Who Asks For Feedback?

Should leaders ask for feedback?  Of course.  Everyone should desire constructive input that can help them learn and improve.  Do they ask for feedback?  Oh, now we might have a very different story!  Bradley Busch recently wrote a blog post for the British Pyschological Society's Research Digest about a study of feedback-related behaviors by primary school teachers.   Busch summarized the research findings of James Spillane, Matthew Shirrell, and Samrachana Adhikari.  The three scholars recently published a paper in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis titled, "Constructing “Experts” Among Peers: Educational Infrastructure, Test Data, and Teachers’ Interactions About Teaching.  Spillane and his colleagues examined the tendency for teachers to ask for, or not ask for, feedback from their peers.  Busch highlights a key finding from this study:

The researchers found that the best teachers, as measured by those who had a higher percentage of students who met the minimum requirement to pass their class, and whose classes had higher than average test scores, were no more likely to be sought out by their colleagues for their advice. On the other hand, these expert teachers were the ones who were actually more likely to seek advice from their peers the following year. It seems that the better the teacher performed, the more likely they were to go out and obtain feedback on how to be even better.

The finding that the most able are not particularly sought after for their advice and are instead more likely to seek it from others is perhaps unsurprising. Other research, known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, has found that the least able tend to have an inflated view of their abilities, which would presumably lead to them seeking out less feedback. After all, why would one seek out advice if they think there is little room for development? As for the expert teachers in this study, the researchers speculate that their advice-seeking tendencies may be explained as “they represent a group of teachers who are constantly striving to improve by seeking out advice and information from others”.

For me, the study leads naturally to a question about leaders in a variety of organizational settings.  Do the highest performing leaders have a tendency to ask for feedback more often than lower performing individuals?  Are the highest performers not sought out more often by their peers for help and advice?  Future research should explore these interesting questions.   My sense is that we will find results quite similar to those described here in an educational setting. 

Sir Ken Robinson: How To Escape Education's Death Valley

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson has provided some excellent thinking on the state of education.  I love listening to him describe how we stifle creativity in our children at times, and how we can shift our thinking as educators.  Here's one of his terrific TED talks:

Specialists vs. Generalists: How Do They Fare in the Labor Market?

Tulane Professor Jennifer Merluzzi and Columbia Professor Damon Phillips have conducted some interesting new research on the labor market for graduates from top MBA programs.   They studied approximately 400 graduates of top business schools in the United States.   These graduates too jobs in the investment banking industry.   They discovered that students with broader and more diverse backgrounds and experiences received more job offers and secured higher signing bonuses than those individuals with prior specialization in investment banking/finance both at work and in school.   Here's how the scholars explain their findings:

First, in labor markets with strong institutional screening mechanisms, specialization won’t be as valuable. In the absence of other information, it’s an important indicator of skill, but graduation from a top MBA program is a strong signal to the market that someone is qualified. In that scenario demonstrating consistency is no longer advantageous. Second, employers may discount experiences that incrementally extend previous efforts. Among MBAs, there’s now a strong emphasis on building a consistent profile as a finance person or a marketing person. You end up with many similar people in the market. Specialization becomes commodified, giving you less bargaining power, because you’re easily substitutable. Plus, when the firm is used to hiring a lot of people like you, it’s easier to calculate your value compared with someone with diverse accomplishments.

Clearly, some jobs require specialists.  We cannot generalize these findings to all circumstances in the labor market.  However, the research does remind us that the trend toward specialization in education  and training may be counterproductive in some ways.  I don't think that the findings suggest that we should ignore the development of specialized skills though.  We need to educate students with breadth and depth.  I don't think it's either an either/or proposition.    We need students to have distinctive skills that employers value and that can enable them to hit the ground running when they enter the workforce.  However, we want them to have a broad background that enables them to make connections among ideas in various domains, and that enables them to put their work in context.  We also need them to be able to work with others who have different skills, backgrounds, and experiences.   

At Bryant University, we require our undergraduate business students to complete an extensive general education curriculum, AND we require them to minor in a liberal arts and/or sciences area.  Thus, our finance graduates come out with minors in areas such as history, political science, or psychology.  We believe that this combination makes them highly valuable as they enter the labor force, and our placement statistics confirm the validity of those beliefs.  

