Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

We discuss a few examples of stubbornness showing up in our work and lives.

Some of the reasons that we fall into a pattern of being stubborn:

1) We are perceived as experts in our field or topic (or we’ve convinced ourselves of this) and it simply doesn’t occur to us that we might be wrong about anything related to it.

2) We decided that we know enough about the situation, topic, or problem already and refuse to put in effort to discover more.

3) We need to fight every batte instead of carefully choosing them.

4) We miss the grey areas with people that make each situation unique and worthy of different types of responses from us.

How We Can Work To Fix It: 

1) Let’s examine how we react or respond when people bring us new ideas, suggestions, or changes – we can notice this ourselves, solicit feedback, or do assessment work. Either way, its important to become aware of our own patterns and tendencies.

2) We need to decide what shift (if any) is important for us to avoid stubbornness. For Dave, this shift is spending more time listening and less time explaining.

3) Find a way to hold yourself accountable for the results you want. If we’re not holding ourselves accountable in some way, then we don’t have sustainable change.

4) Find a shared truth (not just my truth or your truth – but a truth we can hold together).

5) Surround yourself with people who support you – Dave mentions how Bonni has been a big support in this way.

Books We Mentioned:

• Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury
• Getting Past No by Ury
• Difficult Conversations by Stone, Patton, Heen, and Fisher
• The Abilene Paradox by Harvey

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