INSPIRATION
You know the moment. You've laid out the plan, everybody's nodding, and the newest person at the table says, respectfully, I don't think that's going to work. Maybe it's the new hire. Maybe it's the intern, or your kid at the dinner table. You feel it in your chest before you've even heard their reason. Or maybe you're the one who said it, and you watched the room go quiet.
At Lincoln, that was us. Most of us were in our twenties, some of us running whole departments, and we had opinions about all of it. On our recording, Jonathan, who was a student back then, said it for everybody: "I know we were insufferable."
The person who caught most of it was Dr. Jerome Offord Jr., the chief of staff who built our team. We call him Dr. O, and some of us just call him Chief. On the show he started describing us as a very vocal, passionate group, and Dr. Doss cut in with "keep it cute, Chief." He'll tell you we gave him some of his gray hair. Then he thanked us. He said our pushing back made him a better leader.
So who pushed back on you this year? And were they right?
Dr. Doss has her own version. Duwon, our coordinator for international student services, came to her one day asking for money. Her first thought was that she had zero dollars and wasn't about to go ask Chief. Then he told her what it was for, and she realized she'd been wrong about something she had never once questioned. It ended with more than a hundred students holding something most of them had never had.
I'll let her tell you the rest. It starts at 35:06. [Watch it here]
COLLABORATION
Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator who spent his career arguing that teaching runs both ways. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he pushed back on what he called the banking model, where the teacher deposits knowledge and students just receive it, and he made the case for real dialogue where both sides learn. Dr. Doss brought him up on the show. Worth a look if you lead anybody.
→ Go to the source [Grab the book]
▶ The TEF Show: the full More Than a College episode is up. [Go here]
EXECUTION
Your 1% this week. Before Wednesday, ask the newest person you work with one question: what's something we do around here that you'd change? If you run a business, ask your newest customer. Then just listen, and hold off on explaining why things are the way they are. Pick one thing they said and act on it by Friday.
Hit reply with one sentence telling me what they said.
PASS IT ON
Forward this to the boss who let you push back.
THE EXTRA
The quote that hit me this week... years ago on Oprah's Lifeclass, Bishop T.D. Jakes told her some of us are 10-gallon people who grew up around people who could only hold a pint. It hit her about her own mother, and she landed on this: you have to meet people where they are and "love them at the level they can receive it." [Watch it here]
— DéRecco
The Invisible Interview · The Invisible Score · The TEF Show
