Tough Callings
Michelle Rhee
- Up Next: Michelle Rhee on Educational Reform
- Interview with Michelle Rhee, Former Chancellor of DC Public Schools and Education Reformer Featured in Waiting for Superman
Henry Cloud
Patrick Lencioni
General
That's a Wrap
The summit is just ending now, and I’ll be heading back home shortly.
This has been a lot of fun and an excellent experience. I’m grateful to the Willow Creek Association for the opportunity to have been one of the guest bloggers here at the leadership summit. I learned a ton, and I hope that all of you were able to follow along a bit through the posts. This has been quite a packed two days!
I am pretty tired right now, but if I can I’ll write up some concluding thoughts when I get the chance.
Patrick Lencioni on Vulnerability
Talking about vulnerability. Good follow-up to a talk on humility.
How he came to this view on the importance of vulnerability: His faith, the example of his dad growing up, experience as a consultant right out of college — they were told “always look smarter than your clients, etc.” Wasn’t real.
The desire to avoid vulnerability in our society stems from our over valuing of avoiding suffering and difficulty. People say “no, always be on, always make yourself strong.” But there is something attractive about people that are humble and vulnerable.
The three fears that keep us from being vulnerable.
1. Fear of losing the business
Another way to say it: Fear of being rejected.
Rejection is something we are called to — Christ was rejected. We have to be willing to be rejected. “Enter the danger.”
We have to speak the kind truth. Can’t have “terminal niceness” in our churches. We fall into it because we don’t want to be rejected.
People are hungry for those who will tell them the kind truth.
Don’t be afraid of being rejected. 8 out of 10 times you won’t be. But sometimes you will — and you have to accept that.
[My observation: Just make sure you really are accurate about the truth and what needs to be done and how you are assessing the situation. If you tell the kind truth, but are actually wrong, that’s not helpful!]
2. The fear of being embarrased
When we’re serving others, we have to do things that could embarrass us. We need to be willing to say “I don’t understand that.”
Your job is not to look smart, but to help them do better. If you are editing yourself to manage your own image, people will not trust you and you will not inspire them.
Be willing to ask dumb questions!
Celebrate your mistakes.
3. The fear of feeling inferior
Be willing to put yourself in a lower position. This is what Jesus did: washed the disciples feet.
Sometimes people aren’t going to reward you for doing the dirty work. But you should do it anyway.
This is about honoring your client’s work: being so interested in them that you care more about their success than your own.
There’s a standing ovation for Lencioni.
(Note: Lencioni just found out he was speaking this week, as he took Howard Schultz’s slot after he withdrew.)
Patrick Lencioni Up Now
Really looking forward to Patrick Lencioni’s message. He has been a major influence on my thinking.
Here are a few posts influenced by and interacting with his thinking:
The Best Message on Humility I Have Ever Heard
John Dickson’s message today on humility is the most insightful and helpful I’ve ever heard on the subject. Dickson is Director of the Centre for Public Christianity and Sr. Minister, St. Andrews Anglican Church, Sydney, Australia. Here’s a brief overview of his talk, and below are my notes:
Are prestigious titles and powerful positions prerequisites for impactful leadership? “You don’t need structural authority to be a leader of influence,” according to historian and social commentator John Dickson. “The leader’s strongest tool is humility,” he says. “It intensifies credibility.” Dickson, the author of Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership (May 2011), investigates the crucial role humility plays in a leader’s life—and its theological, historical, and practical implications. Dickson issues this challenge: Navigate the complex intersection of leadership and humility, and learn to lead through persuasion, example, and influence rather than positional authority. Dickson offers practices to help you cultivate deeper authentic humility on your team—and in your soul.
“Humility is the noble choice to forgo your status and use your influence for the good of others. It is to hold your power in service of others.”
The best leaders are marked by humility. Humility is what makes the great, great.
5 evidences of this:
1. Humility is common sense
It is a reflection of the deep structure of reality. None of us is an expert at everything. What we don’t know and can’t do, far exceeds what we do know and can do.
