Opinion psychology

Lessons From the Samurai: The Secret to Always Being at Your Best

Eric Barker

12:01 AM ET

Reading a few books by samurai there was one thing I saw repeated again and again and again that surprised me.

It has nothing to do with swords, fighting or strategy. Actually, quite the opposite when you think about it.

What did so many of history’s greatest warriors stress as key to success and optimal performance?

“Being calm.”

And it wasn’t one random samurai mentioning it off the cuff.

We’re talking about some of the greatest samurai who ever lived writing about it over and over for five hundred years:

Shiba Yoshimasa (1349-1410):

For warriors in particular, if you calm your own mind and discern the inner minds of others, that may be called the foremost art of war.

Suzuki Shosan (1579-1655):

When you manage to overcome your own mind, you overcome myriad concerns, rise above all things, and are free. When you are overcome by your own mind, you are burdened by myriad concerns, subordinate to things, unable to rise above. “Mind your mind; guard it resolutely. Since it is the mind that confuses the mind, don’t let your mind give in to your mind.”

Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714):

A noble man controls frivolity with gravity, awaits action in a state of calm. It is important for the spirit to be whole, the mood steady, and the mind unmoving.

Adachi Masahiro (1780-1800):

The imperturbable mind is the secret of warfare.

And, of course, the man probably considered the greatest samurai of them all, Miyamoto Musashi, in his classic, The Book of Five Rings:

Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased.

Nobody really needs to sell us on the value of staying calm.

You know the benefits: you think clearly, you don’t make rash decisions, you don’t get scared.

But how do you get and stay calm?

Our society is energy drinks, 24 hour news cycle, Starbucks on every corner and relentless social media feeds. GO GO GO.

And even funnier, much of what we know about relaxing and being calm is dead wrong.

The samurai had answers. And they line up with the science. Here we go.

The Scientific Samurai’s Guide To Staying Chill

The samurai trained in martial arts a lot and they thought about death a lot.

Really, they thought about death a lot.

Via Code of the Samurai: A Contemporary Translation of the Bushido Shoshins:

One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night, from the morning of New Year’s Day through the night of New Year’s Eve.

Hey, you would too. Death was pretty much in their job description, right?

But research shows training very hard and imagining the worst that could happen are two powerful techniques for promoting calm.

Samurais trained relentlessly. They strongly believed you should always “be prepared” (they were like the deadliest Boy Scouts imaginable.)

Research shows that preparation reduces fear because when things get tense, you don’t have to think.

Who survives catastrophic scenarios like samurai battles? The people who have prepared.

Via David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart:

According to Johnson and Leach, the sort of people who survive are the sort of people who prepare for the worst and practice ahead of time… These people don’t deliberate during calamity because they’ve already done the deliberation the other people around them are just now going through.

And how about all that thinking about death?

“Negative Visualization” is one of the main tools of ancient Stoicism and science backs it up.

Really thinking about just how awful things can be often has the ironic effect of making you realize they’re not that bad.

From my interview with Oliver Burkeman, author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking:

It’s what the Stoics call, “the premeditation” – that there’s actually a lot of peace of mind to be gained in thinking carefully and in detail and consciously about how badly things could go. In most situations you’re going to discover that your anxiety or your fears about those situations were exaggerated.

Okay, but you don’t want to spend all day training in swordfighting or thinking about death. I get that. Frankly, neither do I.

So what’s the key here?

Research shows the most powerful way to combat stress or anxiety — to stay calm — is to have a feeling of control.

For samurai, training tirelessly and visualizing the worst that could happen gave them a feeling of control while in battle.

The US military dramatically increased Navy SEAL passing rates by teaching recruits psychological methods for gaining a feeling of control.

Without a feeling of control, when stress gets high we literally can’t think straight.

Via Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long:

Amy Arnsten studies the effects of limbic system arousal on prefrontal cortex functioning. She summarized the importance of a sense of control for the brain during an interview filmed at her lab at Yale. “The loss of prefrontal function only occurs when we feel out of control. It’s the prefrontal cortex itself that is determining if we are in control or not. Even if we have the illusion that we are in control, our cognitive functions are preserved.” This perception of being in control is a major driver of behavior.

Anything that gives you a feeling of control over your situation helps you keep your cool.

So what does it for you?

More information? Practice? Support from others?

That’s the thing that will help you keep your cool like a samurai.

Note I said “feeling of control” — it doesn’t even have to be legit control, just feeling like you do can work wonders.

Even a good luck charm can help — because good luck charms really do work.

Good luck charms provide a feeling of control, and that feeling of control actually makes people perform better with them.

Via The Courage Quotient: How Science Can Make You Braver:

…people with a lucky charm performed significantly better than did the people who had none. That’s right, having a lucky charm will make you a better golfer, should you care about such things, and improve your cognitive performance on tasks such as memory games.

Sum Up

I know what some of you are thinking: Calm? Aren’t samurai the ones always screaming at the top of their lungs while waving a sword?

Thing is, that was a deliberate tactic to frighten their enemies. Musashi explains:

In single combat, also, you must use the advantage of taking the enemy unawares by frightening him with your body, long sword, or voice, to defeat him… In single combat, we make as if to cut and shout “Ei!” at the same time to disturb the enemy, then in the wake of our shout we cut with the long sword.

