Despite some encouraging momentum in the battle to reclaim childhood from screens, adults are still failing to convince kids to hop on the less-tech bandwagon. As a teacher, here’s my take on the situation (and from speaking with my colleagues, they share similar concerns). We know that lots of screen time and social media are crippling for young people, and we are trying to do something about it. The elders are telling the juniors that they need protection from their evil screens, and the youth aren’t buying it. They think we’re freaking out, overreacting, dramatizing. They also see us using all the tools we demonize. In short, we haven’t figured out how to reach them.

To their credit, young people actually are paying attention to the news. According to a 2025 Pew Research Center study, 48% of teens say social media harms people their age, up from 32% in 2022. Still, parents are significantly more concerned, with 55% being extremely or very concerned about teen mental health compared to 35% of teens. According to the study, 74% of teens say social media makes them feel more connected to their friends, and only 14% think social media negatively affects them personally. Meanwhile, social media is the top reason parents give when asked about what most negatively impacts teens (44% say social media has the biggest negative impact).

Adults and kids aren’t on the same page regarding a major health concern. At this juncture, we are faced with two possibilities.

1. Big Tech and their products have become too powerful. We are too late. There is no going back, and we will continue to grow more dependent on devices and less capable of functioning on our own. Screens win.

2. We have yet to outsmart Big Tech and their products. We know we have a societal affliction, and we just need to put our heads together and figure out the cure. The ultimate comeback story.

Ever an optimist, I’m going with option two, and an analogy to the battle against Big Tobacco gives me hope. It wasn’t so many moons ago that everyone knew cigarettes were bad for you, and they smoked them anyway. Young people were motivated to rebel against authority, but not the tobacco companies. Instead, they rebelled against the well-intentioned adults who told them to stop smoking. Eventually, the truth® campaign flipped the script and convinced the youth that companies were exploiting them (and killing them), and that same rebel spirit was directed toward manipulative corporations. Checkmate.

Aside: The tobacco industry has continued to shake its stubborn fist. Big Tech will be no different. That’s fine. As I like to tell my own kids, that’s just the way it goes.

Moral of the story: we are still at the stage where kids are rebelling against parents and teachers (uncool authority figures) telling them to get off their screens. They aren’t worried about the long-term health effects that we’re shouting about. They aren’t upset with the Big Tech villains.

To me, they mostly seem frustrated that we are treating them like incompetent fools rather than competent decision makers. And until we offer them some agency around this issue, which seems fair enough considering we don’t plan to drop our own phones down the well, we shouldn’t expect to have much, if any, success.

Apart from flipping the script on Big Tech companies, I think there are a few key messages for parents, educators, and youth advocates to rally behind.

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Collective Relevance

Rather than scolding kids for their dependency, adults need to convince young people that developing agency is relevant to their future success. This will likely take a collective effort from people who are far more successful and influential than me. Unfortunately, many of the cultural icons kids look up to incentivize hyper connectivity. We need people with social capital in business and athletics, not just academia, to advocate for moderate screen time and social media use. Until that happens en masse, parents and teachers will have to do their best.

Jonathan Haidt has already made the argument for a collective approach in The Anxious Generation (and we’ve seen a promising response). Without a collective effort, we will fail. If we only offer case-sensitive solutions to deal with the heavy users, we will die by a thousand cuts.

There should be a clear understanding between schools, families, and students prior to communal participation. Families should not be surprised by their kid’s access to technology and the internet after they join a community. I think this should hold true for all youth organizations—sports, camps, etc.

There should be a common message about the relevance of modest screen time for developing agency:

Less dependence on screens and media leads to greater personal agency and the likelihood of achieving one’s goals.

Adults need to frame this message positively, not with threats nor scare tactics. This might look like a coaching staff forbidding their players to take out phones during practice times (collective effort) while emphasizing the need for optimal focus to improve performance (relevance). A negative approach would be having an unclear phone policy and then chirping at a player who checks Instagram between drills: “And you wonder why you’re on the bench?”

This all sounds easy peasy as I write it. The truth is that achieving collective relevance will be difficult. Getting kids to believe that putting their devices away is relevant to their well-being and success will suck.

No Pain, No Gain

Any serious effort to limit screen time will come with challenges, and adults will need to embrace them. Kids will be bored. They will act out. They will get into real-life mischief instead of online mischief. When you remove the pacifier, they will scream, and parents and educators will bear the brunt of their outcry. All that said, just as you shouldn’t treat a crying baby with anger and judgment, we will need to approach kids with compassion and empathy.

This, I have found, is where the rubber doesn’t meet the road. We love the idea of unplugging our kids until we have to entertain them all day and keep them out of trouble. It is easier to cook dinner while your kids watch Encanto for the fifth time than it is to cook dinner while they scream at you and play another round of Destroy the House. But when you say no to watching Encanto for the sixth time, there will be blood.

And so we build the walls of our cells.

There’s really no way around this one. Being tech dependent is a bit like sitting comfortably in the eye of a hurricane. To leave the shelter of the digital bubble is to risk extreme discomfort—excommunication from the world. Between freedom and imprisonment, there is a violent storm to endure. What allows us to take the plunge toward freedom, to endure the storm, is agency.

Agency, the vehicle to freedom, is the best incentive we have to lose our attachment to our devices. We cannot have real agency when our phones and tablets and laptops steal our focus, when they tap into our wiring and influence our thoughts, which influence our feelings and actions, which define the brief experience we call life.

Here’s where we are really up against it. Young people (and, let’s face it, people of all ages) enjoy the experience that their devices construct. The strategy then is not to lecture kids about the relevance of agency. The strategy is to create conditions for agency so they can experience its relevance.

Insight Through Experience

As a kid, I was fortunate to go to summer camp. There, I gained the insight that I enjoyed life more without a screen. I didn’t have classes with someone lecturing me about digital citizenship. Digital what? No thanks. Instead, I got dropped off at the lake without screens and had the time of my life. I had proof, real-life experience, that hanging out in the woods with my friends, unplugged, was way more fun than any alternative.

You can’t force a kid to practice digital wellness (take it from someone who has tried to teach it), or whatever you want to call it. Kids do what they enjoy. Without an enjoyable alternative to their screens, they will choose the screens every time. Adults are the same. People working with kids must understand this. You can tell me I should cut my right hand off until you’re blue in the face. I won’t do it. I’m convinced that life with my right hand is more enjoyable than life without it.

As adults, we are responsible for creating conditions for young people to gain the insight, through direct experience, that they are better off spending less time plugged into their devices and more time practicing agency.

Summer camps do a pretty good job with this—if they don’t allow campers to bring their personal electronics. Schools are trying, and parents can do their best, but I suspect other third spaces—physical locations outside of the home (first place) or workplace/school (second place) that facilitate social interaction, community building, and social support—will have a greater impact. I’d recommend parents identify good ones and get their kids involved early.

The Path to Purpose

It won’t be social media bans or digital citizenship courses or even phone-free schools that reverse the “great rewiring” of the youth. It will be the collective understanding that developing agency and detaching from screens offers a better experience that is purpose relevant. We all have a purpose that motivates us. You cannot tell someone what their purpose is. It is discovered. As adults working with young people, the best we can do is to nudge and encourage that discovery as skillfully as possible.

To finish up, I’ll resurface four paraphrased tips from David Yeager’s 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People (2024):

1. Ask, don’t tell. Respect young people by treating them as adultlike. Adults are asked; children are told.

2. Find ways to honor the young person’s status — for example, point out their competence and expertise — rather than pointing out your own authority. Avoid an I-know-better-than-you attitude.

3. Validate whatever negative experiences young people may have had. Treat their feelings as real and legitimate. Then look for a way forward.

4. Presume agency. Acknowledge that the young person can make up their own mind, and then make it clear that you are rooting for them to make a good choice. Also, explain how their actions have broader consequences in the world.

When adults use a “mentor mindset” (high expectations, high support) rather than an “enforcer mindset” (high expectations, low support) (Yeager, 2024), they will be far more likely to help kids find a genuine path to purpose.

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This post originally appeared on Medium with The Good Men Project.

Every so often, an idea clicks into place like a puzzle coming together. It’s nice when it happens (e.g., the concept of sustaining alignment instead of juggling the unworkable “work-life balance”). This idea doesn’t have so many puzzle pieces. No complaints from me on that score.

Initially, I was thinking about a progression of skills for boys to practice in an effort to develop a positive masculine identity, and the Five C’s—courage, confidence, composure, consciousness, and compassion—clicked. I still teach the skills to boys, and, the more I have thought about them, the more I believe the Five C’s are essential for principled leadership.

This framework has evolved since I originally introduced it in 2024. Since then, I have replaced consciousness with concentration, and I have revised the language to reflect my current thinking. I also updated the visuals, including a beautiful sketch on a piece of construction paper I stole from my kids’ craft closet because I was displeased with the AI slop. We’ll discuss the benefits of deliberate training with these five skills, as well as the downward slide—and eventual spiral—that occurs when selfishness, distraction, volatility, timidness, and panic rule the day.

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Courage

We begin with courage.

As Maya Angelou said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” Every person has the capacity for courage: the will to act, despite the fear that those actions will bring painful consequences.

How does one practice the skill of courage? By doing scary things. Once done, and you realize, like Sanka Coffie, that you aren’t dead yet, things are less scary.

Confidence

Confidence follows courage. When people are confident, they shed self-doubt. They are honest and vulnerable. They find their voice and use their full potential to make a positive impact.

Leaders should be confident, not arrogant.

Confidence is believing you belong, that you are a part of the greater good. Arrogance is believing you are better than everyone else, that you are above and thus entitled to good fortune.

How does confidence become a skill? Reps. Countless, mindful reps. While courage deals with the unknown, confidence, built upon many successful reps, is a result of knowing.

Composure

Confidence leads to composure. Leaders who develop composure will be more effective critical thinkers and problem solvers. Without the ability to practice composure and self-discipline, selfish and non-critical thinking will follow.

The discomposed leader is doomed to an endless game of Whac-A-Mole.

There are lots of ways to practice the skill of composure (mindfulness, meditation, journaling, yoga, etc.). Whatever training you choose to invest in, it could make all the difference when the world goads you with some irresistible bait.

And here I feel obligated to include a link to Zidane’s infamous headbutt, a timeless cautionary tale of what happens when we take the bait.

Concentration

The skill of composure allows for concentration. Awareness is the first step to doing good in the world, which, I argue, is each person’s responsibility.

However, it is easy to get distracted, and it is difficult for leaders to resist the pressure to constantly innovate, produce, perform, profit, repeat. With this pressure comes a barrage of bottomless productivity rabbit holes riddled with detours (more distraction).

I have written previously about the leadership fundamentals for achieving peak performance, the psychology of success. To lead at our best, we need to focus on what is task relevant while letting go of the irrelevant.

Becoming skillful in concentration—the ability to do one thing at a time, to see things as they are, to be still—is the key to perceiving suffering, learning from it, and growing stronger. As someone who routinely fails to avoid distraction, I realize how much more mental training I ought to do (the same kind that generates composure) if I want to lead from a state of awareness and focus.

Compassion

We arrive at the tip of the arrow. The point. Once you internalize the progression—and with consistent practice—the Five C’s framework works more like a self-sustaining cycle of interrelated skills.

Albert Einstein said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” Compassion training isn’t all that complicated (if it is, consider that a red flag). Be kind as a habit. Automate giving. Put others first. Water a plant. Write a nice letter.

When leaders practice the altruistic skill of consistently and unconditionally showing compassion, without any thought of exchange, they lead with purpose. Purpose has a gravitational pull. Without it, we have the feeling of being lost in space.

Aim with compassion at your purpose, and you’ll likely hit the target.

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Beware the panic slide/spiral

Now that I know the Five C’s, am I all set? Will I be a principled leader now and forever? Nope. Not really. Actually, never. What goes up must come down.

In 2021, I wrote Are you a riser or a sinker? Summary: teams do better with positive people (risers) than negative ones (sinkers), even the biggest optimists will have spells of sinking, and there is value to be gained from both risers and sinkers.