2. Humility is beautiful
It is a simple psychological reality: we are more attracted to the great who are humble, than to the great who know it and want to know us too. “Presumption diminishes greatness. Humility enhances greatness; is greatness.” The same is true in any context.
But did you know that humility has not always been admired? In ancient Rome, humility was a negative word associated with defeat. Humility before the gods and emperors was advised, but humility towards an equal was regarded as ill-informed. One of the prized virtues was “love of honor.”
Academic research found that a humility revolution took place in the middle of the first century. Not only because of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus’ crucifixion changed the way people understood greatness and humility. The cross of Christ was contrary to the understanding of greatness in the ancient world. The early Christians had to deal with this question: Did his crucifixion mean he wasn’t as great as they thought? No. They realized: “If the greatest man we have ever known sacrificed his life on the cross, then greatness must consist in willing sacrifice and holding power for the good of others.” And of course this is Matthew 20:28 and Phil 2:3-8.
Interview with a researcher: “The admiration of humility comes entirely from Christian influence. Entirely.” Western culture has been profoundly shaped by the cross of Christ — even long after it ceased to be explicitly Christian.
3. Humility is generative
It generates new knowledge, new abilities. The logic is easy: the proud person (say, at a conference like this) will go away with less than the humble person, who is looking to learn. This is even true in science. Think about how science works: it is basically a humble confession that you can’t just observe the world and describe it; you have to test your theory.
The scientific revolution is the result of a humility revolution. Humility generates science.
True also in business. John Kotter tracked the careers of 115 of his students from the Harvard Business School. One student was average in class, but ended up being an incredible leader. Lucky break? No. What took him further was his humility. “Confronting his mistakes, he minimized the arrogant attitudes that often accompany success.” He watched more closely and listened more closely than others. “The humble place is the place of growth.”
4. Humility is persuasive
The textbook on persuasion for 2,000 years boils down what persuades to 3 things: logos (intellectual component), pathos (aesthetic or emotional), and ethos (character of the persuader). Aristotle said: the character is the most significant. “We believe good-hearted people to a greater extent and more quickly than we do others on all subjects in general and completely so in cases where there is not exact knowledge but room for doubt. Character is almost, so to speak, the controlling factor in persuasion.”
5. Humility is inspiring
“The real power of effective leadership is maximizing other people’s potential, which inevitably demands ensuring they get the credit. When our ego won’t let us build another person up, then the effectiveness of the organization goes down.”
When leaders appear aloof and unapproachable, we admire them, but we don’t imitate them. But humble leaders: We don’t just admire them; we aspire to be like them.
Four tools of leadership: ability, authority, character, persuasion. Some of the most inspiring leaders in history had no structural authority. They just had truckloads of ability, character, and persuasion. “Sometimes you don’t need the power of the hire and fire. You don’t need armies to change empires or individuals.”
The Other Leadership Summit Guest Bloggers
Here are the other live bloggers for the Summit that I’m working with. You can check out their blogs for their angle on the conference and the sessions as well (which I would highly recommend!):
And, the Willow Creek Association blog features one post per session, so you can get a quick sampling of the different blogs there as well.
Henry Cloud: Three Kinds of People
“Not everyone is the same, and therefore you cannot deal with everyone you lead the same.”
3 categories of people (“Now, I hate classifications that force people into certain categories. But these are true and biblical.” Also: “We all have all three of these areas in our hearts, including the foolish and the evil, but some people make a career out of one of them”):
1. Wise
Correct them and they change. (Assuming you are correct! Not always the case.) And, they thank you. So what do you do when you’re leading a wise person? You talk to them. Someone’s listening. So you coach them, give them feedback, resource them. With the wise person, the challenge is to make sure they are a match for what you need. And you have to give them good feedback in coaching, and you have to keep them challenged. Easy.
