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The National Educational Leadership Preparation (NELP) Standards

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The National Educational Leadership Preparation (NELP) Standards

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Meditation starts at 3 p.m. sharp in compassion class. As lecturer Leah Weiss invites her students to close their eyes, the classroom of 33 goes silent. As we settle into our chairs, she tells us to take three deep, slow breaths, pausing before we exhale.

This is not your parents' business school course. GSBGEN 324: Leading with Mindfulness and Compassion explores the role of compassion in the workplace, asking questions such as "What does compassionate leadership look like?" and "How can mindfulness enhance productivity?" The course regularly carries a waiting list of 70.

It is not difficult to imagine why students would be drawn to a course that not only teaches leadership but also offers techniques that help reduce stress and improve well-being. At a time when we are inundated with bad news and often more connected with our digital devices than with one another, compassion class provides an antidote to some of the ills of our era.

"I set the classroom up as a lab," says Weiss, who began teaching the course at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2012. "The approach is, 'Here are some ideas being experimented with. Here are some experiments you can try in your own life. You have to do it, not just read about it.'"

Class meets once a week for three hours. Daily meditation, a range of exercises and "real-world homework" make up the course, which is based on the theory that a compassionate attitude can significantly reduce the distress people feel in difficult situations, as well as make you a better leader.

One of the first exercises students undertake is to write about a time they failed. Weiss also has them share their self-criticism - the unkind, judgmental things they say to themselves when things get hard. Submissions are anonymous, and everyone takes turns reading others' statements aloud. It doesn't take long for a rapport to build as universal themes arise: I feel like a fraud. Everyone else is having an easier time. I am the only one who feels lonely. I am the only one who feels anxious.

This is what people in this room are feeling, Weiss tells her class.

"It is very important for them to realize this as they move out into the world," she explains.

Weiss's curriculum draws from a methodology called Compassion Cultivation Training, an eight-week program designed by scholars at the Medical School's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education to help students develop kindness for themselves and others. The program integrates traditional contemplative practices with contemporary psychology and scientific research on compassion. Weiss also has taught compassion courses at the School of Medicine and at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, and the Alzheimer's Association.

In the past decade, a wide range of peer-reviewed journals have published evidence of the benefits of compassion. Current Psychiatry featured a study in 2016 that reported multiple benefits from being kind to oneself, including resilience after failure, lower levels of depression and anxiety, and even a better overall quality of life. A 2013 paper in the multidisciplinary journal PLOS ONE concluded that self-compassion helps underperforming, chronically stressed undergraduates improve their problem-solving. Another paper published that year in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences described a study that showed a positive correlation between self-compassion and job satisfaction among 300 white-collar workers in Istanbul.

"It's hard to think of a way in which compassion is not relevant to leadership, success and well-being," says Jamil Zaki, director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory and an assistant professor of psychology. "People with high empathy and compassion excel themselves. Folks who are managers or leaders who can connect with others succeed, and their bottom line is better."

By way of example, Weiss cites company policy that reflects tangible compassion for employees. If a worker loses a family member and asks for bereavement leave, a company that offers paid leave and shows caring at work will in the long term increase a sense of security and, as a result, loyalty. When other employees see that their company or boss cares about them, retention and morale will rise, Weiss says. That inevitably helps the bottom line.

The opposite is also true. A financial company in the habit of laying off employees just before the December holidays wanted to end the year "on top," but they felt the repercussions when some of their best people subsequently left. "It doesn't work in the long run," says Weiss, "even if it works in the short run."

For Divya Vishwanath, a second-year Stanford GSB student who previously worked in corporate marketing, including compassion class as part of her coursework made perfect sense. "While at Google, I learned about the benefit of practicing mindfulness and how that made me a better leader/manager/teammate," she wrote in an email. "It had been a while since I had been purposeful about this practice, and after a fun but crazy time in the start-up world, I wanted to revisit the habit."

Weiss's course is part of a purposeful thread in Stanford GSB's leadership curriculum: teaching future leaders about the importance of self-awareness, self-care and self-understanding, says Sarah Soule, senior associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of organizational behavior. "The course fits well into our overall leadership curriculum because it covers these, and other, important topics about leadership."

When Weiss talks to people on campus and in the work world about self-compassion, she often encounters disbelief that being kind to ourselves is a good tactic, either personally or professionally. Many believe that self-criticism is what keeps us accountable and improves our performance, she writes in her new book, How We Work: Live Your Purpose, Reclaim Your Sanity, and Embrace the Daily Grind, slated for release in March.