Sneaky. These are the kind of smart ideas that come from a cool head.

The samurai were great warriors. They fought against their enemies in epic battles.

But as Musashi and the others make clear in their writings about being calm, the most important battle is to overcome yourself.

Via The Book of Five Rings:

Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.

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Brown v. Board of Education: Few Revolutions Are Ever Truly Complete

Jon Meacham

May 17, 2014

Sixty years since the historic Supreme Court ruling, the work of making equal opportunity real for all Americans is not over.

It was supposed to have been a slow news day. Reporters covering the Supreme Court had been told not to expect very much on Monday, May 17, 1954, when the court’s press officer shifted signals. “Reading of the segregation decisions is about to begin in the courtroom,” said Banning E. Whittington, while putting on his coat and leading a pack of journalists up a flight of marble steps into the chamber, and into history, according to The New York Times.

It was 1 p.m. when newly confirmed Chief Justice Earl Warren began to read the opinion of the court in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The key sentence was unpoetic, but it belongs in American scripture as surely as any words of Jefferson’s or Lincoln’s do: “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” With these words the American Revolution that had begun in the aftermath of the French and Indian War on the North American continent in the latter half of the 18^th century entered a new and dazzling phase.

In his important history of the pre-Brown South, the late writer John Egerton brilliantly captured the moment of Warren’s announcement 60 Mays ago. “In the most fundamental way, everything came together around this court decision, around the issue of race and education,” Egerton wrote in his 1994 book Speak Now Against the Day.

For the past quarter of a century, Americans in general and Southerners in particular had been contending with one another over rights and privileges and responsibilities, over race and color, caste and class. They might have chosen another issue, such as the right to vote, as the primary vehicle for this monumental debate. They might have, but they didn’t. Every American citizen had a direct interest in public education; millions of them saw it as the key to the future well-being of their families. The ballot was crucial, without a doubt, but education struck every chord on the scale: age, sex, race, religion, occupation, residence, language, nationality.

Two points come to mind on this 60^th anniversary. The first is about the primacy of politics and the indispensability, in our system of popular government, of at once respecting and shaping public opinion. The nation was fortunate that Warren was where he was when the crisis of the Brown decision came. As a politician—a former Republican governor of California and vice-presidential nominee on the 1948 GOP ticket that lost to President Truman—Warren knew that a unanimous court was essential in such a difficult hour. And so he worked hard behind the scenes to produce a 9-0 decision, work that included bringing around justices from Alabama and Kentucky. The Brown opinion was the work of a man who respected politics despite its inherent limitations and frustrations.

The second point, and it is related to the first, is that few revolutions are ever truly complete. The 1954 decision was epochal—but it was only the beginning. The following year the court returned with an enforcement decision to make clear that it was quite serious about ending the segregationist order made possible by Plessy v. Ferguson. And as we all know, the work of making the promise of equal opportunity real for all Americans is not over even now. That’s worth remembering on even the slowest of news days.

Opinion Religion

Sudan’s Real Crisis Is the Disregard for Female Life

Kimberly L. Smith

May 16, 2014

The death sentence for a pregnant Sudanese woman who refuses to renounce her Christian faith shows that the government's depravity extends far beyond religion and deep into the heart of humanity.

The world was shaken by the news Thursday that a pregnant woman was sentenced to death for apostasy. Meriam Yehya Ibrahim is eight months pregnant, and because she will not renounce her Christian faith, she will be hanged soon after she gives birth. In Sudan, children must be raised the religion of their father. The government claims that because Ibrahim’s father was a Muslim, she must remain so and her marriage to a Christian man is invalid.

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim’s story resonates with everything I’ve experienced in my 10 years of working in Sudan and South Sudan. Ibrahim’s story reminds me of a dear friend of mine, Mary Achai, whose Muslim slave master set her on fire, along with three of her children, because she ran away when she learned that he planned to sell her 10-year-old daughter as a virgin bride. Although Mary is permanently marred inside and out, she survived the fire. Her 10-year-old daughter, toddler and nursing baby did not.

Rightly so, much emphasis is being given to the fact that Ibrahim’s sentence of death is in retaliation of her choice to be Christian. However, fundamentally, the crisis in Sudan is not one of religion but rather a complete disregard for the dignity of life, especially female life.

I know Muslim women in South Sudan who the Islamic Janjaweed raped with sticks as they mocked, “This is so you cannot make black babies.” I know men who’ve been beaten, had their teeth knocked out and forced to swallow them and had limbs hacked off as they watched their wives and children dragged behind the tail of a horse into slavery because their skin was black instead of the beautiful bronze color of their Arab-descendant fellow countrymen. I know a beautiful young schoolteacher whose father forced her to leave her job to marry a man who already had four wives so that he could garner a few more cows. I’ve sat through bomb blitzes targeted at the indigenous people of the Nuba Mountains, which is largely Islamic, simply because they are black and yet dare to proclaim their right to life, liberty and the use of their homeland’s natural resources.

The depravity of the Sudanese government extends far beyond religion and deep into the heart of humanity. A people will not truly have freedom of religion unless it is built upon a foundation of the sanctity of life.

