Teaching
I teach in spaces where answers are incomplete, stakes are real, and the work cannot be solved by expertise alone.
My teaching is grounded in the practice of adaptive leadership. I spend most of our time not on solutions, but on disciplined attention to the problem itself—how it is framed, who is implicated, what losses are embedded, and why it continues to persist despite good intentions and technical skill.
Learners often arrive wanting answers. I work deliberately to resist giving them. Instead, I aim to create conditions where people learn how to stay with uncertainty long enough to see more clearly, think more honestly, and take responsibility for the work that belongs to them.
This approach can feel uncomfortable at first. That discomfort is not accidental. It is part of learning.
How I think about teaching
How learning happens
My teaching draws heavily on case-in-point learning. The room itself becomes part of the curriculum. What is happening between us—authority, silence, resistance, urgency, confusion—is treated as data rather than distraction.
I think carefully about heat: how to generate it, how to regulate it, and how to keep the group in a zone where learning is possible but not anesthetized. I am attentive to when learners need more challenge, when they need containment, and when they need space to think rather than reassurance.
I believe deeply in Heifetz’s principle of “giving the work back.” I support learners fully, but I do not rescue them from the responsibility of learning. I am not afraid to disappoint if that disappointment serves growth.
At times, this means leaving people without closure.
Silence, Story, and the Arts
I use silence intentionally in my teaching—not as absence, but as presence. Silence creates space for reflection, for noticing internal reactions, and for allowing deeper questions to surface.
I also draw on the arts as a way of teaching what cannot be conveyed through slides alone. Storytelling, music, and performance play an important role in my classrooms. Ben Zander’s teaching, and The Art of Possibility, have profoundly shaped how I think about learning: giving people an A, being a contribution, and creating environments where possibility expands rather than contracts.
I rarely use slides in undergraduate teaching. Instead, I rely on story, dialogue, and careful sequencing of experiences—often informed by the Duarte approach to narrative—to help learners feel the gap between current reality and what could be.
What learns are expected to do
Learners are asked to bring themselves into the work.
Across undergraduate and executive settings, I ask participants to arrive with a real challenge—something unfinished, conflicted, or uncomfortable. We begin outside-in, diagnosing the system, stakeholders, and patterns at play. Only later do we move inside-out, examining identity, loyalties, and lines of code that shape how leadership shows up under pressure.
Learning does not end with clarity. Often, it ends with better questions.
Supporting the leaner
While I do not remove discomfort, I care deeply about the person doing the learning.
I pay close attention to how individuals experience the work, especially when it touches identity, values, or deeply held assumptions. I offer direct, honest feedback grounded in respect and belief in people’s capacity to grow. Learning is demanding, but it should never be careless.
Contexts that shape the teaching
My teaching spans both technical and adaptive domains. I have taught highly structured material such as ECG interpretation to medical learners for many years, and I continue to teach extensively in organ donation, donor management, and death determination—contexts where technical excellence is necessary but never sufficient.
These environments, where ethical tension, uncertainty, grief, and system pressures collide, have profoundly shaped my teaching philosophy and reinforced the importance of adaptive learning.
What learners say
“This course genuinely moved me. It was the first time I felt uncomfortable in a way that forced me to confront my own assumptions and sit with questions that didn’t have clean answers.”
“I learned how to slow down, diagnose problems as adaptive challenges, and resist jumping straight to solutions. That shift has changed how I think far beyond the classroom.”
“I had never been asked to sit in silence or stay with a problem this way. It was difficult—and it fundamentally changed how I understand learning.”
“Instead of fixing, I learned to notice what was really happening beneath the surface. That changed how I communicate, how I lead, and how I see myself.”
Why this matters
I believe the most important things learners carry forward are not frameworks, but capacities: the ability to stay present under pressure, to listen more generously, to hold competing truths, and to act with integrity when the path forward is unclear.
That is the work I care about most.