One of the greatest blessings I've enjoyed is the support of some extraordinary teachers and mentors, and David Bradford is among the most significant. After a long career as an educator, author, and leader, David is scaling back some of his professional responsibilities, so it's an opportune moment to express my gratitude for the many ways he's influenced and inspired me over the years. [1]
Touchy Feely and Beyond
I first encountered David as the co-author, with Mary Ann Huckabay, of the "Interpersonal Dynamics Reader," the series of essays that served as the primary text for the course of that name at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), more commonly known as "Touchy Feely." [2] I took the course with Mary Ann in the Fall of 1999 in my second year in the MBA program, and it's no understatement to say that it changed my life. Mary Ann has made so many contributions to my growth as a person and as a coach that I call her my "fairy godmother," and among them was a heightened curiosity about social psychology and its role in contemporary management practice and education, along with an appreciation for David's contributions to the field.
Subsequent research led me to realize that Touchy Feely in its current incarnation at Stanford would not exist without David. The course is delivered primarily through "T-groups," an experiential learning model that was first developed in 1946 under the leadership of psychologist Kurt Lewin, and then popularized in the 1950s and '60s by a group of Lewin's proteges, including Leland Bradford, David's father. T-group programs spread throughout corporations and academia, and a T-group-based course was first offered at Stanford in 1968. David, having completed his PhD in social psychology in 1966, joined the Stanford faculty in 1969 and began the process of transforming the course into what would become the most popular elective at the GSB. [3]
It hadn't yet attained that status when I arrived as an MBA student in 1998, although it was already well-established--I estimate that roughly one-third of my classmates took the course. But today the school offers 11 sections of the course each year, accommodating a total of 396 students, and with roughly 400 students per class in the MBA program and another 100 in the MSx program, it's clear that the vast majority of Stanford management students find the course integral to their GSB experience.
The GSB makes an effort to highlight the school's emphasis on experiential learning, leadership development, and interpersonal skills as differentiators that set it apart from other management education programs, and rightfully so. I benefited greatly from these aspects of the school as an MBA student, and I've been privileged to help expand them in a number of ways over the past 15 years. I've seen the impact on thousands of students who have gone on to occupy significant leadership roles around the world. Many people have contributed to this work, of course, and I suspect David would be quick to credit these colleagues--but I also suspect that these colleagues would agree with me that David is the single person most responsible for the GSB's success in these areas.
To PhD, or Not to PhD?
In the early 2000s I was considering a PhD in Organizational Behavior and a career in academia. Mary Ann recommended that I reach out to David, and he agreed to meet. We talked about my goals and interests, and then he drew a list of activities on a whiteboard, including basic research, applied research, teaching, and direct work with clients, and he asked me to think about what percent of my time I wanted to spend on each activity and to write down a figure next to each item on the list. Then he showed me how my time would actually be allocated if I followed the path I was considering and wrote those figures next to mine on the whiteboard. The two sets of numbers had nothing in common. It was the gentlest crushing of a dream I've ever witnessed, and I'm certain that this single conversation saved me many years of frustration.
I later wrote about this episode, and someone commented, "Takes a lot of tact and intelligence to destroy a person's mirage, as you put it, without crushing their spirit." David is obviously a man of intelligence, but I wouldn't necessarily describe him as tactful. His directness helped me to see how an excess of tact could keep me from achieving my goals and having the desired impact on others. Tact blunts our rough edges, and while sometimes those edges do need smoothing out, they can also cut through a lot of bullshit. The gentle directness that David embodied in this conversation--and which I've seen him employ many times since--has been an ongoing source of inspiration for me.
The Teaching Assistant
I retained Mary Ann as my coach while in my first leadership role after business school, and the experience was transformative. Several years later I found myself wondering if it might be possible for me to translate my managerial and entrepreneurial experience into a coaching and consulting practice. For a period I considered pursuing coaching training and building a practice in my spare time while I continued to occupy my current leadership role, but eventually I concluded 1) that I was sufficiently passionate about coaching that I wanted to give this effort my best shot, and 2) giving it my best shot meant that I needed to quit my job and focus on building a practice full-time, which I did in 2006.