2. Fools
May be very bright and gifted. This is why they’ve gotten as far as they have. And they really do produce a lot of times. But here’s the problem. With the wise person, when the light comes, they adjust themselves to the light. With a fool, when the light shows up, they adjust the light. It hurts their eyes. They’re allergic to it. They try to dim it and they try to adjust the truth. The wise man changes himself; the fool tries to change the truth. “This wasn’t a big deal.” “It’s not like that.” Or, they shoot the messenger. Whenever you give feedback to someone, and the first reflective move is defensiveness, let that be a warning sign. They are squinting. They deny that it’s reality, the minimize it, they externalize it, they shoot the messenger. They aren’t happy to hear it, and a lot of times they get angry. You become the problem.
Every time you talk to a person like this, they do not own it. When you get hopeless about that with them, that is one of the best things you can do as a leader. A wise responsible leader initially has hope that the person will start listening. But this person just keeps not listening. You gotta give up here.
Here’s what the Bible says, and all research validates: “With a wise person, talk to them. They will love you for it and listen and get better.” But then the Bible changes its tone. It says “do not correct a fool, lest you incur insults upon yourself. Do not confront a mocker, lest they hate you. Etc.” These verses describe reality like you’ve never seen it before. They say: “Here’s your strategy: Stop talking.” Why? They have stopped listening. Their allergy to reality is now in charge. It’s your job as a leader to take stewardship over this and stop the insanity.
So you have a conversation. “You know, Joe, how we’ve talked about A and A and A and A. I want to talk about a new problem. The problem that talking with you about problems doesn’t help.” And you begin to get out of the weeds, and take it up to the patter. “I don’t know how to give you feedback in a way that changes anything. I’m hopeless. So let me tell you what I do when I’m hopeless. I’ve got to protect our vision. We’re going to do something different. We’re going to have some limits. What I want to know is how I can talk to you in a way that makes a difference.” It may be they are foolish for reasons you can address. Maybe you can give your feedback differently. But then to second question: “What do we do if we have this conversation again, and nothing has changed.” If they don’t listen again, you have to have consequences. They may get moved out of the position. There are extreme consequences, there are minor consequences.
Here is the principle: Fools don’t change when truth comes to them, but when the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain of changing. “I’m a recovering fool. All of us are foolish to some degree. Jesus died for fools.” You can redeem their position and role and giftedness.
The leadership challenge here is to limit your exposure, make it clear about the consequences, give them a choice, and follow through. Need to say “I need someone in this position that can hear reality. I hope that’s you. I want you to be in that chair. But that’s what that chair is going to require, and you get to make the choice.”
3. Evil
They want to inflict pain. I’ve seen this, and you have to believe it. There truly are bad people in the world. I’ve seen it in board meetings, I’ve seen it in high levels of leadership. Paul writes: “Reject a divisive person after a second warning. Have nothing to do with them.” Strategy: protection mode.
“God has called you to lead people. Sometimes it’s not about the plan, but about getting the people to work the plan. Take the challenge to not let somebody’s character problem stop the mission God has called you to.”
Interview with Michelle Rhee, Former Chancellor of DC Public Schools and Education Reformer
This interview with Michelle Rhee here at the Global Leadership Summit was highly, highly impressive. She is an amazing, clear-minded, hard-headed thinker and reformer when it comes to education. Many of you may be familiar with her from the documentary Waiting for Superman, which tells the story of her relentless quest to reform the public education system in Washington, DC. Here’s a brief bio:
Leaders know that change isn’t easy—and it doesn’t come overnight. That’s why, for the past 18 years, Michelle Rhee has stayed the course with a single objective: to give children the needed skills to compete in a changing world. Rhee, who served with Teach for America, founded The New Teacher Project, equipping school districts to transform how they recruit and train qualified teachers. During her three years as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. Public Schools, students’ scores and graduation rates rose dramatically. Today, Rhee is CEO of StudentsFirst, a movement to transform public education. She holds firm to her conviction that teachers are the most powerful driving force behind student achievement.
This is a paraphrased summary of the interview — I tried to type the highlights as I could keep up.
Question: You had a lot of opposition against you as you brought about the reforms as Chancellor of Washington, DC public schools. Why didn’t you bail?
