Good for you! Listening is one of the most important skills of leadership as you know. Too often bossholes do all the talking, and in doing so they actually convey to their people what they want to hear back. When these bossholes actually try to listen, they then hear only affirmations.
Listening must start from a place of vulnerability. When I left my longtime institution to become the provost of a different university, I made time to meet all 85 of the faculty in their offices. Many of them were convinced that this was the beginning of some sort of culling and had their CVs on their desks in preparation. Imagine. I would smile and tell them to put their CV away. My first question was, “So, what’s going on?” Sometimes it was the only question I had to ask. I had to disarm myself to disarm them, and I learned gobs about them, the school, and myself. It took weeks to complete the meetings, but it was worth it.
I had what feels like hundreds of bad bosses. I had so many bad paradigms to learn from. The first thing I did as a boss was listen, really listen to my staff. They taught me boatloads about themselves and what they needed to be successful in those conversations.
I am sorry you had that experience and that it was so disheartening. No one deserves such treatment, particularly from a so-called teacher. Clad in the impregnable armor of my world-class naïveté as I was, I somehow survived. It’s true though that when I began teaching, I literally thought of those classes and decided to do it differently. This is the lesson it is so easy to miss. We can reject the bad models (although the trauma may linger)!
Yes. I had a professor Clark. The Clark. He gave me a D and wrote in my crit sheet, "your meticulous attendence kept you from getting the F you should have gotten." And i deserved credit for sitting through such a small class despite being so lost. I tried! I liked him personally and would sometimes talk about the Mets and other stuff after class, but I never took another class with him. I did, however, share your attitude about grades. My favorite class was with LaFarge who gave me a C. I regret not taking more of his classes. If I had I might have stayed an English major myself.
Good for you! Listening is one of the most important skills of leadership as you know. Too often bossholes do all the talking, and in doing so they actually convey to their people what they want to hear back. When these bossholes actually try to listen, they then hear only affirmations.
Listening must start from a place of vulnerability. When I left my longtime institution to become the provost of a different university, I made time to meet all 85 of the faculty in their offices. Many of them were convinced that this was the beginning of some sort of culling and had their CVs on their desks in preparation. Imagine. I would smile and tell them to put their CV away. My first question was, “So, what’s going on?” Sometimes it was the only question I had to ask. I had to disarm myself to disarm them, and I learned gobs about them, the school, and myself. It took weeks to complete the meetings, but it was worth it.
I had what feels like hundreds of bad bosses. I had so many bad paradigms to learn from. The first thing I did as a boss was listen, really listen to my staff. They taught me boatloads about themselves and what they needed to be successful in those conversations.
I am sorry you had that experience and that it was so disheartening. No one deserves such treatment, particularly from a so-called teacher. Clad in the impregnable armor of my world-class naïveté as I was, I somehow survived. It’s true though that when I began teaching, I literally thought of those classes and decided to do it differently. This is the lesson it is so easy to miss. We can reject the bad models (although the trauma may linger)!
Yes. I had a professor Clark. The Clark. He gave me a D and wrote in my crit sheet, "your meticulous attendence kept you from getting the F you should have gotten." And i deserved credit for sitting through such a small class despite being so lost. I tried! I liked him personally and would sometimes talk about the Mets and other stuff after class, but I never took another class with him. I did, however, share your attitude about grades. My favorite class was with LaFarge who gave me a C. I regret not taking more of his classes. If I had I might have stayed an English major myself.