Now we add the “or” to our positive framework. Put the Five C’s into an upward arrow, flip it, and you get—the panic slide! If we observe the characteristics of sinking, we can reverse the slide before it becomes a downward spiral.

To be clear, you don’t want to ride the panic slide. Nevertheless, despite your tremendous leadership prowess, one day you will discover—to your surprise and dismay—that you are indeed sliding. Here are the features of the panic slide:

1. Selfishness: Burdened by constant self-centeredness.

• Example: King Louis XIV of France who said, “I am the state.” His selfish rule set the stage for the French Revolution.

2. Distraction: Avoiding reality and living in the imagination.

• Example: Nicholas II of Russia ignored the suffering of the Russian people and instead focused on his personal affairs, leading to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty and the rise of the Russian Revolution.

3. Volatility: Triggered by challenges to the ego.

• Example: Emperor Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator. He was an erratic and ego-driven leader who left Rome in chaos.

4. Timidness: Crippled by the fear of being hurt.

• Example: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was known for his appeasement of Hitler. His fear of painful consequences contributed to one of the greatest catastrophes in history.

5. Panic: Frantically escaping, a complete resistance to reality.

• Example: Adolf Hitler epitomized this stage in the final weeks of WWII when he went ballistic in his bunker and ultimately killed himself, unable to face reality closing in on him.

Do not fear. If you’ve trained well, you can stop the slide before you come crashing down on the panic button.

Leaders who practice the Five C’s will spend more time rising than sinking. Because they concentrate, they will observe their own thinking and behavior. They will identify selfishness, distraction, volatility, timidness, and panic, understanding the roots of their self-induced spiraling.

They will know the more skillful alternative, and they will not get stuck in a downward spiral.

Final notes on training

First, there are a few important questions about training to consider:

1. What do you prioritize when training your team (especially during onboarding)? What do people learn first? If these skills/topics aren’t the most essential things for people to know with regards to your team’s purpose and culture, you have more questions to ask.

2. What does your team think about previous training you have done? How do you know? And how does that inform the decisions you make about future training?

3. When does your team do “soft skills” training (like the Five C’s)? What proactive culture training do you do? What signals do you look for that might indicate a need for reactive training? What percentage of your training is proactive vs. reactive? I’d strive for roughly 80% proactive and 20% reactive.

And the final note. There are very few trainings that have a lasting impact. Sometimes, it’s because the training isn’t so great. Most of the time, regardless of quality, no matter how high or low we feel post training, somewhere down the road of our busy lives, whether it be a subtle drift or full blown panic slide, we return to baseline.

The trick to effective training is this: it is repeated over time, like all good practice, building upon shared values, reminding us of that light above the clouds, the same light within each of us that supplies the energy to push forward with this exciting human project.

At my current school, we have a tradition called the sunset climb. It’s my personal favorite (and there are definitely a few C’s involved). Our graduating students hike the local mountain at sunset and, one at a time, express their gratitude for their peers and mentors. It’s an emotional moment where kids and teachers feel the weight of close friends parting ways at the end of a hard-fought journey.

This tradition reminds me why I teach, and I know that if there were more “sunset climbs” sprinkled throughout the year, I’d feel even better about my chosen profession. When you think about training, instead of going through the motions, think about creating these sunset moments.

Remember the tip of the arrow: compassion. Concentrate on the point.

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Question for the club

What helpful tools, graphics, mnemonics, etc. have been useful leadership guides for you?

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I’m going to kick things off with a BIG quote from Kobe Bryant. Big in length, sure, but significant because it describes the “ideal performance state” for an athlete (Haff & Triplett, 2016, p. 156), which I will argue is transferable to any profession:

When you get in that zone it’s just a supreme confidence that you know it’s going in. It’s not a matter of if or this [or] that. It’s going in. Things just slow down. Everything slows down and you just have supreme confidence. When that happens, you really do not try to focus on what’s going on because ... you could lose it in a second. Everything becomes one noise—you don’t hear this or that; everything’s just one noise—you’re not paying attention to one or the other. ... You just really try to stay in the present and not let anything break that rhythm. Again, as long as you just kind of stay there, you become oblivious to everything that’s going on. You don’t think about your surroundings or what’s going on with the crowd or the team. You’re kind of locked in. ... You have to really try to stay in the present and not let anything break that rhythm.

Anyone who has watched Kobe Bryant play knows what the ideal performance state looks like, at least on a basketball court:

• Absence of fear

• Automatic motor skills, no thought or analysis necessary

• Undisturbed concentration on the activity

• A sense of effortlessness and control

• The slowing of time and space

He understood sport psychology, and he put it into practice. He understood that by using selective attention, one reduces distraction, narrowing focus instead on what is task-relevant.

High-level athletes can access the ideal performance state that Kobe describes—and so can everyone else. Today, (using the Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, Fourth Edition as my reference) I want to talk a little bit about how you can do that, and about how leaders can facilitate the ideal performance state, rather than obstructing it.

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The Psychology of High Performance

First, let’s acknowledge a simple truth. Each one of us, even the pros, only has so much energy to give. We have to practice psychological and physiological efficiency, which is giving no more than what is required to perform a mental or physical task. The psychology of success is not to work harder than everyone else all of the time. That’s a reliable recipe for burnout.

A key component of efficiency is practicing task-relevant focus. To perform at our best, we can’t waste attention on worrying and catastrophizing. These imagined concerns are task-irrelevant. Many well-intentioned coaches and leaders make a lot of task-irrelevant noise. More on this soon.

Athletes will lack energy when it matters most if they spend it on worry, anger, frustration, or anxiety. They will also perform with less confidence and less focus. Instead, if the athlete learns how to use her emotions to elevate energy and concentration, she is more likely to find that ideal performance state.

When does having the proper energy matter most? When we are faced with complex or new tasks, high pressure situations, and activities that demand deliberate focus. In these moments, there are a few recommended techniques for athletes—diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscular relaxation, autogenic training, routines, and systematic desensitization (feel free to pick up Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, Fourth Edition for your next pleasure read). I want to offer three rules to remember:

1. Make it simple.

2. Get skilled.

3. Stay calm when facing complex decisions/tasks.

If you can do these three things, you will reduce the chances of experiencing a total meltdown when you find yourself in a dogfight. If you can’t remember these three things, remember this one:

1. Nothing inspires performance better than self-confidence.

In a world bursting with high performers, skill is never enough. You need to believe you can perform. Self-belief leads to heightened work ethic and determination. Of course, confidence isn’t necessarily enough either, but it’s what we’ve got. So before you call yourself a talentless loser, remember that no one gets far without self-confidence. Negative self-talk is akin to self-inflicted hamstringing.

Next, we’ll consider the fundamentals of psychology that all leaders should know so that they can motivate rather than demoralize.

How Leaders Facilitate or Derail High Performance

This might be the more important part. Well-intentioned leaders who misunderstand the psychology of performance may unwittingly pave the road to hell for their athletes (I’ll use “athlete” for consistency, but you can substitute it with whatever teacher-student model you want). Let’s circle back to the concepts of physical and psychological efficiency, both of which are compromised by:

• the athlete perceiving a threat to self-esteem

• the belief that one cannot meet the demands for success

• a fear of the consequences of failure

As a leader, if you contribute to any one of these perceptions, odds are you will decrease your athlete’s performance. The goal is not to mess with the athlete’s mind. Many leaders go wrong here in their attempts to motivate, pushing their athletes over the wrong edge of the Inverted-U Theory with too much arousal (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908).

People need to feel senses of competence and self-determination in order to succeed. There are some basic practices that can generate those feelings, which takes us to a question as old as Hamlet: to punish undesirable behavior, or to reinforce desirable behavior?

Wherever you look—school, sports, the workplace—the results all point to the same answer: to improve performance, use punishment sparingly and reinforce with positive feedback often. With punishment, athletes focus on what they are doing incorrectly, the task-irrelevant stimuli we talked about avoiding earlier.

Reinforcement is the opposite. It leads to athletes focusing on what they should do, what is task-relevant. They also “build long-term memories of success, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and confidence” (Haff & Triplett, 2016, p. 163), all key components of peak performance. It’s no exaggeration to say that positive feedback goes a long way.

There are a few nuances worth understanding in terms of helping people learn new skills. In stressful and competitive environments, providing clear directives concurrent with the activity is beneficial. However, when someone is learning a complex skill, the more effective strategy is to offer delayed feedback, at first frequently, but decreasing over time as the person masters the skill.

Starting with instruction is good, but in order for someone to gain self-confidence and self-efficacy, a leader needs to transition to discovery, allowing the learner to perform without immediate feedback. In essence, it’s harder to learn with someone breathing down your neck.

Practice the Mental Game

Against my better judgment, I put together summarized bullets to appease the scannability algorithm. It will look great on your refrigerator. Jokes aside, if you don’t practice the mental game, as Danny Devito said in a Jersey Mike’s commercial, fuggedaboudit!

• Develop automatic confidence.

• Don’t waste your energy. Use it for what matters most.

• Become aware of task-irrelevant distractions and practice task-relevant concentration.

• Make tasks simple and get skilled.

• Reinforce the good before punishing the bad.

• Learning is a process, not a prescription. Let it happen.

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Question for the club:

If positive reinforcement builds long-term success and punishment causes athletes to focus on task-irrelevant errors, why do many leaders still default to high-pressure, fear-based motivation? How can a leader maintain high standards without triggering the threat to self-esteem that derails the ideal performance state?

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References:

Haff, G. G., & Triplett, N. T. (Eds.). (2016). Essentials of strength training and conditioning (4th ed.). Human Kinetics.

Wells, N. (2021, March 12). Inverted-U theory. Sport Science Insider. https://sportscienceinsider.com/inverted-u-theory/

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482. https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.920180503

After reading one of my posts, a colleague asked, “So, do you just write about whatever you are reading?” My answer: sort of. It doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough there is a collision between a book and my experience, and I feel like writing about it. The book now is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by . He argues that generalists, people who develop range through diverse experiences, thrive in a wicked world (wicked being unpredictable, ever-changing, unclear, misleading). It’s a well-researched and engaging book, and as a person who leans generalist, I found it reassuring that I might not be a hopeless wanderer after all.

The collision. I work at a summer camp, and we recently lost another fantastic counselor to the college internship, an unsettling trend. The pressure on young people to take the “next step” toward a successful career is rising. For many, working at a summer camp has become the wrong step, at least not the best one. If your goal is to have a higher-paying job out of college, you have a point. Data do seem to favor the internship on that score (though, I bet there are some other variables we aren’t controlling for that explain those outcomes).

However, Epstein also sites a 2017 study published by four economists that found “people who got narrow, career-focused education were more likely to be employed right out of school and earned more right away, but over time both advantages evaporated; decades later, they had spent less overall time in the labor market and had lower lifetime earnings than workers who received general educations.” Adam Grant agrees that “generalists excel over time” sharing a 2025 Science article, “Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance,” which concluded, “Across domains, world-class performers, compared with peers performing just below this level, engaged in more multidisciplinary practice and showed more gradual performance progress through their early years.”

I believe the majority of our discontent—our envy, contempt, greed, longing, anxiety, hostility—comes from our conviction that we are (or should be) more than who we are. Somewhere along the way, we are convinced that we have not arrived at our destination, that there are grander things in store for us, more that we are destined to achieve. We forget that people on their death beds wish they hadn’t worked their life away, too busy to be present, too consumed by expectations that took precedence over love and happiness and relationships. It’s so easy to fool ourselves into thinking, later, there will be time.

Epstein argues that young people, instead of specializing early, should diversify their experiences as they try to find “match quality,” which he says is more likely to happen later in life. One could use that reasoning to justify seeking a variety of internship experiences. I can get on board with that. However, the rationale I hear most often is along the lines of needing a head start or a foot in the door to avoid falling behind on a specific track. This logic runs out of runway. While it increases your chances of the higher paying job after college, it neglects a basic, inevitable truth: who you are now is different from who you will be after college, and who you will be then is different from who you will be 5 years later, and so on and so forth, should you live long and prosper.