Helping First-Generation College Students Succeed

Northwestern Professor Nicole Stephens and her colleagues—MarYam G. Hamedani of Stanford University and Mesmin Destin at Northwestern University—have conducted several studies examining the academic performance of first-generation college students.  Not surprisingly, they have found that, all else equal, first-generation college students do indeed underperform those young people with parents who have attended college.  Their research aims to understand how we might close that performance gap.   I'm particularly interested in this topic, since I was a first-generation college student.  Moreover, companies should be interested in this topic, since they want to insure that they can attract talented young people who have learned a great deal and achieved their potential in college. 

This research challenges the notion that extra academic skills-based preparation for these first-generation students yields performance improvement.   Many schools offer these "skills" enhancement programs, but they have not yielded positive results.  These scholars designed a program whereby college seniors would share their experiences with new students, describing to them how "their backgrounds affected their experience."   According to Kellogg Research Insights, "Seniors were asked, for example, to share an obstacle they faced in college and how they overcame it."  

The scholars found that those students receiving this intervention earned higher grade point averages than those who listened to seniors share their stories without an explicit discussion of backgrounds and social class. Amazingly, the researchers found that this program "eliminated the GPA gap between first-generation and continuing-generation students, as well as the disparity in the rate at which the two groups took advantage of institutional resources." 

Stephens explains, "If you understand that it’s normal for students from a background like yours to encounter obstacles—and that it doesn’t mean that you’re deficient, but that rather you need to do different things to succeed—that equips you to deal with the challenges you face.”

The Value of a University

Bob Sutton has an amazing post on his blog this week.  He writes about what struck him as he read an article from about a decade ago by the great organizational behavior scholar Karl Weick.  Sutton writes:

Karl started out his 2002 British Journal of Management on "Puzzles in Organizational Learning: An Exercise in Disciplined Imagination" this way: 

It is sometimes possible to explore basic questions in the university that are tough to raise in other settings. John Gardner (1968, p. 90) put it well when he said that the university stands for:

• things that are forgotten in the heat of battle

•values that get pushed aside in the rough and tumble of everyday living

• the goals we ought to be thinking about and never do

• the facts we don’t like to face

• the questions we lack the courage to ask

What an important reminder for us all... The thoughts of John Gardner don't just help a professor like me try to justify the existence (or cost) of universities. These thoughts remind me of what we are obligated to do as faculty members.  Sutton points out one small example, a Stanford study that finds "there is little or no documented health advantage to organic food."  Sutton argues that this study made him uncomfortable.  Frankly, it bums me out too... so much for spending all that money at Whole Foods!  Yet, who will make these types of contributions if not a professor? 

It is our obligation to ask these tough questions.  I would argue that it's also our obligation to train our students to ask these types of tough questions, and to teach them how to explore these questions.   That practice will help them not just in the scholarly arena, but also as leaders in various private enterprises or other organizations.  

Why Education Without Creativity Is Not Enough

Anya Kamenetz has a terrific article about American education and its effect on competitiveness over at Fast Company.  Kamenetz argues (rightfully, I believe) that a focus on simply cranking out more and better STEM graduates (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is not the way to compete more effectively with China and India.  She offers the perspective of one leading executive in the Indian outsourcing industry - Phaneesh Murthy, CEO of iGate Patni.  Here is an excerpt from Kamenetz's article:

If we could just tighten standards and lean harder on the STEM disciplines--science, technology, engineering, mathematics--we'd better our rigorous rivals in India and China, and get our economy firing on all cylinders. As with much conventional wisdom, this is conventional in the worst sense of that word.  If you want the truth, talk to the competition. Phaneesh Murthy is CEO of iGate Patni, a top-10 Indian outsourcing company. Murthy oversees 26,000 employees--not the ones snapping SIM chips into cell phones or nagging you about your unpaid AmEx bill, but the ones writing iPhone apps, processing mortgage applications, and redesigning supply chains--in jobs that would be handled in the U.S. by highly paid, college-educated workers. In other words, you. Yet Murthy, a regular bogeyman of outsourcing, believes American education is by far the best in the world. "The U.S. education system is much more geared to innovation and practical application," says Murthy. "It's really good from high school onward." To compete long term, we need more brainstorming, not memorization; more individuality, not standardization.

The Innovative University

I'm reading Clay Christensen's new book: The Innovative University.   I'll be posting about it once I'm done.  Here's a video from the authors: