Choice Time

Sheena Iyengar is a professor at the Business School of Columbia University and the author of The Art of Choosing. I heard her speak last week and came away highly impressed by both her delivery and her topic. She spoke at length about her research on choice and about her book in which she aims to help us become better choosers. I was one of almost 4,000 people in the audience who listened to her fluid and eloquent presentation, given with no notes and in complete synchronicity to a slide show that played behind her. There is nothing remarkable about that for a gifted professional speaker who has clearly done her homework and knows her stuff. Except for the fact that Sheena Iyengar is blind.

Diagnosed as a toddler with a rare form of retinal degeneration, this superbly intelligent woman was completely blind at the age of 14. I wonder if she has a strong sense of what an audience of 4,000 might look like. That might be a plus as a public speaker. It might calm the nerves. I found it remarkable how she was able to regale us with stories, quote exact figures from her research, and show both amusing and informative examples to illustrate her point, all in perfect order with the powerpoint she had created. As a budding public speaker who still relies on cue cards highlighted by keywords, I found her talk to be an exquisite paragon of the art.

Iyengar’s talk was about the relationship between leadership and choice. Some leaders are literally born into the role. Others are simply born with bucket loads of charisma and naturally rise to the top, while most of us in leadership positions have arrived there because we have developed the ability to choose well and to enhance the power of good choices for transformative good.

Her book begins with the story of Steven Callahan who, in 1982, was shipwrecked and became one of the first people ever to survive on the high seas for more than a month. He drifted in a small raft, finding his own food and drinking water, for 76 days, ending up on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from where he started. He says he overcame almost certain death by choosing “to pilot myself to a new life or to give up and watch myself die.” It was the power of his own choice that saved him.

I am proud that the school where I work, and where my daughters attend, teaches children how to make good choices. This is such an important part of our educational philosophy that we actually have a period of the day called “choice time”. And it is exactly what it says it is – a time of the school day when students get to choose what activities they would like to partake in. Teachers put out different types of materials, quite often art supplies, items to build with or glue together, thingamajigs where scientific discoveries can be made. And if a child does not choose to spend time doing one of the choices set out by the teacher, he or she may choose to do something else. Quite often the choices presented are connected to the current area of curriculum study, but sometimes not.

Children who have recently arrived at our school and who have not been exposed to having this much choice in the classroom sometimes struggle to pick an activity and to focus. But soon they learn how to make good choices, how to collaborate and negotiate with their classmates, and how to trust their own judgment. Some of our students come to us from traditional classrooms where they have been told where to sit, when to talk, whom to talk to, when to get up, where to go, and what to do. They are not used to making choices of their own. At our school, we have discovered that, at choice time, children actively engage in the process of defining themselves. They are given the opportunity to make decisions and think for themselves, and they shine.

Isn’t this what we want from our college graduates, from our work force for the 21st century? Don’t we seek collaborators and team players who know themselves, think for themselves, and have great ideas? That’s what I want for my own children.

Iyengar spoke of the vast differences in how certain cultures perceive choice. For example, Anglo-Americans crave individuality and feel empowered from having more choice, while Asian-Americans tend to value choice less and have deeper trust of group norms. She also warned that too much choice, as all parents can attest to, can be detrimental. Have you ever taken a small child to a good-sized grocery store and asked them to pick out a snack?

However, she highlighted one study that she had done, in which two groups of children were given anagrams to solve. One group was given the choice of several topics that the mixed-up words were about. They were also allowed to choose which pen, out of five different colored markers, they wanted to write the answers with. A second group was given no choices – they were assigned the topic and the pen. Not surprisingly, Anglo-American kids who were given the choices performed two and a half times better on the test than their peers with no choice. Interestingly, Asian-American children performed significantly better when told that their topic and pen color had been chosen by their mother. All great evidence of the power of choice.

It is clear that effective leaders today have to be dedicated practitioners of the art of choice. They have to understand the people they lead and work with them to give them the right amount of choice to empower them. Sheena Iyengar herself was dealt a rough hand in the game of life, a disease that robbed her of her eyesight. She chose to rise above it, to become an expert in her chosen field, and she chose to shine.


