Ted Klein: Teaching professionals how to get people on their side

At Concordia Continuing Education, Ted Klein has spent years helping professionals do the thing everyone today’s aspires to do: influence people and spark change without relying on their title to do it for them. That principle is at the heart of his course, Influencing with Integrity and Impact, which begins on June 10. In the fall, he’ll also again lead Innovation and Problem Solving, which starts on September 26.

Can you share a memorable moment or success story from your teaching experience?

Ted Klein: It started with research. I had been doing online work with the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center on the science of happiness, and I started developing exercises focused on elements of students’ lives that would make them happier. We found that their test scores were going up when we did this. So I wanted to scale it.

From there I started running workshops with executives on gratitude, improv, and leadership and eventually found my way to teaching at CCE. All of it kind of centers around this idea of helping people create more wonderful teams.

What unique experiences do you bring to your classes at CCE?

TK: I’ve been practicing Zen for about 30 years, so I like to incorporate some of that contemplative pedagogy into the work. As the facilitator in these classes, I’ve come to learn that my ability to listen is probably what is teaching them the most in the classes.

What real-world challenges do you help your students tackle?

TK: Most of my students are in positions where they’re trying to influence change without formal authority. That’s a delicate thing to do well, so we look at how to do that with integrity. They write about their core values and compare those values to what they actually experience at work. That’s when things shift. They realize they do have power to help make the workplace more aligned, more ethical, and more human.