“The best teachers are leaders, and the best leaders are also teachers,” says Harvard Business School Professor Thomas DeLong, who since 1997 has taught more than 20,000 MBAs and executives on campus and around the globe. Like leaders, he says, teachers “should be like a mad scientist who can’t wait to get to the classroom to share the experiment. If you adopt this mindset, students will remain intellectually and spiritually in the classroom with you.”
The Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice in the school’s Organizational Behavior Unit, DeLong teaches courses focused on leadership, organizational behavior, managing human capital, and career management. His new book, Teaching by Heart: One Professor’s Journey to Inspire, was recently published by Harvard Business Review Press. He shares his journey between teaching and leadership and offers an inside view of educating MBAs at HBS.
Martha Lagace: Teachers are leaders, as you argue in your new book, and yet most managers don’t receive any training in teaching. How can managers approach their role in a new way?
Thomas DeLong: Their employees need them to do that. Just like MBA students, employees need to know we are invested in them and care deeply about them. I’ve seen it over the years. When I am teaching executives, among whom may be 60-year-olds, and I ask them, “Write down the name or names of individuals in your career who you knew cared more about you than you cared about yourself,” the older executives write down two, three, or even four names. They actually have a visceral reaction. When I ask 40-year-olds the same question, they might write down two names. When I ask 30-year-olds to write down the name of the person who cared more about them than they did, that they knew would be there as a security net to help them, guide them, and confront them, they look at me and say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I believe those 30-year-olds want the same thing the 60-year-olds want. They want an effective manager who makes it clear through word and deed that they care about them.
Lagace: Your new book is an inside perspective on teaching at HBS. What can managers and leaders learn from your experience?
DeLong: Humans learn through stories. We ask our students to put on the hat of the protagonist in the story and then to try and make sense of the options, challenges, and opportunities that particular protagonist has. The underlying premise is that after thinking and trying to feel like a decision maker, there’s a higher probability of our students being able to think about complex issues and work through them. We also want our students to learn to be courageous—to have opinions and to expect and want to learn from colleagues and fellow students who might have very different ways of viewing a situation.
Just as I believe a manager is an orchestra leader, I see myself as the orchestra leader to guide, direct, and facilitate. In the classroom, it’s my responsibility to engage everyone and to try to read every student and find the key to unlock how that person learns. I want to figure out how I can support them in the learning process.
Lagace: What demands does it place on you?
DeLong: I need to manage in real time the way in which we’re learning the content. At the same time, I’m managing my own internal dialogue about whether we are moving in the right direction. Maybe there’s a student who looks disengaged. There’s a student who’s emotional. There’s a student who has her hand up for every question. And so I’m processing that. I find that to be exhilarating and taxing. I think if it’s done right, or if a teacher attempts to teach in this manner, they don't have much left for the rest of the day emotionally and psychologically. And there are moments that my partner or my children will want more from me and I cannot meet their expectations.
My worry is that the higher people go in management, the harder it is to get the truth.
But this is my belief: that if we spend 80 minutes involved in this particular situation, I want the students to leave that 80 minutes still thinking about that challenge. I want them to empathize and feel what that manager might be feeling. At a meta level I want the whole class—in some ways sharing the same breath—to actually feel different inside when they leave class. Part of that is from questions they’re asking about themselves and about the art and science of being a manager.
Lagace: What else do leaders and teachers share?
DeLong: Both need to put people in their life who are truth speakers. I don’t want to sound like I have the answers, by any means. I’m embarrassed that I waited until my oldest daughter was 15 before I asked her, “What’s one thing, Sara, that I could do to be a better dad?” When students come into my office they know I’m going to ask them, at the end of our conversation, “What’s one thing I can do to be a better teacher?” And I add, “Please don’t say everything’s just fine.” Then we just sit in silence. And then every student has feedback for me [at the end of the semester].
As a manager, what’s important is that I’ve created an environment where people can speak truth to power. And I can share it with the class: “Here are two or three things that I don’t know if I can change, but I want you to know that I know and I’m trying.”
I would also invite leaders to find someone with whom they can have conversations about their skills as a manager. My worry is that the higher people go in management, the harder it is to get the truth. As people rise we are less willing to be as honest with them as we could be. It’s a commentary on us and on the structure of organizations, and it is the human condition.
Lagace: Doesn’t it hurt sometimes to solicit and receive that kind of honest assessment?
DeLong: Yes. I was pleased and hurt by a letter I once received from a student after I kept talking about getting feedback. “Professor DeLong, you’ve always encouraged us to speak truth to power. So this is my effort to do so. When I attend your class I find myself anxious and fearful. I’m afraid you will use your humor to humiliate me or make fun of me in some way. I know you are well known as a great teacher, but I haven’t been able to connect with you. I know most students look forward to your course, but you need to know that you can hurt students without knowing it.” Even though a hundred students might write thank-you notes, this is the one I ruminate on. And by the way, I didn’t know who that student was. They did not sign their name.
So, I would love for managers to realize that when their subordinates and colleagues come to work they bring their history and current relationships. One of the assignments in my MBA class is to have a difficult conversation. A student once wrote, “Professor DeLong, if I’m being honest, I knew three years into my relationship that my partner and I have very different visions of the future. I knew he wouldn’t end the relationship and I needed to, but I just couldn’t have the conversation. I made excuses. The time was never right. I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid of losing friends. But ultimately it was my fear of disappointing and hurting him; and before long another three years had gone by.” And then she went on to write, “Had it not been for coming to HBS and your class, I don’t know when I ever would have gotten around to doing this. I did it, and it was painful. It would have been better to have done this years ago.”
