Setting the Stage for Learning

Structure influences behavior.

No matter how creative a leadership teacher you may be, I cannot underestimate the importance of setting the stage prior to any speaking engagement or class. I often say that I am less the professor and more the architect — the architect who creates the structure for learning to take place.

In Systems Thinking parlance, we say “Structure influences behavior.” This is important to remember when beginning any class. I mentioned in a prior post that I taught at the Harvard Summer School last year. When I walked into my classroom at Emerson Hall to set up my first class, I was a bit surprised to notice that it was organized in a very traditional academic manner — lots of rows of chairs with desks.

Two minutes after my class had assembled, and before I had even formally welcomed my students into the course, I asked them to kindly remove their desks and create a circle using only their chairs.

They did, and then I asked, “What did you learn?” After some reluctance, one student initiated the conversation by saying she liked the circle. “Why” I asked. “Well, we can see all the faces of our classmates rather than just their necks!” she replied. Spot on!

Others chimed in, and shared their delight with the new structure, but some were uncertain and felt somehow naked without the “protection” of a desk and a row. After a very bad joke (“Well, if you can’t succeed in my class, you’ve just taken your first steps in an alternative career as a furniture mover”), we engaged in a very robust dialog of why, in fact, structure created behavior — a key foundation of the course I was teaching.

In another teaching situation — this time at Tufts — I learned that my new class would be comprised mostly of introverts (a pre-class assignment for each student was to learn her/his Myers-Briggs score). Knowing about this majority of introverts in advance, I did not start with the entire class in front of me. Rather, I divided the class into smaller groups of three. I’ve learned that extroverts tend to dominate class discussion if allowed to do so, whereas my introverts fully enjoy the safety of smaller triads (and even dyads). During the year, each class began this way, and each one generated the energy and enthusiasm I needed to excel at my job as the professor.

I’ve learned over time that it’s a bit less what I bring into the learning environment, and more what my clients and students bring into it. Although it might sound obvious, learning as much as you can about my students and the classroom structure has been a very important element for successful teaching and learning.

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