I find myself cheering for Ibrahim as a thundercloud of hope, proclaiming “Life is worth dying for.” Mohamed Jar Elnabi, her attorney, echoes the sonorous claps of Ibrahim’s life as he endures death threats, social castigation, and financial hardship for defending her.

From half a world away, it is tempting to turn our faces away from Ibrahim and Elnabi, but in so doing we would be turning our backs upon our own human dignity. There may be no financial incentive to pursue the arrest of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president who sets the pace for this human debasement and who the International Criminal Court has indicted for war crimes against the indigenous people of Sudan; in fact, it would cost us something. But I find myself wondering what cost we pay by not demanding the pursuit of justice beyond our political or personal gain.

To date, the embassies of Britain, the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands have called on Sudan to respect Ibrahim’s right to change her faith. Isn’t this woman’s life, and the principle for which she is willing to lay it down, worth more than a “call”?

Kimberly L. Smith is the president and co-founder of Make Way Partners, the only indigenously operated relief organization providing orphan care and anti-trafficking efforts in the Sudan and South Sudan. Smith has been serving alongside the Sudanese people for 10 years. Make Way Partners currently provides complete care to 1,100 orphans and employs 300 Sudanese, many of whom are former victims of sex trafficking. Smith is also the author of the award-winning book Passport through Darkness, which chronicles much of her experience in the Sudans. For more information on Kimberly L. Smith and Make Way Partners, please visit www.makewaypartners.org.

Opinion Humor

Do We Really Prefer Louis CK’s Take on Womanhood to an Actual Woman’s?

Kath Barbadoro @kathbarbadoro

May 16, 2014

Louis C.K. attends the premiere of "Blue Jasmine" at the Museum of Modern Art on July 22, 2013 in New York City. Evan Agostini—Invision/AP

Who better to tell you about how women are treated than an actual woman? Why do we need someone like Louie to make our experiences palatable?

If you’re a fat woman, your ears tend to prick up when you hear that somebody allowed One Of Us on TV. If she’s doing something other than falling down or stuffing her face, you’re impressed. If she’s portrayed as a smart, funny person who calls out the show’s protagonist for his disinterest due to her size, your ears don’t just prick up, your jaw just about falls to the floor, too. It’s a rare thing. A recent episode of “Louie,” comedian Louis CK’s fantastic FX show, has received a lot of attention and praise for portraying a fat female character as something other than a punchline.

CK has received accolades for his takes on everything from cultural issues to personal ones. He’s hailed as one of our generation’s comedic geniuses, and rightly so. However, it seems much of the praise he gets for tackling topics like race and gender belies an implicit preference we have for our information on these issues — while we like to hear progressive stances on things like racial and gender inequality, we’d still prefer they come from white men.

Of course, the main reason people defer to Louis CK’s perspective on these subjects is because he’s extraordinarily gifted, not because he’s white and male. But it’s interesting to me that CK’s “stances” on these issues, hailed as groundbreaking — that being white in America is easy, that being a fat woman is tough — are not new comedic premises. They’re things non-white-male performers have been saying since they took the stage. It’s not that I think CK should stop talking about it, because I’m grateful for his perspective. I’m just uncomfortable with how much easier it is for people to swallow these ideas when they come out of his mouth than out of the mouths of the people he’s actually talking about.

I think the problem, like all problems in 2014, can be illustrated by a terrible Upworthy headline. The website posted a clip of CK’s excellent bit about white privilege on their website under the headline “Sometimes It Takes A White Dude To Get Real About Racism.” It should be obvious why that’s ridiculous. Non-White Dudes have been “Getting Real” about Racism for quite awhile. It’s just that for most of history, White Dudes have been lynching them for it. Now, we just accuse them of “making everything about race” instead. A more accurate title for that post: “If A Black Comedian Said This, He’d Be Stuck Doing Urban Comedy Nights Forever.”

It isn’t just issues of race. CK also frequently deals with gender inequality in his work in a way that is hailed as unprecedented — particularly his take on women’s vulnerability to sexual assault. While I’ve seen many women talk about the issues Louie covers onstage, few have been able to achieve mainstream success, and even fewer have been lauded for their incisive social commentary. Why is that?

I think there are a couple things going on — one is the idea that as a person who has not experienced sexism, CK is free to form an “objective” opinion on the issue, rather than having his position tainted by personal bias. But we’re talking about people’s lived experiences. Who better to tell you about how women are treated than an actual woman? Why do we need someone like Louie to make our experiences palatable?

Another issue is the fact that in entertainment culture, white and male are considered “neutral.” All types of audiences are presumed able to identify with white male protagonists, but the idea that people could enjoy a creative work with a different type of person at its center still seems to be novel. These types of creative works are sorted into special interest categories, intended for specific demographics — “chick flicks,” the aforementioned “urban comedy nights,” and so on. They’re the stuff of genre, not of High Culture. As such, they’re precluded from the kind of audience and accolades “Louie” receives. When these works aren’t ignored, they’re usually considered preachy or whiny — they make the audience feel bad.

Louis seems aware of this. On the show, his date tells him, “You can talk about how you’re overweight and it’s adorable, but if I say it, they call the suicide hotline on me.” I get that. I’m a comedian, and a fat woman, and I talk about it onstage. When I use the f-word to describe myself, the audience gets uncomfortable. They “Awwww” at me sympathetically, but the last thing I want is pity. I want laughter and, hopefully, understanding. I don’t want someone else to have to mediate that understanding for me.