So, recognizing the complexity of people’s real lives around us, a question that I want managers to ask themselves is: “What do I need to do specifically to honor the dreams of my subordinates?” Because what we’re really saying is, “How am I going to teach them?” Many executives do not think of themselves as teachers. But that is all leadership is. It’s teaching. How are you going to go about that? What is your style?
That is the essence of my book. That is the enlightening surprise as I have talked with people about this book: The fact that leaders don’t see themselves as educators, teachers, and role models. They see themselves as administrators and their identity is not based on teaching. All I am inviting them to do is to reflect and ask themselves how their day would unfold differently if they saw themselves as teachers. It means being with people and talking with people, not to or at them. There is an opportunity to figure out ways to work in more meaningful ways with people.
Book Excerpt## Teaching by Heart: One Professor's Journey to Inspire
By Thomas J. DeLong
This is a subject about which I’m passionate, and so I trust you’ll indulge me personalizing aspects of the covenant-creation process.
From the first moment in the classroom, the teacher is laying the groundwork to create a covenant with students—a relationship where the student develops faith in the teacher and the teacher reciprocates with trust-based connections to students. I hope to create an environment where students know I care about them, or at the very minimum know that I care about them by extension. My love of my subject and my preparation extends to them. But I must convince them that I care and am committed to them.
Why do I want to create a covenantal relationship? Does it make a difference? Let’s look at why it matters and what a covenant means. As you’ll discover, a number of parallels exist between a covenant leaders establish and how the best teachers teach.
Here are the three dimensions of building a covenantal relationship in the classroom.
First, students must know that they are in safe, competent hands. The first dimension is built on faith. I want students to have faith in the process that over time increases in excitement and in density. I want students to know that I’m thinking about the class night and day; that it’s my top priority. They must feel secure when they walk into the classroom. They must feel secure as they fulfill class assignments outside of class.
Second, students need to know that teachers care about them and their work. They learn this through feedback, interactions in the classroom, and observing them interact with their peers. I strive to help my students feel it as we chat one-to-one in my office or anywhere on campus. Third, students must feel like they are learning and growing and developing. They need to know that they are being stretched and pushed and challenged with new knowledge, that their assumptions are being tested, and they must gain new knowledge about themselves.
This three-dimensional approach guides me as I prepare and develop classroom materials as well as when I teach. The students expect it, and I expect it of myself. Recall our discussions of leaders, and you can see that all of this translates to what employees hope to receive from their bosses. Though there are obvious differences because of the environment (classroom versus office) and financial relationship (students pay school; company pays employees), the need for empathy, insight, and opportunities for learning and development are remarkably similar.
What’s the Difference between a Covenant and a Contractual Relationship?
As you think about these covenant relationships, you might be wondering about the contractual opposite. Though I stated the basic difference earlier—the latter is transactional; the former is based on faith and truth—it’s worth exploring the differences between these two types in more detail.
In a covenant, leaders and teachers are “all in.” They concentrate on connecting with each employee or student so that each person believes he or she can be successful. “Best self” means arriving with an attitude that is aspirational and focused on possibilities.
Leaders and teachers show up to work thinking of others as much as or more than they do of themselves. They help foster an inclusive mindset, focused on making the whole team or class better. They balance the interests of the group and each professional or student. But here’s the key difference from a contractual relationship: They are generous in the ways they meet the objectives of others.
In a contractual relationship, leaders and teachers show up to fulfill their obligations from a purely cognitive standpoint; they have no emotional skin in the game. They are only focused on individual objectives. They possess a survival mentality, assuming they are in the service of self. They may very well feel that they are marking time until something better comes along. They focus on looking busy or worse, taking credit where credit isn’t due.
Contractual leaders and teachers worry about their image, how they are perceived by their boss—a manager or department head. They possess little empathy for others because their goal is to survive where they perceive themselves to be unwelcome. Psychologically speaking, they are turning inward in an effort to have enough energy to see alternatives where they will feel valued and part of the larger group. But the irony is that the more they worry about their own image, the farther the distance created from others and self.
When teachers and leaders are focused on purely transactional relationships, they become cynical and believe that any alternative is better than the current situation. More important, they become disconnected from universities and companies. In their cynical minds, someone else is to blame for their disconnection and dissatisfaction. They may demonize their bosses, their institutions, and their students and employees.
In covenants, on the other hand, leaders and teachers are concerned about all employees and students, not just the best and the brightest. They are especially worried about those who feel lost and disoriented. They may not be able to “save” everyone, but they make an attempt to develop their employees and help their students learn and grow, no matter the abilities or achievements of their employees or students.
Finally, leaders and teachers who have contractual relationships endanger their organizations, while those with covenants fortify them. Contractual leaders and teachers create low morale—students and employees don’t perform up to their capabilities. Contractual leaders and teachers fail to inspire students and employees to shoot higher, and they fail to instruct them how to do so; they settle for mediocrity. Those who embrace covenants are great motivators; they are also conscientious about fulfilling their obligations to students and employees. When those who embrace covenants make a promise, they try to keep it.
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from Teaching by Heart: One Professor’s Journey to Inspire by Thomas J. DeLong. Copyright 2020 Thomas J. DeLong. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Martha Lagace is a Boston-based writer for Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
[Image: Harvard Business School]