Teaching statement v1.0
Someone asked me about teaching. Here's what I said.
Welcome to My Next Electric, a newsletter about how humans are electrifying their stuff.
Helping people start companies, especially in and around battery storage (experiments: Batteries Included Fund)
Design (thinking) for humans in an increasingly electrified world, especially vehicles and the power grid (experiments: Night Shift Bikes)
My inner teacher’s take on it all (experiments: My Next Electric)
Today, a follow up on my leadership toolkit and something I should have done 33 years ago.
I applied for a part-time teaching gig last week.
Cover letter, check.
CV, check.
Teaching statement, say what now?
33 years of calling myself a teacher and not once had I ever taken the time to write down how or why.
Here’s what I finally wrote:
A.D. Frazier, Jr. was my best boss. We met in Barcelona, Spain. 1992. He was the new COO of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, there to observe. I was his new driver/translator. I’d been on the job 48 hours when I pissed off a VIP so badly he made me pull the minivan over so he could walk to his hotel.
A.D. stayed up past midnight listening to my emotional, entitled defense of our 22-year old colleague who’d irritated my former passenger that morning. I’d never had a boss just listen. He let me speak then patiently coached me forward. Taught me daily for two years straight and kept listening for another 31 until he passed this November. He never preached leadership, just walked it. Signed every email like this:
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HUDI believe great managers have the humility to know most decisions will require more data and knowledge than they possess; an understanding of how and where to get more of both; and the discipline to experiment their way to better alignment between the humans they manage and the humans they serve.
Teaching management when you’re not day-to-day with someone like A.D. can be tricky. I center learning on a collection of 15 field-tested, HUD-building tools and frameworks.
Learning management with me is about getting as many reps with these tools as we can by applying them to what’s already happened — in students’ lives, and in real world case studies. And to what’s happening today — in each student’s career, and in existing businesses.
It also includes building. I find great joy in a properly constructed prototype: just enough structure to demonstrate value creation; enough not yet built to keep from shipping too slowly; tons of listening to customers on how/if you’ve created value.
When students put rough prototypes in front of real humans, their proficiency with these management tools skyrockets.
I can’t wait for the data that’ll improve my toolkit. And I can’t wait to see what my students put in theirs.
Thank you,
Matt Candler
Teaching statement, v 1.0. Check. Here’s to many more edits.
