Please Tell Me About You: Alexander Kopelman on Seeing People First

3 days ago

6 min read

Alexander Kopelman, founding president and CEO of the Children's Art Guild, wrote a napkin that sounds like it is only about kids. Let's stop asking children what they want to be when they grow up, and instead ask, please tell me about you. He says "we tend to think of childhood as a waiting room" for the moment we become complete as adults. In the process we miss what children already know and who they already are. The same habit shows up far beyond childhood. Leaders do it with teams. Parents in a family business do it with the next generation. Many of us do it with ourselves, treating the person in front of us as something to be shaped instead of someone to be heard. Alexander's question slows that down. It gives a person permission to exist before they perform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPwrXoJZlho

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 375 with Alexander Kopelman.

Why does the question about the future make people invisible?

Alexander's napkin comes from his own childhood. "I felt like a piece of clay to be shaped." His mother made sure he went to concerts and museums, read the right books and got decent grades. The society he grew up in was preparing children to be engineers and nurses and whatever else it needed.

The result, he says, was being invisible as a person. He didn't know how to think about his own wishes and needs, never mind talk about them.

I asked whether his mother meant it as a menu of options. Alexander pointed to the missing piece. He never heard the question, which one do you want? What he heard was, "this is what you must have to be the kind of person I want you to be." There is an irony too. Alexander grew up to love classical music, poetry and literature, the very things he was exposed to. He would have loved to be asked which of them he was enjoying that day.

The point for any leader is the gap between intention and what lands. A team member can receive a development plan as an order, even when it was offered as a gift.

What happens when we treat people as raw material

Alexander has read widely in childhood studies and identity development. He cites a UK study by researcher Kate Bacon, called Who Do You Think You Are?, which asked children about their own idea of childhood. Much of what they said was about agency, having some power in their own lives. Most of them feel disempowered.

My reaction was that the same could be said of many adults. Alexander agrees, and he calls it a cycle. We grow up with the idea of becoming something in the future instead of being in the present, and then we pass it on.

He also describes what a factory approach does. A teacher puts a dot on a blackboard. Kindergartners tell long, inventive stories about what it might be. By high school, the students say it's a dot on a blackboard. Systems that process people like widgets tend to label the ones who don't comply as failures, even when they are often the most creative and innovative. Any owner who runs a company on compliance alone may want to notice what that costs.

Why do leaders feel they have to have every answer?

Adults, Alexander says, carry a belief that we are supposed to have the answers. When a child asks something we can't answer, most of us get uneasy and turn it back on them. Why are you asking that? Why are you being this way?

I pushed on this. Maybe it isn't a belief at all, maybe it's a decision, and a decision can be changed. Alexander agreed. "I think most people don't realize that it's a choice they're making." Recognizing how many choices we have is, in his words, extremely liberating.

He practices this in a small way. Before the interview, he warned me that he may pause, look away and think before answering. For years, men in his group would ask why he had gone quiet or why he wasn't looking them in the eye. He needs a private space to tune in, and he'll look you in the eye when he's ready. Silence makes people uncomfortable. That discomfort is often what pushes a leader to fill the space with an answer.

Why you have to start with yourself first

Alexander works with many educators, and he says they have the hardest time starting with themselves. They want to go straight to doing something for the children. He thinks that's impossible. There is an energetic component that children pick up on. If you're eight, you know exactly how to call an adult's BS.

His invitation is to pause and step back from the stories we live in. He's clear this doesn't mean giving the story up. It means creating a little space between the voices in your head and what's actually going on with the people in your life, enough to hear them, see them and possibly interrogate the story itself. Sometimes we carry beliefs and behaviors that aren't us, simply because that's how we were socialized.

That work has a long track record in his own life. For twenty-five years he has been part of a men's group, formed after a weekend run by the organization now called the Mankind Project. Over that time he watched men who struggled to say they were sad move from being at the mercy of what is to having the power to make decisions. He has also seen men for whom it didn't work. That gap is what made him want to start earlier, with children.

What one small shift looks like at home or at work

Systemic change in education can feel like pushing an elephant up a hill. Alexander's approach is different. If each of us does something small in the way we interact with children, enough hands around the elephant will eventually let a community describe it. His message is that it doesn't take a lot.

When I asked what I could do with my own kids, Alexander suggested sharing something that was difficult for me at their age. My honest answer was that I would probably couch it as a lesson, which is still molding the clay.

Then a story from that week came to mind. I had cooked a spicy Indian dish, and some of the kids complained the next day that the smell hadn't left the house. The way they said it was triggering, and I got upset and never explained why. Growing up, I was the only brown kid in my school, and that old feeling came back. I didn't come clean about that.

Alexander's response is worth holding on to. He said I didn't get it wrong, I just didn't catch it in the moment. It sometimes takes time to become aware of what's happening, and it's important to be gentle with ourselves first.

How to apply this with your team and family this week

Pick one conversation where the old question would come easily. What's the plan? What are you going to do? What are you going to become?

Ask the person in front of you, please tell me about you, and let the silence run.
Share something that was hard for you at their stage, with no lesson attached.
Create the agreements for how your team or family works as a group, with them, at the start, instead of imposing a standard.
When someone asks a question you can't answer, notice the urge to turn it back on them.
Look for one story you're carrying that came from how you were socialized, and ask whether it is yours.

Alexander's hope is that the children who learn this grow into adults who know they have choices and an inner compass. The same is open to the people you lead, and to you.