The fabric of the school is created by the staff, faculty, and administration. It’s created in the interactions among a diverse cast of characters that includes nonacademic personnel like the landscapers and custodians. The cumulative effect of so many interactions among individual actors is a spirit, a feeling, an atmosphere that permeates an institution. Just as students leave classrooms and focus on those activities that are more central to their lives, faculty members find themselves in the web of institutional relationships.

The individual-versus-collective dynamic is often evident in universities. Outside the classroom, faculty members are supposed to interact, fostering a collective spirit. Those attracted to university life, however, are in the main individual contributors. They are a type of entrepreneur, creating their own startups based on their research, their interests. Mixing with others can feel like an unnatural act to many professors. They have a penchant for maximum autonomy, individual work as opposed to team play. They want to be included but don’t want to take on administrative work that might take them away from what makes their hearts beat fast. The technical and functional work is what defines them. They maintain positive self-concepts only when they continually produce enough and cross enough activities off their lists. Their credo is “Who I am is solely based on what I accomplish.”

The glue of the school is created in the hallways of the faculty office buildings. Each department has its own norms in terms of whether faculty members are supposed to work from their school offices. In most departments, you can walk the halls and hear the latest gossip. What you won’t hear in the business school hallways is a discussion of leadership theory or an organizational behavior concept. The topics fluctuate between who is not working hard enough in the department, who has or has not published recently, who is preparing for the promotion process, or the inadequacies of department and school leadership.

If we find ourselves chatting in subsequent days, the conversation meanders back to the regular topics. While we occasionally focus on a colleague’s teaching ability or research accomplishments, I’ve observed that we end up spotlighting where colleagues are coming up short. Different faculty members rotate as the objects of the conversation, but the themes remain basically the same. I don’t know whether we need to blow off steam by talking about others or whether we just gossip as a way of connecting on some level with our colleagues.

On occasion we can be raucous. If I’m sitting in my office and I hear loud laughter outside the door, I wonder what I’ve missed. In more insecure moments I wonder if I’m ever the topic of conversation among the faculty. Somehow I think I’m above the fray.

I do know that if we are talking about Bill and Bill turns a corner and is heading our way, we change the topic in a nanosecond and create the illusion that we were chatting about some other topic. We have the ability to include Bill into the conversation and evolve into gossiping about someone else. Bill becomes part of the conversational circle rather than its target. It’s quite remarkable how deft we are at real-time conversation, creating the impression that we are authentic in word and deed.

Within this milieu, creating strong, reciprocal relationships can be a challenge. So how do we create connections in a world where individuality is the norm? University leaders grapple constantly with this question. They strive to create an atmosphere where those who primarily work alone want to be at school, chatting in the hallways with their colleagues and students. Adding to the challenge, faculty members often believe that their time away from campus—on research trips, in their home offices working on papers and books, at forums on their academic topics—is where the real creative work takes place. Nonetheless, deans and department heads continue their search for answers around inclusivity and connection.

Validation

One of the easiest ways to connect with others is through validation. Validation involves acknowledgment and affirmation. I’m not suggesting giving others insincere compliments to stroke their egos. But validation does have everything to do with noticing when colleagues, staff, and students do good work and acknowledging it. Validation also means paying attention to and being interested in something other than one’s own agenda. Validating someone else is communicating that you are “aware.” You are committed to focusing on what the other person might want to accomplish. It is the process of trying to understand the reality of someone else.

It costs little to express gratitude outside the classroom, but it can reward both parties with a sense of connection. Last year I ran into a fellow teacher, Julio, who unlike me, never took himself too seriously. He was kind and tough simultaneously in the classroom. He never cold-called students, yet invited them to participate. He pushed and prodded students to think deeply in real time and not simply say something. If someone was struggling in his classes, he coached the student offline. Julio came to my office twelve years ago to thank me for guiding him when he was section chair of one of the ten first-year sections or communities. He didn’t make a big production out of it; he just walked into my office and said, “Thank you.” He continued, “I have been scared to death to have this role and you have reached out to me to see if I needed anything.”

I bumped into Julio at the dining room in Baker Library years later and noticed how gaunt he appeared; I told him he didn’t look well. He said, “I thought most everyone knew that I have a rare form of cancer.” His response stopped me in my tracks. I replied that I didn’t know what to say; I did thank him for telling me.

After lunch I returned to my office, suspecting that my lunch guest may have noticed that I was there but not really there. My heart and mind were still wrapping themselves around what Julio had told me. On my walk back to the office, I ran into a younger professor I’ll call Joanna. Joanna was denied promotion. Her research was seen as good but not great. Her teaching was off the charts. She could hold students spellbound with her intensity, her understanding of the content, her unparalleled energy. I watched her teach twice, and both experiences were memorable.

