Hoover Tower, July 2016
Begin with the End in Mind
At the end of 2006 I accepted an offer to join the first in-house coaching staff at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where I had completed my MBA six years before. I took on the role not because I aspired to a career in academia, but because I was excited about the opportunity to contribute to the launch of the school's new curriculum, with its emphasis on leadership development and experiential learning, and because I thought it could accelerate my own development as a coach. The results on both fronts exceeded my wildest expectations.
I maintained a full-time role at the GSB until 2016, when I resigned to devote more time to my private practice, although I continued to serve as a Lecturer teaching Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy Feely") and The Art of Self-Coaching, the course I had launched the year before. I resigned from the Interpersonal Dynamics faculty in 2017 after the school asked me to add a third section of The Art of Self-Coaching, as I could only be on campus one day a week, and until 2020 I taught my course year-round. It was routinely one of the school's highest-rated electives until the last time I taught it in 2021, and I learned a great deal from that experience. I took a break from Stanford entirely last year, in part to reflect on the role I wanted teaching to play in my life, and a few days ago I concluded that it was time to retire from the GSB.
Today I'm struck by the extent to which the courses and programs that were products of the "new curriculum" are now viewed as features of the landscape, as if they'd always been there. This is gratifying, but it also reminds me that it's time to move on before I, too, am viewed as a feature of the landscape. I'm also somewhat astonished to realize that I worked with well over 1,000 MBA students in more than 50 courses from 2007 to 2021. It's impossible to convey how much my work with them has meant to me, and how significantly it shaped my growth and development, not only as a coach, but also as a person.
I know it's time to end this chapter of my professional life, but I do so with some ambivalence. I took great pride in delivering excellence as a teacher, and I don't like ending on a disappointing note with my final group of students. I loved creating an environment in the classroom that invited students to have deeper conversations and take some meaningful risks in order to learn, and I'm not sure how I'll meet that need in the future. And this evolution in my relationship with Stanford is yet another in a series of post-pandemic transitions that evoke a loss of identity.
All that said, the time is surely right. The last few years have made it clear that coaching is a counter-cyclical profession--the worse the state of the world, the more leaders benefit from good coaching, and I've never felt more useful to my clients or more needed. The idea of relating to Stanford as an alumnus, with none of the responsibilities that faculty and staff must bear sounds appealing. And at this stage of my life I'm reflecting on and writing about issues more relevant to senior leaders than to graduate students: coping with midlife malaise, evolving from warrior to sage, leading other senior leaders.
It's impossible to summarize my relationship with Stanford in a single essay, but I can recount half-a-dozen stories from the last few decades that provide a little color...
1. A Lesson in Humility
I arrived at Stanford as an MBA student in 1998--a quarter-century ago!--but my relationship with the university began in 1985, when I was a senior in high school. I was a bit lackadaisical about the college admissions process--the fact that high school was ending came as something of a surprise to me--and I discovered that I'd missed the application deadline for Brown, which had been my first choice, to the extent that I was making a choice at all.
I never considered the other Ivies, which seemed out of reach or a poor fit for me (or both), so I set my sights on Stanford, which I envisioned as both more achievable and more offbeat. I didn't feel arrogant about it, but I was confident I'd get in--and then a thin envelope arrived in the mail, informing me that my presence in California would not be required. It was the first of many useful lessons Stanford would teach me.
I ultimately graduated from Brown, via a long and winding path, but I keenly remembered Stanford's rejection, which served as a useful chip on my shoulder and source of motivation when I decided to apply to the Graduate School of Business to pursue an MBA. At the time I was passionate about helping nonprofits and NGOs use technology more effectively, and entrepreneur Jed Emerson and Stanford alumna Melinda Tuan helped me realize that the GSB would be the best place to pursue my vision. So it was very fulfilling when I got the call from the GSB's Director of Admissions Marie Mookini that I'd been accepted as a member of the Class of 2000.