Answer: I loved my job. Every day I loved it. The children in the district were receiving such a disservice. More than half of the children weren’t graduating. It was really criminal what was happening. And to think people were avoiding addressing the problem because they were afraid, I said “I can’t let this keep happening on my watch. If you want to yell at me, fine, but this won’t keep happening on my watch.”
Question: How did you get to where you are?
Answer: My parents always emphasized the importance of gratitude. We grew up with a mindset of how do you help others and cure the injustices and do as much to that end as you can.
Question: You ran into Teach for America after college.
Answer: Yes. In my senior year of college, I had no idea what I was going to do when I graduated, and I was watching a PBS documentary about Teach for America. I thought “Wow, here’s a place were people are seeking to change the world through public education. I want to do that.”
Question: You got assigned to inner city Baltimore.
Answer: I was not such a good teacher my first year. I realized what most do: It is literally the hardest job you can possibly have. Coming to school each day and seeing to it that all 36 kids receive the education they need. [Applause]
Question: [I missed it]
Answer: Yes, some people came and said “you might want to think about a career change.” That was hard, because I’d been a success at everything I’d done so far.
Question: But things changed quickly. 2 years later, 90% of your students were at proficiency levels in reading and math. When you started, it was at 13%. What did you do?
Answer: It wasn’t rocket science. We did what every school in this country that is seeing those results do. We built a very strong work ethic. We taught them there is no easy way to do this. Come in before school and after. Engaged their parents so they understood what we were doing and why. I sometimes had my kids do two hours of homework a night, and the parents though I was nuts. Now, right now I have a daughter and 20 minutes is hard to get through! So maybe it was too much at the time. But the things we put in place changed the way they did things. It was their hard work that brought the change.
Question: You went to Harvard and were involved in [something with policy.] But you couldn’t get over your time teaching.
Answer: . . . I founded a new organization called “The New Teacher Project.” The idea was that we would work with educational departments and etc. and see how we could get more teachers into inner city schools.
Question: You encountered some myths in some studies.
Answer: The biggest myth that existed at that time is that there aren’t enough people who want to teach in the neediest schools. One statistic said the nation would need 2 million teachers over the next decade, not enough applicants. We quickly found that was not true at all. You do a recruitment campaign, and you get thousands of applicants. The problem was the bureaucracy. The best candidates could not get hired. Their applications got lost, [other stuff].
Question: [Missed it]
Question: Your organization became very effective. In the meantime, this stuff is happening in DC. Some direct authority was given to make some changes, and you were called by that guy. Why did you say yes? You were having such a phenomenal time with the new teacher project. You initially resisted. How did he get you to say yes?
Answer: I said no several times, and being a superintendent was the last thing I wanted to do. And I had never run a school, much less a school district. I was the least likely person to choose. Ultimately I took the job because in a heart to heart with the mayor I said “you don’t want me for this job. Your job as a politician is to keep your constituents happy. If I come in and do what’s necessary to turn things around, I would cause you heartache and headache.” And he said: “As long as the things you are doing are the right things for kids, that is fine.” “I had never heard a political say this. I said ‘what are you willing to risk for this?'” And he said “everything.”
Question: Give us a sense of what things were like when you stepped in.
Answer: 8% of the 8th graders were on grade level in mathematics. Chances of graduating from college upon entering freshman year 9%. At kindergarten, the students were on par with other students in other districts around the nation. But the longer they were in our system, the more they would fall behind. It was almost better if students would have just stayed home all day. We bought computers that first year for the whole district, and I got a call that first day saying “this isn’t going well.” And they said “many of the classrooms can’t plug them in, because they only have two-pronged outlets.” So there was a huge amount of dysfunction; it was very broken.
Question: What did you zero in on as the core problem you were going to address?
Answer: We wanted to clean up some of the basic issues first: make sure everyone was getting paid, on health care, had their books. Then the things we really focused on was … we really elieved the way we had most impact on our students was to make sure there was an excellent teacher in every classroom and excellent principle in every school. So our emphasis was on human capital.