But people with high levels of self-imposed perfectionism tend to suffer from higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower self-esteem, which can lead to poor performance and feelings of shame. "Practicing self-compassion doesn't mean you sit on the couch eating bonbons," says Weiss. "It means you can learn to course correct."

Another discussion topic is accepting negative feedback and letting go of self-destructive habits and thoughts. "Notice the tone of voice you use with yourself when you realize you're mortified," suggests Weiss. "Are you yelling at yourself? Calling yourself names? Are you getting on to solving the issue or staying stuck in repeating the script of railing against yourself?" Positive self-talk - speaking to yourself as you would to a friend - changes perspective and resilience, compassion research shows.

Changing toxic work environments by changing the future leadership is just one of Weiss's goals, but it guides much of her work.

"I think about the fact that these [students] are going to be the people running the companies, deciding what happens to our environment, making the big decisions. There is so much at stake. It comes back to how human, how whole and grounded in conscience our future leaders can be. Compassion needs to be normalized as a given, not as something optional. It is time to start building it as a preventive step before people get burned out and lose their way."

Six Ways to Exercise Self-Compassion

Stanford GSB lecturer and "contemplative scholar" Leah Weiss wrote the following tips for readers interested in practicing compassion in their daily lives

Take it Personally

Emotion suppression isn't possible. If our minds are thinking it, our bodies will show it. Bottling up your emotions can result in long-term harm. To yourself and probably to others around you. What's a better way of dealing with your emotions? Acknowledge your emotions - Identify where they are stemming from - Have a mindful conversation if necessary - Allow that emotion to pass - Note that it is okay to feel, to process, to take the time to acknowledge.

Sit Uncomfortably with Vulnerability

Vulnerability. It's not something that you will likely achieve overnight. Most of us have gone through too many negative experiences to expose ourselves outright. But we have to be vulnerable if we are going to exercise self-compassion or compassion toward others. We have to take the good with the bad. We have to weigh and note both. We have to let other people see our imperfections.

Remember You're Human

People can be intimidating. The CEO of your company. Your manager. That co-worker who always has the answers. Celebrities. Highly successful people. The list of people that seem superhuman goes on and on. It's easy to become impressed by these people. To feel self-conscious around them. But you're forgetting an important detail: We are all human. We all mess up. We all experience the same range of emotions. We all feel like frauds from time to time. Remembering that all humans share similar experiences can flip that compassion switch. Both to yourself and toward others.

Rewrite Negative Scripts

When you start talking down to yourself, stop. Then, say something kind to yourself instead. If your best friend came to you with a problem - maybe he screwed up big-time at his job, or maybe she forgot an important appointment - and began berating themselves over it, what would you say to them? You could try simple phrases, like: - It's going to be all right; everyone makes mistakes - Wow, that's awful! I've been there, too - You're doing a great job; this is just a hard day. Look at yourself like an outside observer, and say the things you'd say to your friend to soothe, comfort and reassure.

Stop the Worst-Case-Scenario Train

When we're worried or stressed, it's easy to jump right into visualizing the worst-case scenario. Jumping straight into the worst possible scenario - in your head - does more damage than anything. It doesn't help you prepare for fallout; it just pushes you straight into panic mode. Take a minute, breathe, and focus on the reality of what's happening in this moment.

Self-Soothe

What are some things that bring you comfort? Your favorite music; fuzzy socks; a warm blanket; a cup of coffee or tea; a long walk outdoors; a grueling workout; or a gentle yoga practice? When you're feeling inclined to beat yourself up, do something that comforts you instead. Make this a regular practice when you're feeling down on yourself; it will enable you to handle moments of pain and discomfort in a more constructive way.

This story was originally published in the March 2018 issue of Stanford Magazine.

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Meditation starts at 3 p.m. sharp in compassion class. As lecturer Leah Weiss invites her students to close their eyes, the classroom of 33 goes silent. As we settle into our chairs, she tells us to take three deep, slow breaths, pausing before we exhale. This is not your parents' business school course.

