In teaching, in friendships, in work collaborations, the single element that stands out to me when I think about what makes for success is lack of ego involvement.
The people I most enjoy collaborating with are the ones who are interested in doing good work, not in showcasing themselves. Their focus is on creating an effective program, writing an excellent article, or putting together a meaningful event, not on making themselves look good.
The same is true of good teaching. Interviewing candidates for the Master’s Program in Music Education this spring hit this one home to me all the more. The best teachers put their students and the subject matter ahead of themselves. They value their students’ learning and growth, and they deeply care about and are interested in their students as people. They are passionate about the material that they teach and the classes/lessons that they facilitate. They are not concerned with how they themselves appear – with making themselves look smart, making themselves more powerful, being able to “look down” upon their students, or other such ends.
This applies to my friendships, as well. At different times in my life, I have stopped getting together with certain friends who dominate our relationship. Every conversation is about them, and I rarely get a chance to speak, never mind share anything personal. Every plan we make is about them. They see themselves at the center of all that they do. These people drain me and frustrate me. Of course, there are times when our friends are going through something challenging, and they need our support. My oldest and dearest friend loves to remind me about the year during which we never talked about what was going on with me because she was going through a very, very intense personal crisis. She needed it to be all about her during that year, and I was happy to shift our focus – because it was necessary, because it was temporary, and because I knew that she would do the same for me (and she has).
Come to think of it, I can’t come up with a context where I would prefer that someone was egocentric. When would it be better to be self absorbed than to have a more balanced view? When one is very sick? When one is in a crisis? I need to spend more time with that one.