Question: What moves did you then make?
Answer: We decided to close 23 of the schools, 15% of our inventory. At the time that we did that, no district had done it to that extent before. They had wanted to close that many schools, but 3 a year. I cut the central office administration in about half. When I started there were 1,000; when I left, there were 500. I removed about 2/3 of the principals in the district . . . there was a lot that was going on. Separate from those numbers, the main thing I tried to do was address the culture. We wanted to think about every child the same way we think about our own. One day we were having a policy discussion about a new teacher evaluation system we were going to put in place. Question was if a teacher was regarded as ineffective, how long do we let them stay? Some people said “let them stay for 2 or 3 years.” I said “If we let an ineffective teacher stay a second year, I have to be comfortable knowing that person would be teaching my kids. I would never let that happen. If I came to school on the first day and the principal said ‘Here’s Olivia’s teacher. She’s not so good. But we are trying to develop here, and this is good for the system.’ There’s no way I would let that happen.” If this was not a policy I was not willing to subject my own children to, that was not a policy I was willing to let any other parents in the district have their kids subject to. [Sounds like the Golden Rule — Mt 7!]
Question: [Missed it]
Answer: A good educator who walks into a classroom with a good teacher can tell it almost right away. The teacher is writing on the chalkboard, saying “Fred, don’t pull Sue’s hair,” and you didn’t even realize that was happening. Etc.
Question: What does value added mean?
Answer: This is a term that has just come in. We want to evaluate our students on the basis of how students are growing. I looked at the performance evaluation of the teachers, and 95% were great — at a time when only 8% of the students had a chance of graduating. How could that be? The concept of value add is you measure a teacher and the students at the beginning of the year, and the end, and make sure there’s growth. It creates a fairer system. If you set an absolute goal, “90% of your students have to be here by the end of the year,” you might be at a school where 90% are already on grade level at the start, and another is at a school where only 10% are. So it is more fair to measure if the students grew.
Question: Lots of people lost jobs. Then you got picketed. Did that wear on you? How did you handle that?
Answer: One day they even came to my house. My mom said “there are some people here, and they’re really excited about something.” I said “Mom, they’re here to protest me.” One day we opened the Washington Post and there was a two page spread on all the school closures, news shots of me getting yelled at, etc. My mother walked into the kitchen that night as I was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich and she said “Are you OK?” Then she said “when you were a kid, you never used to care about what other kids thought about you. I feared you might become anti-social. But now I see that that is serving you well. :)”
You have to be OK with criticism. This is not the profession for you if criticism makes you feel super bad. I would much rather have had a room full of people yelling at me, than the opposite where no one cares. I would much rather deal with anger than apathy.
Question: And you can’t lead if change isn’t happening. It’s the very nature of leadership. So the million dollar question: If you had to do it over again, would you change that fast? What would you say to leaders: incremental change, or revolution?
Answer: I’m not an incremental girl. I certainly didn’t think it was appropriate for the context we were working in. When I was responsible for a school district that was failing a vast majority of its children, I wasn’t going to stand for that. Some people would say to me “you are going too fast, like a bull in a China shop.” But I always noticed that their children were not in the DC schools. If you have your children tucked up in a private school, you can afford to let this slide in the DC schools a bit. I never heard a parent of a child in the district say “you’re moving too fast.”
Question: [Missed it]
Answer: If you look at the education agenda in this country, it has largely been driven by special interests. And the problem in that scenario is that there is no organized interest on behalf of kids. So seeing that void and believing that the only way we will see change in this realm is to have that voice out there, I decided I would motivate people towards that. So I started an organization called Students First, and it is a movement of people across this country who know that our education system is not serving children well in this country and put pressure on public officials for change.
Question: One more question while we change. Some final parting words of challenge.
