After-Action Review Continues at the End of the Day

The moment I gaze out of my office window at the end of the day, I find myself calming down and decompressing. My heartbeat has returned to a normal rhythm. I see a few of my students passing by and heading off to catch the bus or to work out. I see a group of twenty petrified-looking, prospective students gazing straight ahead, each dressed to impress, following a guide.

One of my goals for the students is to have them stand back and face their own life path. An underlying assumption is that the students will do less harm if they are aware of why they do what they do. They will hurt themselves and others less if they understand the purpose and path they are on. I don’t pretend that they should have an answer, but I would like them to be asking questions about their journey before, during, and after the experience at HBS. It’s ironic that the course on authentic leadership begins with how we appreciate and get over, around, or through our past. As I look out my third-floor window at the students and staff playing tennis, I realize that my life’s journey is intertwined with their time at HBS. I’m thinking about how teaching the course informs my own thought processes and how I relate to the past.

The Past

My patterns are deep and intertwined. My narratives inform how I live today, how I taught today. I accept the fact that I will always be driven to accomplish tasks. My ability to laugh at myself is healthier today than years ago, and I can also laugh at my struggle for self-acceptance.

It occurs to me that for a long while, it was difficult to admit these patterns existed. It was easier to take refuge in denial. I suspect most teachers possess similar reactions to their patterns. But to become more effective in the classroom, teachers need at least a modicum of reflection. Without it, they won’t be aware of their patterns and won’t be able to change for the better. Over the years, I’ve observed a lot of teachers, and the ones who resist introspection never learn, never grow, and never become more effective.

Now let’s return to how this introspection works in my classroom and in my head. The first three sessions of the course introduce the notion of personal stories or narratives that guide how we think and feel and behave. We also focus on how we lose our way along the journey. What are the signs we are getting close to the edge? How do we self-regulate in real time? How will our ongoing fears play havoc with our ability to take prudent risks?

Contemplating these observations, I realize they are based on my distorted view of my past. Though I recall what I’ve experienced, I often distort reality. I remember spending two years creating a collection of nickels. I’m also convinced that my older brothers took the collection and went to our local corner market and spent my collection on candy. At a family reunion this past winter, my younger brother got angry at our older brother for blaming my younger brother for stealing his collection of coins. How can this be? Between you and me, I know with 100 percent certainty that my story and not theirs is accurate. This is me making a joke; as I noted, I can laugh about these things now.

I do believe I live now based on a distorted past where I may have compressed experiences or even combined certain memories from two different events. But to me they are real. As I re-create the stories of my past, I realize that my siblings, for example, are convinced they have memories like elephants. Each of us has a different picture and narrative about our family and the way we saw the family interact. But regardless of their accuracy, my memories inform how I see my current situation. I thought our family was tight knit and highly engaged with one another. As I grew older I realized that I was highly engaged with my parents, but my other four siblings were not. We each describe family dynamics from our own vantage points. I’m the only child of the five that would describe my relationship as warm and connected. I’m the outlier.

I know I’m not alone when it comes to these perceptions. I’m not the only one who has gone through a crucible, and I’m not the only one who is affected by those long-ago experiences and bears the scars still. As a large group of students walk by, I note to myself that teaching the students every year about confronting and overcoming crucibles is balm for my soul as well. When does the class begin and end? I’m not sure it ever does. That is why the past connects and influences how we live in the present.

Do I have the ability to keep a clear head as I observe students creating their own narratives? Do I have perspective on my shortcomings, my crucibles? How do I define failures and reframe them to be viewed as opportunities to learn? Students have told me about ongoing abuse in their families. Some have discussed current relationships that frighten them. Some have lost parents at an early age. For others, the hardships have been more subtle; they are brilliant students who have never felt accepted by parents for who they are, only for their outstanding academic achievements. The list is endless.

As I gaze out the window and reflect, I question whether I’m helping students become more adaptive. Will they make it through their next crucible with greater resilience? Can they maintain a clear head in times of crises? Do they become paralyzed with fear? Do they wait for someone else to save the day? Are they unable to be the people they were before they experienced the hardship? I want them to be able to keep tough feedback in perspective. I want them to be able to be direct when a tough conversation is necessary.

The Present

How do the inside and outside relate to one another? Do I have the ability to explore my own self-awareness along with the students? Appreciating what is happening simultaneously inside of me and externally in the classroom is one central goal. Have I been able to push the students to question their rationale for doing what they are doing? Do they have a theory of how they experience other people? Do they have a sense of how others experience them? Most important, do they know what happens inside others when they are in a group? These questions are fundamental to the whole idea of leadership and what it means to empower others.

I obsess over whether students are becoming more self-aware; this awareness is crucial if they are going to make a difference in the world. To earn the trust of others, they must be comfortable in their own skin and conscious of what resides beneath the surface. If they’re not self-aware, other people won’t take them seriously; they will seem superficial, lacking the depth that comes with self-examination.

Are they aware whether they live the values they espouse? Do they know the difference between their espoused and enacted values in everyday life? What are their responses when they begin to cross their own lines of self-regulation? Do they know what their boundaries are? Do others know what their values are?