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School Principals' Job Satisfaction: The Effects of Work Intensification | Wang | Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy

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School Principals' Job Satisfaction: The Effects of Work Intensification

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In the fall of 2006, 10-year-old Casey Harmeier was clowning around with friends in the hallway at school when he was dared to pull the plastic cover off of a fire alarm. When he did so and an alarm sounded, he was arrested and taken to juvenile detention. His father, who worked for the school district, was not notified of his arrest until four hours later. While Casey was initially charged with a felony offense, media attention and the ensuing public outrage eventually led to dismissal of the charges. But the trauma caused by the arrest was clear: in a journal entry after the incident, Casey spoke of the stigma of being arrested, saying he felt like a "disease" and a "vile monster." In the same entry, Casey said he was scared every time he "left his parents' sight."

This incident, and others like it (including the arrest of a sixth-grade girl for drawing a heart and writing "I love Alex" in baby blue sharpie on the wall of her school's gym) led to a series of bipartisan reforms at the Texas Legislature, meant to ensure that students would not face the same harsh consequences and ensuing trauma that Casey faced for what was age-appropriate misbehavior, rather than criminal behavior.

Today, the tragic school shootings in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas, so close in time to each other, present an opportunity to either move Texas further toward research-based school discipline policies, proven to better ensure school and student safety - or, conversely, to move state and local policy backward, with regressive responses that are understandably rooted in fear, but that do more harm than good.

There are already early indicators of the potential for Texas schools and policymakers to take a wrong turn and move back in time to the "zero tolerance" approaches that have been disproven by research and experience. One of those indicators is the spike in charges filed against Texas students for "terroristic threat" or "exhibition of a firearm" (which does not require actual possession of a firearm), which started in the immediate wake of the Parkland school shooting and continued through the end of the 2017-18 school year.

Media coverage and information from attorneys representing students in these cases prompted Texas Appleseed to request data from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department for these two offenses. While it is always important for schools to follow up on any threat of violence, we heard stories from attorneys who represented children who had been arrested though they did not pose a threat, including:

A 12-year-old blind student who reacted to a bully by threatening him;

A 17-year-old student arrested and taken to jail for pulling the fire alarm at school;

An 11-year-old student who receives special education services and who learns in a self-contained classroom threatened to "Tase" the teachers who restrained him during a meltdown.

A 12-year-old student with a disability who was arrested and taken to detention for making a gun with his fingers and pretending to shoot make-believe creatures in an empty hallway at school.

Our data analysis confirms the spike in charges that we heard about anecdotally, showing:

A dramatic increase in referrals to Texas juvenile probation departments in the wake of the Parkland tragedy, with a 156% increase in referrals for terroristic threat, and a 600% increase in referrals for exhibition of firearms. 66% of the exhibition of firearms referrals were for threatening to exhibit a weapon, not actual possession.

The spike was borne most by younger students, with a 69% increase in referrals for terroristic threat and a 762% increase in referrals for exhibition of firearms for 10-13 year-olds.

Black students are overrepresented in referrals, and were more than twice as likely as all other students to be referred to juvenile probation for terroristic threat or exhibition of firearms.

Though TJJD is not able to include information related to disability, anecdotal evidence also suggests students with disabilities are overrepresented in arrests.

While schools must respond to threats of violence, media articles that our team reviewed as part of our research for this report suggest that many schools are following a "zero tolerance" policy that fails to distinguish between students who actually pose a threat and those who have no ability or intention of harming anyone.

Texas Appleseed requested data from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department for referrals to juvenile probation for "terroristic threat" or "exhibition of firearms" for 2016, 2017, and January through May (the most current data available at the time of the request) of 2018.

From January through May of 2018, there were 1,212 referrals for terroristic threat and 259 referrals for exhibition of firearms. Referrals for terroristic threat in 2018 were nearly three times higher than they were in the same time period in 2017, and referrals for exhibition of firearms were seven times higher than they were in the same time period in 2017.

When assessing the data by school year, there is a large spike starting in February 2018 for both types of offenses, which did not occur in the previous school year.

Black students are overrepresented in referrals for these offenses, representing 24% of referrals for terroristic threat and 31% of referrals for exhibition of firearms, but only 13% of the student body population. Additionally, Black students are referred for both offenses at twice the rate of all other students.Male students are also overrepresented, accounting for 83% of referrals for terroristic threat, and 86% of referrals for exhibition of firearms.