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Obviously, I think young people should choose the camp counselor job before the college internship (and if you search “skip the internship, go to summer camp,” you’ll see I’m not alone). I’m biased, but hear me out. Epstein proposes that “you don’t commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that give you the most promising range of options afterward.” Working as a camp counselor offers tremendous range, especially when it comes to leadership and management. With all due respect (love that loaded phrase) to internships, here’s why I recommend camp counseling instead:

1. Life happens now

When working with kids, this couldn’t be more true. Lots of people feel guilty about doing what they enjoy, even more so if it gets in the way of “growing up.” If you enjoy the work of a camp counselor and you have the energy to do it, now is the time. You won’t have that same energy as you age, and you have the rest of your life to frolic with spreadsheets and cubicles and emails and all the other perks of a “real job.”

And keep in mind, Epstein notes, “Big innovation most often happens when an outsider who may be far away from the surface of the problem reframes the problem in a way that unlocks the solution.” What seems off-track now may end up being the key to success—and camp counselors spend all day problem-solving.

2. It’s the healthy choice

As a camp counselor, you spend the summer outside, in nature, running around, laughing, playing, unplugged. In essence, you get to be a kid, and you are paid to do it with people you love like family. Talk about the ultimate reset before diving into another academic year or even your first full-time job.

Does the internship give you this gift? Years from now, maybe with kids of your own, will you daydream of the beloved internship that you posted about on LinkedIn?

3. The network is broader

Not only will you develop range in your leadership, but you will expand the range of your network. It’s very likely that someone working at the camp has a connection in the area of the internship you are considering, and it is likely that connection also went to camp. If you prove to be a great camp counselor, this connection is gold.

The internship network will be narrower, as well as the skills you develop.

4. You will learn antifragile skills

Being antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder) is a step beyond resilience. It isn’t just about enduring through challenges, but growing because of them. Antifragile people don’t break under pressure or uncertainty. They thrive. Becoming harder can be useful in difficult circumstances. Becoming stronger and more skillful is far more functional. Building human muscle with heavy resistance is a good representation of antifragility. Though the stress of the weight initially damages the muscle fibers, they repair and adapt, becoming bigger and stronger than before.

What antifragile skills do camp counselors build? They learn how to care for others under variable conditions and how to maintain safety by dealing with risk. They adapt to unpredictable problems. They manage different conflicts with different strategies at different times. They lead through crises, engage small and large groups, inspire a child to face his fears and be himself. The list is endless—and wonderfully general.

5. You will learn to lead

If you run a cabin of campers, you are learning to lead a team and build a culture. If you run a division of campers and other counselors, you are the mayor of a small town, a CEO if that sounds better on the resume. There are few roles where you can have so much responsibility at such a young age.

We learn the most through experience, in practice rather than theory (as Epstein says repeatedly), and the leadership experience you get as a camp counselor, particularly if it includes the management of larger groups, far exceeds that of the intern.

6. Without camp counselors, there are no camps for kids

Let’s face it. It’s not all about you (I hope you agree). Kids need camps, especially boys (I will restrain myself from going further on that point in this post). agrees in Notes on Being a Man, describing summer camps as necessary “third spaces” (a social environment separate from home and work/school) for kids to connect and mature. And Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, says, “Summer camp is the best way for a child to detox from smartphones and social media. All the activities and camaraderie are a substitute for the drama of virtual life, so not just a denial of something, but a substitution with something healthier.”

If there are no camp counselors, there are no camps. No camps means fewer spaces for kids to play outside and discover who they are. Fewer communities where they belong. Fewer places where they learn to be independent and responsible, making choices and practicing self-discipline. Fewer opportunities to receive mentorship from a role model they can relate to. Fewer doors opened to new experiences and new people. Fewer moments to fail, try again, find success, and gain confidence. If I needed to filibuster something in a pinch, I’d talk about the value of summer camps.

The important point I want to emphasize here is that I hope young people take impact into consideration when weighing the value of working at a summer camp compared to landing an internship. The kids you work with will remember you forever, and there is no way to quantify the ripple effects of the good you are doing. It is limitless.

General closing thoughts on deciding what to do with your life and career

With all that said, I do recognize that not everyone has the opportunity, interest, or match quality to work as a camp counselor. There’s also a financial privilege variable. Some people may need to make more money than a camp salary can offer. That’s legit. And for those young adults who want to test the waters by trying out various internships—bonus points for those that have a positive impact on the welfare of others—go for it.

Internships aside, there are infinite experiences to choose from that don’t include camp counselor, and any one of them may very well be the right choice. I’m just a camp guy defending the honor of a position with diminishing status. Pity me. Ultimately, the choice is yours. Whatever you decide as a young person and aspiring leader, I encourage you to keep the following thoughts in mind.

Epstein says, “It is difficult to accept that the best learning road is slow, and that doing poorly now is essential for better performance later.” Finding a career with high match quality takes time, and match changes as we grow. For example, if you threw me back into a cabin of 10 kids as their counselor, it wouldn’t be the same experience, and certainly not the optimal situation for anyone involved. I can only imagine their wide-eyed horror, and my monotoned enthusiasm falling flat with the dust between the floor boards. There’s a younger, more relatable, more energetic person for the job, and it’s OK that I’m not that person anymore.

Most people, even if they don’t want to admit it, even if they don’t like it, know the road to high performance is slow. It’s the “doing poorly” part that really freaks us out. Waiting makes people antsy. Failing, just the prospect of it, terrifies people enough that they don’t even try (initially, I wanted to say makes them quit, but sometimes one of the best things we can do is quit and move on).

When we aren’t put in situations where we are likely to hear tough feedback, we miss precisely what we need to hear to increase our range and perform at our best. Here’s a thought-provoking and unreserved white paper on how this applies to college career services helping students with low social capital.

I remember a high school classmate explaining how he was taking an easier science offering despite qualifying for a popular physics course with one of the school’s best teachers. His rationale was that he would definitely get an A in the unchallenging class, which would be better for his GPA, which would be better for his college prospects. He had it all mapped out. I don’t know the degree to which that decision impacted his future, but I took that physics class.

It was hard. I stayed after school a lot to do practice problems. There were times that I did poorly. There was maybe one other class in my high school career that demanded more from me. To this day, I still draw from that experience—the reasoning skills, the importance of practice and retrieval, the wonder of solving problems, the value of a strong relationship with a teacher who also looked like a mad scientist—and I have no clue what my grade was. My guess is no one cares.

I said I don’t know how things worked out for that guy who took the easy science class, so naturally I did a quick search, and he has letters next to his name that suggest he is doing great. Good to hear. Was I hoping he was involved in a massive scandal or bankrupt to prove my point? Of course not. I still maintain my argument. In my case, I may not have gotten the best grade, but I experienced the most growth.

And I have this to add about his plans, and my plans, and everyone’s plans. In Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, says, “If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.” I love this line. It’s so dark. Our plans are just plans, irrelevant to reality. I suggest we invest in our present before our plans.

I also believe there is more to be gained from vigorous observation than overplanning. I’ll turn to Lamott again (exercising range, nice), as what she says about writing plot can teach us about living life:

In lieu of a plot you may find that you have a sort of temporary destination, perhaps a scene that you envision is the climax. So you write toward this scene, but when you get there, or close, you see that because of all you’ve learned about your characters along the way, it no longer works. The scene may have triggered the confidence that got you to work on your piece, but now it does not make the final cut.

This is a reasonable and effective way to approach decisions about your future. Life does not follow a script. It unfolds, and we do not know what comes next. Such is the nature of good stories.

With the specifics behind us, and for the readers who skipped straight to the end, I come now to my grand, generalist crescendo. Range is a wonderful thing, and every person is capable of doing something wonderful. Like a kid at a summer camp, we should do something that cultivates a sense of wonder, for ourselves and others.

We need not be afraid of taking the slow road, for time is excruciatingly short. Rushing to achieve match quality will only lower our odds of discovering it, and what one does now, especially what one does poorly now, is the real learning that will get us to wherever we are going. Godspeed.

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Question for the club: I’m interested in hearing what questions young people have about all of this, and I bet young people are interested in hearing the thoughts of potential employers and not just some rando named Nowak. Not a question, but fire away.

Though I hesitate to call myself a leader, I am comfortable being called quiet. I’m an introvert, no bones about it. This probably doesn’t surprise some of my readers. For me, small talk in big crowds is a test of fortitude. I prefer to exercise alone. I’ve never considered myself popular, nor have I been praised for being the life of the party—and I don’t foresee that happening any time soon. Recently, I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by . No lie, I was silently fist pumping. This is a book I could have used sooner. Then again, the topic is as important as ever.

The world favors extroverts, particularly when it comes to leadership. I don’t think extroverts are bad, but a lack of introverts is. My take is that leadership teams should aim for a relative balance of introverted and extroverted contributors, and introverts should feel confident that their quiet style brings high value. The common problem is that introverts are not taken seriously as leaders. There is considerable evidence to suggest that a diversity of perspectives leads to better decision-making, and the analysis that comes with quiet leadership is critical.

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I don’t want to cherry pick Cain’s ideas and present them as my own, so I’ll focus on my experience as a quiet person. In cultures where the loudest voice wins, everyone loses. The quiet voice depends on the quality of its content. As a quiet person, you know you have to make your words count. And others have to be paying attention and thinking critically to hear the sense in the words.

We should be listening for quiet voices and elevating them into leadership positions. The key to navigating a loud world is not to get louder, just as it is unwise to panic in the face of crisis. To focus on task-relevant action, you need to reduce task-irrelevant stimuli. Quiet leaders generally aren’t overstimulating (though they can get overstimulated). They are good people to turn to when the volume or the temperature is climbing to harmful levels. You can be sure they want to cool things down.

Notes to Quiet Leaders (Advice for Introverts)

• You can learn how to lead, quietly.

• Introversion is not an excuse for inaction. It’s a reason to act.

• Figure out what percentage of your day you can sustain being more extroverted (mine is about 10–20%, or 1.6 to 3.2 hours in a 16-hour waking day).

• Schedule quiet time every day.

• Hold your communication to a high standard and practice it (listening, writing, speaking, etc.).

• You can be another quiet person’s hero.

• Team up with extroverts who know when to call on you.

• If there are no extroverts who know when to call on you, help them understand why they should. Just avoid going full Milton Waddams from Office Space.

• Try not to shrink when it gets loud. Soak it in and grow bigger.

Steps for Teams to Elevate Quiet Leaders

1. Identify who they are. Once you know that, you can stop forcing them to be a different kind of person and start playing to their natural strengths.

2. Transform your team’s culture of feedback and decision-making to ensure fair process and an accurate representation of perspectives (for example, before you start a group discussion, survey the entire group and display the data so the team can see the balance of perspectives, rather than letting the first voice steer the ship).

3. Empower quiet leaders in quiet ways. They probably aren’t hoping for grand gestures. A thoughtful letter or one-on-one conversation will likely be more meaningful, and you can communicate confidence by giving them uninterrupted time for focused work that matters to the success of the whole.

I’m quiet, and I approve this message.

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Question for the club: What is one piece of advice or encouragement you would give to a young, quiet professional starting their career?

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I keep a list of one-sentence ideas that might be worth expanding on later. Here’s one that bubbled up for me recently: Welcome suffering and learn how to end it. This is a daunting challenge, easier said than done, I assume for everyone reading this. Yet, if we can meet this challenge, even a little bit, then we have a priceless gift to share. For me, the late Charlotte Joko Beck, an American Zen teacher, offered clear insight to size up this feat.

Let’s start with what may be one of the most baller statements of all time. If I ever open a gym or something, I’m putting a version of this on the front door. She said that if we are fixated on feeling good, blissful, or enlightened, then “we need to be disturbed. We need to be upset.... Don’t come to this [Zen] center to feel better; that’s not what this place is about. What I want are lives that get bigger so that they can take care of more things, more people.” This sentiment applies to leadership. Don’t come to leadership if you want to feel better. Come to grow bigger. Anyone who believes leadership will make them feel better, or that it is about the self, will be sorely disappointed.

