When leaders suffer from the curse of knowledge

I sometimes suffer from the curse of knowledge. I also suffer from the impostor syndrome (more about that tomorrow).

(Based on those two observations you probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I also suffer from medical student syndrome, which causes me to believe that I have every illness I read about.)

For the moment, however, I’d like to focus on the challenges posed by knowing too much—otherwise known as “the curse of knowledge,” a term I am borrowing from Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Made to Stick.

The curse of knowledge is a problem that often besets those who possess deep understanding of a subject – researchers, consultants, and even school leaders, among others.

The problem, though, isn’t the amount of knowledge one possesses, but rather our inability to communicate clearly what we know.

For example, some of the worst teaching I’ve experienced was in advanced graduate courses taught by scholars with deep knowledge of their subject matter. There was no doubt they knew the material. They had literally written the book. But they were unable to structure and explain what they knew in accessible ways.

The curse of knowledge can make it difficult for those who possess it to understand a beginner’s mind. It can make it difficult to distinguish what is central from that which is peripheral and to speak concretely rather than abstractly.

Because communicating clearly and concisely with others is an essential leadership skill, it’s important that principals and teacher leaders are aware of and address the curse of knowledge as it infects their work.

Here are a few things that school leaders can do:

1. Spend a few minutes writing about what you would like to communicate, separating what is primary from that which is of secondary importance. Engage in conversations to help you further develop your clarity.

2. Hone in on a big idea or two. Organize two or three subordinate points around each big idea. Polish each of those points to proverb-like compactness.

3. Provide concrete examples and/or offer stories to illustrate those points.

In a recent blog post, Ann Murphy Paul uses the term “curse of expertise” to discuss the same phenomenon and offers some suggestions for addressing it.

Question: In what areas do you or others on your leadership team experience the curse of knowledge? What have you done or could you do to address it to enable you to communicate or teach more effectively?

Why resignation is often the most significant problem leaders face – and what can be done about it

In the face of major national problems like gun violence and the privatization of public education it is easy to feel overwhelmed and insignificant.

Whenever I am faced with problems of some magnitude, I realize that I’m usually confronting two problems – the first is the problem itself, and the second is the resignation and sense of hopelessness I feel in its presence.

In the long run, the second problem is the more important one because it deprives us of the energy to take action by ourselves or with others.

At such times I have learned that it is essential that I find sources of inspiration, often in the work of individuals who have made a difference.

I remember hearing several years ago on the CBC an influential scientist who said that his interest in science began when he read Silent Spring.

A New York Times article about Rachel Carson, Silent Spring’s author, offers important lessons and provides inspiration to principals and teacher leaders regarding the significant contributions individuals can make whether their focus is the classroom, the school community, or the larger society.

“She was a classic introvert who exhibited few of the typical qualities associated with leadership, like charisma and aggressiveness,” Nancy Koehn writes. “But as people like Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, have pointed out, leadership can come in less obvious forms.”

Koehn draws these conclusions about Carson’s leadership (the italics are mine):

“Rachel Carson’s story offers many leadership lessons, including the importance of persistence in pursuing an objective. When I discuss her with business executives, many are struck by her ability to stay focused on goals in the face of obstacles including severe illness.”

“Another lesson involves the importance of doing thorough research and taking the long view. A sense of context based on hard facts, along with a knowledge of history, is essential to understanding what’s at stake in difficult and uncertain situations. It also confers a sense of authority on the person who has acquired this knowledge.”

“A third insight concerns the juggling of personal demands and professional ambitions. Carson understood the challenge — and satisfaction — of dealing with our obligations to others even as we follow our professional drive. And she saw that this can rarely be navigated smoothly. For her, and for many executives with whom I have worked, times of great productivity were followed by fallow periods when ambitions had to be put aside for personal reasons.”

A lesson that I draw from Carson’s life and work is that position power is not a prerequisite to making a meaningful and lasting contribution to the world or to our small part of it. Another lesson I extract is that influence often takes “less obvious forms” than the charismatic and aggressive appearance it often displays in American culture.