Kath Barbadoro is an Austin, Tex. based stand up comedian.

Opinion feminism

Dear (Female) Grads: You’ve Learned How to Be Perfect. Now Change

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman

May 16, 2014

The real world, you see, requires an entirely different skill set, one the guys have been busy mastering

Congratulations, ladies. Many of you are or will soon be gliding across the stage to receive your hard-earned bachelor’s degrees — 25% more of you will earn one than your fellow young men, by the way. The knowledge you’ve acquired is impressive. You’ve aced exams and turned in practically perfect papers. You are justifiably proud of your elegant Spanish subjunctives and facility with algorithms. You’ve learned to play by the rules, to impress, to please and to be well liked. For 15 years you’ve dominated the classroom.

Now take everything you’ve been taught, and forget it. The real world, you see, requires an entirely different skill set. It’s a shame that nobody warned you.

The metric that matters now is the one the guys have been busy mastering. You’ve seen it — the one governing all that unruly behavior on the sidelines of your winning game. It’s a style that involves breaking rules, ignoring insults, letting mistakes roll off of backs and moving forward with half-finished reports and imperfect work. It’s the sort of behavior you’ve all but ignored. But pay close attention now, because your new reality will reward risk taking and failure more than perfection. It will celebrate action, even of the messy sort, over inaction. And it will demand confidence at least as much as competence. All of that good-girl behavior that got you to this impressive summit doesn’t breed success in the rough-and-tumble of professional life.

Carol Dweck, the Stanford Psychologist and best-selling author of Mindset, puts this paradox to us bluntly: “If life were one long grade school,” she told us, “women would rule the world.”

The classroom is, she explains, at least for now, our ideal habitat. Rules and expectations are clear. Orderly, considerate behavior is valued. Mistakes and failure — not so much. And look at the data. We thrive in academia. We get more degrees than men, more postgraduate degrees and, now, even more Ph.D.s. But somewhere between the classroom and the cubicle, the rules change and women don’t fare so well.

Your mothers, like the two of us, learned this lesson the hard way, watching the guys around them rise to the top — seemingly on a wave of bravado that had little to do with diligence and ability. They and we didn’t realize that sometimes just joining the fray, taking chances, imperfectly or not, was as critical to winning the corner office as ability and hard work.

So, in the interests of teaching all of you what it took us far too long to realize, we’re done congratulating you. We’re not going to tell you that you’re terrific, or that you just need to believe in yourself and everything will turn out well because you are so perfect.

Instead, here’s some unvarnished advice on what it really takes to succeed in the professional world you are about to enter.

1. Drive a stake through perfection. This is going to be a hard addiction to break, so start small. In professional life, getting something done is substantially more critical than getting it perfect, and output really matters. The more time you spend focusing on dotting every i or crossing every t, the more likely you are to miss opportunities.

2. Do more, think less. This will flow naturally from doing away with perfection. The more we think and ruminate and consider and analyze, the less likely we are to act. Soon we’ll see our colleagues have already floated three ideas while we’ve been busy stewing. When in doubt, act.

3. Fail fast. This is the natural consequence of Nos. 1 and 2. And yes, ladies, failure is a good thing. When you aren’t worried about being perfect anymore, you can act and take risks, and that will mean failure. Failing fast is new techie buzz phrase — and one that’s extremely useful for us because it’s an easier way to see failure as success. The thinking is that the world is moving too fast to spend years on the perfect prototype. Test drive ideas, fail, learn and move on. Look for strategic risks. All of this builds confidence.

4. Toughen your hide. Hillary Clinton recently advised young women to take a leaf out of the male playbook and grow the skin of a rhinoceros. Not attractive, but spot on. She was referring to the insidious female habit of clinging to criticism. Let it go. Your boss/friend/colleague is not still thinking about that email or comment or performance five days later. Nor should you be. Try this reframing: Isn’t it slightly egotistical to think you and your foibles are top of mind for everyone? Or this one: When you start to feel emotional — teary, angry, whatever it is — use those feelings not as a jumping-off point for rumination, but for action.

5. Nudge, don’t soothe. Don’t just give your friends a warm shoulder to lean on. Women are masterful at providing sympathy and support. But too much listening can encourage pointless rumination. And often we avoid telling friends the truths that would really help them overcome bouts of self-doubt and find more fulfillment. Encourage them to be bold or take risks or ask for a promotion or to just stop dwelling. Be frank. You can help your friend’s confidence more by giving her a tough, well-pointed nudge than by endlessly telling her she’s fabulous just as she is. Insist she do the same for you.

6. You don’t have to be a jerk to be confident. Now that we’ve asked you to learn all these new skills, we want to reassure you — you can do it all without being a jerk. Many women see male confidence as Mad Men–style swagger, and just know it won’t fit. The two of us know from experience that when we act like men, it rarely works. And we’re not just talking about all the studies that show women are penalized for being too aggressive. That’s still true, but it’s changing. The fact is, we must be comfortable with our display of confidence. So raise your hand, sit at the table, apply for that job that’s a bit out of reach, but don’t lose those qualities that make you uniquely female and uniquely valuable. Listen, conciliate, negotiate, collaborate, include. Those are powerful qualities in today’s workplace when employed with purpose. As Christine Lagarde told us, be authentic — dare the difference.