Rate of Referrals for Terroristic Threat and Exhibition of Firearms by Race (January-May, 2018)
Most referrals for both offenses are for 13- to 14-year-olds, but the increase in referrals was the largest for 10- to 13-year-olds. In January through May of 2018, there was a 69% increase in referrals for terroristic threat and a 762% increase in referrals for exhibition of firearms for 10- to 13-year-olds when compared to all of 2017.

Most referrals for terroristic threat come from a school-based location. Assessed by county, Harris County had the highest number of referrals from a school-based location, accounting for 13% of all referrals for terroristic threat from a school-based location. Assessed by district, Houston ISD had the highest number of referrals from a school-based location, accounting for 5% of all referrals for terroristic threat from a school-based location.

Counties with the Highest School-Based Referrals for Terroristic Threat (January-May, 2018) School Districts with the Highest School-Based Referrals for Terroristic Threat (January-May, 2018)
Lastly, most referrals for exhibition of firearms were for threatening to use a firearm (as opposed to actually possessing a firearm), accounting for 66% of all referrals for exhibition of firearms. Notably, there were no referrals for threatening to use a firearm in 2016 and only 5 referrals in 2017, but there were 170 referrals from January through May of 2018.

Arresting students for behavior that falls short of presenting an immediate safety risk is indicative of a harmful zero tolerance approach to student behavior. There are a number of research-based alternatives that improve school safety but also show positive school- and student-outcomes. Many of these - like Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SW PBIS) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) - focus on prevention, creating safer schools by improving overall school climate. Others, like Restorative Discipline, focus on addressing the harm in a way that repairs and strengthens relationships in the school. Many schools in Texas have adopted these models, or are in the process of putting them into place - but effective implementation can take time.

Another model - school-based threat assessment - is included as a recommendation in Governor Abbott's "School and Firearm Safety Action Plan," and targets precisely the dilemma schools confront when a student makes a threat of violence. Particularly in the immediate wake of a school shooting, schools are understandably afraid of failing to take action, but overreacting can have dire consequences for a student. A research-based threat assessment model - implemented appropriately - allows schools to determine when a student's behavior necessitates law enforcement involvement, and when it is instead more appropriately managed by referrals to counseling or other services. It is a proven, pragmatic, low-cost approach to addressing threats of violence that ensures schools neither overreact or underreact. As an added bonus, the model fits nicely within a SW PBIS, SEL, or Restorative Discipline program for those districts that are already putting those alternatives into place.

This model was born out of work done by the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education to determine how to prevent school shootings. One of the six principles that forms the foundation of the model is central to distinguishing it from a "zero tolerance" approach. According to that principle, "the central question in a threat assessment inquiry or investigation is whether a student poses a threat, not whether the student has made a threat."

The model relies on creation of a multidisciplinary team that consists not just of law enforcement, but also a member of the school faculty or administration, a mental health professional, and other professionals who regularly work in the school setting, such as teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors. Perhaps most importantly - when a threat assessment is being conducted, the model suggests the team should include someone who knows the student whose behavior is being assessed. The multidisciplinary nature of the team and inclusion of someone who knows the student ensures that the context in which the behavior occurred is fully considered. Rather than focus solely on the question of whether the student's behavior falls within the elements of a Penal or Education Code violation, the team's inquiry determines whether the student truly poses a safety risk.

One of the forensic psychologists who worked with the FBI and Secret Service to develop a threat assessment model for schools describes the difference between traditional threat assessment instruments and the model developed for schools:

The value of a research-based threat assessment model is in its ability to guide educators in distinguishing between "transient" threats, and "substantive" threats. The difference between the two determines the consequence and response from adults:

Transient threats include a variety of qualitatively different threats that are not serious. Some examples are a student shouting "I'm gonna kill you" as a joke or playfully using his or her fingers to shoot another classmate. Another student might say "I'm gonna kill you" as a competitive statement during a game. Still other transient threats are expressions of anger that do not reflect a serious intent to harm someone, such as a student stating rhetorically "I'd like to kill that jerk" in anger but not actually possessing an intent or plan to kill anyone...Transient threats can be provocative and disruptive, but from a threat assessment perspective, they do not reflect a real intent to harm others.

In contrast to transient threats, substantive threats are behaviors or statements that represent a serious risk of harm to others...[S]ubstantive threats are characterized by qualities that reflect serious intent, such as planning and preparation, recruitment of accomplices, and acquisition of a weapon. Examples of likely substantive threats include a student threatening "I'll get you next time" after a fight and refusing mediation for the dispute, or a student who threatens to stab a classmate and is found to have a knife in his or her backpack.

