Dr. Ross Reck
Not only is caring an important self-interest for many people, there is also an incredible payoff associated with it. During my last year as a professor at Arizona State University, the faculty development office undertook a project to assist faculty members to become better teachers. The project involved identifying the seventy-five best teachers on the ASU campus, surveying their students to find out what they did well and then interviewing these teachers to find out how they did these things so well. The results of these interviews were to be published in the form of a handbook that would serve as a guide to help less effective teachers improve their skills.
I was fortunate enough to be included among the seventy-five best teachers on the ASU faculty. Six weeks after the questionnaires were administered to my students, a representative from the faculty development office came to my office to go over the results with me. This turned out to be a very pleasant experience for me as she pointed out that I had scored very well.
She then said there was one item that stood out from all the rest. This was that my students somehow had the idea that I genuinely cared about them. She then looked at me and said, “Now I want to know how you pulled that off!”
Since the question caught me off guard, I really didn’t have an answer. I did, however, inform her of some of the things I did for my students such as helping those who were interested become straight-A students, helping them find high-paying jobs after they graduated, and treating them like friends instead of second-class citizens. After she thought for a moment, she looked up and said, “What you’re telling me is you really do care and it shows.” I must admit this comment hit me like a ton of bricks because it had never occurred to me before. Yes, I did care, but caring was something I did as a matter of course with everyone. I had been taught to do so by my parents and I didn’t know any other way to operate.
Interestingly enough, when I resigned my position as a professor and went into business for myself, 80 percent of my business during the first several years came from my former students. Until then, I had never associated the idea of caring about people as having any sort of payoff, but it really does. What goes around definitely does come around. When you really care, what comes back is always more than what you gave away in the first place.
