I was watching Sir Ken Robinson’s latest TED Talk the other night (I’m slowly making my way through the top 100 most viewed talks… which is a topic for another post), where he talks about the difference between “Teaching” (task) and “Teaching” (achievement).
Transcribed from the talk:
“A friend of mine, an old friend — actually very old, he’s dead. (Laughter) That’s as old as it gets, I’m afraid. But a wonderful guy he was, wonderful philosopher. He used to talk about the difference between the task and achievement senses of verbs. You know, you can be engaged in the activity of something,but not really be achieving it, like dieting. It’s a very good example, you know. There he is. He’s dieting. Is he losing any weight? Not really. Teaching is a word like that. You can say, “There’s Deborah, she’s in room 34, she’s teaching.” But if nobody’s learning anything, she may be engaged in the task of teaching but not actually fulfilling it.”
As I listened to the talk (highly engaging, as per usual), I thought there was another task/achievement word that we could add to teaching and dieting… Leading.
Your card may say leader or you may be referred to as a team leader, but if no one is following you – if no one believes in the direction your going – are you really leading? Are you achieving leadership? Or simply going through the motions?
Image Credit: TED.com
