"That's Interesting! Tell Me About That!"

Taking in the big picture at Snowmass on April 18, 2020

I can see Gordon Robbins’s face as I write this. In my mind’s eye he’s sitting over his usual cup of soup at lunch in the Okemo base lodge, well into his 80’s, chatting away with all manner of instructors but particularly young ones. Suddenly, something, someone’s comment commands his complete attention and everything else on the planet ceases to exist.

It happened regularly, and would have been easy to overlook. Mid-conversation, when someone would say something new, something outside his own experience or from a fresh perspective, Gordon would hunch over as though making himself smaller, stare at the person who made the comment while extending his hands out and rolling his fingers towards himself in come-here mode, and he’d say, smiling, “Ah, now that’s interesting! Tell me about that!”. The other person felt it: they would have the total and complete attention and enthusiasm of the astonishingly accomplished and supremely sophisticated man in front of them, and he’d love every instant.

Gordon Robbins was no ordinary snow sports pro, and he certainly was no ordinary human being. He was far better than that. His long, varied, international, and endlessly interesting life defies easy description, and his role in snow sports was merely the last chapter. Gordon was tremendously influential in the sport of snowboarding and in snowboard instruction from the very beginning. His impact is difficult to overstate: countless professionals who continue to drive the sport forward and guide the teaching and coaching of it to this day have their own tales of Gordon’s intellect, his nature, and his many gifts to them. Still, none of that, nor any of his other spectacular adventures and long and singularly interesting life had any effect on those cafeteria conversations. Every person of every sort, every place, every idea, every experience, was a moment of joy and the potential for learning not to be missed for Gordon.

To see the look on the face of some young, awkward, slightly quirky instructor when this Gordon effect happened was like watching the sun rise above the horizon. His joy became theirs and they would both be transported. Joyful curiosity and selfless generosity were his hallmarks. Those character traits continue to inform my view, and they certainly are not limited to my dear departed friend Gordon.

There’s a vexing question for all of us in the snow sports teaching business: Can we train ordinary coaches and teachers to make them great, or is there something in great coaches, some innate, intangible quality that they possess that cannot be trained or learned? Particularly since the last Interski – the quadrennial international congress of snow sports associations - our national instructor teams here in America have been very focused on the skills necessary to be effective teachers. Communication skills, empathy, friendliness, and other skills can be trained in the same way that good customer or guest service can be trained. But the question persists: is there something else, something deeper, something woven into the DNA of great instructors? Is it character?

Gordon Robbins has been on my mind quite a bit lately as I consider this question, and Gordon’s example proves ever instructive. Ironically, they’re traits of an approach to learning, but they do manifest themselves in the way in which people teach. They form a common theme that unifies great leaders, scientists, managers, teachers and coaches. As described, the two character traits that have been on my mind are each really amalgamations of two things: The first is a joyful curiosity. The second is selfless generosity.

On a more operational level, the coaches that have had the most direct impact on my day-to-day teaching and on my development through the ranks of instructors have in common a particular way of working with me. Knowing how my mind works, my favorite go-to coaches all understand that simply telling me how to do something, how to explain it and what words to use was a recipe for the loss of my attention and, frankly, my respect. The better response, the one that keeps me focused and guides me to a better understanding and more effective performance is to ask how I’d approach a problem and then say “OK, walk me through it”. Using the same hand motions as Gordon, my coaches Barb, Alison, Jean, Deb, Biff, and a couple of Bobs all take this approach with me: each would say “OK, walk me through it”, and each would suggest how to tweak, tailor or approach the substance or my process in a way that would make it more effective. Their approach with me was always selfless in its generosity, joyful in its curiosity, and tough on me in the way I needed. I learn as much from the way in which they handle me as I do from anything they’ve told or showed me over the years. I am lucky to call them all my friends, and their lessons continue to bear fruit – on the hill in my day-to-day work and in my thinking about my craft and my career. It’s as though they all sit on my shoulder, Jiminy Cricket style, guiding me through and keeping me honest.