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are the authors of the New York Times best seller The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance — What Women Should Know. Kay is the anchor of BBC World News America, based in Washington, D.C. She is also a frequent contributor to Meet the Press and Morning Joe, and a regular guest host for the Diane Rehm Show on NPR. Shipman is a regular contributor to Good Morning America and other national broadcasts for ABC News. She joined the morning broadcast in May 2001 and is based in the network’s Washington, D.C., bureau.

Opinion Education

New Orleans Charter Schools Shouldn’t Treat Students Like Prisoners

Kenyatta Collins

May 16, 2014

Strict discipline structures emphasize behavior over academic performance.

Is my high school, Lake Area New Tech, a prison or school? Students arrive ready for school every morning, but unfortunately must wait outside the building until security guards unlock the doors at 7:30 a.m. It could be raining, hailing, or sleeting, but they will NOT open the doors until then. Once the doors are unlocked, it takes the guards 15 to 20 minutes to search each student and check for uniform violations. That leaves us with just a few minutes to eat breakfast before class starts at 8 a.m. That’s not enough time for 600 students to make it through the cafeteria line. On a typical morning, we are treated like prisoners, which causes students to react in a variety of negative ways.

Some students break the rules in response to how they are treated. I know how they feel because I was once punished for an act of “rebellion.” At my school, female students are required to wear skirts and socks of a certain length. One day I arrived at school without the proper socks and was told by my principal that I had two options: I could either go to in-school suspension or get my parents to bring the right socks. This made me angry and I gave my principal an earful. But I didn’t want to end up in in-school suspension with more than 30 other students so I called my mother and asked her to bring the correct socks. It took her at least a half hour to bring them, meaning I lost that half hour of class. After going through that frustrating experience, I was upset for the nearly the whole day. I am the top ranking student in my class with a 4.5 grade point average, and also participate in sports and contribute a lot to my school. Why should a student in my position—or any student at all—be treated like a prisoner?

My school is not alone. The charter schools that have opened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina are beyond strict. The rigid discipline structures that have been placed inside these schools are not effective. In many schools students are expected to walk in straight lines, remain silent, and wear a full uniform at all times. These discipline structures focus too much on behavior rather than academic performance, which should be administrators’ number one priority if they want to help students excel. The only benefit we get from abiding by these rules is to look like young professionals. Yet what good will that do us if our test scores and academic performance are low? In order to become professionals we must succeed in academics, which is something we are unable to do if we’re being held in detention or suspended due to a uniform or behavior violation. By attending a school with fewer rules, I would excel even more since there would be fewer distractions about attire or behavior.

It’s quite challenging for most New Orleans students to adapt to the rigid discipline structures since they come from environments that are nothing like that. Many students here are exposed to drugs or violence or at least witness something of the kind. Although I have had no personal involvement in either, I often witness drug transactions on the streets. Some people think the violence and drugs make the rules even more necessary to make sure students don’t engage in such activities. Wrong! If you treat students like prisoners, they will react like prisoners.

Students also respond differently depending on who is making the rules. Most of the administrators working in the schools I have attended are white and not from Louisiana. This makes me think back to the beginning of the United States when the Native Americans were being “Americanized” by white Europeans. The white people made the Native Americans convert to their religion, stop speaking their native language, stop wearing their traditional clothing, and change their names to “American”and “Christian” ones. They even had to start wearing their hair like the white people wore theirs. I see a similar process happening in schools with all of these stringent rules, which leads me to the question: Are we being trained for the professional world or for the white world? Or does being a professional mean being part of the white world?

Students may feel as if teachers from the North don’t know much about Southerners’ backgrounds. Why should we have to abide by rules created by people who are not from the South and don’t have full insight about us? Some students feel like the teachers don’t know much about us apart from stereotypes. When the people who create the rules know so little about who we are and where we came from, what reason have we to trust them?

Kenyatta Collins, 16, is a junior at Lake Area High School. This essay is part of a collaboration between The Hechinger Report and high school students at Bard’s Early College in New Orleans.

Opinion Education

Teach For America Deserves Credit for Improving New Orleans Schools

Brianisha Frith

May 16, 2014

My “inexperienced” teachers planted notions of college in my head and held me, and themselves, up to a high standard.

After Hurricane Katrina, I started at a new middle school called KIPP Central City, one of many charter schools that has opened in New Orleans. The entire KIPP environment (KIPP stands for the Knowledge is Power Program) focuses on getting students to and through college. When I first heard that goal, it felt insane yet intriguing.

My journey continued at New Orleans’ KIPP Renaissance High School, where I am a junior. Like my middle school, KIPP Renaissance consistently hired teachers who were white, young, and fresh out of college. Nearly half of the teachers had been trained by Teach For America. TFA arrived in New Orleans in 1990, and presently the program’s participants or graduates work with at least one in five students in the city. TFA teachers’ leadership, critical thinking, and well-planned lessons helped improve the education in New Orleans for many students after Hurricane Katrina. Their drive to educate every single child is refreshing and dignifying.