The encounter with Joanna will always be linked with my earlier encounter with Julio. The unfairness of life struck me. Why was Julio the one to get a horrible disease? And why was a great teacher denied a promotion? But my thoughts were even more focused. It made me question the origins of teaching ability. I asked myself how a junior faculty member could learn the art and science of teaching with so little experience in the classroom. I wondered if I really believed that teaching was something that could be learned or whether it was an innate gift. Joanna taught me otherwise.

And most relevant of all, reflecting on Julio and Joanna made me realize anew the need to reach out to colleagues and to students. Unless we make a conscious effort to reach out to these individuals, they may be gone before we know it, and all we’re left with is regret. By forging connections, we create a sense of inclusiveness that benefits everyone and makes us feel like we’re part of something larger than ourselves.

Paying for the Sins of Others

Joanna was denied a promotion largely because two senior faculty members didn’t like each other. Their callous disregard for one another spilled over in the decision-making process of hiring, developing, and evaluating other faculty members. It seemed obvious that Joanna would be promoted. Yet these two professors had very different opinions about Joanna. One loved her work, her approach to research, and her teaching abilities. The other faculty member took the opposite point of view. In fact, these two members of the department took the opposite point of view on virtually every departmental decision.

Though the vast majority of department professors believed Joanna should be promoted, she paid the price of unfinished business between two faculty members. She paid for the sins of senior faculty who refused to consider Joanna’s promotion on its merits. They both became more dug into their positions the closer they came to having to make a decision. Their warfare was a result of the disconnectedness that one often finds in academia, and it harms both faculty and students.

But let’s examine Joanna’s story in more detail, since it reveals the petty politics that can prevent the best teachers from being promoted and lower department morale.

Joanna was a new professor with big dreams and ambitious plans for her career. She arrived at Harvard Business School with streams of glory following her. Family members and graduate student friends celebrated her appointment for days. Teaching in the required curriculum, Joanna hadn’t taught MBA students before. Joanna and the students had some trepidation, given all they had heard from alumni and friends about the Harvard MBA experience. Joanna needed to observe and get a feel for the students, guiding them on their educational journey for her specific content expertise.

Joanna knew she would be supported in a teaching group consisting of anywhere from five to eight faculty, all assigned to teach the basic curriculum of a foundation course. Each MBA in the first year will be taught the same material. Joanna worried that she wouldn’t hold her own in the classroom compared with the other new teachers and seasoned faculty. What happens if she embarrasses herself in the first few sessions of the course? What happens if some student challenges her, points out an error in her computation, tries to “one-up” her in front of the class?

On the first day of class, Joanna feels comfortable being in front of the ninety-two students, though she has a typical case of nerves initially. Still, she feels in command of the room. As the class unfolds, her confidence continues to increase. After the class, she reports back to her teaching group that she thinks it went well. The chatter in the hallways among students is that this new faculty member is awesome in the classroom. The semester ends. The evaluations come back for Joanna. She is rated a 6.3 on a 7-point scale. The teaching group is supportive. The course head sidles up to Joanna and tells her he couldn’t be more proud of her.

Each year Joanna’s scores improve until after four years at the school she is ranked as the best teacher in her group. After four short years, she has a reputation as being one of the best teachers in the school. But alas, for some reason, one of the senior faculty members resents her fame. She resents that Joanna is complimented on her teaching whenever the two colleagues are together. Joanna begins to hear whispered innuendo that her research is questionable. No one is explicit about the problem, but Joanna begins to feel a bit paranoid.

Joanna decides to be proactive and ask senior faculty members what she should do to enhance her research and her standing in the department. Most senior colleagues give her contradictory advice. She begins to feel more anxiety when at school. After a while, Joanna starts isolating herself. Rather than interacting with established faculty members, she gravitates toward younger faculty members whom she met four years earlier in socialization activities. Invitations to teach in executive courses diminish. The department head pulls Joanna into his office and tells her that she should withdraw her promotion packet.

Joanna leaves the school seven months later, in June, to accept a tenured position at a competing school. But Joanna really didn’t leave in June. Her heart and soul moved on in late November when she was told she wouldn’t be promoted. Older faculty visit her and tell her they can’t believe that she was denied a promotion. Everyone acts aghast. But no one steps up to accept responsibility for the outcome.

The senior faculty member who felt threatened by Joanna for some reason can’t make it to the 2:00 p.m. farewell gathering in Joanna’s honor. At the gathering, Joanna is presented with a book that highlights the history of Harvard University that will serve as a reminder that she came up short. She’s told it’s perfect for display on a coffee table. That way every visitor can be reminded she didn’t succeed in her first efforts as a professor.

