{"id":38124,"date":"2022-04-12T07:29:23","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T11:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/948294437a.nxcli.io\/?p=38124"},"modified":"2022-04-12T11:33:05","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T15:33:05","slug":"fear-shame-and-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/12\/fear-shame-and-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear, Shame, and Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How You Were Educated Is the Reason Leaders Fail<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Ask any good grade schoolteacher what the most important thing they do is, and they will tell you that, beyond the specific lessons they teach, their most sacred purpose is to instill their students with a love of learning. Learning is more than a skill; it is the key to leading a successful and joy-filled life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nurturing learning and stimulating curiosity in young minds comes from more than just an altruistic sense of duty. It speaks to the reality that teaching successfully requires successful learners. Even the most dedicated teachers are constrained as to what they can accomplish due to things they cannot control. Hence, the popularity of the notion that when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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You cannot confer an education or cause anyone to learn anything unless they are capable and willing. You might coax a capable but reluctant student by helping them discover some untapped source of inspiration. And you might be able to identify and correct underlying learning disabilities. But beyond the early childhood development driven by innate basic survival instincts, learning results from choice. The best a teacher can hope for is to utilize competencies, diligence, and conscientiousness to create meaningful influence and supply the necessary learning tools to their students. The learning is always up to the student.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nurturing learning and stimulating curiosity in young minds comes from more than just an altruistic sense of duty. It speaks to the reality that teaching successfully requires successful learners. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It seems, though, that the most widely used toolkit for teachers looking to exercise reliable influence amounts to employing fear and shame to encourage academic performance or at least compliance. Some of this stems from tried-and-true behavioral modification knowing that people move away from pain and gravitate toward pleasure. Parents commonly use fear and shame to induce desirable behavior from their children. Indeed, things children desire are used in barter for behaviors their parents expect. From tacit threats to harsh punishments and solemnly expressed disappointment, children learn that perhaps their parents\u2019 love is conditional.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Obedience serves the interest of both parents and children. Early in a child\u2019s life, it becomes clear that compliance with requests and demands is a matter of safety. It is sensible to avoid the wrath of an angry, authoritative guardian that might result in something deeply unpleasant or from the natural consequences of risky behavior that could result in a skinned knee, broken bones, or worse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Exercising control and even exacting some pain is justified in the name of children needing to learn. Whether that is learning right from wrong, how to read, or solve math problems, fear and shame are acceptable practices for shaping a young person\u2019s mind and character. It wasn\u2019t that long ago that \u201cspare the rod and spoil the child\u201d was considered an acceptable approach to raising children. And while corporal punishment is frowned upon in as much as it may rise to the level of legal abuse, exacting an emotional toll on children by well-meaning adults is still widely practiced at home, in religious institutions, and schools.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Formal education, or structured learning that focuses on academic rigor and developing employable life skills, differs from the aims of character development that occur in the home and religious studies. Academic education suggests an element of objective facts and accepted truths and theories based on an empirical understanding of the world. Child rearing and religious training present a powerful imperative based on faith and obedience guided by what is commonly accepted or believed to be right or wrong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In formal education, the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, together with science, history, geography, music, and art, are the common elements whose standards are measures of systemic rewards and punishments. Students who succeed are rewarded with matriculation and adulation, while those who fail face humiliation and limited prospects for choices they can expect to pursue in life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People often look to leaders for guidance on what is right or wrong. There is some expectation that good leaders should demonstrate good character. We want leaders to be fair, caring, and reliable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While good character is desirable, alone, it isn\u2019t sufficient. Leadership requires a range of competencies to be effective. A level of knowledge, skill, and experience defines competent leaders. Natural talent and a certain amount of luck may also increase the likelihood of elevating into a leadership role but are insufficient for becoming a great leader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Leadership is both learned and earned through preparation and development, and experience. One experience most of us have through our formal education can stand in our way. We learn that it is preferable and safer to have the right answers. While this might help solve problems and perform many tasks, it can be most unhelpful when it comes to leading people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The whole process of institutional education, most notably in public education, is guided by deductive reasoning. Students are expected to provide a known correct answer that they must discover or acquire. Teachers rarely will ask a question for which they do not have the answer in hand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While good character is desirable, alone, it isn\u2019t sufficient. Leadership requires a range of competencies to be effective.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Tests are designed to assess a student\u2019s prepared knowledge and compliance with rules and processes. Beginning during the earliest years of schooling, students are encouraged to succeed, try invoking the fear of getting answers wrong and failing. While perfection and effort may be rewarded, unfortunately, so is being average.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The message constantly repeated and reinforced is that it is safer to have the correct answers. Being wrong is dangerous and is a source of shame. Students that do poorly face humiliation from their peers, uncaring teachers, and even misguided parents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s no wonder that by the time a manager becomes successful in life, they have carried with them the sense that having the right answers is expected and somehow beneficial to themselves and those whose performance they are responsible for.<\/p>\n

Effective leaders understand that being resourceful to those they serve is accomplished by asking questions, encouraging people to find their own answers, and empowering them to solve their own problems. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Effective leaders understand that being resourceful to those they serve is accomplished by asking questions, encouraging people to find their own answers, and empowering them to solve their own problems. Rather than the deductive reasoning that draws people to pursue a single correct answer, leadership is best delivered through inductive reasoning, where finding the right questions is more valuable. There may not be a single correct or even best solution. That is what fosters collaboration, innovation, and competence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rather than fear and shame, leaders ought to be guided by humility and vulnerability. Knowing that all of us are smarter than any one of us – and trusting that offering better questions will empower people to find better solutions is the essence of exceptional leadership. The real power of leadership is the development of others\u2019 potential.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Having the right answers might feel safe or intelligent and important, but having the right questions makes you a better leader. It\u2019s not just a matter of learning to ask those questions but unlearning the habit of dispensing advice and answers and perpetuating the cycle of fear and shame that contribute to the persistent mediocrity and dysfunction found in most organizations and the world at large. Having all the answers keeps people dependent on you for the decisions they make and the problems they need to solve, and it robs them of the deep sense of joy they find in accomplishing things that matter. Answers turn out to be a trap, and questions will set you free.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How You Were Educated Is the Reason Leaders Fail Ask any good grade schoolteacher what the most important thing they do is, and they will tell you that, beyond the specific lessons they teach, their most sacred purpose is to instill their students with a love of learning. Learning is more than a skill; it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cohort-reading-resources","category-leadership-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38138,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38124\/revisions\/38138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}