Ms. Miller, one of my English teachers at KIPP Renaissance, is the epitome of an awe-inspiring teacher who sparks a light in the children she teaches. A graduate of Teach For America, she insists on everyone being actively engaged in class by answering and asking questions. She also sees the best in everyone. Her words of wisdom and nurturing spirit made passing the standardized exam required at the end of the course much more realistic for me. She is more than a teacher, she is like our second mom. I have never had a relationship like that with a teacher.

TFA critics oppose the idea of having so many fresh, white teachers in the classroom. They argue that TFA’s five-week summer training program is insufficient to prepare any new teacher, and is therefore unjust for public school students who should have nothing less than fully qualified and experienced teachers. However, in my view these “inexperienced” teachers manage to uphold a high standard, not only amongst themselves but to their students as well.

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, I attended Holy Ghost Catholic School. It was strict on uniforms and discipline. However, many of my teachers at Holy Ghost seemed disinterested in not only teaching, but being at school. The majority of my teachers were middle-aged African Americans and a minority were nuns who taught religion. The notion of college was nowhere implanted in my head. The relationships with my teachers here were totally different than the ones I have at KIPP. Looking back, I think that the school was not doing enough to prepare us for advanced work. For instance, every year we had to color a picture of Saint Katharine Drexel. The students who colored the best portrait would be recognized over the intercom. I won all three years—winning was everything then. When I arrived at KIPP, I did not know that coloring pictures would not be crucial in receiving a high school diploma or college degree.

Nevertheless, Holy Ghost helped me understand the connection between schools and community. Some of my teachers there also helped me become more self-sufficient, both in and out of school. I developed a deep sense of integrity and commitment at Holy Ghost that the teachers at KIPP further nurtured.

Students in New Orleans are now prospering and receiving a more high-quality education. Personally, I feel more fearless than ever when attacking challenges. The New Orleans education system is rising, and much of the credit should be given to these ambitious new teachers.

Brianisha Frith, 16, is a junior at KIPP Renaissance High School. This essay is part of a collaboration between The Hechinger Report and high school students at Bard’s Early College in New Orleans.

Opinion Business

10 Things the Greatest Leaders All Have In Common

Eric Barker

May 16, 2014

I’ve posted a lot about effective leaders. Looking back, what patterns do we see?

Know The Power Of Feelings

Leaders who just focus on results don’t do nearly as well as those that also pay attention to relationships.

Via Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect:

Zenger found that if employees rated a manager as very high on “focus on results” (that is, one’s ability to get things done effectively), there was only a small (14 percent) chance that the manager would be rated among the top 10 percent of leaders overall. However, if in addition to “focus on results,” employees also rated the manager’s ability to “build relationships” very highly, then the likelihood of that person’s being rated as a great leader overall skyrocketed to 72 percent.

Paying attention to employee feelings matters.

What’s the difference between exemplary and good employees? They care.

Via Responsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don’t Act) Responsibly:

What strategies really improve organizations? Research involving 400 people across 130 companies came up with a simple answer:

You must change individual behavior by addressing employee feelings.

Via Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard:

…the core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people, and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people’s feelings.

(More on being a well-rounded leader here.)

…But Be Tough In A Crisis

The one time people definitely want a take-charge, decisive dictator is during a crisis.

Via Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration:

…crew members expected leaders to make decisions regarding emergency matters as quickly and autocratically as necessary under the circumstances.

(More on balancing toughness with warmth here.)

Know What Makes Employees Stay And Leave

Employees are made happy by achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility and advancement.

They are most often made dissatisfied by policies, supervisors and work conditions.

Via HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing People:

(More on building great teams here.)

Judge People By What They’re Good At

If you want people who are competent at everything you’ll end up with a team of mediocrities.

Better to get the best person in a discipline and support them with others who can compensate for their weak spots.

Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:

The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his specialty effective. This means that he must think through who is to use his output and what the user needs to know and to understand to be able to make productive the fragment the specialist produces… We can so structure as to make the strength relevant. A good tax accountant in private practice might be greatly hampered by his inability to get along with people. But in an organization such a man can be set up in an office of his own and shielded from direct contact with other people. In an organization one can make his strength effective and his weakness irrelevant.

(More from the best management thinker ever here.)

Hubris Is Your Greatest Weakness

Don’t get full of yourself. That’s the downfall of nearly all great leaders.

In my interview with Harvard Business School professor Gautam Mukunda, author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, I asked him about the biggest mistake leaders make:

Gautam: Over time, it’s grandiosity.

Eric: Hubris?

Gautam: Yeah. You live in an environment where everybody constantly tells you how great you are, and you begin to believe it.

Eric: Yeah. Even Machiavelli said a leader needs people who are going to be honest with them, because everybody’s going to kiss their ass.

Gautam: Exactly… The CEO of a major corporation, how often does he or she hear the word “no”? How often does someone challenge their basic preconceptions about the world?

(More on resisting common leadership errors here.)

Culture Is What You Do, Not What You Say

Cultures are formed by the behavior that is rewarded in a company, not pretty words.

So if the top salesperson gets treated like a king — despite how abusively he treats people — congratulations, that’s your culture, no matter what’s on slide 47 of the PowerPoint deck.

