E-mail and Lollipops

So far this summer, I have walked 332 miles.  In the past, I have listened to music, but I knew this was going to get repetitive.  I have friends who use podcasts, but I always figured the lack of rhythm would slow me down.  I tested it on a round trip to church by doing music on the way there and podcasts on the way back, I found only 2 minutes difference across 5.4 miles.  Since then, I have listened to hundreds of podcasts.  Some time, I'll blog a recommendation list because I have eclectic listening habits, but that's not the point of this post. 

One of the podcasts I listen to most is the TED Radio Hour from NPR.  Last week, I hit a particular favorite called Everyday Leadership by Drew Dudley.  I'll summarize the important here, but you really should watch the entire talk.  He discusses why most of us don't think of ourselves as leaders because we think leadership is something bigger than us that is only on a world changing scale.  He believes we de-value the everyday things we do that have impact.  As an illustration, he tells this story of girl who was going to leave college during registration.  She met Drew when he was raising money for a charity by handing out lollipops to people in line.  He gave one to the boy standing next to her, telling him that he needed to give this lollipop to beautiful woman standing next to him.  The boy did, and then Drew made a joke to her parents about taking candy from strangers.  As a result of this interaction, she decided to stay in college.  She dated that boy for four years.  She related this story to Drew on his last day at the school and then sent him a wedding invitation a year later. 

One of the reasons Drew shares this story on the TED stage is that he has no memory of this happening.  It completely changed the life of this girl, but it was such a normal part of his day that his brain didn't bother recording it.  He says this in his talk: "And that was such an eye-opening, transformative moment for me to think that maybe the biggest impact I'd ever had on anyone's life, a moment that had a woman walk up to a stranger four years later and say, "You've been an incredibly important person in my life," was a moment that I didn't even remember."  He then asks the audience to consider their own lollipop moments, when something simple fundamentally made their lives better.  Many hands were raised because most of us have that moment.  He then asks if they have ever told the person who did that.  Very few people people raised their hands. "Why not? We celebrate birthdays, where all you have to do is not die for 365 days and yet we let people who have made our lives better walk around without knowing it. And every single one of you, every single one of you has been the catalyst for a lollipop moment. You have made someone's life better by something that you said or that you did, and if you think you haven't, think about all the hands that didn't go back up when I asked that question. You're just one of the people who hasn't been told."

I have a small version of a story that is not as life changing.  My school requires that we contact parents if their kids are going to fail for a quarter or semester, so they will not be surprised when the report card comes.  Because I teach older students, I often e-mail the student as well.  Two years ago, I had a boy in physics who had JUST squeaked by with a 69.8% for the quarter.  I didn't e-mail his mom because he did pass, but I e-mailed the boy.  I told him that he did pass, but I knew he could do so much better than just squeak by.  As an aside, I said, "Think about it; do you want to be the kind of man who just squeaks by?"  Three days later, I got an e-mail from his mom, telling me that he had vacuumed their living room without prompting.  When she asked him why, he told him that he had been thinking about the kind of man he wanted to be.  When I had typed that e-mail, it was a simple question.  I had not thought it would be a changing moment for him; I might not even remember it if I hadn't gotten this e-mail from his mom.  When that boy graduated, he was a different kid.  It was not just because of this one sentence.   A lot of people poured themselves into this guy's life.  It was, however, the cumulative effect of a thousand lollipop moments and e-mails. 

   

When you send an e-mail or make a silly joke, when you make eye contact and smile, you may be what that person needed at that moment.  Keep in mind that it works the other direction as well.  If the question I asked him in the e-mail had been belittling, it could have had a powerful negative impact (and I am sure I have had many of those moments as well).  You can destroy the poor guy who answers the phone at customer service.  As you go through your day, consider the small moments as times when you can have an impact.  You may never know because they may never tell you.  This message is for everyone, but it is especially poignant for us as teachers.  We have more opportunities than most people and certainly more people in our lives who respond to what we do.