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Disappointment brings us to our next piece of wisdom from Beck. She said that our “problems arise because we separate ourselves from our experience. The discomfort and pain are not the cause of our problems. The cause is that we don’t know what to do about them.” Leadership requires a shift in mindset. It is not about evading problems, but embracing them. The more we run from discomfort, the smaller we become, and the smaller our world becomes. The more we understand pain, the bigger we grow, and the more expansive our leadership.

What might this look like in the context of leadership?

• Facilitating a dialogue about a controversial policy

• Listening to feedback about an unpopular executive decision

• Debriefing an organizational failure

• Tackling a difficult or undesirable project

• Mediating a conflict between colleagues or sharing one’s own feelings of frustration

• Doing the right thing, despite there being a more profitable option

And now back to the original thought of welcoming suffering and learning how to end it. All too often we reject suffering wholesale. By rejecting it, we cannot learn from it. Instead, we anxiously and hopelessly construct a small and fragile world where everything must go right. When things don’t go right, we get incredulous, upset, angry. When something goes wrong, which it will, here are some alternative responses:

1. While it may be hard, don’t freak out. Observe the difficult experience and try to identify what is hard about it.

2. Don’t blame anyone. Instead, explain what happened as a matter of fact without making it personal.

3. Ask, is there anything to learn from the difficult experience? How can this be viewed as a test, and how would one pass the test if a similar event happened again?

4. Identify a fresh, replicable practice that would end future suffering and is of value to others.

As a society, we have become obsessed with reducing friction. We want to make things easier, to remove barriers. We want everyone to have an open road with endless opportunities. But this isn’t life, and it certainly isn’t the landscape in which leaders emerge. Principled leaders take their shape from friction. They feel most alive when life pushes against them, knocks them around a bit, and they roll with it. We’re not here to feel better. We’re here to get bigger.

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Question for the club: Do you have any effective practices when it comes to growing through friction?

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How about this for a novel idea? Instead of another speech including “so I asked AI...” what if we led with “these words are 100% my own and not AI-generated”?

The rumors are true: AI saves you tons of time. It is a powerful tool that improves efficiency and increases one’s output. It’s going to become as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi, and, as we delegate our thinking to it more freely, people are going to be crippled by its absence. I’m going to focus on how leaders need to be wary of eroding human connection through AI over-reliance. The majority of workplace dissatisfaction boils down to poor communication, and we don’t want AI to compound the issue. Before we obsess over upskilling in AI, we should prioritize good communication.

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First, more on the claim that poor communication is the primary cause of the workplace blues. I could rattle off some findings that support my statement—from Gallup, McKinsey, Deloitte, peer reviewed journals—but I’ll speak from the heart instead. Here’s why poor communication is the root of dissatisfaction:

It misses the point.

The point is the raison d’etre. When a leader is vague and beats around the bush, he misses the point. When a supervisor does not listen to the direct report who disagrees with a policy, she misses the point. When people are unhappy with their existence at work...and then don’t converse with their feelings, they miss the point. You may be thinking that I have recklessly broadened the definition of communication. I say, nay! “The successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings” can happen in a variety of modalities, including self communication. It is how we connect, and we are creatures of connection.

This is why I believe communication is so essential. I worry that if we forget how to do it, or we don’t develop the skills in the first place, we don’t just lose our human connection to one another and the cosmos, but to ourselves. Outsourcing the labor of connecting will render us unfeeling.

I am currently reading Make Something Wonderful, a posthumous collection of writings, speeches, interviews, and correspondence from Steve Jobs. It’s hard to imagine Jobs composing his emails with AI, and I’d love to hear his take on AI in general. He once said, “Creativity is just connecting things.” He also said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” To have a hope of connecting things, the beautiful process of being in the world, we cannot turn to a chatbot every time we have a question. To have a voice, we have to speak—with vulnerability, uncertainty, courage.

These words are 100% my own. They are nothing special, but I know that in the absence of my breath, they would not exist, and that is pretty neat. These thoughts could only come from me, and they have the chance of connecting with someone else, and that connection will be the result of our shared thinking, heartfelt communication—even if just for a moment—a nod from afar, above the fray.

Great leaders are great communicators. Communication is a skill they practice and do their best to perfect. And it is a responsibility they cannot abdicate.

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Question for the club: How do you develop strong communication skills and avoid poor communication that demotivates?

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This past weekend was my second time riding the Pan-Mass Challenge. It's a massive undertaking with a lot of build up, raising more money for charity than any other single event in the country (specifically for cancer research and treatment). Between the fundraising and the logistics that go into a two-day bike-a-thon, it's a heavy lift. As PMC folks like to say, "The ride is the reward." This couldn't be more true. The experience gives you chills. It is visceral proof of our intimate connection to others. We depend on one another, and we are at our best when we are supporting one another.

With the PMC, there are a lot of leadership lessons I could harp on – the compounding interest of daily effort, why we should take leaps of the heart, the infinite returns of generosity. What I want to highlight is the power of small gestures.

On the final stretch of the ride, I passed a woman who was standing and smiling next to a life-sized cutout of a man cheering in a lawn chair. This struck a chord with me. I crafted this woman's story in my mind, and here I was, a part of it, some stranger pedaling a bicycle. During the ride, you pass a lot of supporters, young and old, but you don't see everyone. You don't see all of the people who have donated to the cause, those who have participated in the past, the countless lives that cancer has touched and connected. Untold shared suffering, and an even greater wave of compassion to ease that suffering.

I thought of my dad, who was always on the sidelines of my games, my biggest fan. I remember him standing on a median in Boston and yelling to me at the final sprint of my first half marathon. If he hadn't passed from cancer, I know he would have been there to support me – but this cutout in a lawn chair... In most contexts, I’d probably consider it a silly use of materials, but this small gesture reminded me that my dad was out there. I don't know the woman or the man or what their relationship was, but I thank them for their encouragement.

Small gestures have a big impact. Moving forward, I want to challenge myself to make at least one small gesture of compassion each day. Ideally, I'll exceed that minimum, but I want to hold myself to the one, whether it be a handwritten note, a passing favor, supporting someone's cause, giving a compliment, whatever. I wouldn't suggest thinking of this as a problem to solve or a box on the to-do list to check. Rather, small gestures, giving in general, should be viewed more like little pieces of chocolate, a modest reward, sweet to the senses, warming to the soul, leaving you wanting more.

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Five free ideas to make small gestures easy:

• Carry a little notebook or notecards that can fit in your pocket. I've seen someone who does this with sticky notes. You'll always be ready to write a quick note that will brighten someone's day.

• Think of your small gesture for the next day before you go to bed. Write it down and recall it in the morning. This gives you an evening ritual that feels good and keeps you accountable.

• Use a threshold reminder. When you walk through the threshold of a room where you interact with others, tell yourself to make one small gesture of compassion before you leave.

• Automate it. Give at least $1 a day to a high-impact charity (here are some ideas). If you give $31 a month, you can set a daily reminder that you gave $1 to help others today.

• Ask someone what they have to do on any given day, and then offer to help with one of those tasks. Even if they say no, that's a small gesture of compassion.

Question for the club: Do you have any small gestures of compassion that you would recommend?

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If you only read the first sentence of this post, let it be this: 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People (2024) by David Yeager, PhD is an indispensable book.

Why? you ask. Yeager describes the effect of applying a mentor mindset: "This is a mindset in which young people are held to high standards, but they are also given the support they need to meet those high standards." This is instead of an "enforcer mindset" (high expectations, low support) or a "protector mindset" (low expectations, high support). I believe boys need role models with mentor mindsets, rather than enforcers or protectors. And, in case you were wondering, low expectations and low support – AKA neglect – is another ill-suited alternative.

Enforcers rely on dominance, and though they have followers who fear them, those followers will gladly find greener pastures when the opportunity presents itself. Protectors rely on comfort, and their followers may freely frolic in fields of flowers, but they will not grow into their full potential, and they will be unprepared for the harsher seasons to come. Meanwhile, the mentor mindset:

• Upholds high standards

• Maintains order and avoids chaos

• Conveys care

• Takes young people seriously

Yeager says that "status and respect" are core needs for young people, and that if we honor those needs, we'll be much more effective in helping them make "important contributions to our organizations, families, schools, and society." In short, we help them "find motivation to do the right thing."

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Like any good theory, it is easier said than done, and Yeager isn't the first person to proclaim the effectiveness of high expectations and high support. Whether it be culturally responsive teaching, growth mindset, the warm demander stance, or restorative practices, there is a lot of scholarly chatter circling around similar conclusions. If everyone could read a book and become an effective mentor, that would be sweet. Alas, being a mentor is hard work, and you don't build rapport by regurgitating leadership philosophy. Once you get off the page and onto the pavement, things get real. Life isn't scripted. Including a mentor mindset, I would ask for the following requirements on a role model application:

• Leads by example, modeling ethical behavior and respect for all

• Practices self care, care for others, and care for the environment

• Believes in reintegration and collaborates to repair harm

• Cultivates compassion in all interactions

• Is open to viewpoints that differ from one's own

• Listens with the sole purpose of helping the speaker and avoids judgment and interruption

• Values humility, interdependence, and reciprocity

Apply today! These are the kind of role models we need, across the map. I'll take the selfless, patient, kind, and skillful before the uncompromising egomaniacs who force their insight on others. The person who thinks they are no better than anyone else is wiser than the one who thinks they are the best.

We've been told that boys and men are clamoring for prestige with no regard for anyone else, yet, every day, I see boys who want to be good. I see boys who want to make a positive impact on the world, boys who want to create and experience a sense of belonging. I'm growing more certain that my eyes are not deceiving me – and rather that certain media is deceiving us all.

As adults, it is our responsibility to help pair the youth with good role models. To be clear, I am not advocating for the intensification of cancel culture. I've never been keen on ordering kids to stop hanging out with "bad" influences. That has always felt akin to an arranged marriage. Young people should exercise their critical thinking to decide who they spend their time with, forming close friendships based on mutual respect. Adults are essential in this process because they help kids, through modeling and conversation, identify the qualities of healthy relationships and honorable people.

Yeager discusses the power of creating a "stuggle-success-status positive feedback loop." He thinks summer camps are especially good at this: "At camp, you struggle at first to do hard, scary things (e.g., climb a ropes course, learn to water-ski, make friends with strangers) in the care of supportive adults. Then you get lauded with status and respect for overcoming your fears." As a long-time camp guy, I can attest to the impact of this feedback loop. No place has ever made me feel more confident, more like I belong, than camp.

The struggle-success-status feedback loop is a game changer for boys, especially in a world that often seems less interested in helping them overcome their fears, and more invested in communicating that they are the ones to be feared. As I've said before, we should not be teaching young men that it is inherently better to be a boy, that they possess a higher status because of their manhood. Instead, boys need role models who show them it's OK to be boys. It's OK for them to struggle, to earn success, and to be respected for the right reasons – and for who they are.

To get started as a mentor, I really like these paraphrased tips from Yeager:

1. Ask, don't tell. Respect young people by treating them as adultlike. Adults are asked; children are told.

2. Find ways to honor the young person's status – for example, point out their competence and expertise – rather than pointing out your own authority. Avoid an I-know-better-than-you attitude.

3. Validate whatever negative experiences young people may have had. Treat their feelings as real and legitimate. Then look for a way forward.

4. Presume agency. Acknowledge that the young person can make up their own mind, and then make it clear that you are rooting for them to make a good choice. Also, explain how their actions have broader consequences in the world.