Instead, moral purpose, clarity, and persistence are hallmarks of such leadership and influence.

To whom do you look for inspiration when feeling overwhelmed and resigned? And what have you learned from those people?

Think “kedge” when you make your New Year’s Resolutions

This is the season of good intentions we call “New Year’s Resolutions.” We aspire to acquire new professional habits, exercise more, live more balanced lives, and so on.

In Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy—Until You’re 80 and Beyond authors Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge introduce a goal-setting concept that truly has the ability to make a significant difference in our lives—the “kedge.”

According to Crowley and Lodge, becalmed and threatened sailing ships would load a small anchor (known as a kedge) into a longboat, drop it half a mile away, and “everyone back on the big boat would pull like demons on the line, literally hauling the ship to the anchor.”

Crowley and Lodge use this process, known as “kedging,” as a metaphor and motivational tool for “climbing out of the ordinary, setting a desperate goal, and working like crazy to get there.”

As I think back over the past year or two, a kedge immediately comes to mind.

As a hospice volunteer I helped introduce a new hospice program through which patients and their families would share their life stories, which would be videotaped and given to families on DVDs.

To do so I had to acquire technical skills, including selecting and framing the setting, determining the lighting, and recording the sound. I had to learn how to edit videos and to make high-quality DVDs.

Even more challenging, I had to learn how to encourage and support patients and family members in unpredictable and often emotional once-in-a-lifetime conversations .

When I reflect on the kedges of my life – although I would not have thought of them that way at the time – they all felt risky as they stretched me out of my comfort zone and involved significant, improvisational learning as I responded to new and often unpredictable challenges.

As I began I was aware of the very real possibility and costs of failure. As the work moved forward, I was energized by signs of progress and a growing sense of competency.

As you consider your 2013 resolutions, I encourage you to include a carefully-chosen personal or professional kedge or two among your other goals.

The benefits are likely to be substantial, for both you and for others.

I also encourage you to share your kedges with other readers so that we all might better understand the varied forms they may take.

My best wishes to you for a wonderful 2013!

 

The influence of leaders’ beliefs in shaping school culture

As a relatively new teacher I was the only participant from my high school who attended a two-day, in-district workshop on mastery teaching.

I recall learning that virtually all of my students could learn virtually everything important that I wanted to teach them given sufficient time and alternative means of learning it. That made sense to me, and I left the workshop with the goal of shaping my teaching in ways consistent with that approach.

When I returned to my classroom following the workshop I explained to my students that I intended all of them to learn all or virtually all that was important in that class.

One of my quicker, more insightful students immediately asked what grade they would receive if they learned virtually everything. I couldn’t immediately recall that subject being addressed in the workshop, but it made sense to me that students who learned at the anticipated high levels would receive an “A” or a “B” for their learning, and that’s what I told them.

By the end of the day, though, I realized I had a problem in the form of my principal’s strongly held view that students’ grades ought to resemble a bell-shaped curved slightly skewed to the high side—more students would receive As and Bs than Ds and Fs, with the largest number of students receiving Cs. To ensure that this was so, he would inspect our grades at the end of each marking period and talk with those whose grades did not conform to that pattern.

Our principal’s belief in this areas was so strong that it seeped into teachers’ views of the school and of its curriculum and grading practices. We told ourselves that while we clearly had high standards—thus explaining the Ds and Fs—we also were good teachers because a larger than expected number of students achieved As and Bs, at least compared with the prediction made by the bell-shaped curve.

The principal and I negotiated a means by which I could experiment with my newfound, district-supported ideas and practices for one marking period so that I could prove I was not lowering academic standards, a task that required that I spend many more hours with him than I would have preferred reviewing the work of students to whom I intended to give As and Bs.

I left the school at the end of the academic year, and to the best of my knowledge mastery teaching left with me.

This was my first experience with the power of leaders’ beliefs—an important aspect of school culture—to influence whether and how new practices would be used, even those recommend by the school system. I didn’t then have a conceptual frame nor the language to describe it, but I was learning that culture trumps innovation.

What’s on your mind?

• What experiences have you had with school culture overpowering desirable new practices?