And to the victors go the spoils. Two or three more young PhDs are hired for the upcoming fall. The process is repeated each year by every department. And we wonder why more faculty members don’t get through the system and become tenured faculty. I’m biased, of course. I’m not talking about just Harvard but about most universities. Businesses suffer from similar problems. Institutions organized around partnerships especially suffer from promotion processes that are poorly defined and often misunderstood. “Joannas” exist everywhere, in academia and business.

The irony of the Joanna story is that she was doing well until hints were dropped that she hadn’t impressed everyone. And everyone needed to be on board for her to make the next step up the tenure-track ladder. In typical fashion, younger professionals paid the price for questionable management and mentoring. We could blame the department head. We could blame all the senior faculty members. We could blame a flawed promotion system. We could blame the dean for not re-creating a system into something more meritorious. We could blame Joanna for not demanding to be managed.

Organizations sell alignment as the solution to this problem. Yet alignment breaks down when younger people are penalized for poor leadership. Over time, the spirit of the place turns more to cynicism than to commitment. I know that my friend Joanna left for a great job. I miss her. I wish we had been in the same department. I’m not sure I could have helped along the way. But I do know that achieving connection and commitment makes work exciting. It is soul work. Sometimes that connective work is strategic and sometimes just intuitive, real-time action or behavior that focuses on reaching within and between two colleagues.

With hindsight, I wish I could have helped Joanna the way I’ve tried to help students who are struggling. I don’t always succeed, but the effort to create connection and commitment seems to be a crucial part of a professor’s job.

The Reward of Connecting with Students: Nate Bihlmaier

May 20, 2012: I received a phone call in London, where I had just landed to teach at a law firm. Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School, was on the line. He asked me to come home immediately, explaining that an MBA student was missing. Nate Bihlmaier was a student to whom I was close. We had discussed careers, marriage, being a parent, being a leader of an organization. I had met him two years earlier on the first day of his MBA studies. I was his section chair (adviser for ninety students), his instructor for the first-year Organizational Behavior course, and he visited me often throughout his two years at HBS.

Nate possessed a wide smile, a wry sense of humor, and a giving heart. He was confident and humble at the same time. He was one of the few students from the state of Kansas who was getting his Harvard MBA, and he never let anyone forget it. No matter what the topic of the discussion was, he would work Oswald, Kansas into the conversation. His fellow section mates pretended to be bothered—not another Oswald, Kansas reference—but we found Nate endearing.

Five days before his graduation from Harvard Business School, he headed for Portland, Maine, with two section mates to celebrate their fast-approaching graduation. We later learned that he and his buddies went to a bar, but Nate stayed there after his friends departed. On the way back to the hotel, he lost his footing and fell into the harbor next to the bar. His body was found three days later, forty-eight hours before he was to walk across the stage to receive his diploma. Instead of Nate attending his graduation, he was represented by his wife, his brother, and his father. Together they walked across the stage to receive his diploma from Dean Nohria. The dean hugged all three in the middle of the stage in front of thousands of attendees.

Five days later I flew to Wichita, Kansas, rented a car there, and drove four hours northwest to Oswald. I had gone to Nate’s home to attend a memorial service at the community center and represent the Business School. I was asked to speak during the service. I sat for late lunch on picnic tables with butcher paper covering the tables under the roof of the old center. It was a barbeque of sorts. Everyone from miles around showed up in their Sunday best on a very hot Friday afternoon; the temperature was nearly ninety degrees. All of us were sweating through our clothes and no one cared. The memorial service evolved into something akin to a Quaker meeting, with those moved by the spirit to share their witness of Nate. The service lasted nearly four hours. It felt like thirty minutes.

One month after my visit to Kansas, I was asked to visit the dean’s office. I was given a letter from the dean that was found by Nate’s wife, Nancy, as she cleaned out Nate’s car to sell. He wrote it two days before he went missing that night in Portland. The letter had fallen down between the seats. He had meant to send it to me. Here is what he wrote:

What are the expectations of a faculty member to reach out to students? Typically, an ebb and flow of communication exists with each student in the class. What I’ve found most satisfying are the conversationally brave moments with students, catalyzed by their expression of one concern initially when in reality they want to talk about something else—something more personal or difficult or complex. I do know that I will never be the same after experiencing the loss of a student. The way he lost his life adds to the sadness. I miss him.

The connection I had with Nate and have with other students energizes me. It is what returns me to the classroom year after year. It is the same reason I attend graduation each year, so that I can meet parents and connect the generational dots. In the spring of 2017 Nate’s cohort returned to HBS for its fifth-year reunion. I already found myself perseverating about how to acknowledge Nate’s passing in a way that wouldn’t detract from the spirit of the reunion. The mentoring of students in the context of learning how to lead and live is a central reward of my professional experience.