Practicing the Art of Self-Challenge // Leadership Secrets from the Brightest Minds at Caltech

I said wow a lot when I was working with students at Caltech. 

Caltech is one of the greatest institutions for learning in the world (ranked above Harvard in global academic rating scales).  If you apply to Caltech (and most opt out because they know they’re not going to get in) you have a 5% chance of actually attending the school.  It has 17 living Nobel Prize-winning alumni.

If I had applied to Caltech they would have sent me a rejection letter with “You’re joking, right?” written in Latin.

So a few years back we’re having a leadership meeting in one of the rooms named after Einstein or something and I ask my team of students what typical homework looks like to them.  They all smile and one of them pulls out a single sheet of paper with an assignment on it.  This is from a basic freshman math class.  It has 4 problems (or “sets” they call them).

I laugh.  “There’s only 4 problems on that piece of paper.  You can probably pump that out in 30 minutes.”

Now it’s their turn to laugh.  They explain to me how homework at Caltech works.  And it forever changed my view on leadership.

“First,” they say, “You spend an hour trying to complete any of the four problems.  During this hour you learn you don’t know how to solve any of them, but you figure out which of the 4 you have the highest probability to solve.”

Wow, I say.

“Then,” they continue, “You spend an hour trying to solve the one problem you have the highest probability of solving.  That doesn’t work, either.”

“Next you go and ask a friend who’s ahead of you in school for a few hints on how to solve that problem.”

“Finally, you spend an hour taking the hints you got from your friend and using them to solve the problem.  You get a 25% on the homework assignment after 4 hours of work.”

They pause.  “That’s an ‘F’.”

So I say, “Why don’t you just skip the first two hours and go straight to asking a friend so you can get a better grade?  That wouldn’t be cheating, right?”

“Right.  You wouldn’t be cheating academically,” they say.  “But you’d still never want to do it because you’d be cheating developmentally.”

Cheating developmentally.

You see, you don’t go to Caltech to learn the answers to problems.  You go to Caltech to learn how to solve problems.  It’s the process – the challenge – that produces Nobel Laureates and world shaping minds.  It’s the struggle you’re paying for, not the diploma.

For example, my friend Peter graduated from Caltech a few years ago.  Currently he’s on a full-ride scholarship to Mt. Sinai Medical School in New York City. 

He’s on a mission to cure cancer. 

You see, nobody knows how to do that yet.  And that’s exactly the kind of problem Caltech has trained him to tackle. 

The Education Guru Sir Ken Robinson famously remarked that the point of education is to equip our children to face the unknown challenges of tomorrow.  The same can be said of leadership development, and the truth is you become equipped to face the challenges of tomorrow by jumping head first into the challenges of today.

If you avoid the challenges of life you’ll be unprepared to solve the problems of life.  If you never step into the deeper challenges of leadership your leadership will never be ready to take you where you’re meant to go.

Now generally, there are two ways to be challenged.  One is for your circumstances to change around you to where you’re forced to grow.  This will happen in life whether you want it to or not.

But the second way, and the way I’m convinced is much more profitable and interesting, is to choose challenges for yourself.  To practice what I call the art of self-challenge.

That’s what I love about Caltech.  Students go there to be challenged.  They have a value for being challenged.

I’m convinced that deep down inside we all do.

This past season for me both vocationally and personally has been the most challenging season of my life.  It was a life situation that, for the most part, I chose.  A little over a year ago, right in the middle of this season, I wanted to give up.  To quit.  Then one day I was expressing my frustration to an older, wiser mentor of mine and he said, “Jason if you want to quit a year from now no one would blame you. But not yet.  Make this season count.”

He looked into my eyes and said, “Make this your finest hour.”

Strength surged through me.  My eyes teared up.  My spirit swelled.

I’m convinced that the human spirit – your spirit – longs for strength in the midst of challenge.  We long for people to look into our eyes and say, “Make this your finest hour.”

I’m convinced this is the voice of God.  When God in the scriptures says, “Courage.  Take heart,” he’s saying, “Make this your finest hour.  Step into this struggle and watch what I do through you.”

Most of us are well acquainted with the God of Comfort.  I wonder if it’s time for us to get to know the God of Challenge.

I wonder if we forget sometimes that the name Israel means, “to struggle.”  We forget that the word passion means, “to suffer.”

Yet it was the struggle of Jacob that made him Israel.  It is the passion of the Christ that makes Him the Leader of Leaders, the King of Kings.

This is how we grow.  It’s how we solve the most important problem of our leadership lives: our own development.

So what are the challenges to which God is calling you?  What are the conversations, projects, choices that will lead you into struggle and will unearth your passion?

What risk can you take this week as you partner with God and others to serve humanity?

Go.  Do it.  Spark Good.  

This is the Caltech way.  This is the way of Jesus.  This is the way of development. 

It is the making of a leader.