Via How Will You Measure Your Life?:

If you don’t articulate a culture— or articulate one but don’t enforce it— then a culture is still going to emerge. However, it is going to be based on the processes and priorities that have been repeated within the organization and have worked. You can tell the health of a company’s culture by asking, “When faced with a choice on how to do something, did employees make the decision that the culture ‘wanted’ them to make? And was the feedback they received consistent with that?”

(More on building a rock solid company culture here.)

Know The Difference Between Leaders And Managers

The goal of management is consistency and order.

The goal of leadership is to motivate and create necessary change.

Management is about processes. Leadership is about people’s feelings.

Via John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do

Management controls people by pushing them in the right direction; leadership motivates them by satisfying basic human needs.

(More on moving from great manager to great leader here.)

Know Thyself

What can you learn from an Army Ranger about leadership? Knowing your limitations is key to being a great leader:

One company leader, socially was a buffoon and tactically he was a buffoon. But, he knew he was a buffoon… When we got to our site, he said to me, “You’ve got the training to protect this site. I don’t. Protect this site.” That’s all he had to say.

That taught me a very valuable lesson: “It’s okay not to know something.” There are people around you who do know something, and they can teach you. If it’s too grand a knowledge base to pick up right there, put them in charge. Have them report to you. Put the responsibility on them. If you do that, they will execute that to perfection, and I did.

(More on how effective leaders spend their time here.)

Convey Authority And Warmth

People expect leaders to carry themselves a certain way. What’s the secret? Convey authority and warmth.

Via The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help–or Hurt–How You Lead:

When first introduced to a leader, we immediately and unconsciously assess him or her for warmth and authority. Obviously the most appealing leaders are seen to encompass both qualities, and the least effective leaders are those we regard as cold and inept.

(More on how to appear like a leader here.)

Inspire By Showing People The Importance Of Their Jobs

How do you inspire people? Show them why their jobs are important.

Noah Goldstein, co-author of Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, reviews a study:

Adam Grant, a scholar in the field of organizational behavior, realized that workers often fail to live up to their potential because they’ve lost track of the significance and meaningfulness of their own jobs. He figured that if he could remind employees of why their jobs are important, they might become more highly motivated, and therefore, more productive individuals.

What magic do both the speeches of Martin Luther King and the marketing of Apple have that move us to believe and act?

Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, has an interesting theory:

People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it… Start with “Why.”

(And when all else fails, yes, nagging works.)

Sum Up

Ten things you can do to be like the best:

Know The Power Of Feelings
…But Be Tough In A Crisis
Know What Makes Employees Stay And Leave
Judge People By What They’re Good At
Hubris Is Your Greatest Weakness
Culture Is What You Do, Not What You Say
Managers Are About Processes, Leaders Are About People
Know Thyself
Convey Authority And Warmth
Inspire By Showing People The Importance Of Their Jobs

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I Fight Wildfires. This Is What It’s Really Like

Matt Turturici

May 15, 2014

California wild fire — A firefighter on structure defense duty watches flames in San Marcos, San Diego county on May 14, 2014. Stuart Palley—EPA

As fires continue to rage through San Diego County, causing evacuations to thousands of homes, San Mateo fire captain Matt Turturici talks about his 24 years as a blaze combatant, and how urban sprawl has made the landscape a more dangerous place

I’ve been a firefighter in California for 24 years. I started my career up north where wildfires like the ones now burning in Carlsbad in San Diego County are not uncommon. As more people have moved into interface areas — where the edges of forests and grasslands meet urban sprawl — wildfires have gotten more dangerous. Before, fires used to just burn and die out in the wilderness. Now many homes simply become kindling. Fire can’t distinguish between the two. This is what fighting them is like.

We call fires like these campaign fires. Usually they have a name and are well established by the time a request for aid comes from the California Office of Emergency Services. Often the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, runs the response. It’s not necessarily the fact that there’s one big fire in Carlsbad or near Yosemite or Los Angeles County. When state resources get drawn down from fighting multiple fires, that’s when they start tapping into local resources. Cal Fire will request your help as a strike team, which consists of five fire engines with four firefighters each, a battalion chief and an aide, who is usually training to become a chief. Cal Fire crews typically work 24-hour shifts on the fire line and come back off the line for 24 hours. Then they start again.

The amount of preparation that goes into organizing and deploying strike teams is equivalent to fighting a war. You arrive at base camp, check in and are assigned to a division. You’re told: This is the radio channel you’re working on, this is where the fire is moving, this is what the wind and weather are doing, and these are the objectives for your engine company — for example, defend the houses on this block. Sometimes you have to do structural triage; you have to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Nobody wants to walk away from a house that’s burning, and we typically don’t.

As the fire approaches, it can become surreal because of the way the smoke filters sunlight. It feels like you’re on a different planet. It can be eerie. The wall of flames can reach 20 to 150 ft. depending on what’s burning and move very quickly. When the fire’s moving, it can sound like a freight train. When you’re in a situation where houses are really starting to get hit, you can hear tires exploding or propane tanks blowing off. Especially seeing the results afterward, seeing stuff burned to white ash when there’s no remnant of what was there before, can be strange. It’s like Chernobyl; it’s just gone.

