Leadership in Education – Personal Excellence: Shahpur Jamall

The theme of Care and Growth as it pertains to our discussion on legitimate power is built on the premise that the teacher is there to make a contribution to the student’s life. In other words he is there to give something to the student and not get something from the situation. As we discussed earlier, conditional giving is not really giving at all.

In one of my earlier articles, I asked you to make a list of the reasons why you go to work. If you examine that list now you will find that most of the things you listed are about what you get from your job; to support your family, job fulfillment, respect from the community, enjoying your work or a sense of belonging.

If our reason for coming to work is fulfilling our own needs we are really not in a position to contribute anything to the children we are educating. We cannot do the right thing if we are concerned with what others will think of us, with losing our job, with impressing our principal, or by focusing on results and outcomes.

The first time I conducted a workshop on Personal Excellence, one of the teachers left at the end saying, “He expects us to become saints”. On the face of it, the notion of unconditional giving does beg the quintessential 20^th century question, “What’s in it for me?”

The answer is everything. To the extent that our fulfillment is based on what we get from the world, we are always at the mercy of the world because what we get is not in our control. Another way of putting it is that as long as our attention is on our needs, be it the need for security, fulfillment, recognition or respect, which is really appreciation by other people, we will always remain needy and unfulfilled.

Our needs are any empty basket with the bottom missing. No amount of money is ever going to be enough, and appreciation and respect are very fickle things. As Etsko Schuitema likes to say, “The world rarely gives us what we want when we want it”.

Unfortunately the default human position is that we function from our needs. This does not mean we ignore our needs, or pretend they don’t exist, but we have to put them in their rightful place, that is in the passenger seat of our lives. The driver’s seat must be taken by our values, the greatest of which is how we can make a contribution to our little corner of the world.

In every interaction with the other, we have a choice of where our attention is. We can either be attending to “What am I going to get out of this?” which puts us in a weak position as what we get from the world is in the hands of the other. Or we can put our attention on “What can I contribute?” What we contribute in any situation is always in our hands.

Therefore true fulfillment can only come from what we contribute, not what we get from the world. As teachers we are in a unique position, we can change the world, provided we are first willing to change ourselves.

This quote is taken from Etsko Schuitema’s other seminal work, Intent: Exploring the Core of Being Human.

“In any situation there are two possibilities.  One relates to what you want to get, the other to what is correct, what you should give or put in.  If you ruthlessly pursue the second possibility you will transmute and continue transmuting, hour after hour, day after day week after week, you will change and continue changing.  You will not recognize your self after a week and every week after that you will continue to surprise yourself. You will assume the stature and the status of the giant who is coiled up inside you like a tightly wound up spring. You will ride the roller coaster your life was designed to be. Don’t sell yourself short.”

I realize these few paragraphs are not going to transform the way any of you view the world but I hope you may be curious enough to look into the issue further. I highly recommend the book as this journey begins with a single step.

Ultimately this subtle change in Intent can actually unleash the infinite potential of students and also bring fulfillment to the teacher both personally and professionally.

Image: A Life of Fullness by Behzad Bagheri.