We were at the end of our vacation and were on a train heading north through the mountains towards Munich. It was Thanksgiving break, and I’d taken the chance to get away from it all and spend the week abroad. My two toddlers were coloring contentedly next to my wife, and my mother worked her way through a block of cheese. I looked at my phone and opened an email that I most certainly should not have opened while on vacation.
The responses on the Qualifying Exam don’t resemble any of her previous classwork. There is no way that the writing is hers.
My breath quickened. A message from a colleague about one of my graduate students.
This is an issue you will have to take to the Honor Council, but it will be challenging as we don’t have a clear departmental policy on AI use.
My thoughts pinballed. I’d known this student for four years. She came to my son’s second birthday party. We wrote and published a research paper together. We’d shared ideas, laughs, setbacks, victories. She was one of my first doctoral students, bright and coachable and hard-working.
And I was fairly certain that she had cheated.
When we face challenges or crises or dilemmas, our minds speed towards possibilities for action. Fueled by emotions and assumptions and preferences, we race to a decision, sometimes good, sometimes not. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, calls this thinking fast. He contrasts this with thinking slow, a deliberative and logical mental process in which we might consider alternative options, name what we do and don’t know, or seek counsel.
Both ways of thinking can be helpful for making a wise decision—intuition, emotion and logic can all be useful. But, we often get stuck thinking fast without ever thinking slow.
This thinking fast is kind of like a scratched and worn-out record on an old record-player—maybe the kind your parents or grandparents had. These scratches might keep us spinning over and over and over again, caught on repeat in our anger or hurt or frustration. These scratches might also cause us to jostle the record, jumping ahead to the next track, and skipping over valuable information.
Often, we ruminate. Often, we leap too quickly to a decision.
How do we get to that place where we are able to think slow? How do we enter into the mode of thinking where we can leverage our intuition and emotion, as well as our reason?
In the Practical Wisdom Framework, which we teach in our Fellowship program for school leaders, we emphasize the importance of recalibration—a process of stepping away from a fraught situation even though we feel compelled to take action. Recalibration involves slowing down, placing our attention elsewhere, and letting our adrenaline and cortisol return to their normal levels. We take a beat. We step away so that we can step back into the arena with clear eyes. Recalibration helps us move from fast to slow when a tough decision demands our best thinking.
One principal told us how he draws on past experiences working in a fast-paced retail environment to help him recalibrate while at school. He makes time for ten deep breaths—behind his desk, in the bathroom, in a supply closet—when he finds himself in a crisis.
Another leader described how she takes a few minutes to look at inspirational quotes tucked in her desk drawer to find clarity of mind before particularly fraught conversations.
While we might not have the luxury of clearing our head with an hour-long jog during lunch, there might be time to take a quick walk. Or, listen to some good music. Brew a cup of coffee. Do 30 push-ups. Organize our desk. Plan the weekend. Meditate. Call our mother. Breathe.
Yes, there are crises that demand an immediate response. Many crises, however, can wait.
As I read and re-read the email from my colleague, I headed full tilt towards triage mode. I considered calling the dean, confronting the student, combing through the Honor Code, writing back to my colleague.
Somehow, I felt angry, insulted, embarrassed, and sad, all at once.
My wife could tell something was wrong and she asked me what was up. I read her the email and explained exactly what the Qualifying Exam entailed and what was at stake. I told her that there were three possible next steps, though I was unsure of which was the wise way forward.
Similar to how I approach most tough decisions, I asked her what she thought and what I might do next.
“Well, there’s not much you can do now. It’s still Thanksgiving break. Can it wait?”
My kids were still coloring and my mother was still eating her bread and cheese. The mountains were still beautiful and I was still on vacation for a few more hours with my family.
Yes, indeed, it could wait.
For more on how school leaders find time to recalibrate, when faced with conflict at work, see our team’s recent article on wise leadership practices in Journal of School Leadership.“Wisdom in Their Words: A Phenomenological Study of Practical Wisdom in School Leadership”
Dr. Mark Pacheco is co principal investigator and research lead for Wisdom at Work: Revitalizing Formative School Leadership.
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