Bill Milliken (Founder and Vice Chairman of Communities In Schools, Inc.) said, “It's relationships, not programs, that change children. A great program simply creates the environment for healthy relationships to form between adults and children. Young people thrive when adults care about them on a one-to-one level and when they also have a sense of belonging to a caring a community." And just as important as the adults, are the peer role models. Children learn from people they love, and boys love each other. It is my sincere hope that every boy gets to experience a caring community filled with role models where they develop loving friendships. I wish every boy will feel confident saying, "I love you," to a brother.

My Man: It’s OK to be boys (Part I – Introduction)

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Question for the club: Do you have a helpful case study to share that illustrates the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of one of the mindsets above? And, theory aside, do you have any strategies for building rapport?

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Are independent schools defensible? Do they serve a noble purpose in the scheme of greater education, or does their reach only extend as far as their private interests? It's easy for this to feel like an exercise in self-assurance, an opportunity to explore the ways in which one can argue that independent schools are more than businesses with a basic priority: remain financially strong. How often do you hear of a school, like Jhamtse Gatsal in the 2014 film Tashi and the Monk, that gives up one meal a week to feed impoverished people in the local area? How often do you hear of an athletics program that advertises its modest facilities and equipment? How often do you hear of a school that deliberately goes without so that a community with less can go with?

What I am going to suggest is simple. Many will call it idealistic or naive. And I assume many more will think it a horrifying and foolish concept altogether. I believe independent schools should give people a look under the hood. I hesitate to use the expression "see how the sausage is made"–it implies something gross is happening, something that is better left unseen. However, with the exception of information that should remain confidential to ensure privacy, I don't think schools, institutions designed to educate children, should have anything to hide when it comes to the way in which they operate.

What does this look like in practice? In my role, it might look something like this:

• My interactions with students are appropriate and professional, and I would be comfortable with any student's family observing the way I speak to or treat their child.

• My approach, as it pertains to behavior management, student motivation, and culture building, is based on educational research and evidence.

• Anyone who is interested can better understand my educational philosophy because I articulate it clearly in writing and demonstrate it in practice.

• My educational philosophy is open to analysis and revision when new information prompts a need for growth or change.

• I collect data that demonstrates the effectiveness of my educational approach that I can share with the public, while maintaining privacy.

• I collect data that demonstrates the fair and equitable treatment of students (or lack thereof), regardless of their background, status, or identity.

• My work with students promotes the public good, including community outreach and a commitment to engaged and responsible citizenship.

This may not be a comprehensive list, but it's a start. I'm going out on a limb here, but I imagine prospective families and potential donors would be excited to work with a school that expresses values of transparency and integrity. And if school leadership or the board or alumni or parents want a school that offers a "best-in-class" experience with all the bells and whistles, go ahead and sell that product. There's a market for it. However, if we are going to talk seriously about independent schools communicating their public purpose, then we need to begin where the rubber hits the road.

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Take the admissions office, the development team, the academics and athletics and student life departments, and decide what it means to look under the hood. If you see a rusted part, a fluid leak, or some frayed wires, consider addressing those trouble spots first. Schools should not be in the business of luring families into faulty vehicles. In that scenario, the value of independent schools is exclusive at best, harmful (and sometimes traumatizing) at worst. And for what? For the selfish practice of "dream hoarding" (more on this later)? For a tradition of "excellence"? For the endowment of the school's lineage, rather than the greater good?

Forgive me if I sound sarcastic or cynical. I've had that problem most of my life. I'm trying to be honest, not negative, as I too believe in the value of independent schools. Concurrently, I also believe it is imperative that we understand, especially in the private sector, that we do not exist without the public. Just like public schools, independent schools depend on the success of democratic principles and nations, they depend on global cooperation and peace, and they depend on independent people having the financial independence to fund them. This question of the value to the public is existential. And I imagine schools that don't have a good answer, or instead have a deceptive one, will not stand the test of time.

There is a place for independent schools, but it must be alongside public schools, rather than above them. For if the public fails, the foundation, not just of education, but of society, crumbles. There is a divide in desperate need of a bridge, one that is most clearly measured by wealth. I wonder if we shouldn't be a touch more critical, or skeptical, of the word choice "independent." Should independent schools be planting their flags in their dissociation? Might we consider referring to them as "partner schools" or "associate schools" or anything that doesn't emphasize a disconnectedness from public life?

Again, I am not arguing that all independent schools, when you look under the hood, are hotbeds of corruption, deception, and greed. It's easy to generalize, and perhaps a little pleasurable to write off everyone involved in these institutions as ivy-dripping, ivory-towering, and, while we’re at it, rhino-poaching elitists. We know that's not the truth, and we also know independent schools are not dependent on lots of things, such as teaching certifications, an obligation to serve the public, and shared curriculum standards. That's not to say these things don't exist at independent schools, just that they aren't required to.

If we want to talk about values, let's talk–with the hood wide open. If we want to tell the stories of independent schools, let's tell them–with the good and the bad and the commitment to improvement. Let's do it with integrity. Independent schools, like everything else, are impermanent. And if they are not connected to the public, they are increasingly at risk of becoming meaningless in the grand scheme. Independent schools face the challenge of proving their relevance through their actions. Proving that they are capable of being accessible. Proving that their missions are bold, transformative, and aimed at liberating living beings around the world, rather than advancing a selective us and peering down their noses at them.

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Shall we devise a plan of action then? Here are some potential phases to get the ball rolling.

Phase 1: Values Alignment

• Define the "public good" as a school and identify how your institution contributes to it.

• Review the existing mission and school values to determine if contributing to the public good is a strategic outcome.

• Gather input from stakeholders (board of trustees, school leadership, faculty and staff, students, families, alumni) to better understand how the school community wishes to engage with public issues.

• Develop a vision statement that articulates the school's commitment to the public good.

Phase 2: Strategic Planning

• Develop achievable and measurable standards addressing the value added to society.

• Have the various school departments articulate how they will align their practices with institutional standards.

• Develop and implement core curriculum that promotes critical thinking, ethical decision-making, and civic engagement, including community outreach and service learning.

• Build community partnerships with local organizations, nonprofits, and schools that share a commitment to the public good.

• Collect and share data to demonstrate an effort to build an inclusive culture.

• Display an annual financial statement of operations that is transparent, accountable, and aligned with the school's dedication to the public good.

Phase 3: Evaluation, Communication, and Growth

• Collect data on student outcomes and community impact.

• Implement tools to measure improvement in community engagement and ethical decision-making.

• Communicate the school's commitment to the public good and share evidence of action and progress. This includes being transparent about the school's finances, operations, and impact.

• Identify areas for improvement and adjust the school's approach and evaluation process as necessary.

• Stay connected to local issues and foster a culture of learning and problem-solving.

• Share stories from external public figures, in addition to internal stakeholders, who have experienced the positive impact of the school in the greater community.

In ' 2017 book Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, he explains that it is not "just the top 1 percent pulling away, but the top 20 percent" (p. 22). He attributes this to "opportunity hoarding...when valuable, scarce opportunities are allocated in an anticompetitive manner: that is, influenced by factors unrelated to an individual's performance" (p. 102). To prevent the U.S. from becoming a more unequal and less mobile society, he urges the upper middle class (which he self-identifies with), the top 20 percent, to rezone neighborhoods to favor some higher density housing; to be less exclusive about the kind of kids their children go to school with; to eradicate legacy preferences in admissions; to democratize internships; and, wait for it, to pay "a bit more tax" to fund more opportunities for less fortunate children (p. 154).

This talk generally makes people uncomfortable, as most of us are more inclined to rally behind the idea that the top one percent is to blame for all of the inequality in the world. I suspect that discomfort, and perhaps a little incredulity, earned Reeves' book its 3.7 rating on Goodreads. However, I believe it is this discomfort, this dirty little possibility that more than one percent of us might be complicit in perpetuating inequality and injustice, where we need to plant our flags.

Alas, can independent schools, free from bureaucratic hoops and politicized mandates, declare, with confidence and honesty, that their value to society is more than worth the cost? Is the investment of time and resources and energy and money not better spent elsewhere? Are the public schoolers out there, the vast majority of people, getting a bad deal? Is it not in their best interests to demand the policy makers to do something about this highway robbery? After all, imagine, for example, what the country could do with Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment alone (an AI analysis suggests a targeted investment of this magnitude could build a nationwide electric vehicle charging network or modernize the water infrastructure; for context, the Manhattan Project cost about $2 billion, or roughly $30 billion today, and Taylor Swift's net worth is about $1.6 billion). Consider my interest piqued. I'd love to hear the answers to these questions.

I'll offer this. When it comes to their value added to society, independent schools have an undeniable advantage: they have the ability to prioritize the public good. In the way they partner with local schools and organizations, in the way they emphasize community service and civic engagement, in the way they share their resources and expertise, they can choose to be of value. They can choose to be yoked together with the public. As Reeves says, "I guess we'll find out."

Question for the club: You have any bright ideas?

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Hans Rosling writes about our "dramatic instincts" in Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, and I've been reflecting a lot on the "negativity instinct," which is another way of describing the negativity bias. Rosling is not the first person to point out the human tendency to focus on the negative. Experts say we are 7x more sensitive to negative stimuli than positive. Rosling explains that even though a growth curve may be positive overall, we only notice the negative dips, not accounting for the reality that we are in better shape at the slumps than when we started. We don’t recognize progress over time.

As a dean of students, I often feel like a bad news filter. I can attest to feeling the 7:1 bias. Sometimes, a single unfortunate incident will cast a shadow over the whole world. Even though I am aware of the negativity instinct, I'm not immune to its effect. I don't know anyone who is. However, like Rosling, I do believe we can do something about it.

In reality, there are not 7 bad things for every 1 good. It just isn't so. Take a tray of chocolate chip cookies for example. In this desirable scenario, grab a cookie, and the odds heavily favor an enjoyable experience. There are plenty of positives out there, and I believe we can transform our daily experience with a single strategy: go for 1:1.

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Someone recently called me the "dean of discipline." An honest mistake that gave me a good chuckle. Nonetheless, I don't accept the title. If all I did was discipline, I would go mad. As Rosling suggests, I expect bad news (and a large part of keeping your sanity is reframing the "bad" as a learning opportunity and realizing, as Rosling says, that things can be “both better and bad” at the same time). I also seek out good news, and I do my best to live in the realm of 1:1. When I find the good (in my case, good behavior), I make an effort to follow up with the appropriate students, and sometimes their families, to share my appreciation for their helpful actions.

Expressing thanks doesn't take long. On average, a fist bump and a compliment adds up to a 10-second procedure. I’ve tried to create a system that makes positive reinforcement a part of the job. For me, it’s a simple spreadsheet where I log good conduct and then note when I have shared feedback with a student and/or the family. I dedicate time to deliver praise, and since bad news is reported more frequently than the good, I have a reminder pinned at the top of my daily tasks: “look for the good.”

This is pretty simple stuff. Sure, a mathematician (or anyone who is better with numbers than me) may see that I haven’t quite got the ratio business right, but, in all seriousness, it’s the effort that counts. Notice I said “go for 1:1.” It changes the way you feel about your work, and it fosters a culture of belonging. With a low cost and a high reward, I haven’t experienced much downside with the 1:1 strategy. And if you think the world is doomed so why even try, here are 32 global improvements worth celebrating.

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Question for the club: What practices have you found effective when addressing the negativity instinct?

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I attended K-12 public schools, I have worked in independent schools for the past 12 years, and, given that education is in the news, I want to share why I think privatizing education would be a grievous oversight with catastrophic effects. The late Frank L. Boyden said one must “never make a decision just to get something done” (McPhee, 1966). I don’t know many people who think we’ve gotten education “right,” and there’s good reason for that conclusion. Decisions of such enormous influence, ones that will define future generations of Americans, require logical and thoughtful thinking, aligned with national—and principled—values, values with sturdy roots that grow and strengthen with changing times (just as the Constitution does). Unfortunately, all sides of the political aisle have fallen short with these decisions, for a while, and it’s clear that we remain divided on the issue of how to best educate children.