Dewey G. Cornell, Overview of the Virginia Threat Assessment Guidelines pp. 2-3 (2018).

Use of a research-based threat assessment model shows the majority of threats (70%) are transient. A threat assessment model does not ignore transient threats, but the response would be proportional and would not call for the same response needed for substantive threats. Even "substantive" threats may not necessitate law enforcement involvement.

A zero tolerance approach that fails to distinguish between transient and substantive threats, arresting every student who makes a threat, makes poor use of expensive law enforcement and juvenile and criminal justice system resources and unnecessarily criminalizes students. Students may still face consequences for their behavior - but the consequence should be proportionate and aim to teach students why even a threat of violence is harmful. In the innumerable media stories reporting arrests of Texas students in 2018, many indicated that law enforcement had already determined that the threat wasn't substantive.

Experts in its use emphasize that a school-based threat assessment model should be part of a tiered approach to campus safety, with the primary focus on prevention and creation of healthy school climates. The research conducted by the Secret Service uncovered the importance of "[c]ultures and climates of safety, respect, and emotional support" in preventing school shootings, finding that "[e]nvironments in which students, teachers and administrators pay attention to students' social and emotional needs - as well as their academic needs - will have fewer situations that require formal threat assessments." Threat assessments should not supplant approaches like SW PBIS, SEL, and Restorative Justice, but should become part of a continuum that includes them.

The lifelong trauma and stigma of being unnecessarily arrested and charged with "terroristic threat" or "exhibition of firearms" can have a devastating impact on a student's outcomes. Overreacting to threats made by students in frustration or anger does little to ensure school safety and may ultimately have the opposite effect.

Texas schools have an opportunity to instead embrace a research-based approach that addresses safety concerns, avoiding the potential harm to students.

In 2019, the Texas Legislature should provide funding for research-based, multi-tiered approaches to school safety that include a threat assessment model, and require school districts to indicate in their safety plans which research-based approaches their schools are utilizing.

Texas school districts should prioritize a tiered, research-based approach to school safety that includes a threat assessment team model.

Texas schools should take advantage of the free training being provided by the School Safety Center this summer.

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In the fall of 2006, 10-year-old Casey Harmeier was clowning around with friends in the hallway at school when he was dared to pull the plastic cover off of a fire alarm. When he did so and an alarm sounded, he was arrested and taken to juvenile detention.

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A Case Study Approach to Educational Leadership

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Preparing Antiracist School Leaders in a School Choice Context - Sarah Diem, Bradley W. Carpenter, Tiffanie Lewis-Durham, 2018

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Aspiring school leaders must be equipped with skill sets to facilitate the critical examination of district policies that reproduce inequities. Policies such as...

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Kim Scott is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Radical Candor, the go-to source for how to be a better boss and build better relationships at work.

I interviewed the former Google and Apple executive on her bestselling book, how to create a culture of feedback, the best way to give praise and criticism, the biggest mistakes people make when giving feedback, what it's like to work with Sheryl Sandberg, her best carer advice, and even how being a better manager may help you find a happier relationship.
Zack Friedman: For those that don't know, what is Radical Candor?
Kim Scott: Radical Candor is the ability to show you care personally about a person whom you are challenging.

It's a way to give guidance (both praise and criticism) to people you collaborate with -- at work and beyond. Guidance is usually called feedback, but feedback is screechy and makes us want to put our hands over our ears, but guidance is something most of us long for.
Zack Friedman: Given the need for both praise and criticism, what does a culture of feedback look like?
Kim Scott: A culture of feedback is one in which people are expected to overcome their reluctance to hear praise and criticism, and also to deliver it. Rather than silence being the norm, people are expected to speak up, but in a way that is humble and respectful, not obnoxious.
Zack Friedman: Once you define the right culture of feedback and set the foundation, what's the optimal way to deliver feedback?
Kim Scott: The very best feedback occurs in impromptu two-minute conversations.

It's very hard to systematize that or operationalize it. I tried to build an app that would help people remember to have these conversations, but it didn't work. It turns out if you're trying to teach people to put their phones away, look each other in the eye and talk, then an app is a value-subtracting round trip. These impromptu conversations are, as Ben Horowitz put it, the atomic building block of management.