Self-awareness of motivation is another core issue. Have my students considered their intrinsic and extrinsic motivators? How much does the task at hand drive them? Do they love what they are doing? Have they found their sweet spots that intersect the three circles of capabilities, others’ perceptions of their gifts, and their true passions? Have they assessed feelings of being trapped, of lacking the freedom to change their career course? Do they see their options as making cliff decisions or wedge decisions?

Cliff decisions emerge when we believe that the only answers to the issues we face are dramatic changes. I would be making a cliff decision if I felt the only choice was to leave the university because there was a colleague I didn’t trust. These are decisions that may be an overreaction to a situation that could be solved with less dramatic outcomes. If I made a wedge decision about remaining at the university, on the other hand, I might ask to move out of the department or I might sit down and have a conversation with my colleague in order to smooth out the situation. Even if I decide to teach with another colleague rather than the one I distrust, I’ve made a minor change and have not overreacted.

Here are some other questions about which I ruminate. Do the students relate to the concept of career anchors and how their values, motives, and needs combine to create career drives? Career theory would suggest that we need to have myriad experiences before we can home in on a better career choice. We need to have “road miles” so that we, through the process of elimination, understand the intersection between our values, motivations, and needs. Why are the students anxious to find the “right career” based on their motivations without having many road miles traveled in their lives?

Do the students understand the power of communicating horizontally as well as vertically? Do they talk with others or to others? Are they enhancing their current relationships based on how they interact? How much of the interaction is self-focused as opposed to being genuine interest in the other person? How much time and effort are spent trying to understand the realities of others? Listening becomes a lost art. Are the students are too obsessed with achieving their own tasks, crossing more and more items off their lists? I obsess about whether students possess the courage to have authentic conversations that connect with others. I hope they realize that mature vulnerability brings meaning in their daily lives.

Every session in the course includes a pause for participants to look for and appreciate blind spots. The students need to push learning where they are frightened to explore. What parts of their lives are blocked from the view of others? There is a time and a place where the sharing of new information brings greater self-discovery. What are the appropriate ways to have students share in a safe environment where they don’t later regret their openness? As we seek to understand those areas of ourselves, we come to grips with our ability to have compassion for others—and more important, compassion for self.

Typically when I look out the window of my office, I find myself focused more on appreciation and gratitude. Today I’m making connections between the three sections of the course. While the past and present are essential, the ultimate goal is creating a future that has meaning and gives students opportunities to develop themselves and others.

The Future

Research on individual change proves the power of integrating support into the change process. I have received such support throughout my life. We ask students to report on a time when they needed help but didn’t ask for it. We follow up by asking them to relate a time when someone else came to them for help. What was the experience like? Were they capable of creating a network that served them just as they supported others?

Part of the support emerges from our personal relationships, an existing network that might include spouses, friends, and siblings. Yet we often devote ourselves to tasks at work and allow personal relationships to suffer from neglect. Am I emphasizing this enough to the students? Are they even aware that most relationships at home are focused on getting through life rather than developing more meaningful and enduring relationships? I try to highlight that we need not only to focus on the integration of work and play, of home and work but to be more aware of the quality of the life we create with those who are near and dear to us.

As I reflect on the future, I realize that I have set up the class to integrate layers of experience, content, and self-reflection so that students are able to create a purpose for their lives. That is the ultimate goal for students to achieve. With the assistance of their learning groups, they create a statement that serves as an iron rod of sorts, a center pole for living their lives. As the students work with and give feedback to one another, they create a guide distilled from their course experiences.

This guide is related to purpose. For instance, one student may discover that she is guided by a commitment to making the world a safer place. Another student may learn that he wants to help others live more congruent lives. In class, I share with students purpose statements that were created by other students over the last few years. These are statements of intent, of focus, of hope for the future.

Once they’ve found their guide, they have created the conditions to examine and reflect on how they can empower others. Have they come to grips with their desire to lead others? Perhaps through the class the students realize they don’t want to be out in front.

Perhaps the students believe that they don’t have the capabilities and passion to empower others. A few feel guilty because they want to make a difference in the world, yet we’ve given them few options beyond running a company. Hopefully, through their adventure in studying authenticity, they have built up enough courage to follow the right path for them. I strive to create the conditions where students leave the course with the confidence and intention to live life on the edge of their comfort zones.

The central theme of the course is to create the space for students to focus less on image making and more on living from their essence. They must know how to communicate and relate to themselves in nondestructive ways and learn to listen and focus on others and what others need. We hope to remove the barriers that the students create for themselves that hinder their growth. The desired outcome is to help students understand that they judge others based on what they see and hear and assess themselves based on how they think and feel.

We’ve been conditioned to behave in ways that conform, to hide behind our fears and to take the road most traveled. I am trying to free students to explore different roads. Most important, I hope to imbue them with enough courage to explore new ideas and experiences, even if the unfamiliarity makes them uncomfortable. I hope that the students learn how to “self-watch” in real time in order to activate or deactivate how they are thinking, acting, and feeling.