Joyful curiosity and selfless generosity: I believe that these are not traits that can be engineered, taught, faked, fudged or measured, though we should keep trying. What I do know is that these character traits can be identified and encouraged. When we find an inkling of them in people, some little spark, we can draw it out of instructors with genuine interest and care just like Gordon would, hunched over, focused and gesturing with enthusiasm for more of what they have to offer.

Smite Be Something To It

The aspen trees need no social distance. April 8 in Aspen, Colorado.

I’ve been struggling with something very specific recently. No, I’m not talking about social distancing, figuring out my local market’s delivery schedule so I can get fresh vegetables, or deciding whether to say something to the unbelievably selfish people in my community who seem to not get it. Those are certainly challenges related to my present quandary, but they’re not my central point here.

At the moment, I am struggling with conjugating a verb. It’s not a word we use very often, and it’s definitely a wrinkle of translating biblical text and concepts into modern English as we experience the COVID-19 pandemic. And I find it entertaining - the verb, that is, and not the pandemic. I am struggling to conjugate the past and conditional tenses of the verb "to smite".

Conjugating “to smite” is made a little tougher given that the only beings that we commonly think of who could have smote (see what I mean?!) are pretty lofty. My informal view without an exhaustive survey is that Moses, King David, and King Solomon could all have smotten (?) people for offenses. Lohengrin, Shiva, and Zeus certainly possessed the ability to smite someone. Those of us whose religiosity is squarely in the Five Books of Moses and are therefore more accustomed to a fire-and-brimstone, plagues-upon-Egypt relationship with our G-d understand the possibility of being both “smote” and “smitten” by our Eternal Ruler at the same time. The questions to which I seek answers are whether we were smotted; would we have been smott had we not washed our hands; when was the last time you were smotten? Is someone who has been smotted considered smut? It’s vexing.

Although from the same root word, “smitten” has an entirely different connotation in the modern context. Somehow being bowled over by a stunning beauty seems more enjoyable than being struck down by lightening for eating bacon or making matzo balls with butter. Need I say more on that subject?!

One of the philosophical and even theological aspects of the current state of the world that I do genuinely find interesting is that the changes we are all working hard to make in our everyday lives, our societal behavior, are for the benefit of all. Success or failure of social distancing and the like is determined on the basis of the collective outcome, not merely whether we ourselves survive and remain healthy. Yes, there have been and will continue to be a dizzying daily array of heart wrenching individual tragedies that I have no intention of minimizing. Still, when this is all over and we’re back to business as usual we’ll need to consider how each of our behavior contributed to the health and welfare of our community, our nation, our society, and the world in which we live.

My friend Jiri and I had one of our classic intellectual conversations yesterday about theological conflicts between competing belief systems within the same religions - those who believe in individual versus collective salvation. We agreed that COVID-19 necessarily grounds he and I in the collective view. I am not saying that those who fail to social distance or do whatever else we should be doing to “flatten the curve” of the spread of the new coronavirus will be smotten, smited, smot … I don’t think that they’ll be struck by lightning, turned into pillars of salt, hit by a falling satellite, or crushed in a trash compactor. I do believe, however, that those members of our communities who fail to act in our collective best interests will have shown the rest of us their true nature.

The many belief systems that I have studied – my own and others – all include some sort of judgement of how we’re doing (or how we did) as people. I do not personally possess the ability (or the desire) to smite someone, and I do not sit in judgement in any sort of official or ecclesiastical way. I do, however get to choose the people with whom I spend my time. This pandemic is unlike anything we've seen for generations, and I reserve the right to use what I see as a litmus test of character and not invite people to my table when we all can gather for matzo ball soup, or brisket, or a cup of coffee, or take some Temerity laps, or a bike ride …

I am confident that the overwhelming majority of people in the communities where I live will choose to apply themselves towards the welfare of all mankind. Let me be clear, my matzo ball soup is pretty good, but it clearly is lower on the priority list than the greater good of society.