Great teachers have a powerful impact in our lives.  All good leaders are also good teachers.  The importance of their teaching ability is not so much in the subject they are teaching, but in the authentic method of their teaching. 

Way back when I was in 5th grade, I had a great teacher in Mr. O’Hearn.  He taught English as the subject with the most impactful topic of diagramming sentences.  I’m not sure if any of my children still diagram sentences, but it was a great way to learn about sentence structure.  Mr. O’Hearn considered himself old fashion even for the late 70’s.  Few teachers were still teaching the method of diagramming and even fewer were doing it the way he did. 

Each school day the class was given 10 sentences that were written on the blackboard.  We were to copy those down in our notebooks and be prepared to diagram them on the board the next day.  With only 10 sentences and 30 students, not everyone was chosen to show their work the next day.  The mystery was provided by Mr. O’Hearn not letting us know who was going to show their work each day.  We had to be prepared.

As you can imagine, he was not the most popular teacher in 5th grade.  Most students feared demonstrating their knowledge, but I thought he was great.  He showed us what he was teaching, explained how he expected us to demonstrate our knowledge and held us accountable to doing the work.  As each student went to the board and showed his or her work to the class, Mr. O’Hearn praised the correct demonstration.  If we were wrong, he pointed out what was wrong and how to do things correctly, so the whole class could learn.  He never ridiculed or embarrassed students.  It was about teaching and learning.

Teaching in leadership is about simple things:

1. Communicating the expected process.
   
2. Giving assignments that reflect that process.
   
3. Letting others demonstrate their proficiency.
   
4. Correcting action when needed.
   
5. Praising actions when done correctly.
   

Knowing what a prepositional phrase is and which word in the phrase is the object of the preposition hasn’t gotten me very far in life.  Instead, Mr. O’Hearn’s lesson for me was about holding myself accountable and how others were going to hold me accountable. A great teacher demonstratinggreat leadership!

Silence in the room was broken by laughter as John commented, “Well, I guess we know who just came back from a seminar.”  That was the painful, yet memorable reaction I received in a team meeting as I commented on how we could effectively measure the success of our program.  That meeting happened early in my career as, you guessed it, I had just come back from a seminar.  Has something similar to this ever happened to you? 

My company, in an attempt to educate me further on customer relationship management (CRM), sent me to San Francisco to attend a seminar.  I spent four wonderful days at a very expensive conference center attending break-out sessions on how other companies succeeded in customer relationship management.   I learned CRM practices and methodology, ways to implement successfully, and how to effectively measure success.  I certainly didn’t leave California an expert in four days, but I did leave with some valuable information that could help support organizational change.

The problem with this scenario is not that I didn’t want to learn and change.  The problem wasn’t that my company and leader didn’t want me to change.  The problem was that others didn’t want me to change. 

Companies spend millions of dollars each year in training and organizational leadership development hoping that we as future leaders will change.  We are expected to grow and develop and become more effective in our current leadership role and more prepared for our next role.  As leaders in organizations, we must encourage and demand transformational change whenever we are sending others for leadership development.  No one expects us to become an expert with one seminar;  I know from experience.  I don’t expect those who go through the ThoughtShredder process will change immediately.  It takes time and reinforcement.  That reinforcement requires that we accept transformational change and others accept the new organizational culture. 

I encourage all of my audiences to take make two commitments, and I encourage you to do the same right now.  Write these two statements down and commit to them:

1. I will change.
2. I will allow others to change.
   

This might seem obvious or even silly, but statistics show that a very small percentage of seminar attendees actually do something different when they return to work.  Much of this, from my experience is because we go back to an organizational culture that doesn’t want us to change.  We need to make the commitment today to be that transformational leader before we attend another seminar or send another colleague to one.