After a recent World Cup, I heard a member of the Brazilian team lament, “We never felt the shirt.” The expression suggests a lack of engagement and passion, and from the moment I could differentiate between a mesmerizing teacher and a passionless teacher, I knew which teacher was “feeling the shirt.” In seventh grade, I couldn’t take my eyes off Mr. Walter Stickel as he told story after story about Lewis and Clark trudging up the Columbia River in a rainstorm, chilled to the bone.

It was then that I became a student of great teaching. This book attempts to unpack what I’ve experienced, studied, and observed over the past fifty-two years regarding teachers—to convey how in their best moments, they can lift people up, and in their worst, let them down.

At times, I’m also going to draw parallels between teaching and leadership. While these are two distinct activities, my experiences as a Harvard Business School professor and as a corporate leader have demonstrated that these two disciplines are inextricably intertwined. More to the point, I’ve found that the best teachers are also leaders, and the best leaders are also teachers. For this reason, I will occasionally discuss both in concert, especially the lessons teachers can learn from leaders and managers.

I will take you inside great institutions—Harvard being the first and foremost of them—attempting to impart how to lead and teach. I will also take you inside my own head and heart. I’ve “felt the shirt” as teacher and leader, and on occasion have misplaced my shirt somewhere between home and work.

I’ve experienced the highs and the lows. In terms of the latter, I read a teacher evaluation form on which one student wrote she was frightened to come to my class, fearing that I would make fun of her. I never did, but my humor frightened her. Though I’m not intending to make my students fearful, that was the effect in this case. When I read this evaluation, I felt shame and guilt and remorse and self-pity all wrapped in a messy emotional package. I’ve also received a letter from a former student expressing how his life was transformed through my teaching; the letter brought tears of joy. The positive feelings dissipate quickly, though, and the negative ones linger.

As teachers, we focus more on our inadequacies and failures than on our strengths and accomplishments. I’ll deconstruct why this is so. I will walk you through the heaven and hell of teaching by dissecting and analyzing what I’ve experienced in the Harvard Business School classroom.

Yes, the Harvard classroom is different. But it’s also the same. Harvard is an elite institution, light years removed from a junior college classroom. But I’ve found that a classroom is a classroom, no matter the institution that houses it or the age level of its students. I’ve taught in Utah, in corporations, and in various venues globally. Though I’m going to focus primarily on Harvard Business School, the vast majority of the teaching experiences I describe are universal.

I hope to take you on an adventure where, at the end of the experience, you will be better able to develop a sense of what makes a great teacher and pick up lessons about how to teach and lead better. I know this is an ambitious objective—you may be wondering if this is a book about teaching or a psychological study. But as you’ll discover, understanding your patterns of behaviors is crucial to any discussion about teaching. You need to ask yourself: What is it that I do consistently that assists me living and teaching, that leverages my talents in unique ways? Just as important, you need to understand those emotional or behavioral patterns that sabotage your efforts to make a difference.

I’ll discuss what needs to be done to disrupt those patterns so that you can experience the present without being encumbered by your past or by the fears you have of the future.

I’ll also delve into the mysteries and occasional miracles of teaching. For instance, how does a teacher enter a state of being where she feels “flow” for eighty minutes, creating magic by stringing a series of one-act plays together during the class session?

We’ll spend a lot of time inside the classrooms of Harvard Business School, where I’ve taught for the past twenty years. I will deconstruct the process of creating a curriculum and preparing for an eighty-minute class, describing the nerve-wracking fifteen minutes before class begins and the intricate, idiosyncratic nature of the teaching experience. Along the way, I’ll step back and connect specific classroom behaviors with leadership issues—in organizations, teams, and one’s own life.

And I’ll ask—and answer—some provocative questions:

• What happens on multiple levels while teaching? What am I thinking and feeling while at the same time trying to process what the students are thinking and feeling?
• How are my internal conversations affecting how I teach? What are the students’ internal dialogues revolving around? Are they in the classroom or somewhere else?
• How might I pull them back into the moment, so they are having an intimate, personal experience with seventy-nine other students?
• What am I thinking and feeling in those reflective moments after a class has ended?
• How can I manage my emotions, review what transpired in the classroom, write down notes on how I’ll connect today’s lesson with tomorrow’s lesson, and evaluate the performance of my students?
• As I gaze out the window of my office, what am I conjuring in my head? Are my thoughts and emotions constructive, destructive, numbing?

And there are other teaching questions worth addressing that relate to being on the faculty of a leading academic institution, including the following:

• How do faculty teach one another?
• How do faculty members use the culture to find their way and create a great career in academia?
• How do faculty members get in their own way and sabotage their own efforts by working against one another?

Through this journey, I will discuss my own patterns—habits of the heart and of the mind that were formed early and have played out throughout my life. These patterns include experiencing life in extremes, rocketing between the polarities of great highs and low lows. As I’ve become more attuned to these patterns, my students, my children, and I have reaped the benefits. Teachers need to be aware of their patterns in order to manage them.

Without this awareness, they will leave a classroom feeling like I did—either the best teacher or the worst. When I felt like the latter, I caused undue pain for those around me as well as for myself.

As you may have already figured out, I’m going to use myself as a case study throughout this book. As embarrassing as it may be at times to reveal my doubts and neuroses, not to mention my mistakes and failures, I don’t see how I can deconstruct teaching without deconstructing the teacher I know best. While I’ll occasionally cite other books and conceptual frameworks, this book isn’t designed to be an academically rigorous analysis of teaching. It’s personal, and so I’m going to share a lot of stories about myself and other teachers whom I know or have observed.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot both theoretically and practically about teaching. For instance, I’ve come to appreciate the power of covenant versus contractual relationships, the importance of human attachment, and the critical nature of cognitive distortions that get in the way of our growth as teachers. I’ve also discovered the value of paying attention in the present, of being “all in.” Being present means that you are increasing the likelihood that you will do less harm to yourself and others. I will share both stories and my research on the outcomes of not slowing down and paying attention.

All of this raises another question that applies to ambitious teachers: How can such achievement-driven personalities live more aware lives, lives that aren’t beholden to their addiction to achievement?

As a teacher, empathy matters. By trying to understand the reality of others, we demonstrate that someone else matters more than we do. Rollo May said it better when he stated, “Our goal in helping others is to imagine the reality of others.”

Authenticity, too, counts for a lot. You can’t fool students. If you sit in your office and try to figure out how to do or say something so the students will be impressed or entertained, you have no chance of thriving in the classroom. Through preparation and commitment, you must have something important to say. You should be like a mad scientist who can’t wait to get to the classroom to share the experiment. If you adopt this mindset, students will remain intellectually and spiritually in the classroom with you. Students will remember the spirit that you bring to and create in the classroom. Teachers don’t have long to convince their audiences that they won’t waste their time. Don’t give people an excuse to tune you out. By the person you are, the content you provide, and how you transcend the message in word and deed, you can be a great teacher.

Through this journey, you will learn how to create experiences inside others, so they see themselves differently because you have been in their life. I don’t believe in entitlement. However, I do believe our students are entitled to have teachers who are their best selves throughout their time together. If there’s a single takeaway from this book, it’s that becoming your best self not only will make your life better and more successful but will enhance the lives of everyone you teach.

Whether you’re a teacher, a student, a business leader, or just someone fascinated by the teaching profession, you’ll find this book will instruct, entertain, and—like the best teachers—inspire. When you get right down to it, we’re all teachers in one way or another; we teach our students, our employees, our kids, and our friends. So we all have a vested interest in the process. By deconstructing teaching, I hope to dig deep into this process and reveal some truths about how and why we teach the way we do.