by gcLi Executive Director Jeremy LaCasse.
Two equally powerful forces drive the creation of community and influence our teaching of leadership. The first is uncertainty, and the second is belonging. Uncertainty is everywhere and omnipresent. Belonging, or at least the sense of belonging, is often elusive. At times, students, parents, and faculty want to remove uncertainty and, correspondingly, think that belonging should be absolute at all times. The sentiment on both of these forces is misguided. Failing to acknowledge the need for uncertainty in appropriate measures impairs the development of resilience. Similarly, understanding what belonging truly means is crucial for developing brains.
In a recent Bowdon College magazine article, Erika Nyhus wrote on why uncertainty is helpful. When we think about developing adolescents, certainty or absolute conviction impedes learning and also mitigates the perceived security in both school and life. Resilience that comes from navigating the unknown and understanding that desired outcomes are not guaranteed, helps students develop the capacity to navigate and lead. Uncertainty is essential in helping create the resilience necessary to be a grounded person and a successful leader.
Dr. Nyhus’s article considers students who have an absolute plan for traveling through their educational experience, along with the benefits of surprises. Having a plan and ambition is good, but as the Yiddish proverb goes, if you want to make God laugh, have a plan. With this in mind, how do we approach helping our students both appreciate and navigate the inherent uncertainty of the world?
Jennifer B. Wallace talks about “mattering,” the idea that you both belong and are contributing to something greater than yourself, as key to helping people navigate the uncertainty of the world and life. Often, the spot where people want certainty is that they belong. Much of childhood is spent trying to determine whether one belongs and what belonging means. In our schools, one of the challenges is that we focus on ensuring everyone belongs. Yet we often fail to understand that the link to contributing to something greater than oneself is critical to belonging.
Given these elements of certainty and belonging, what is a teacher of leadership to do to help students navigate them to the greater good? In simplest terms, teachers need to work to help each student see how they belong by realizing the critical piece of contributing to a larger communal good. Given that people often prioritize their own need for certainty and guaranteed results, getting students to think about helping others will make them feel that they belong when they work together for the greater good. This is a significant challenge.
A leadership teacher cultivates belonging by actively engaging with student feedback and understanding what impacts their feelings. They build the trust needed for students to accept the uncertainty of their position within the community. Judgment, the analysis and critique of one’s contribution to the community and the perceived intention behind their actions, quickly erodes a person’s ability to feel supported and incorporate feedback into their practice. In other words, teachers need to focus first on their relationship with their students to build the critical trust that they need to navigate their belonging.
Once students have that trust and feel that they belong, they have the support, structures, and, hopefully, the fortitude to face and embrace the uncertainty inherent in leading. As Ronald Heifetz notes, leadership is disappointing people at a rate they can absorb. Often, student leaders anticipate that leadership is exhilarating, that it’s about making people happy and thus resulting in glorious success. They fail to understand the significant disquiet of leading a group from where they are to somewhere new This new place requires the group’s learning of new skills and practices to achieve that goal.
Some teachers dislike the uncertainty inherent in teaching, preferring to tell students what they need to know, not challenging them to truly demonstrate their learning or utilizing their creative capacity to solve novel problems.
Leadership entails a person being aware of what is happening around them and choosing behaviors from a place of empathy and courage. While this helps the group to achieve its goals, it also works f toward each person feeling that they belong and are contributing to the shared effort.
Only when each member of the group feels they belong can they truly commit to a larger shared goal—a meaningful superordinate goal. Consider the student section at a collegiate sporting event. The students in that group feel like they belong, as evidenced in their shared attire, facepaint and actions, and have the shared goal of supporting their team and school. As teachers of leadership, we need to help our students know they belong as we actively work to ensure that each person in the group feels connected to the work of achieving the shared and uncertain goal.
Our world currently is filled with uncertainty and marginalization, alienation and isolation. In the words of Mother Teresa, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
Helping students learn to create communities of belonging in the face of uncertainty through their shared work is critical to students developing leadership skills, resilience, and most critically, the sense of how important we are to each other.
In my experience, the greatest human achievements are accomplished when we are connected in shared effort. Teaching leadership enhances the likelihood that students in your school community will better understand this and engage in positive and shared work. We can and must do this together!
Links:
A Boost from Uncertainty (Nyhus, Bowdoin Magazine)
Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Danger of Leading (Heifetz & Linsky)
gcLi Executive Director Jeremy LaCasse, is also Assistant Head of School at Taft School. He held the Shotwell Chair for Leadership and Character Development at Berkshire School. Jeremy also directed the Ritt Kellogg Mountain Program, served as dean of the sixth and fourth forms, taught European and Medieval history and coached the ski and crew programs. Following his time at Berkshire, he served as the dean of students at Fountain Valley School of Colorado, and following FVS, he was the head of senior school at Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh. He moved on as head of school at Kents Hill School in Maine and the assistant head of school at Cheshire Academy in Conn. . Jeremy graduated with a B.A. in history from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and earned an M.A. in private school leadership from the Klingenstein Center, Teachers College, at Columbia University.