Answer: As I think about what needs to happen in this country, it really is about putting students first. Go to our website at www.studentsfirst.org to find out more about what is happening. I’ll close on this. I was meeting with a state legislator a few weeks ago. He said “I understand what you’re trying to do. I just wnat you to understand this is really hard. The union will be picketing, etc.” I looked at him and said: “But as an elected official, your job is to represent all your constituents. If you just turn your attention to where the yelling is the loudest, you will be turning your backs to kids. Because kids don’t vote. Kids don’t hold rallies and protests. Proverbs 31:8: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.” The children cannot go out there and represent their own interests, so we as the adults need to be the ones who stand up and do something about it.”
[WOW. Fantastic.]
Answer: I would describe myself as an aspiring Christian. My fiance is a strong man of faith and evangelical Christian. There are a few things holding me up. I was talking to a pastor recently, and he said “I can tell that you’re close. What’s the problem?” I said [missed it.] He said “this is a journey between you and God. Don’t pay attention to what other people are saying and doing.” The other thing is I’m a very linear and rational sort of person. I have a hard time turning things over. So this concept “let go and let God,” right, is a tough one for me. Going through this workbook Experiencing God. There is one day we did this together and talked about the concept of letting Go and letting God, and the lesson was talking about Sara in the OT, and she took things into her own hands to fulfill the promise God had made. My fiance said, “see, that’s what you do. You can’t do that. Let go!” So that’s where I am in my spiritual journey.
Up Next: Michelle Rhee on Educational Reform
Michelle Rhee is an educational reformer, whose story is partly told in the documentary on the state of modern education, Waiting for Superman. Here’s a brief bio:
Leaders know that change isn’t easy—and it doesn’t come overnight. That’s why, for the past 18 years, Michelle Rhee has stayed the course with a single objective: to give children the needed skills to compete in a changing world. Rhee, who served with Teach for America, founded The New Teacher Project, equipping school districts to transform how they recruit and train qualified teachers. During her three years as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. Public Schools, students’ scores and graduation rates rose dramatically. Today, Rhee is CEO of StudentsFirst, a movement to transform public education. She holds firm to her conviction that teachers are the most powerful driving force behind student achievement.
Tough Callings: Jeremiah, Part 2
Hybels is giving lots of examples of tough callings.
The president of World Vision: Was asked once: “What’s the hardest thing about leading World Vision? ‘It’s just having your heart exposed to misery again, and again, and again.'”
A woman who went to Somalia to work with the poorest of the poor.
Jim Mellado: “Was on the fast track of corporate stardom. I met with him one day and said ‘There are lots of churches that will never reach their potential, because they aren’t sure how to lead. What if we started a training organization, and you led it, and we helped train leaders all over the world, especially where no one will go, in the most under resourced areas of the world. And now for 17 years he has showed up every single day, gave up an unbelievable career to accept a tough calling from God, to simply help make churches better.”
“Some of you have been nudged by God to go in a direction of a tough calling. Do you have the courage to do that?”
“Those who came into the sessions today, at every venue all over the world, received a piece of a shattered clay jar (ties in to the illustration from Jeremiah Hybels just gave — not recorded here). Write the date on it. Let this be a reminder that this world is not going to get fixed unless leaders, leaders like us, are available for tough assignments — like Jeremiah was. Some of you have been prompted, but have never had the courage to say yes. We’re going to give you some time to reflect.”
A Few Thoughts
I really appreciated this session. It is easy for people to get the notion that good leaders will always see things going great — if you just learn enough about leadership, things will always go “up and to the right” for you. And people can get the wrong idea that the point of leadership conferences is to reinforce this idea.
So this session was a good reminder that effective leadership doesn’t equate with things always going smooth. Leaders will have tough times. Good leaders will not always see things go well, and leadership is not about finding success as traditionally defined. Some of the best leaders may hardly be known this side of eternity. That’s because true greatness is about character and faithfulness. Recognition and success are secondary, and may not match up perfectly (or even very well) with true greatness in this world. The Christian leader seeks to please the Lord, looking forward to what is to come, and ultimately the “well done” that comes from Christ on the final day.
A good final word from Hybels: “I’ve never known a single leader who regretted accepting a tough calling.”