Laura K Spencer, Ed.D.

Tag: Adam Grant

  • How Great Thinkers Inspire Learning Through Doubt

    How Great Thinkers Inspire Learning Through Doubt

    “Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re impostors. They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight.” – Adam Grant

    I love that quote! It’s a good reminder that even the best thinkers know they don’t have all the answers. They’re always looking for ways to learn and grow. And that’s a big part of what empathetic leadership is all about: creating a space where your team feels safe to try new things, even if they might stumble along the way.  

    Think of it like a coach who lets a player try a new move in the middle of a game, even if it means they might mess up. The coach gets it – mistakes are part of how we learn. By giving the player the green light to take a chance, they’re helping them add a new skill and become an even better player.

    It’s the same in leadership. Empathetic leaders give their team the room to experiment and learn from their slip-ups. They’re there to guide and support, but they also let their team own their ideas and choices.

    And guess what? This doesn’t just help individual team members grow, it supercharges the whole team! When people feel supported and know they can take chances, they’re more likely to think outside the box and come up with game-changing ideas. And when they know their leader has their back, that’s when real trust and respect kick in.

    I’ve been there myself. I had a team that was wrestling with a big decision about which direction to go. It was tempting to just step in and say, “Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do.” But instead, I hung back and watched them work it out for a few weeks. It wasn’t always pretty, but they learned something super valuable: that slowing down, really listening to each other, and working together was their secret weapon. Sure, they had to set aside their egos for a bit, and there were some bumps and frustrations along the way, but it was worth it.

    By the end, they didn’t just nail the decision, they became a way stronger team in the process.

    So, here’s my takeaway: if you’re aiming for empathetic leadership, don’t freak out when your team makes mistakes. Just be there to help them learn from it and come back swinging even harder.

    Remember, empathetic leadership isn’t about being a pushover or dodging tough conversations. It’s about building a team culture where trust, respect, and support are the name of the game.

    Grant, A. (2016, June 6). Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Viking.

  • Speak Up, Rinse, Repeat

    Speak Up, Rinse, Repeat

    From Adam Grant’s Originals book:

    When Harvard professor John Kotter studied change agents years ago, he found that they typically undercommunicated their visions by a factor of ten. On average, they spoke about the direction of the change ten times less often than their stakeholders needed to hear it. In one three-month period, employees might be exposed to 2.3 million words and numbers. On average during that period, the vision for change was expressed in only 13,400 words and numbers: a 30-minute speech, an hour-long meeting, a briefing, and a memo. Since more than 99 percent of the communication that employees encounter during those three months does not concern the vision, how can they be expected to understand it, let alone internalize it? The change agents don’t realize this, because they’re up to their ears in information about their vision. If we want people to accept our original ideas, we need to speak up about them, then rinse and repeat.

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    So then … how often are you speaking up, rinsing, and repeating?

    Can students articulate their individual learning goals and why they have them? What about their parents?

    Can the class as a whole articulate the vision and beliefs of the teacher? Do they know the overarching goals for the school year?

    Do teachers understand the vision and mission of the school, and their role in that vision and mission? What about the rest of the school staff?

    Do principals and district leadership understand the vision and mission of the district, and their role in that vision and mission?

    What steps are needed to make those answers all a resounding YES?

    What’s your “speak up, rinse, repeat” strategy?

     

  • Bashing into Walls to Change the World

    In the book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant writes, “When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them.”

    He explains that people blame the absence of creativity for the lack of originality in the world. (Be honest: Have you said recently, “Why can’t they come up with a new movie idea instead of just refashioning old ones?” I have…)

    Grant surmises that people think society would  be better off if only we could come up with some more novel ideas. “But in reality,” Grant explains, “the biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation—it’s idea selection…It’s widely assumed that there’s a tradeoff between quantity and quality—if you want to do better work, you have to do less of it—but this turns out to be false. In fact, when it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality.” And when focusing solely on quality, “many people fail to achieve originality because they generate a few ideas and then obsess about refining them to perfection.”

    This reminded me of a Steve Jobs interview in which Jobs stated:

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    “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

    Creativity, originality, change… they all require stepping outside the societal norms and limitations placed on us. They require taking risks; ideating and iterating many, many, many times; and understanding that the capacity for creativity is in all of us, but maybe, just maybe, creativity requires work and a commitment to let all those ideas flow! Lots and lots of them. And of course, bashing into walls and living life outside the neat little world!

    So how do we provide the conditions for students to bash into the walls (okay, maybe not literally!)?How do we encourage the mass generation of ideas instead of obsessively refining the few? How do we provoke students to question, or even change, rules and systems?  In other words, how do we bash into the walls of a traditional, high-stakes educational system and empower students to become change agents (like the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students are trying to do!)?

    Educational systems, structures, and beliefs create enormous pressure on students to “get it right” (as determined by people no smarter than us) the first time. One assessment to measure if you learned the chapter content. One essay to determine if you met the writing standard benchmarks. One grade for each assignment. One SAT exam. Each of these with its own set of rules and systems to prove conformity to societal expectation.

    When students go against those rules and systems (again, as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students are), adults get agitated and seek to put them back in their place. And yet, when students become adults and seek out jobs, the workforce bemoans their lack of originality and creative problem solving skills. 

    Our role as teachers and administrators should be, then, to bash into the traditional walls to provide students opportunities to:

    • Think and act like a designer
    • Solve real world problems
    • Connect with industry experts to experience the world of work from people living it, and not from a textbook
    • Use play as a way to learn
    • Learn from and with students, and not just teach to them 
    • Experience personalized learning that embraces strengths, passions, and ideas

    What walls are you bashing into? How about your students?  I’d love to hear about your classroom or school experiences.

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