The One to One

Each semester, I meet with every student in my class for an hour per student. It's about 30 extra hours outside of teaching the class and (much like the singing exercise) I ask myself if I really have it in myself to keep doing it each semester. The one-to-one is a time when I ask students questions about who they really are, what drives them, what makes them come alive, and where their true purpose lies. It is also a time when I tell them what I have been thinking about the semester: my general observations and questions I have about their choices or non-choices as the case may be. I have gotten a reputation among the students for having the courage to say things that others do not say to them, but sometimes I forget the basic rule of invitation.

Peter Block in his book, "Community: The Structure of Belonging" (2009) states that "Invitation is the means through which hospitality is created. Invitation counters the conventional belief that change requires mandate or persuasion.  Invitation honors the the importance of choice, the necessary condition for accountability" (p.113).   When I forget to invite students into the one to one in a way that asks for their permission to share my thoughts and to ask them hard questions, I have not honored the importance of choice.

When I attended the Powers of Leadership Training created by Sharon Parks and Larry Daloz at the Whidbey Institute (http://www.whidbeyinstitute.org/conversation/id/dbd7b8/about), I learned about a way to invite students into these hard conversations that is both simple and effective.  When I sit down to do a one-to-one with a student, I ask "At what level would you like my feedback -- extremely gentle,  moderately gentle but with pushes here and there, or no holding back?"  Extremely gentle doesn't mean lying.  It means telling them things that are absolutely true, but in ways that put my relationship with the student first and the feedback second.  No holding back doesn't mean verbally being harsh, it means I dig deeper into their default first responses and I use gentle, but powerful phrases as "I wonder what life would be like if you let go of that thought?"

The one to one is an art and has taken a while to learn to do effectively, but it makes life in the case-in-point classroom so much more effective.  Through genuine invitation, challenge, and support my students and I learn to lean in to the discomfort of naming things publicly, questioning assumptions, and   building public powerful relationships that can effect change. 

The Role of Intention in Case-In-Point Teaching

In my experience of life, there is only one thing that I have absolute control over.  It’s not my actions, my thoughts, or my feelings.  I believe the only thing that I have absolute control over are my intentions.  I can point to several specific instances in my life where I have tried to control my behavior, thoughts, or feelings, but have failed miserably and sometimes with significant consequences.  On the other hand, I cannot think of a single time when I did not have absolute control over my intention in any given situation.  However, having control over something doesn’t mean I remember to use that control.  Neither does it mean that it didn’t take considerable practice and intention in itself to learn to be present to that control.

Intention is not vision, it’s not deep purpose, it’s not control, and it’s not a boundary, but it is interdependent with all of those aspects of life. To me, intention is the power I have in steering the co-creation of the reality I am sharing with others (it’s the “co” in co-creation).  Intention is an opening to possibilities I would not have seen without crystallizing my thoughts around what it is I want to see.  Intention is what turns a blob of clay into a work of art, but not in isolation from the clay itself, the deeper purpose of the potter’s life or the intended deep purpose of what is created from that space.  If intention is the one thing, the one and only thing, I have total and absolute control over, then it has to be powerful.  It must be the kind of power that is powerful even when I am not consciously directing it. When I am not intentional, I am still co-creating reality, I am still putting my hands on the clay, I’m just doing it with some other intention, without a destination, without taking responsibility for being the potter.  That doesn’t mean I control the wheel or the behavior of clay itself – but I would bet that it influences all those factors.  When I have a crystal clear intention, I am creating a boundary and eliminating some of the possibilities that were there within the clay before I started working with it.  

When I teach and I am crystal clear about my intentions, the same thing happens – I am eliminating some of the millions of possibilities that could take place within the classroom.  In case-in-point teaching, intention is paramount because I have to trust that in planning for class, although I will have to surrender some of what I meticulously planned to the emergent context, it forces me to set the deep purpose of each class meeting.  It’s as if what I pay attention to, how I respond, what I see and hear, how I interpret events, and even how I feel is completely overlaid with that intention.  I see within that framework.  I respond to the emergent context within that framework.  I teach to that intention and I achieve results within that specific intention.  On the days when I am not intentional, but allowing an intention that is not conscious to me to drive my work, I am certain that I achieve the results of that unconscious intention, but it is usually neither pleasant nor not powerful in the end.  

I like to bring this up to my students in juxtaposition to Ivan Illich’s “To Hell with Good Intentions,” which I firmly believe in—just as I believe in the well-worn adage, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  When I am really honest about my intentions, they move beyond “good intentions.”  They become alive and specific.  They become powerful and conscious.  And in many cases, they become transparent to others which helps with the co-creation of our shared reality because people can opt-in to that intention, help shape it, or opt-out and in doing so, their own intentions become conscious and open to their own exploration as well.

I think this is why creating or teaching a new class is so difficult for me.  I do not have a crystallized intention about the class. I want to keep many options open and I often have far more readings, assignments, and themes for the semester than anyone can handle (especially me).  After the first iteration of failure, some of the distracting course components fall away and the intentions for the course become more clear.  The second semester becomes even more clear and by the third semester, my intentions for the entire course and each class period have gotten so clear that I am able to finally teach the course I could barely even envision when sitting at a blank syllabus template three semesters beforehand.  

The Singing Exercise

Today's class was about facing the fears (and the excuses for these fears) which hold us back from being authentic/vulnerable and owing our power as leaders. (It is based on a chapter from Leadership Can Be Taught by Sharon Parks.) Holding this class is exhausting. Holding this class IS the signing exercise for the instructor. I introduced the basic gist of the class the week before (by modeling the exercise for them) and the class then spent an entire week sending flaming e-mails amongst themselves about how unfair this exercise was, how it was really a chance for them to be embarrassed, and how it had nothing to do with leadership. However, by the end of class today, I can safely say that they addressed these grievances themselves. Every semester, I ask myself if I should go through with this again and every time the answer from those who have gone before a resounding "YES!"