2. Let's Talk About That
After graduation I spent the next six years pursuing the vision that had initially led me to business school, primarily as the first executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, aka N-TEN. I was determined to make N-TEN a success, and I threw myself into the experience with vigor, which resulted in some predictable conflicts. Vince Stehle, a member of my board, took me aside and said, in effect, "You're a talented guy, but you have some rough edges. I advise you to invest in yourself and get a coach." I turned to Mary Ann Huckabay, with whom I'd taken Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy Feely") as an MBA student and asked if she'd take me on as a coaching client. (Thankfully she said yes, and she's still my coach today.)
When I began exploring coaching as a career path in 2005, I considered applying to the GSB's Group Facilitation Training Program, which prepared community members to lead student groups in Touchy Feely. I participated in a group co-facilitated by Barbara Brewer and Dietmar Brinkmann to refresh my memory of the experience, and I got a lot more than I bargained for. Most significantly, I came to the realization that to give myself the greatest chance of succeeding as a coach I needed to quit my job and dedicate myself entirely to my practice--which I did. But for the first time I also grasped just how much growth would be required of me if I were to pursue this path.
With Mary Ann's encouragement I applied to the training program, and one step in the process was an interview with a current facilitator. The night before my interview Amy had to go to the emergency room, and the hospital kept her for observation. Amy insisted that I keep the appointment, and I arrived on campus feeling anxious and distracted. My interviewer was Tony Levitan, a GSB alumnus, and as we got started he noticed that something was amiss and asked me how I was doing. I answered candidly, saying something like "Not great," and Tony did something that I'll never forget: He said, "Well, let's talk about that." So we did--which, of course, turned about to be the most relevant type of "interview" for the program.
3. Too Big to Fail (Or So I Thought)
The Executive Challenge is a role-playing case competition that serves as the culmination of the first-year Leadership Labs course. I served as an alumni judge in a pilot version of the EC in 2007, and later that year my colleagues and I on the Leadership Coaching staff had to decide what to do with the event now that "LeadLabs" was becoming a mandatory component of the core curriculum. I recall a meeting with Evelyn Williams, the faculty member who had developed the original version of LeadLabs and the Fellows program at the University of Chicago's business school and had been recruited to bring it to the GSB by Dean Bob Joss.
At Chicago participation in the EC had been a reward for high-performing students, but I advocated for expanding it to include all students. If we kept it small, it would be our responsibility alone--and we were already struggling to command the resources necessary to make LeadLabs a success. But if the whole school was involved more people would feel a sense of ownership, and the EC would be "too big to fail." The final decision was Evelyn's, but I take a little credit for influencing the outcome, and today the entire MBA1 class participates in the EC, along with 70+ MBA2 Leadership Fellows and hundreds of alumni judges. (It's the second-largest event at the GSB behind graduation.)
This set the stage, however, for a great embarrassment and another profound lesson. From 2008 through 2015 I ran the scoring system for the EC, and it evolved into a finely-tuned machine that managed to process an immense amount of data throughout the day, carefully check the results, and deliver the final scores in time to be announced at a massive party held at the conclusion of the competition. But in 2014 an oversight on my part resulted in an error, which meant that several teams were awarded a victory that had to be renounced, and the real victors were denied the opportunity to celebrate with their classmates.
The cause of the error was a tiny technical glitch, and when I discovered what had happened I realized that it would be easy to evade responsibility. No one would have faulted me if I'd shrugged my shoulders and blamed the fates. But I decided that if I took pride in the system's previous successes--and I did--I had to claim this failure as my own. I reached out to the students who had been affected and apologized, and I received a host of gracious responses in return. I also wrote to the staff who had been assisting me, making it clear that I held myself responsible, and their supervisor, Ursula Kaiser, replied, "Thanks for the clarification, Ed. I appreciate your sense of accountability and honesty. You are a true gentleman." I don't always live up to that, but it's something to shoot for.