But you can't force them to happen with an HR system. You have to teach people why it's important, how to do it, and help them take steps to put the ideas into practice. This is about pedagogy and behavior change. This is why Jason Rosoff, CEO of Radical Candor, and I are focused now on talks and workshops. We are also starting to experiment with follow up sessions in which managers work to hold each other accountable for soliciting feedback--and help each other figure out how to deal with it when they hear things they really didn't want to hear. Then we work with managers to help each other remember to give impromptu praise, daily.

Ditto re criticism. The order of operations is important here -- focus on soliciting feedback first. Then on giving praise. Then on giving criticism. Finally, managers help each other encourage feedback between people on their teams.

Radical Candor shouldn't be just between managers and employees. It should be part of the culture.
Zack Friedman: If you ask most managers, they probably think they're good at giving feedback. Their perception, however, may be different than the reality. What are the three biggest mistakes that people make in giving feedback?
Kim Scott: The most common mistake is not to give it at all. People are reluctant to give voice to what they appreciate about one another, often for fear of sounding corny or stupid. People are reluctant to point out a mistake another person is making, often for fear of being "mean." So they say nothing, and miss important opportunities to communicate and build relationships.

The second most common mistake that people make is usually a result of the first. They don't offer critical feedback for fear of being mean, and an issue builds and builds, and anger builds along with it. Finally, when the anger reaches a certain peak, it explodes and the feedback is harsher than it needs to be.

The third most common mistake is to act like a jerk -- to give feedback without taking even a moment to show the person common human decency.
Zack Friedman: Generally, it's easier to deliver praise than criticism. What's the best way to deliver constructive feedback?
The best way to deliver guidance is actually to start not by delivering it, but by soliciting criticism.

Make sure you understand the other person's perspective, and what you might be doing or not doing that is contributing to any tensions or problems. When you get some criticism, treat it like a gift. Don't just thank the person for the feedback; act on it. Make your listening tangible.

Then, focus on the good stuff. Make sure you are bringing to the forefront of your mind the things you appreciate about the person you're collaborating with. Be bold and tell the person about these positive things. Give praise. Now, you've shown the person that you view feedback as a gift, and that you are open to it. You also show them that you see the good in them.

Now, it should be "safe" to ask if they are open to some critical feedback from you. "I see an issue I'd like to make you aware of. Are you open to hearing about it?" Only don't use my words, say that in a way that feels natural to you. Most of the time, the person will say yes.
Zack Friedman: There are some bosses who act more like friends to the members of their teams. That has implications not only for the business, but also for feedback and optimizing performance. What's wrong with the boss that wants to be everyone's friend? What's the right balance?
Kim Scott: I have found that if someone on my team isn't angry with me, I'm probably not doing my job as a boss very well. Our instinct with friends is to mollify them, to keep them happy, to be popular with them. These are disastrous instincts for a boss.

The goal is to form a real human relationship with each direct report -- to use everything you know about caring about other people. But it's not a friendship. Often, being the boss feels like a lonely one way street. Friendship definitely shouldn't feel that way.

That's why you get paid to be the boss. You don't get paid to be a friend.
Zack Friedman: You worked together with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg while you were both at Google. What's the biggest lesson you learned from working with Sheryl?
Kim Scott: Sheryl constantly reinforced that feedback is a gift. She led by example here, soliciting feedback and showing real gratitude when she got it.

She is a person of fantastic, almost super human energy, and there is nothing she pours more of that energy into than showing the people around her that she cares. When I got engaged, she threw a big party for me, even though she was eight months pregnant and had been sick for every single day of that pregnancy. I remember watching in awe as she laid out food for everyone, knowing full well how even looking at food made her feel.
Zack Friedman: You've spent time at Apple and Google, and you've worked with many other organizations. What are your three best pieces of career advice?
Kim Scott: 1) Don't forget to quit.

When you hate a job or a boss, pay attention to the fact and find a situation that works better for you. Most of us feel trapped when we are not in fact trapped. But remember: if you never like any job or any boss, maybe it's time for an attitude adjustment

2) There is no shame in a job that just pays the rent.

Sometimes, our passion is outside of work, and our job is what we do to keep body and soul together so that we can pursue that passion. And sometimes we don't have a particular passion, but that doesn't mean we are not enjoying our lives or that our lives don't have meaning.

I think there's too much talk of being passionate about your job, and it confuses people. A wise man once told me, "Only about 3% of people really know what they want to do when they grow up, and they confuse the hell out of the rest of us."