I’m not trying to put myself out of a job, but here’s my thesis: the United States should commit to the systemic reform of public schools, encouraging accountability through the electorate and granting flexibility to educators to, I don’t know, teach kids how to practice ethical skills and values with confidence and joy so that they may serve others, their communities, and this world. Historically, widespread inequality is ruinous to the success and vitality of a nation. Therefore, schools should foster personal liberty while still advocating for the public good. Poverty and inequality are the root causes of underperforming schools, and the free market promises innovation—not equality. Privatization will lead to further division. The holistic improvement of education through public schools (which serve over 80% of enrolled students) is our best bet.

Before addressing the puzzle of schooling, one must acknowledge that inequality, not schools, is the root cause of lagging education and student achievement. When it comes to the relationship between poverty and achievement, the facts are clear: “There are never any flat lines when one compares student achievement to family income; that is, as a group children of wealth always outperform students of modest means, and children of poverty perform the worst” (Onosko, 2011). This correlation is indisputable, unless you ignore the facts, so we cannot ignore wealth inequality when discussing school reforms. Some may believe that a public effort to combat inequality is too costly, but history has proven time and again that vast inequality within a nation leads to turmoil, revolution, and collapse. If America does not invest now, if it does not address the root issue by allocating federal resources “based on need, not on competition between the swift and the slow” (Ravitch, 2013), then it will pay a much higher price further down the road.

The free-market system has led to America’s development into an international superpower. No argument from me there. However, free-market forces, devoid of a collective voice and purpose, are not concerned with inequality. Steven Miller and Jack Gerson say, “Privatizing public schools inevitably leads to a massive increase in social inequality” because “private corporations have never been required to recognize civil rights” (2008). It is important to understand why their claim is not merely speculation. Milton Friedman, a supporter of privatization, confessed, “No one can predict in advance the direction that a truly free-market educational system would take,” but he had faith in “how imaginative competitive free enterprise can be” (1976). While Friedman and other hopeful privatizers have imagined, we have all experienced the mixed effects of innovation–the movement from small farms to big factories in the meat industry, the production and recall of automobiles, microplastics. To put it bluntly, the ultimate motivators of the free market are profit and consumer needs, not justice and egalitarianism. The bottom line is financial success, not the ending of human suffering.

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If free-market forces define a privatized education system in America (if education is a good, subject to supply and demand, rather than a basic public right), then the public voice will take a backseat to private interests. Benjamin Barber warns, “Once profit displaces pedagogy, private interest will displace public good and corporate interests will displace pupil needs” (2004), which (as Miller and Gerson explain) “has the effect of silencing the public voice” (2008). An every-school-for-itself mentality would undermine any sense of collective responsibility for collective needs. It’s tough to have a strong and united nation without shared interests. By handing over the reins of public education to the private sector, there will be no assurance of equal educational opportunity. The private market is a race to the top. It would be bad business to level the playing field or to settle for less so that others can have more. Without meeting the collective needs of the public—which includes personal liberty and the unrestricted pursuit of one’s potential—without curbing inequality, schools will further divide the American people.

Instead of abandoning common interests and resorting to the fragmented, hands-off approach of privatization, America should focus its efforts on the systemic improvement of education through public schools. As John Tierney points out, “We cannot improve education by quick fixes” (2013), and as Michael Fullan insists, the US “has a habit of breaking things into pieces: what looks like a system is not, because the pieces are not well connected.” Though this may be an efficient way of producing goods, it is not an effective way of cultivating mindful citizens. Fullan says, “Systemic means all elements of the system are interconnected and involved, day after day. Systemic is experiential not theoretical” (2011). In order to develop lasting and effective educational reform that serves national, rather than private, interests, the focus should turn toward a public school system that can build upon a stable and advantageous foundation.

A successful public school system needs a strong and skilled community of educators who have the flexibility to innovate with technology, instruction, and insight. Fullan emphasizes how effective reforms must “change the day-to-day culture of school systems” (2011). Quality public schools can ensure that teachers are accredited and experienced (private schools can side-step this process if they wish), and they can trust their teachers to use and request evidenced-based instruction each day in the classroom. Perhaps you’ve heard complaints about the low morale and frustration of soldiers who go into battle with “their hands tied behind their backs.” Teachers often experience a sense of devaluation, and they will benefit from flexibility, optimal conditions to do their job, and an appreciation for what they do. Paying them more would be a nice gesture too. Aspiring educators must first understand education fundamentals in order to handle flexibility, which is why generating high quality teachers is paramount.

Of course, when it comes to the issues between public and private, there is a balance. If Americans decide to commit their funding and efforts to public schools, they must avoid the authoritarianism that decades of politicized educational reforms have bred. Both the public and private sector, if granted too much power, can create an education system (or any system) that, “while being an effective machine to instill what the government [or corporation] wants students to learn, is incapable of supporting individual strengths, cultivating a diversity of talents, and fostering the capacity and confidence to create” (Zhao, 2014). The public school system in America can avoid this outcome because, while schools inform the electorate, an informed electorate holds the public system accountable. An authoritarian education system that narrows learning “threatens our democracy due to students’ reduced capacity for informed decision making” (Onosko, 2011). The protection of democratic values and rights depends upon the integrity of schools, which a system of public checks and balances can uphold. Or we could just leave it to social media.

The Founding Fathers believed that government was a means to achieving liberty for all:

They were careful to design a system that guarded against democracy’s ‘turbulence and follies.’ They used the division of powers (among other things) to prevent the most common dangers of democracies: majorities oppressing minorities, minorities hijacking the government, and elected representatives putting their own interests before the people’s. (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2004)

No matter the political stance, one could argue that some, if not all, of these dangers—whether consciously or unconsciously—threaten America (and humanity) today. The United States of America, as far as I understand, does not officially endorse a single group of special interests as superior. Instead, it is a nation that aspires to promote shared interests for the common good. By committing to a public school system, the public declares their trust in the republic while guarding against the influence of private interests over national interests. In recognizing the common good, the informed citizen realizes that nations fail when inequality and partisanship become acceptable, costs of doing business. If Americans do not feel that they are a part of something greater than their own preferences, if they do not feel compelled to contribute to a purpose greater than themselves, to the liberty of all people, then we have a nation that is blundering toward a rude awakening.

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Question for the club: Do you have any thoughts on the education divide and what education reform might look like? Or can you suggest simple ways for someone to get involved?

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Works Cited

Barber, B. (2004, May). Taking the public out of education. Retrieved February 3, 2016, from http://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=14096

Friedman, M. (1995, June 23). Public schools: Make them private. Retrieved January 31, 2016, from http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html

Fullan, M. (2011). Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform: Overview. Retrieved February 10, 2016, from Fullan website

McPhee, J. (1966). The headmaster: Frank L. Boyden, of Deerfield. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Micklethwait, J., & Wooldridge, A. (2004). Right from the beginning: The roots of American exceptionalism. In The right nation: Conservative power in America (pp. 314-333). New York: The Penguin Press.

Miller, S., & Gerson, J. (2008, March 10). Exterminating public schools in America. Retrieved February 3, 2016, from http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2008/03/exterminating-public-schools.html

Onosko, J. (2011). Obama's Race to the Top leaves children and future citizens behind: The devastating effects of centralization, standardization, and high stakes accountability. Democracy & Education, 19(2), 1-11. Retrieved February 8, 2016, from http://democracyeducationjournal.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=home

Ravitch, D. (2013). Chapter 3 & 4. In Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools. NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Tierney, J. (2013, April 25). The coming revolution in public education. Retrieved February 3, 2016, from http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/the-coming-revolution-in-public-education/275163/

Zhao, Y. (2014). Fatal attraction: America's suicidal quest for educational excellence. In Who's afraid of the big bad dragon?: Why China has the best (and worst) education system in the world (pp. 1-11). Jossey-Bass.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this. Feel free to reach out to me directly.

First off, I apologize. This article is behind schedule. I have lots of excuses, none of which I will deploy. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of asking or, as in, “This or That?” While it is true that one can have This and That, I believe the or question is more imperative to address. For example:

• Do you want to be happy or successful?

• Do you want to be respected for your kindness or for your harshness?

• Would you rather be rich or joyful?

• Is it better to be frantic or focused? Mindful or manic?

• Are you helpful or harmful?

Asking or is so important because it forces us to choose, to prioritize. When we try to be This and That, we end up stretching ourselves thin, often to the breaking point, and sometimes beyond it. Whether it be personal or institutional philosophy, I suggest you explore the or. It may be the essential question you're avoiding.

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For those who are looking for a place to begin, I’ll offer this adaptation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Five Mindfulness Trainings. Answering these questions will likely be a challenge:

• Are you committed to cultivating interdependence and compassion or isolation and indifference?

• Will you protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals or exploit them for personal gain?

• Will you practice openness, nondiscrimination, and critical thinking, or will you welcome anger, fear, greed, and intolerance?

• Are you committed to practicing generosity in your thinking, speaking, and acting, or will you try to be superior to others?

• Will you share your time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need, or will you hoard opportunities to maintain your status?

• Do you see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from your own, or are the happiness and suffering of others not your concern?

• Do you prioritize wealth, fame, power, and pleasure, or do you prioritize service that reduces the suffering of others?

• Are you committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening, or do you speak to obtain and hold attention?

• Are you committed to speaking truthfully, using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope, or will you spread uncertain news and cause division and discord for the purpose of capturing an audience and gaining followers?

• Will you avoid speaking and acting out of anger, or will you use your anger to fuel your words and actions?

• Will you prioritize understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness for all, or will you seek to win prestige at the expense of others, using disparaging remarks and excluding outsiders?

• Are you committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming, or are you committed to entertainment at the expense of your body and mind?

• Are you determined not to use or create products containing toxins that are harmful to the body, mind, and environment, or will you use and create the necessary products to maximize profit and personal gain?

• Will you consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being for one and for all, or will you consume in a way that expedites the attainment of wealth, fame, and power?

Be it thought-provoking or infuriating, I hope you find this process helpful. Ultimately, we can't have it all. We must choose.

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Question for the club: What or questions do you think are important to ask? Also, please feel free to ask me a question at any time. I’ll do my best to share my two cents.

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Following a recent group conversation about New Year’s resolutions and our hopes for 2025, I spent 30 minutes driving home in silence because I was troubled. As one participant explained her rationale behind a pessimistic outlook on the state of the world, she concluded with a sincere wish that Elon Musk blow up in his rocket to Mars. I don’t know this person well, but I think her frustration manifests from good intentions–wanting humans to be more compassionate and helpful and less violent and destructive–but I do not see how Elon Musk exploding in his own space ship gets us there.

What gets us there, is when people, like Elon Musk, are compassionate and helpful rather than violent and destructive, when they use their significant power and influence to ease suffering in the world. Without question, this is a tall order, an impossible one if our expectation is that everyone on Earth will embrace one another in tears of joy. However, at the very least, we have a responsibility to try, and we have to be more creative than wishing death upon those who have strayed from the path of righteousness. I don’t believe that is how we heal the world’s suffering. I don’t believe that is the leadership philosophy we want to practice. Here are my initial thoughts in five quotes and some brief analysis.

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This is true. If adults fail to teach children more mindful ways to live and lead, if we stoke ambitions for wealth, fame, and power–leaving the soft character stuff to chill like a side of asparagus in the shadow of a kids’ chicken tender basket–we are doomed.

Above all else, we should value kindness and compassion–especially when it comes to the distribution of status, respect, and leadership. At the same time, mischief and play are OK. Joy is a good thing. We could all do with a little more good trouble in our lives, and we can stop pretending that we have never shared a mischievous laugh with friends.

Forcing a square peg into a round hole is indicative of immaturity and non-critical thinking. Such coercion only causes damage and distress. We need to be more skillful and patient for someone to adopt a new insight, surrendering a belief that was, up until the turning point, the truth. Here lies much frustration. How can I be patient? If I do not act forcefully, someone else will, and I will lose. Social media or some blustering bully will seize the opportunity if I am too slow and too meek. Fair points. We need to be more skillful.

Forgive me for doubling up on Thich Nhat Hanh, but this one is really the Buddha, and I love it. Imagine a political candidate saying, “Don’t believe anything, not even what I tell you!” This is the kind of leadership we need, and the kind of education our children deserve if they are going to build a healthier society. Humans can take better care of each other and the planet. We can do better, but that will require critical minds (not the blow-people-up-in/with-rockets critical, but the intelligent kind).

Do we have the humility to ask this question? Do we think that our generation has solved the world’s problems? Do we think that we are the best that humanity has to offer? Do we believe that if we raise the youth the same way we were raised, under the same conditions, that there will be a better world? Adults who blame the next generation for their problems are falling into a familiar trap. If younger generations did not solve the problems of their elders, most of us would still live in a world where it was deemed moral and legal to force people into slavery, consider a woman property, and execute someone for being gay (sadly, there are still places in the world that have not gained the insights that these are harmful practices).

What are my resolutions then? Act out of compassion instead of anger. Exercise a critical mind. Become a more skillful teacher.

Happy New Year,

Nick

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Questions for the club: How do you develop young people as valuable resources? And what do you think will “get us there” when it comes to leadership?

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Every moment of our lives has led to this one. Me writing these words. You reading them. Both of us deciding to spend our limited and waning time in these bodies trying to make sense of an issue we deem to be of importance: the state of boys and men and the meaning of masculinity. I appreciate this moment together.

Over a decade ago, I was participating in a training session with the senior staff at my summer camp, and we were setting off in canoes to a nearby island for a group discussion, the topic of which, I confess, I do not remember. I was already in my canoe, looking back at shore as one of my friends began to push his boat into the lake, his fellow canoeist sitting in the front seat, paddle in hand. My friend said, “Seamless,” and then he jumped into the back of the boat and capsized it, dumping him and his equally fully clothed and dry companion into the chilly, June, New Hampshire water. Naturally, we all erupted into laughter, including our now soaking friends (with the slight exception of the victim who was initially, and justifiably, incredulous).

The Blue Cliff Record is a collection of 100 famous Zen koans (a short anecdote or riddle that provokes awakening), and one of them is a dialogue between Emperor Su Tsung and National Teacher Hui Chung. Here is a translation from the Pacific Zen Institute:

Emperor: “After you die, what will you need?”

Teacher: “Build a seamless monument for me.”

Emperor: “Please tell me, Master, what the monument would look like?”

The teacher was silent for a long time; then he asked, “Do you understand?”

Emperor: “I don’t understand.”

There’s more to the koan, and if, like Emperor Su Tsung, you don’t understand, that’s fair. However, when I stumbled upon it recently, I remembered the “seamless” canoe story, and I think I experienced something like an awakening. At least, the idea of seamlessness was heartwarming. It gave me a feeling of liberation—from attachment, isolation, the pull of this and that. A seam connects or separates two distinct pieces. With seamlessness, there is no perceivable connection nor separation. There just is what is. Everything interconnected, free flowing, unfolding like a flower. 

What on Earth does this have to do with masculinity?

Masculinity has often been portrayed as the opposite of femininity. This is problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that masculinity seems to be associated with “bad.” Masculinity is not the opposite of femininity. If anything, it exists because of it. They are interdependent. And they are not two extreme ends of a spectrum, mutually exclusive of the other. To say that a man cannot be feminine has no basis in reality. It is a preference.

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When we teach boys to “be a man,” rather than helping boys to be themselves, we do not help them. Telling a boy to be a certain way is not the same as helping them to find their way. We run into trouble when we start trying to be something. Once we think we are on another level, or built different, or alpha or sigma or him, we are destined to be anything but who we are, and we will never be free. When we teach a boy to be something, he may become a man, but not one he will ever be comfortable or confident with, because that man is a stranger to his true nature. 

There is nothing wrong with boys and men, only misperceptions about what kind of person they should be, and self-fulfilling prophecies based on those perceptions. There is no such thing as the “manosphere,” unless we choose to believe in it. There is no such thing as a “real man,” unless we ignore the plain truth that every man is indeed real. There is no such thing as “boys will be boys,” unless we think boys exist on an island of their own (perhaps resembling Lord of the Flies). We have spent far more time and energy stigmatizing boys and men than we have reintegrating them. That is a real shame. 

I’ve been guilty of these misperceptions. I’ve insisted that boys are suffering from toxic masculinity, that we need to redefine what it means to be a man, that we need to build a new model of masculinity. Within each of these thoughts, there are seams, a patchwork of ideals sewn together by imaginary thread. The truth is, I think, that boys and men don’t need hard lines. I’m not saying they don’t need self-discipline, responsibility, expectations, values, or consequences. I am saying if we keep telling them who they ought to be, they will never be enough, and they will always be discontent. 

Men are 4 times more likely to die by suicide than women (and are 10% less likely to access mental health care). 71% of US opioid deaths occur among men. There has been an 8% increase in the suicide rate among young men aged 15 to 24 from 2020 to 2021, and 15% of young men today–5 times as many as 1990–say they don’t have a close friend (American Institute for Boys and Men, 2024). Boys and men are struggling to find their worth. For lack of a better phrase, many of them are bursting at the seams, and the consequences affect all of us. 

As Dōgen said, “Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.” With each passing day, we have one fewer day here and now. Boys and men, we are not who we see on our screens. Those are not mirrors. We are neither the center of the universe, nor its garbage. Who we think we ought to be is likely not who we will become. And who we are now is everything. We are everything, no matter how hard we resist it. We are dust, and to dust we shall return, no different than any other thing. Our masculinity has no definition because it is seamless, so there is nothing to redefine, only a way to find.

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There’s no specific question for the club, but I’d love to hear any suggestions, insights, or questions you have.

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Thanks for reading!

Nick

Your “best self” is not a thing of the past or the future, not a static state, not some wax person on display. As much as we wish for it, we won’t be in our 20’s forever (or whatever your golden age is). The best self is always changing, with the present. That’s a liberating paradigm shift. Especially when you realize that, as you change, you are becoming something better for others. For example, when I was filled with the energy of youth, I made a good camp counselor. Now that I’m in my 30’s and a touch more boring (?), I’m not so good at living in a bunkhouse, but I have grown into a decent educator. I can be helpful in that space—more patient, thoughtful, wiser than my younger self. However, if I spent all my effort trying to get back in that bunkhouse, trying to be the person I was more than a decade ago, it would be hopeless for me and less than optimal for a group of campers. Likewise, the camp counselor version of me, a nostalgic movie in the past, would be a fish out of water trying to make the cut as a dad, husband, and teacher. For that, I’m grateful to be older. 

So, the best self does not elude you. It’s not through the hidden gateway of a time machine or at the unseen top of a forbidding mountain. It’s here and now. 

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And what of the self? Can you ever really pin that down? I was myself yesterday, and am myself today, and will be myself tomorrow, presumably, yet I can’t think of a single part of myself that will remain unchanged in that time. My cells, my state of mind, the air I breathe, all fleeting. It’s not so different from a snake shedding its skin, an irretrievable shell that must give way for growth. That’s the constant. The one thing that never changes is the fact that everything is always and forever changing. In Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chögyam Trungpa said, “The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.” This includes ourselves. We refuse to believe that our best is beyond us.

Trungpa also said, “Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.” Again we ask, what of the self? Or, more precisely, what of the heart? Is it changing? Indubitably. You can have your heart fail, remove it from your body, get a transplant, and keep living. Unless—we are so guarded, so closed, so fearful—we are unwilling to open up, and we hide our failing heart from the world, keeping it to ourselves, protecting our ego from vulnerability. This would be giving up, a self-destructive trap, a stubborn squabble, for what?

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Question for the club: What tricks, tools, habits, or rituals help you be your “best self” in the present?

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Pride has lots of definitions. 

My favorite: a group of lions forming a social unit. 

The most commonly understood: a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired. 

I’ll argue that, particularly when it comes to leadership, we should avoid pride—and substitute it with respect. For example:

• We take pride in our culture. → We respect our culture.

• Have some pride. → Respect what you do. 

• Our team members feel a sense of pride. → Each individual respects the team. 

• I am so proud of you. → I respect the heck out of you. 

Why respect before pride? Simple. 

Pride is taken. Respect is given. 

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I won’t be a total zealot and suggest that pride must be canceled. It’s not all bad. When someone we admire says, “I’m so proud of you,” that generally feels pretty awesome. But we should investigate the application of the word, for it may be a signal that some ego checking is necessary. 

Principled leaders are givers. 

I recently participated in the Pan-Mass Challenge. It was an incredible experience, not because I was proud of my ability to ride a bicycle, but because of the respect I felt for the compassion, generosity, joy, gratitude, all of the goodness that overflowed throughout the weekend (and during the entire fundraising process). Between the volunteers, the riders, and the supporters, I was in awe of the giving spirit. Everyone had a shared reason for being there. It was all for the benefit of others. Thousands of people working together—all as one—much like a pride of lions, much like a family. 

That’s respect. That’s leadership. That’s the kind of experience that ignites a fire in your belly, electrifies every nerve in your body, triggers a gear you didn’t know was there, and elevates you, with a rush of sensation that feels like a life force pulling you forward, making you grin at the realization that you are finally, wholly present. 

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Question for the club: Have you found any successful strategies for promoting a culture of givers (and for avoiding excessive pride and a taking mentality)? 

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Every so often, an idea clicks into place like a puzzle coming together. It’s nice when it happens (e.g., the concept of sustaining alignment instead of juggling the unworkable work-life balance). This new idea doesn’t have so many puzzle pieces. No complaints from me on that score.

Initially, I was thinking about a progression of skills for boys to practice in an effort to develop a positive masculine identity, and the five C’s—courage, confidence, composure, consciousness, and compassion—clicked. I still teach the skills to boys, and, the more I have thought about them, the more I feel the five C’s are applicable (and desirable) for leadership. We’ll discuss the benefits of deliberate training with these five skills, as well as the downward spiral that occurs when selfishness, distraction, volatility, timidness, and panic rule the day.

Courage

We begin with courage. 

As Maya Angelou said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” Every person has the capacity for courage: the will to act, despite the fear that those actions will bring painful consequences. 

How does one practice the skill of courage? By doing scary things. Once done, and you realize, like Sanka Coffie, that you aren’t dead yet, things are less scary. 

Confidence

Confidence follows courage. When people are confident, they shed self-doubt. They are honest and vulnerable. They find their voice and use their full potential to make a positive impact. 

Leaders should be confident, not arrogant. 

Confidence is believing you belong, that you are a part of the greater good. Arrogance is believing you are better than everyone else, that you are above and thus entitled to good fortune. 

How does confidence become a skill? Reps. Countless, mindful reps. While courage deals with the unknown, confidence, built upon many successful reps, is a result of knowing.

Composure

Confidence leads to composure. Leaders who develop composure, even some of the time, will be more effective critical thinkers and problem solvers. Without the ability to practice composure and self-discipline, selfish and non-critical thinking will follow. 

The uncomposed leader is doomed to an endless game of Whac-A-Mole. 

There are lots of ways to practice the skill of composure (mindfulness, meditation, journaling, yoga, etc.). Whatever training you choose to invest in, it could make all the difference when the world goads you with some irresistible bait. 

And here I feel obligated to include a link to Zidane’s infamous headbutt, a timeless cautionary tale of what happens when we take the bait.

Consciousness

The skill of composure allows for consciousness. Awareness is the first step to doing good in the world, which, I argue, is each person’s responsibility. 

However, it is easy to get distracted, and it is difficult for leaders to resist the pressure to innovate, produce, perform, profit, repeat. With this pressure comes a barrage of bottomless productivity rabbit holes riddled with detours (more distraction). 

Becoming skillful in consciousness—the ability to do one thing at a time, to see things as they are, to be still—is the key to perceiving injustice and suffering, and therefore the path to freedom and good health. As someone who routinely fails to avoid distraction, I realize how much more mental training I ought to do (the same kind that generates composure) if I want to lead from a state of awareness.

Compassion

We arrive at the tip of the arrow. 

The point. 

Albert Einstein said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” Compassion training isn’t all that complicated (if it is, consider that a red flag). Be kind as a habit. Automate giving. Put others first. Water a plant. Write a nice letter. 

When leaders practice the altruistic skill of consistently and unconditionally practicing compassion, they lead with purpose. Purpose has a gravitational pull. Without it, we have the feeling of being lost in space. 

Aim with compassion at your purpose, and you’ll likely hit the target.

Beware the panic slide

Now that I know the five C’s, am I all set? Nope. Not really. Actually, never. What goes up must come down. 

1. Selfishness: When leaders put their personal interests first, what matters comes last.

2. Distraction: Leaders who aren’t paying attention are not leaders.    

3. Volatility: Pompeii, August 24, 79 A.D.—everyone is running for their life, and they do not like it. 

4. Timidness: The timid leader is scared of everything, whimpering about something, and confident in nothing.

5. Panic: A fish out of water is in control of your body. 

Do not fear. If you’ve trained well, you can escape that slide before you come crashing down on the panic button. Perhaps I’ll talk more about escaping the panic slide in a future post. For now, trust in the C’s and beware their opposites.

Final notes on training

First, there are a few important questions about training to consider:

1. What do you prioritize when training your team (especially during onboarding)? What do people learn first? If these skills/topics aren’t the most essential things for people to know with regards to your team’s purpose and culture, you have more questions to ask.

2. What does your team think about prior training? How do you know? And how does that inform the decisions you make about future training? 

3. When does your team do “soft skills” training (like the five C’s)? What proactive culture training do you do? What signals do you look for that might indicate a need for reactive training? What percentage of your training is proactive v. reactive? I’d strive for roughly 80% proactive and 20% reactive.

And the final note. There are very few trainings that have a lasting impact. Sometimes, it’s because the training isn’t so great. Most of the time, regardless of quality, no matter how high or low we feel post training, somewhere down the road of our busy lives, whether it be a subtle drift or full blown panic slide, we return to baseline. 

The trick to effective training is this: it is repeated over time, like all good practice, building upon shared values, reminding us of that light above the clouds, the same light within each of us that gives us the energy to push forward with this exciting human project. 

At my school, we have a tradition called the sunset climb. It’s my personal favorite (and there’s definitely a few C’s involved). Our graduating students hike the local mountain at sunset and, one at a time, express their gratitude for their peers and mentors. It’s an emotional moment where kids and teachers feel the weight, the kind that feels like an elephant on your chest, of close friends parting ways at the end of a hard-fought journey. 

Every spring, this tradition reminds me why I teach, and I know that if there were more “sunset climbs” sprinkled throughout the year, I’d feel even better about my chosen profession. When you think about training, instead of going through the motions, think about creating these sunset moments. 

Remember the tip of the arrow: compassion. Be conscious of the point. 

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Question for the club: What helpful tools, graphics, mnemonics, etc. have been useful leadership guides for you? 

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A good story escalates. From one point to another, we follow its lead. We want to see what will happen next. We go there willingly, eagerly. Though unspoken, we enter into a marriage of sorts: I take you, the story to which I am dedicated, to have and to hold, for better or worse, so on and so forth, till the end do us part—or till you betray my faith, lose my interest, or are guilty of shoddiness. I’ve been reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, not at all what I was expecting from a book but a happy surprise that has made me think. A great story can teach us a lot about leadership. This should be fun. 

Don’t make things happen for no reason

Simple enough. There should be a reason for everything you do, especially everything you ask (or require) other people to do. Meaningless work is deflating. When someone can’t discern a useful purpose for a so-called responsibility, that’s a problem. In these cases, there is a need for better communication or a few punches of the delete button.  

Refuse to do shoddy work

There is no audience for shoddy work. Even if the audience is properly hoodwinked, shoddiness does not stand the test of time. Losing credibility is one outcome. Setting the example that doing poor work deliberately is acceptable is another. Both scenarios are ruinous. 

Take responsibility and commit 

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin popularized the idea of “extreme ownership.” The leader, like the writer, is responsible for everything. When the story is bad, even bits and pieces of it, there is one person to blame. Leadership necessitates commitment, and commitment sustains a sense of responsibility. Here lies an organic synergy, a fuel of sorts, that drives a leader forward despite inevitable obstacles and setbacks.   

Create both patterns and escalation

People love patterns. Patterns give us comfort. They ease the mind. Patterns—one might call them habits, routines, rituals—are useful and effective. Used well, they drive forward progress. When patterns become sacred cows, however, that progress plateaus into complacency. As noted in the introduction, a good leader knows when and how to escalate. Disruptions in the pattern are interesting. They pull the audience in and beg the question: what now? 

Use Freytag’s Pyramid for leadership strategy

Remember Freytag’s Pyramid from English class? Not only does it outline the structure of most stories, but it can also chart a well-executed leadership strategy. 1) Provide the necessary exposition for a foundation of understanding, 2) incite the rising action, building curiosity and enthusiasm for the unfolding narrative, 3) arrive at a discernible climax the audience can appreciate, 4) wrap up loose ends without losing interest in the falling action, and 5) communicate a thoughtful resolution where, at least for a moment, the dust has settled and the story is clear.   

It’s OK to be surprised

I used to love the improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? For me, the best jokes surprise even the joker, after which everyone shares a good laugh. More than one author has advised writers to be surprised by their work (i.e., don’t plot out the whole story and see what happens). This is good advice for the timid leader who wants everything to be neat and peachy. One cannot achieve greatness without preparation and lots of hard work, but life-altering discoveries are beneath the surface and above the clouds, in the unexplored realms of darkness and light, the places of astonishment. Disengage autopilot. Have the courage to stray from the plan. Drop the index cards, forget the lecture, feel the heart pounding in the chest. Aren’t we all wandering around the tub looking for something to take our breath away?        

People enter a story in one state hoping to emerge in another

People read a story in search of a transformative experience. In general, we look for things—products, services, people—that will be life-changing. Leaders who create a transformative experience will have a captive audience. Of course, this is easier said than done, and delivering on this promise requires incredible attention to detail, authenticity, an understanding of the human condition, and a certain boldness in exposing the vulnerability of that condition, the terrifying yet exhilarating truth that nothing will ever be the same again. 

Revise, revise, revise 

And when you think you’ve got the story looking pretty good, revise the heck out of it, with fresh eyes and a critical mind. There’s a line to cut, a detail to add, a word to change, a character to strengthen, a thread to weave. Revision is arduous, no doubt about it, but it’s the difference between entertainment and art. Leadership is an art. It takes patience and diligence, a willingness to turn every stone over and over with curiosity, even joy. To gloss over revision is to stay in the plastic kiddie pool on a sweltering day. It can only hold so much water, never enough to dive in and reach that cool deliverance. 

There’s more. Isn’t that invigorating? When it seems like every good idea has been had already, every great discovery worked out by some superior being who beats us to the punch, there’s always more to uncover, often right under our noses. Whether we register it or not, a good story reminds us of that. It makes us a part of that uncovering, a witness to a revelation that matters. That is the gift of a good story and a good leader alike: to feel a part of, to feel right.

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We have a conundrum. We live in a world that wants free expression in the midst of competing dogmas. Being a “good leader” in this landscape is comparable to navigating a minefield in muddied waters. Is it best then to just keep one’s mouth shut and stay out of the fray, or to run head first into it and hope the mines detonate harmlessly in one’s wake? Before wading into muddied waters, we might call to mind Lao Tzu’s question: “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?” Whether we like it or not, we all must enter the minefield, and we improve our chances of emerging on the other side by slowing down and thinking critically.   

I’ve found the work of (Thinking, Fast and Slow), Hans Rosling (Factfulness), and Robert Sapolsky (Behave) quite helpful. Drawing from their findings, what follows is a list of threats that prevent a person from seeing things as they are—and accompanying checks to make sensible decisions. To go all in on the muddy-water-minefield analogy, consider the threats to be all that churned up mud and the checks…the still water that, with patience, reveals a clearer path forward. 

• Threat: We can be lazy when we think. Our brain will automate thoughts if it sees an easy solution. In other words, we sometimes “go with our gut,” rather than rational thought. Check: Practice deliberate thinking. Double check your conclusions, seek feedback from others, and invest time and energy into decisions. 

• Threat: Our brains engage autopilot with certain cues (e.g., you receive an email from your favorite clothing brand announcing a sale, and then you get lost online browsing items that you had no intention of buying moments before). Check: Give yourself time to process information. Beware triggered responses, and go through the steps of composing yourself, analyzing real data, and exercising good judgment based on all the facts. 

• Threat: Our brains form quick judgments based on prior experiences, leading to the “halo effect” (a positive feeling about a person leads you to see everything they do in a positive light) and “confirmation bias” (a tendency to agree with and blindly accept information that supports your personal beliefs). Check: Since this can happen unconsciously, it is important to lay out the data gathered on people and concepts before sizing them up. To avoid erroneous conclusions, we must be critical thinkers. Honor the full body of work. Remember that everyone thinks they are right—and that everyone is equally capable of being wrong. 

• Threat: Our brains have dramatic filters. In particular, we focus on negative events. Check: To overcome the “negativity bias,” try to recognize at least one positive idea for every negative one you have about someone or something. Weigh those against one another rather than leaving positive ideas off the scale altogether. A catastrophic negative may ultimately weigh more than a string of positives. Nonetheless, this practice helps one escape the negativity tunnel and see that good things happen—all of the time. 

• Threat: When we experience “cognitive ease,” we are more likely to make quick, thoughtless decisions. Check: Create “cognitive strain.” Chronic stress and exceeding optimal stress levels will lead to burnout. However, the decision-making process should not be nonchalant or heedless. Jumping on the first solution that pops in your head may look decisive. In reality, that is recklessness, not good sense—and more appropriate behavior for a middle schooler, give or take. Thoughts come and go without any thought, literally. Creating and embracing tension leads to fewer mistakes in judgment. 

• Threat: We are more afraid of losing than we are motivated by winning. Check: The ego is a powerful spur, and people make decisions based on the fear of personal loss, even when significant gains are plausible. Normalize losing. It will happen. The wise leader studies the evidence, understands the odds, accepts the outcome, and moves forward. 

• Threat: We create mental images to explain ideas and concepts, and we refer to these images when making decisions. We also favor these images while overlooking others. Check: Instead of imagining how things should be, analyze quality data points and focus on how they are. People cannot predict the future, and the images they create are based on their own limited perspective. Embracing the perspectives of others improves one’s ability to discover answers that would have remained hidden in plain sight. 

• Threat: Biases and cultural context impact perception and decision-making. Check: Leaders should attend to differences in ability, ethnicity, family status, national origin/geography, race, religion, sexual orientation, and social group. When leaders develop an awareness of their own cultural lens—and the lenses of others—they can avoid favoring people who look and act like they do (i.e., non-critical thinking). Never underestimate the power of us/them thinking, the psychology of preferring the in-group over the out-group. Expand your “us.” 

With these checks in hand, I’d like to finish with a leadership goal, one that is focused on helping people achieve their full potential, which in turn produces more capable hands to make use of the aforementioned checks. The goal comes from . His guideline is straightforward and reasonable: “Nobody with a competency to perform a task should ever be held back from achieving what they can achieve because of some characteristic over which they have no say” (2019). Yes, biases and cultural context impact perception and decision-making, and it’s thoughtful to check that threat. However it’s also important that we don’t overcorrect the threat while falling for another: deliberately creating out-groups based on characteristics over which people have no say.  

In our noisy world, it has become far too easy to judge others based on insufficient, misleading, or illusory information (I appreciate ’ courage in addressing these topics on his Making Sense podcast, most recently in episodes 366 and 367 discussing urban warfare and campus protests). To judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin—as Dr. King hoped we would—requires us to check our superficial conclusions at the door, to suspend our agenda and enter the business of relationships with an open mind, to slow down, to be quiet, to close our eyes and see. Off to the minefield we go. 

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