4. A Role Play for Real
In the summer of 2010 I was invited by Carole Robin to co-facilitate a group with her in the GSB's week-long version of Touchy Feely for executives, a program that would be overseen by David Bradford. I owe both Carole and David an immense debt for their many contributions to my career, including this experience, which was a high-profile opportunity for a relatively junior facilitator like myself. Much like the MBA version of the course, the program included large-group sessions before each 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 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 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.
5. On the Big Stage
From 2017 through 2020 I taught The Art of Self Coaching, the course that I founded in 2015, three times a year, in Autumn, Winter and Spring Quarters. While it was rewarding to work with so many students--over 100 members of each graduating class--by the end of each academic year I needed a break from Stanford. In 2017 and 2018 I was invited by the Second Year students to give a "Last Lecture," a talk on any topic I chose that would be held in the GSB's largest auditorium the week before their graduation.
It was an honor to be invited, but it also felt like a lot of work at a moment when I was ready to take a break, so I declined as graciously as I could. That was true, but it wasn't the whole truth--I was also anxious about the prospect of speaking in front of hundreds of people. I'm not a natural public speaker, and I've had to work hard to feel comfortable at the front of a room. The most helpful step in that process was taking a public speaking course at the Engineering School while I was an MBA student myself, but I still get butterflies even today.
In 2019 I anticipated being invited to speak for a third time--and having to decline a third time--when something interesting happened: The expected invitation never came...and I was disappointed. I realized that I enjoyed being asked, and when you keep saying "No" eventually people stop asking. Then, out of the blue, the invitation finally arrived, and it was clear that this time I had to say "Yes." So I did.
I knew what I wanted to discuss, and expanding that theme into a full lecture was relatively easy. But I was still anxious at the prospect of appearing on the big stage, so I went back to what I learned in that public-speaking course decades earlier--practice. I recorded myself giving the talk in my office, and that helped, but the best preparation was a bit more esoteric. The day before the lecture I drove all the way out to Chimney Rock, at the very tip of Point Reyes, and I gave my talk to the Pacific Ocean. The vastness of the sea was calming, perhaps because it put everything in perspective. If it went well, if it didn't go well, what would really change? (It went well.)
6. Bookends
Although I ended my GSB career teaching The Art of Self-Coaching virtually as a result of the pandemic--the first time was a big success, the second not so much--the course itself and my philosophy as an experiential educator were built around the in-person classroom experience, which is reflected in two activities that served as bookends for the course. I designed The Art of Self-Coaching to be an accelerated and economical journey. In a given quarter we had just nine or ten class sessions, each 1 hour, 45 minutes, which was less time than the other courses I'd been involved in over the years. I was confident that in the right conditions students could still have a deeply meaningful experience, but we had to get off to a fast start.
So before each quarter I memorized every student's face so that I could greet them by name as they walked into the classroom for the first time. There's no trick to the memorization process--it just takes time and effort--and it inevitably had an outsized impact. Occasionally students would even laugh in amazement. My goal was to send two messages: First, I'm setting a high standard for myself, and I hope you'll join me. But also, I see you--you're not just one of 36 students to me, you're an individual.
And in the final class session there was an exercise that invariably provided some of my best moments as a teacher. An ongoing theme in the course was what I really meant by "self-coaching." I provided a simple definition in the syllabus: "The process of guiding our own growth and development, particularly through periods of transition, in all domains of life." But this was intentionally vague and abstract, and by the final class I expected each student to have determined what self-coaching meant to them as an individual, and what it would look like in practice in their life.
I began the final class session with a warm-up exercise to get everyone moving and energized, and then I had them work on whiteboards in small groups, creating mindmaps that answered the question, "What is self-coaching to me?" The students would sketch out their mindmaps in silence and then discuss the results in their group. After the small group discussions we would conduct several more full-class activities, including some final remarks from me and a ritual to close the class. I enjoyed the entire session immensely, but it was particularly rewarding to observe my students as they discussed their mindmaps. Many of these conversations were quite animated, and there was a palpable sense of energy in the room. My persona as teacher was generally "circus ringmaster," so it's unexpected to realize that my most lasting memory of the classroom will be those times when I sat in the back and merely observed.