True confession: I don't really have a passion for management. My passion is writing. But I knew I couldn't support myself as a novelist. So I went to business school, figuring that I could make more money per hour that way than being a waiter, and that would ultimately buy me more time to write. But, since I spent so much of my time managing people, I wanted to do it in a way that reflected who I really am. That was how I came to think so much about management, and how it ultimately came to have meaning for me.

3) Make sure you like the content of your job -- the work that you actually do day in and day out.

A mentor once asked me, "Do you want to be a manager, or do you want to do the things that managers do?"

It's not enough to care about the mission of your team and like the people you work with. You also need to enjoy the work itself.
Zack Friedman: Let's talk about a time that you failed. How did you process that self-feedback?
Kim Scott: I wrote three novels, and I have a stack of rejections for each and every one of them. What I learned was that if I enjoy doing something, if it gives me strength, even if others don't admire or even like it, I should just keep doing it.
Zack Friedman: That's helpful feedback for yourself and others. It seems that radical candor can be incorporated outside the work context as well.
Kim Scott: Absolutely! One of those failed novels is called Virtual Love, and it is about how I used what I was learning about being a good manager to get out of a bad romance and into a happy relationship.

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New York Times Bestselling Author Kim Scott On The Art Of Feedback

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Kim Scott is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Radical Candor , the go-to source for how to be a better boss and build better relationships at work.

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Stories about black school children being more harshly treated or punished than white children has become an old and disturbing media staple, one that waxes and wanes with the frequency of its retelling, frequently featuring lurid and shocking details. But despite the popularity of this news trope, most reported accounts typically fail to offer much in the way of credible justification for why teachers might behave in such a racially-prejudiced way toward their students.

Now, i n an effort to make sense of the incomprehensible, a recent study conducted by team of education researchers at several major U.S. universities offers an illuminating theory: many teachers harbor implicit biases against the black faces of their students.

According to a preliminary study published earlier this month in the journal Contemporary Education Psychology, prospective teachers are more likely to perceive the faces of black adults as being angry compared to the faces of white adults, even in instances where neither group is emotionally expressive. Similarly, the researchers found that the teachers-in-training viewed the behavior of black children as more hostile than similar behavior of white children.

This study adds to the scholarly heft of previous scholarly work, as well as countless anecdotes which suggest that white teachers and administrators discipline black students more harshly than white students. While such findings - and media accounts they generate - are disturbing to the point of alarm, they nevertheless contain a logic that is hard to deny. What's more, these new findings help to explain the persistence of discrimination that follows black children into adulthood, as their lives move from classrooms to workplaces and other realities of American society.

Indeed, a teacher's racially biased misperceptions are merely the start of a cascading series of negative consequences on students in their formative years. Far too many teachers have been found to underestimate the academic talent and learning capability of black students. As early as preschool, these students tend to get railroaded disproportionately into the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.

Amy Halberstadt, a psychology professor at North Carolina State University and lead author of the Contemporary Education Psychology paper on the study, said in an interview with Science Daily that it's well known black students are more likely to be suspended, expelled and disciplined than white students due to a disconnect between white teachers and black students.

"With this study, we wanted to explore whether people going into education showed indications of racialized anger bias - detecting anger where none exists," said Halberstadt, who led the team of researchers from North Carolina State University, Northeastern University, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Virginia Commonwealth University. "This is a first step toward understanding whether cultural mismatches and racial prejudice are playing a role in the disproportionate number of black students facing disciplinary action."

To test their theory, the researchers showed 40 undergraduate students, all of whom planned to become K-12 teachers, photos of black and white men and women expressing emotions, and asked the participants to identify the relevant emotions the photos depicted. Additionally, they showed the prospective teachers videos of black and white boys engaged in inappropriate behavior for a school setting - such as tossing a classmate's work in the trash or heckling another student's presentation - and asked them to describe the relative hostility of those students.

According to the study's findings, the future teachers were 1.5 times more likely to be accurate at interpreting emotions in the faces of white men and women compared to the faces of black men and women. Additionally, the participants demonstrated a higher propensity to misjudge non-angry black faces as angry than they did for non-angry white faces.

