A Teacher’s Most Useful Skill Is Empathy
What it really means when you tell yourself your students are ‘lazy’
What it really means when you tell yourself your students are ‘lazy’
I get a lot of emails and private messages from people who have read my essay, “Laziness Does Not Exist,” and want to ask me for advice. Usually, I answer the questions in private, if I have the time, but I thought I’d share this one because it’s particularly unique, yet also cuts to the core of a problem that many readers and commenters have raised: How do you motivate an ineffective student or employee without judging them for being lazy?
This question came from a neurologist who supervises medical residents. She’s struggling with how to handle her mentee’s mistakes in a way that both motivates them to do the very best they can do and doesn’t pigeonhole the screw-ups as being caused by “laziness.” Here’s what she wrote:
I am a neurologist with a background in psychology. In addition to direct patient care, a large part of my job is teaching medical students and residents, both in a classroom and through direct and indirect supervision on patient-care teaching units in a hospital.
I read your piece on laziness with rapt interest. I struggle with a tendency to brand medical learners as lazy (in my head) when I feel they are not performing to the standard I feel our patients deserve. I have been actively working on this: I am trying to help them break down barriers I am aware of, and remaining conscious that there are barriers they may choose not to share with me.
To give examples — a junior doctor who fell asleep while we were meeting with a family to discuss their father in a coma. No physical or mental health issues (that I know of) to explain this. The same doctor needed to be reminded three times to attend a lecture.
I so want to remove “laziness” from my mental vocabulary, but: How can I reconcile wanting to give medical learners the benefit of the doubt with my worry that their gaps in performance will harm my patients?
Here’s what I had to say in response:
Thank you so much for reaching out to me! I think it’s really meaningful that you are noticing this somewhat unfair thought pattern in yourself, and are working to challenge it. My hope in this (long) reply is to give you a few things to chew on, some of which might help you see your students (and your own efforts as their mentor!) in a new light.
The first thing I’d ask you to reflect on is this: Why is there is a thread in your mind connecting the ideas “it is a really big deal if my residents screw up” and “if a resident screws up, they are lazy”? To me, there isn’t an obvious logical connection between “doing this job well is really important” and “if you fail to do this job well, you are lazy.”
There are lots of vitally important, meaningful jobs in this world that are very hard to do well. Doing them imperfectly doesn’t make a person lazy — it makes them human. Parenting comes to mind. It’s essential for a child’s development and happiness that they are well cared for, treated in a loving manner, not abused, given structure and stability, not exposed to damaging body image ideals and toxic gender norms, not taught to internalize racism and homophobia, and so much more. Yet there’s basically no parent in existence who does all of that perfectly.
There are lots of vitally important, meaningful jobs in this world that are very hard to do well.
Every parent screws up royally at this super important, super high-stakes job, because the game is rigged against them from the start. They’re being asked to do too much all at once. In addition to rearing their kids well (already a gargantuan task), they have to maintain a house, or a job, or both. Usually, there are some other challenges thrown in for good measure, like dealing with their own history of abuse or mental illness, or caring for an aging parent. Through it all, they also remain their own person, with their own needs and dreams, and bad days — and all of that also gets in the way of them doing the exact right thing every time.
Your medical residents are in a similar boat. They have been tasked with an intense, demanding, and vitally important duty. This job is so important — and so high-stakes — that basically nobody is going to do it completely right. The hours are too long, the scope and variety of information being processed is too vast, the cavalcade of traumatic sights and emotionally draining encounters is unending, and there’s no real respite from any of it. Even when things hit a lull, you’ve still got a lot of heavy stuff to emotionally process and come down from — and more future disasters to steel yourself for.
If I were a medical resident, I would seem like a really sloppy, unreliable, unmotivated person because I’d be in emotional and mental tatters all of the time. I’m not well-suited for that kind of work — I’m Autistic, easily overstimulated, I push myself too hard to the point of burnout, and I get dizzy at the sight of blood. But I’m sure some of your residents are both a good fit for the profession and yet fairly sensitive, too. I bet that sensitivity leaks out in ways that sometimes look “lazy.”