You also find yourself at the mercy of the weather. One wind shift and you’re in trouble, potentially. Campaign fires often create their own weather, so you have to pay attention to the clouds if you can see them. You have to know where the wind normally blows compared with how much the wind is blowing that day. Your situational awareness has to be acute. You’re responsible for your guys; a critical error can get them in trouble. You’re constantly asking yourself: Are you in a good spot? Can we get out of here? If we can’t get out of here, where can we regroup? If you’ve come off the line and come back on, knowing how destructive a fire has already been can also put you on edge.

Then there’s the fire shelter. That’s the most dire situation you can find yourself in. It’s the decision. It’s pushing the button. It’s pulling the pin. It’s what you choose when you have no other options. And it’s not even a guarantee of safety. You have to scratch yourself out a wide spot and the shelter has to be deployed in less than a minute. You deploy it so your feet are pointed toward where the fire is coming. Everyone is in body contact with one another. It can get very quiet among the crew in that moment. You ride it out together.

Fighting fires like these has changed over the years. There’ve been changes to our equipment. There’ve been changes to operations. And there’ve been advances in using computers to forecast fire travel and position ground and aircraft support, which is crucial. Technology will always try to keep up, but there’s a tremendous human element. Ultimately, technology can help, but it can’t think for the guys on the ground.

Turturici is a fire captain in the city of San Mateo, Calif. He was deployed to the 2013 Rim Fire in Yosemite.

Opinion politics

Moral Outrage Checking In at The Beverly Hills Hotel

Kate Pickert @katepickert

May 15, 2014

Jay Leno Beverly Hills Hotel — Comedian Jay Leno participates in a rally to protest draconian punishment of women and gay people announced by the Sultan of Brunei outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is owned by the Sultan, on May 5, 2014 in Beverly Hills, Calif. David McNew—Getty Images

What effect will the celebrity-driven boycott of a hotel owned by the Sultan of Brunei really have, other than making a lot of people in Hollywood feel better about themselves?

There is no substitute for the warm feeling one when gets when standing up to bullies and bad men—even if taking that stand has little effect at all, and there may be more pressing causes to take up elsewhere. Moral outrage can be its own reward.

Take the Beverly Hills Hotel, for example, where a contingent of gay rights groups, ordinary citizens and celebrities are protesting the fact that the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei, has instituted a new Sharia-based criminal code in his home country to be phased in over a number of years. Among other things, the new Brunei laws will eventually punish gay people with death by stoning. Given the barbaric nature of this punishment and the fact that the Beverly Hills Hotel offers elaborate same-sex wedding packages, protestors say the Sultan’s actions are deeply offensive and hypocritical.

Fine. But speaking of hypocrisy, how about the Plaza Hotel in New York City or the Four Seasons in Scottsdale, Ariz. or the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco? Those are partly owned by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, a country that also has Sharia law and criminalizes gay sex. And yet, no one is protesting those. Or how about boycotting Mariah Carey, who performed at a New Year’s Eve party hosted by the Sultan of Brunei’s son earlier this year, months after the Sultan announced his intention to implement the new Sharia penal code back in October 2013? And what about taking a stand against the Cannes Film Festival, where a movie starring Hilary Swank and partially financed by the same Sultan son is being shopped and celebrated?

There was, in fact, an effort last fall to shame the Sultan into selling his L.A. properties, which also include the Hotel Bel-Air. But the movement to force immediate change did not pick up steam until just the past few weeks. And as Buzzfeed has documented, the recent uproar may have had as much to do with a few determined union leaders and Facebook as it did with any breaking news events. Once the protest effort gained some momentum, former Tonight Show host Jay Leno and his wife Mavis got on board and Ellen DeGeneres tweeted her support. “The word just spreads like wildfire in this community,” Mavis Leno told CNN. Suddenly, protesting the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel was an urgent matter practically no one in Hollywood could afford not to support.

Leno said she decided to help lead protests against the Beverly Hills Hotel after realizing The Feminist Majority Foundation, where she is a board member, was planning to hold a fundraiser at the hotel. The fundraiser was moved, and Leno and the group “decided to throw up a kind of strike and protest in the park right across from the Beverly Hills Hotel,” she said.

Christopher Cowdray, the top executive of the Sultan’s hotel company, the Dorchester Collection, has pleaded with protesters to reconsider their campaign, which has caused a steady stream of other organizations to move events and conferences out of the Beverly Hills Hotel and reportedly cost the hotel millions. The protests “only hurt the [hotel’s] employees,” Cowdray told the L.A. Times.

Leno said she regretted potentially causing hotel employees to suffer, but told CNN it was for a necessary cause. “I feel very badly, but this is the only way we can reach the Sultan…Either the Sultan will decide that the hotel is too much of a nuisance and he’ll divest himself or perhaps he doesn’t want to be an international pariah and he will think again.”

So what are the chances the Sultan will buckle under the pressure and sell his hotels or revoke Sharia law in Brunei? Slim, according to Cowdray, who said the Sultan has no plans to sell the Beverly Hills Hotel or reverse course on Brunei’s legal system. And even if he does sell the property, the uproar is unlikely to significantly diminish the Sultan’s fortune, which is reportedly around $20 billion and sustained by vast oil reserves, not hotels.

But when it comes to moral outrage, often it’s the fight itself that makes us feel as though we’ve accomplished something.