Today my professor, Frank Shushok, blew my mind.  He’s one of my favorite colleagues from a mentorship perspective, and has been a great friend of mine since I realized how much I loved higher education and the university environment years ago.  After a group presentation in class today, he shared a book with us.  When he walked into class, I noticed he had each of the course’s books (three), and then an extra one.  Frank reads a ton and one of the books he required for this course this year was actually one that I read based on recommendation from the Vice President for student Affairs at VT last semester.  So, not only was I excited to be ahead of the game in reading, I realized that Frank’s reading taste was great (which I also realized from spending much time in his office aka personal library).

So he was talking about a book by man named Robert Kegan, called Immunity to Change.  Although I’ve never read it, you can assume what the gist of the book is – providing effective ways to sustain change in people or organizations who aren’t necessarily willing to do so.  One point I’ve heard, in the past, about Kegan’s work is that he was interested in, psychologically, why people won’t change when it would help them be better and when the stakes are high. For example, what if you were told to stop smoking because the second hand smoke was killing those in your community? Would you care enough? Would you do it? What kind of things would you change?

Shushok went on to talk about New Years Resolutions (which I called goals, per a previous blog post).  About how people will start, immediately on January 1, to implement strategies that they think will help them change.  Frank said that one thing he’d like to change about himself is stop being late to various places. That caught my attention and brought me in even deeper than I already was.

It’s important to me to be liked. One of the faulty belief systems that I have in my desire to be liked is for people to not feel like I don’t have time for them.  So, until I deal with that reality about myself, I’m not ever going to be on time, one hundred percent of the time.

Frank was talking about how he will often squeeze people onto his calendar when he doesn’t actually have time.  He’s a busy man by nature of his job, and I am a busy man by nature of my job(s) and roles as I play as a graduate student as well.  So that really caught my eye.

He related it to us in how we see people all the time who are interacting in the college or university out of their own dysfunction because they are operating on the level of “I’m late,” and “I can’t figure out why I’m late all the time.” Frank, like me, would much rather stop and engage in conversation with someone than keep moving along toward an appointment that he is supposed to be at, because he wants them to like him – I mean, would you like me if I told you I didn’t have time for you?

This was a very short synopsis of a 400 page book, and an even shorter synopsis of a lot of what Frank shared with us about his perspectives, but I connected with it so strongly. It spoke to me in the truest way (and let’s be real, I’m not going to read all 400 pages before I graduate in May 2014).  One of my New Years Goals, literally, was to be late less often.  I used to have all clocks and watches set 10 minutes fast – I stopped that.  I used to wake up earlier – I hit snooze less often now.  I’m trying many different strategies but I agree that unless I get to the root of the problem – always wanting to stop and talk to every single person, or whatever it is – I probably won’t be on time, all of the time.

I’m excited to read this new book.