At the same time I was accepted into the GSB's facilitator training program for Touchy Feely, which had the effect of re-connecting me with the school and renewing my relationship with David, among others. As a result, when David's teaching assistant for his section of High Performance Leadership that Fall was unable to fulfill that commitment, I was asked if I wanted to step in. While my practice had grown substantially that year, I still had a sufficiently flexible schedule that it was easy to say yes, and I spent that Fall as David's TA. [4]
It was an incredibly enriching experience on a number of levels. It was deeply fulfilling to immerse myself in a curriculum that was so relevant to my coaching and consulting practice, and to get the added benefit of discussing concepts from the course each week with David while also observing him in action as a teacher and facilitator. The course included not only lectures in front of the entire section, but also weekly meetings with a small group of students, and I admired David's ability to be both an authoritative and challenging figure at the front of the room as well as a supportive facilitator in a more intimate setting.
Finally, serving as David's TA allowed me to get to know Carole Robin, yet another of my extraordinary teachers and mentors, who also taught High Performance Leadership at the time and who stepped in to guest lecture on a day that David was unavailable. After the course was over, I distilled my observations about what went well and what I thought could be improved into a 7-page memo(!), and David and Carole were gracious enough to meet with me to debrief it. In retrospect I so appreciate their openness to my ideas, which is one reason I survey my students in the middle of each Quarter to solicit their feedback on my effectiveness as a teacher. It doesn't always feel good to hear, but it's been instrumental in allowing me to learn and grow more quickly.
High-Performing Teams
At the end of 2006 I was invited to join the GSB's staff as a Leadership Coach, a member of an in-house team that was being assembled to help build out the school's "new curriculum." [5] Our tasks included launching the Leadership Fellows program, taking the Leadership Labs course that had been piloted as an elective the previous year and transforming it into a mandatory class for first-year MBAs, and facilitating T-groups in Touchy Feely, among other duties. While David wasn't directly involved in our efforts on Fellows or Labs, I certainly see his influence on the "new curriculum" as a whole--its emphasis on experiential learning and interpersonal skills were extensions of the work he'd been doing in Touchy Feely for decades.
In 2008 David was scheduled to give a presentation on "Building High-Performing Teams" to a class at the GSB that brought MBAs together with graduate students from Engineering and other programs to pursue potential entrepreneurial ventures in small groups. A personal obligation prevented David from presenting, and Carole wasn't available, so they asked me if I could stand in.
I agreed, with some hesitation, and David not only shared all of his materials with me, he also gave me complete license to revise them as I saw fit. At the time I was nervous about public speaking, and I had never been onstage in front of a packed auditorium, let alone one full of Stanford graduate students who had high expectations about my ability to help them build a high-performing team. David's blessing to modify his materials gave me the freedom I needed to translate his ideas into my own visual idiom and to begin developing my own style as a speaker.
The presentation was a success, and I still appreciate the messages from the course's professor who said "the energy in the room was palpable," and a student I knew who was in attendance: "Great job last night." It was a major turning point for me as a professional, not only because I had proven myself capable at this particular task, but also because I had stepped way outside my comfort zone in the process--something I would have to do over and over again if I wanted to continue to grow as a coach and teacher.
And all of this was made possible by David's encouragement and his spirit of abundance. Rather than putting any pressure on me to do it "his way," he expressed complete trust in my ability to do it "my way" and to succeed as a result. Rather than exert any proprietary control over his materials, he was exceedingly generous with his ideas. His approach made a marked impression on me and informed both my efforts as a leader and trainer in a number of settings as well as my commitment to share the majority of my own materials on this site.
A Role-Play For Real
In the summer of 2010 I was invited by Carole to co-facilitate a T-group with her in the GSB's week-long version of Touchy Feely for executives, a program that would be overseen by David. It was a high-profile opportunity for a relatively junior facilitator like myself, and I imagine that Carole may have had to convince David that I would be up to the task.
Much like the MBA version of the course, the program included large-group sessions before each T-group during which a faculty member would lecture or conduct an exercise that all 36 participants would observe. One such exercise was a role-play involving feedback between a faculty member and one of the facilitators, and it was agreed that David and I would team up for it.