The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar, published by Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, 2010. A link to her website appears in the left column of this blog.

A Black Man in the White House

Whether you voted for him or not, the election of Barack Obama is without question a watershed moment in the country’s history. Throughout the long months of the campaign, the so-called race factor was consistently downplayed. While African Americans registered and turned out to vote in record numbers, both the Obama campaign and prominent leaders in the black community were quick to stress that the candidate’s race was not and should not be a major issue.

Fast forward to the hours immediately following Obama’s victory. The mood among all his supporters was euphoric. The celebration in the black community in particular was ecstatic. African Americans danced in rapture in the streets. Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, such as Jesse Jackson and Congressman John Lewis, wept openly. Oprah became, in her words, unleashed. Whoopi whooped and Maya Angelou expressed graceful thanks. There was an outpouring of emotion and grand proclamations of the immense significance of the election. A black man was coming to the White House.

On the weekend following the election, my local newspaper carried a story by Wil Haygood of the Washington Post. It touched on the history of blacks in the White House. In 1901, “President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute, to meet with him at the White House. Roosevelt was careful not to announce the invitation, fearing a backlash, especially from Southerners.” Certain southerners found out and the response was swift and filled with hate.

According to Haygood, the first African American to work in the executive branch was E Frederick Morrow who was an administrative officer for special projects in the Eisenhower White House, appointed in 1955.

But someone had beaten him to it. Many blacks worked in non-political jobs in the White House. One of them was Eugene Allen who was hired as a butler in 1952. For $2,400 a year, Gene Allen polished silver and washed dishes. In the bowels of the President’s official residence, he plugged away at his menial job for thirty-four years. He felt proud to serve his country’s leaders.

Rewards came. Not only did Gene and his wife Helene shake the hand of every President he served, there was the special occasion in the mid-eighties when they were invited as guests to a state dinner. Nancy Reagan called Gene about the dinner, asked him how preparations were going, and then surprised him by inviting him and his wife, not to work, but to sit as their guests alongside world leaders. It was an honor they would never forget. Helene fondly remembered drinking champagne that night, champagne no doubt that her husband had stored.

Gene’s birthday was on the same day as Gerald Ford’s. When the Fords celebrated the President’s birthday, Betty always made sure Gene’s was mentioned as well. The Allens have fond memories of the Carters and the Kennedys. Through some of the darkest times in US history and through some of the best, Gene Allen was at work for his President. From the early fifties until the mid-eighties, there were some tough times being a black man carrying trays down the halls of power. Segregation, violence, protest marches and assassinations. Gene and Helene Allen saw it all.

Slowly, over the decades, they saw a few more African Americans creep into the influential inner circles, culminating in Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice’s consecutive appointments as Secretary of State. In Haygood’s words, “the butler remembers seeing both Powell and Rice in the Oval Office. He was serving refreshments. He couldn't help notice that blacks were moving closer to the center of power, closer than he could ever have dreamed. He'd tell Helene how proud it made him feel.”

And now this man. Obama. More than twenty years after Gene Allen stacked away his last wine glass, he and Helene were on the verge of seeing an African American man ascend to the highest office in the land. Some said he’d be the most powerful man on earth. Interviewed for the Washington Post, their excitement was palpable. Now in their late eighties, Gene and Helene prepared to get dressed up on Election Day and cast their vote for one of their own. How proud that would make them feel.

The day before that momentous day, Helene had a morning doctor’s appointment. Gene rolled over in bed to wake up his wife. She did not respond. He walked over to her side, but still she would not wake. After sixty-five years, the marriage had come to an end. On Election Day, Gene voted alone.

Helene never made it. But I know that, somewhere up there, this woman, who had shaken the hand of eight Presidents, knows who won. She knows that the baton has been passed to a new man, an African American man. There is a black man in the White House. For Gene and Helene Allen and for me, how proud it makes us feel.

Thanks to Wil Haygood. His article A Butler Well Served by This Election appeared in the Washington Post on 11/07/08 and is the inspiration for this story. Post photographer Kevin Clark’s photo of Gene and Helene appears here.