harvard Business School, on classroom and office walls we posted a motto: “We all teach, we all learn, for life.” It was intended for faculty as well as students and staff. It reflected the educational philosophy of the School, one in which everyone is expected to give and take, teach and learn, during the discussions of issues in its classrooms.
A book, Teaching by Heart: One Professor's Journey to Inspire, by Tom DeLong (pictured above), a member of the HBS faculty, reinforces this philosophy. In it, he reflects on a life as both a senior corporate manager and a highly regarded teacher of future leaders. He cites, for example, lessons he learned working with former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack. Among other things, they included the abilities to listen, “compartmentalize on the task at hand”, make one feel like the “most important person in the company,” and encourage associates to feel psychologically safe and willing to take reasonable risks.
“Observing John, I realized that the best leaders also possess qualities that make great teachers,” says DeLong, who’s the Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice.
According to DeLong, the best leaders and teachers create covenant versus contractual (purely transactional) relationships. The former generates the trust necessary for cooperation and useful two-way communication. In DeLong’s words, “The best leaders and teachers listen deeply, communicate empathically, and motivate adroitly … Both must be brave enough to make themselves vulnerable and admit mistakes.”
"Just how extensive is this overlap between good leaders and teachers?"
The question this raised for me was: Just how extensive is this overlap between good leaders and teachers? For example, HBS regularly invites CEOs and other practitioners to complement our full-time, tenure-track faculty in teaching MBA classes. The executives are typically well-recognized for their successful careers.
As faculty head of the MBA program for several years, however, I observed that only about half of them enjoyed their stints at the School and their interactions with students. The other half were like the well-known CEO who came to my office to tell me, “I’ve decided to leave at the end of the term. This is the toughest job I’ve ever had.”
Lest my experience be misinterpreted, let me say that several of the popular and successful instructors at the School, including DeLong, formerly led large numbers of people. But Professor Leonard Schlesinger, the faculty member currently responsible for leaders from non-academic organizations in the School’s faculty ranks, tells me that perhaps one in three of the leaders who are considered for teaching appointments actually qualify. He attributes this mainly to issues with “status and ego.”
In my experience, the problem often was the inability to listen to what MBA students were really saying. I assumed this was a habit they picked up as they rose in their organizations. They had drifted far from the time when they may have asked themselves what DeLong labels “the three guiding questions” of a good leader or teacher:
- How do I experience others?
- How do others experience me?
- How do others experience themselves when they are in (my) presence?
If DeLong is right about the overlap between good leaders and teachers, how did our unsuccessful teachers ever attain their positions as leaders of large, successful organizations? Did they manage to do it without doing much teaching? Did the organizations succeed in spite of their leadership?
Why can’t more leaders teach? What do you think?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Reference:
Thomas J. DeLong, Teaching by Heart: One Professor’s Journey to Inspire (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2019)
Summing up last month’s column
Last month we explored together the impact of remote work on middle managers, in particular whether it had made such jobs harder and more complex. It is the latest chapter in a long-running examination of the role of middle managers that my HBS colleague, Emeritus Professor Stephen Greyser reminds me led to the assignment of a reading in the School’s Administration Practice (AdPrac) course in the mid-1950s titled, “The Foreman: Master and Victim of Doubletalk.”
Responses to last month’s column brought out reminders of the importance of middle management, regardless of the growth of remote work. Laura McCallum said that in her experience as a middle manager, among other things, “you were there to tone down the heat from above and keep your team motivated and focused.”
Tim Armour said that his growing organization tried to remain as flat as possible, but is adding to middle management ranks now, “with one eye on immediate required skills and the other on longer term leadership development.”
The growth of remote work resulting from the global pandemic has affected both the importance and nature of middle management. Esther Derby asserts that the “role for middle managers … is more important now than ever,” summing up a list of middle management roles with a particularly interesting one of, “fostering connections across the organization, rebuilding networks.”
"The middle manager now is the bridge to connection in remote work."
Mark Tover comments that, “the middle manager now is the bridge to connection in remote work” but worries that this complex task will contribute to added burnout of middle managers. Cindy McDaniel agrees that middle managers, “now, more importantly than ever before … keep their team members connected and engaged.”
Germain St-Denis put it more graphically when he commented that, “However nicely crafted, an artificial intelligence-augmented … ‘we appreciate you’ note … will never replace a manager with a #smile and a warm #heart.”
Several suggested that the trend toward remote work will increase the middle manager’s role with potentially damaging consequences. Rehan Nagi, a middle manager, commented that, “my work load multiplied as soon as we started formulating” a plan to cope with the pandemic. He, along with Mark Tover, fears the added burnout associated with the job. This raises the questions of whether middle managers will experience increased burnout in the coming months and how they will deal with it. What do you think?