You’re a neurologist, so I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea of Autistic shutdowns: Sometimes, when we get too overwhelmed by noise, bright lights, or even just intense emotions, we go totally blank and unresponsive, or even fall asleep. Sometimes non-Autistic people react in those ways too, or they find other ways to “check out” from an experience that’s overwhelming. People dissociate, faint, explode into tears, engage in self-harm, or distract themselves for hours on their phones.
Most of the time, we don’t get the opportunity to find out what the reasons are for a person’s actions, but I still find it valuable to assume there are reasons. Always.
Maybe the junior doctor who fell asleep during a meeting was pushed past their limit, and falling asleep was their only way to escape. Maybe they forgot to eat lunch and had a big blood sugar crash. Maybe they just had a ton of long shifts in a row, and didn’t get a good night of sleep because their kid was puking all evening. It’s well known at this point that many doctors and other medical staff fall asleep on the job sometimes. The job is practically designed to be tiring.
You mentioned that you aren’t aware of this doctor having any medical or mental health conditions that might explain their sleepiness. That doesn’t mean they aren’t facing a ton of challenges that could cause exhaustion. We never fully know what someone else is dealing with — just because you aren’t aware of them having a condition doesn’t mean they are completely neurotypical and in flawless health. Most of the time, we don’t get the opportunity to find out what the reasons are for a person’s actions, but I still find it valuable to assume there are reasons. Always.
This brings me to the idea of “laziness” and the role it plays for you as a mentor. I don’t think you’re a bad supervisor or teacher for sometimes seeing your residents as lazy. If it doesn’t affect how you treat them, it’s not necessarily even a problem. However, you are bothered by it, and want to see your mentees in a more charitable light, so I do think it’s worth reflecting on.
As educators, you and I both know that judgment and reprimand are really ineffective leadership methods. When we hold our students (or our employees) to rigid and harsh standards, we de-motivate the people who are struggling. If a person gets reprimanded often enough, for enough minor errors, they can develop a sense of learned helplessness. Your residents are performing really high-stakes job duties, so it’s vital that they do well. But adding to the stress and pressure by throwing judgment or reprimands in their direction won’t help.
However, it doesn’t sound like you’re actually doing any of that. Based on your email, it sounds like you’re just getting privately frustrated with your students for missing lectures and passing out on the job. That seems pretty normal to me. I’d get annoyed too.
I do wonder, though, if seeing your students as “lazy” is a way of mentally beating yourself up for not being a perfect mentor. In your email, you stress how important it is that your residents do their jobs correctly. You feel a lot of pressure, it sounds like, to teach them how to do the job without making harmful — or even deadly — mistakes. No wonder you get upset when they fall short of that mark. It sounds like a really heavy burden to try to make these imperfect people into more perfect doctors!
There is never any guarantee of perfection.
In some ways, you’re wishing that if you did everything right, motivated your residents the correct way, caught every error, and yet were also super compassionate to them, they’d stop screwing up. But the really terrifying thing is: That’s not the case. There is never any guarantee of perfection. They’re always going to screw up sometimes. You can’t actually control whether they make mistakes.
Yes, you should do everything you can to educate your residents, and to empower them to be the best doctors they can be. If they miss something glaring or behave unprofessionally, you should make them aware of the error. But you actually can’t stop them from ever screwing up. That is ultimately on them. I think if you release yourself from the pressure to control something that you can’t fully control, you’ll find yourself being less judgmental toward your residents — and toward yourself.
Easier said than done, I know. I don’t think you have to become fully “okay” with your mentees making mistakes. It would be impossible, in this situation, to be totally serene and free of judgment or stress. I do think, however, that there is value in accepting you aren’t fully in control here.
Your mentees will become the people they are going to become. All you can do is give them the guidance and tools they need, and model for them what an effective doctor can look like. From there, they can make their own decisions about what kinds of professionals they’ll be.