Many Thanks...
So to my former students: It was an honor to work with you, and I hope our time together continues to bear fruit in your current endeavors. Thank you, good luck, and keep in touch.
Over the course of my career at Stanford--as an MBA student myself, and later as a Leadership Coach and Lecturer, I was blessed with so many people who provided support and encouragement. I'm certain that I've inadvertently left some people off this list, and I apologize in advance for those oversights. That said, many thanks to...
Allison Rouse, Amy Kraus, Anamaria Nino-Murcia, Andrea Corney, Agnes Le, Anthony Ramsey, Barbara Brewer, Barbara Firpo, Bob Joss, Bob Sutton, Bonnie Wentworth, Bri' Godfrey, Brian Lowery, Bryan McCann, Carrie Lee, Chevalisa Bruzzone, Chris McCanna, Chris Sadlak, Christopher Williams, Collins Dobbs, Courtney Payne, Delilah Gallardo, Dietmar Brinkmann, Dikla Carmel-Hurwitz, Domenico Anatrone, the late Don Flaxman, Don Hejna, Erica Peng, Grace Yokoi, Graham Veth, Graham Weaver, Hugh Keelan, Inbal Demri Shaham, Ingrid McGovert, James VanHorne, Jamila Rufaro, Jana Basili, Jed Emerson, Jeff Pfeffer, Jimena Galfaso, Joe Murphy, Joel Peterson, John Cronkite, John Johnson, Johnnie Walton, Joy Hsu, Karin Scholz Grace, Ken Chan, Kevin Martin, Kirstin Moss, Kris Becker, Lara Tiedens, Lela Djakovic, Leslie Chin, Lily Kimbal, Ling Lam, Lisa Kay Solomon, Lisa Radloff, Lisa Schwallie, Lisa Simpson, Lisa Stefanac, Liselotte Zvacek, Lynn Santopietro, Margee Hayes, Mark Voorsanger, Melinda Tuan, Michael Terrell, Mike Hochleutner, Mindy Williams, Nancy Dam, Nirit Hazan, Nonna Kocharyan, Nora Richardson, Paul Abad, Paul Roberts, Rebecca Taylor, Rebecca Zucker, Rich Kass, Richard Francisco, Richard Haukom, Ricki Frankel, Roberto Fernandez, Saraswathi Ram Mohan, Sharon Richmond, Stephanie Stevens, Sunny Sabbini, Sue Neville, Suzan Jensen, Tony Levitan, Tuquynh Tran, Ursula Kaiser, Vince Stehle, Yifat Sharabi-Levine, and Zoe Dunning.
More specifically...
Thank you, Carole Robin, for your invaluable guidance, your commitment to excellence, and your ongoing friendship.
Thank you, David Bradford, for your unfailing candor and your lifelong stewardship.
Thank you, Evelyn Williams, for your passion for leadership development, your genius for curriculum design, and the opportunity of a lifetime.
Thank you, Garth Saloner, for your rigor as a teacher and your foresight as a leader.
Thank you, Gary Dexter, for being yourself in the classroom, which emboldened me to do the same.
Thank you, Marie Mookini, for taking a chance on me.
Thank you, Mary Ann Huckabay, for being the single biggest influence on my life outside my family.
Thank you, Paul Mattish, for your unfailing professionalism in the face of utter chaos.
Thank you, Roberto Fernandez, for all you taught me and for being my greatest role model as a teacher.
Thank you, Sarah Stone, for being a beacon of clarity in the confusing life of a Lecturer.
Thank you, Scott Bristol, for your intellectual innovation and your heartfelt compassion.
Thank you!