Unbeknownst to David, I had felt an increasing sense of irritation with him as the week progressed. He had made a few joking comments that highlighted my junior status on the staff, and although in hindsight it was merely a form of friendly teasing, at the time I felt sensitive about my relative inexperience and resented these remarks. Without providing David any advance warning, I decided to make this dynamic the focus of our exercise--rather than conduct a "role-play," I would simply be myself and provide him with some direct feedback for real.
I don't recall what I said, but I recall vividly how it felt. David and I were seated in front of the room, with all of the participants and the rest of the staff arrayed in front of us. Somehow I conveyed to David that I wasn't role-playing, I was speaking from the heart, I was truly frustrated and upset, and I had some real feedback for him. Everyone in the room suddenly realized what they were witnessing, and it became very still and quiet.
From my vantage point today, I'm both embarrassed by this episode and proud of it. I'm embarrassed because it was clearly an effort to gain an unfair advantage over David by surprising him with this feedback in a public setting. And yet I'm proud of it because it was also a legitimate attempt to "walk our talk" as facilitators, to illustrate the concepts we were teaching not through a simulated experience but a real one.
David, to his immense credit, responded in the moment with grace and compassion, dissolving my frustration and providing our participants with a powerful example of how a leader could respond effectively to critical feedback from a subordinate, even--and especially--when it was an unwelcome surprise. After the conclusion of the large-group session, Carole and I joined our T-group in our breakout room. One of our group's members was a hardened military veteran, and throughout the week he had been skeptical about the experience and what he might learn from it, but as our T-group session began, he expressed how my interaction with David had earned his respect. He saw that we took our business as seriously as he took his, and he was going to put his skepticism aside. In the end it was one of the most profound T-group experiences I've ever had, and I credit many factors, including my partnership with Carole, but David certainly played a role in the process.
Teaching Touchy Feely and Beyond
In 2015 I was asked to join the Touchy Feely faculty, and I taught the course in 2016 and 2017. [6] I don't know whether David recommended me, but I'm certain that his approval was necessary for me to even be considered, and while I'm grateful to all of my colleagues on that team for their support, I particularly appreciate David's vote of confidence. Teaching Touchy Feely will always be a career highlight for me, and I still look back on that experience with some awe and amazement. I remember what it was like to struggle through my very first T-group in 1999, and if you'd told me then that I would someday be teaching that same course I don't think I would have believed you.
But even as I was being afforded these new opportunities, I was in the midst of making some decisions that would radically change the role I play at the GSB. In 2016 I resigned from my full-time position in order to devote more time to my private coaching practice, although I would continue to teach Touchy Feely and The Art of Self-Coaching, the course that I had founded in 2015. [7] And then the following year the school asked me to add a third section of The Art of Self-Coaching, and I faced a tremendously difficult decision. Given the growth of my coaching practice, it wouldn't be possible to go down to Stanford more than once a week, so ultimately I chose to resign from the Touchy Feely faculty and focus on teaching my course. [8]
While I believe that was the right choice for me, I made it with some regret, knowing that I would be stepping away from David's influence and from the opportunity to make a direct contribution to the legacy that he's established at Stanford. While I in no way compare my work to his, I try to apply all that I've learned from him (and Mary Ann, and Carole, and many others) in teaching The Art of Self-Coaching, and I'd like to think that it's a useful complement to Touchy Feely and the GSB's other experiential courses, all of which owe a great debt to David.
Thank you, David. I'm a better teacher, a better coach, and a better person thanks to you. My life has taken a host of unexpected turns due to your influence, and it's immeasurably more meaningful and fulfilling as a result. There's no way I can repay you, and it's one of my greatest hopes that I can pay it forward, in some small way, with my own clients and students.
Thanks also to Mary Ann Huckabay and Carole Robin, two towering figures in my life, without whom none of this would have happened.
Footnotes
[1] David Bradford, Stanford Graduate School of Business
[3] A Brief History of T-Groups
[4] High Performance Leadership at Stanford Business School
[5] Leadership Coaching at Stanford Business School
[6] Teaching Touchy Feely at Stanford GSB
[7] Goodbye, Stanford! Hello, Stanford!
[8] Goodbye, Touchy Feely! Hello, Art of Self-Coaching!
Earlier Posts Inspired by David's Work
David Bradford on Real Options
David Bradford on Teams, Families and Privacy