Most strikingly, the results were exaggerated in that the black adult faces were three times more likely to be judged as angry compared to the white adult faces, even when they were not. Similarly, the prospective teachers attributed significantly more hostility to the black boys in the videos than they did to the white boys. For example, on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not hostile at all) to 5 (very hostile), the respondents gave an average rating of 3.37 for black boys' behaviors, while giving white boys a 2.12 rating for similar behaviors.

Civil rights advocates, as well as the general public, have long been aware of racial disparities in school discipline, according to a report issued last year by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Thurgood Marshall Institute. In that report, "Locked out of the Classroom: How Implicit Bias Contributes to Disparities in School Discipline," authors Ajmel Quereshi, senior counsel for the LDF, and Jason Okonofua, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, noted that more than 40 years ago, observers noted disparities in the rate that black students were suspended from school compared to white students.

"As early as 1974, civil rights advocates highlighted that black students were two to three times more likely to be suspended than white students," Quereshi and Okonofua write. "Sadly, little progress has been made in reducing these disparities."

To draw a finer point on the lack of progress, Quereshi and Okonofua cite the most recent statistics contained in a 2014 U.S. Department of Education report that was updated and re-released in 2016:

But more than merely affirming what many already know, the new study advances the knowledge about implicit bias held by an incoming generation of teachers and offers an framework for future scholarship to address and fix the problem - in schools and elsewhere in our society.

In her Science Daily interview, Halderstadt noted that while the findings are disappointing, they also point the way toward better education for future public school teachers - all of whom will need to have the ability to properly educate a m é lange of races and ethnicities in their classrooms.

"If we don't even know that we're doing this, then we can't change," she said. "So the first step is to become aware and then we can work on our changes."

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New study shines light on the racial 'anger bias' of educators

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Stories about black school children being more harshly treated or punished than white children has become an old and disturbing media staple, one that waxes and wanes with the frequency of its retelling, frequently featuring lurid and shocking details.

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Dear reader,

We want to let you know that we are grateful that you are taking the time to click on thisheadline. Because without you reading the story, what's the point?

We are now going to use your precious time to share a surprising new finding: People like getting thank you notes.

O.K., it's not that surprising. But what did surprise two psychologists as they attempted to get to bottom of why so few people actually send thank yous is that many people totally "miscalibrate" the effect of an appreciative email. They underestimate the positive feelings it will bring.

"They think it's not going to be that big a deal," said Amit Kumar, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies well-being.

They also overestimate how insincere the note may appear and how uncomfortable it will make the recipient feel, their study found.

But after receiving thank-you notes and filling out questionnaires about how it felt to get them, many said they were"ecstatic," scoring the happiness rating at 4 of 5. The senders typically guessed they'd evoke a 3.

To be clear - the notes in question were not your typical "thanks for the Amazon gift card."Rather, the 100 or so participants in each of the four experiments were asked to write a short "gratitude letter" to a person who had affected them in some way. Sample letters included missives of appreciation to fellow students and friends who offered guidance through the college admissions process, job searches and tough times. In lab experiments, Dr. Kumar observed that it took most subjects less than five minutes to write the letters.

Along with underestimating the value of sending a note to another person, many seemed to be concerned with how much their writing would be scrutinized.

As it turned out, most recipients didn't care how the notes were phrased, they cared about warmth, Dr. Kumar and his co-author Nicholas Epley, a professor at the University of Chicago, found.Participants were also judged to be more competent at writing than they expected.

This finding was "a gem" that is "worthy of future research" said Sara Algoe, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who also researches gratitude, in anemail.

"I like that their work reinforces the value of just saying something," she wrote.

Researchers also encouraged the writers of the thank-you messages to mention that a study had spurred their letters, something that doesn't usually happen in real life. How often do we get to tell someone, "a scientist asked me to do this" before making ourselves vulnerable? The studyfound that many subjects were concerned that recipients would feel awkward upon receiving the compliment-filled letters. (Recipients rarely did.) Wouldn't those concerns intensify without a good excuse for sending it?

Perhaps, said Dr. Kumar. But that should not undermine what he sees as the broader finding: People tend to undervalue the positive effect they can have on others for a tiny investment of time.
Most people don't read this far so thanks for that, The New York Times Health and Science Desk

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You Should Actually Send That Thank You Note You've Been Meaning to Write

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Dear reader, We want to let you know that we are grateful that you are taking the time to click on thisheadline. Because without you reading the story, what's the point? We are now going to use your precious time to share a surprising new finding: People like getting thank you notes.