One of the lost opportunities in learning and life is not sharing enough about ourselves. I wear a few different hats: husband, father and assistant principal being the main three. These are the things that I wish people knew about me broken down over three blog posts, one on each of the three main hats I wear. The first, Jeff Lahey, Assistant Principal
Look for part two in the series "What I Wish People Knew About Me" focused on my life as a husband.
0 Comments
This week I had the great fortune of realizing I had made a mistake. Yes, I said I had the great fortune of realizing I had made a mistake, a significant one at that. I don’t know about you but I haven’t always been so willing to accept mistakes, particularly when others are pointing them out to me. It takes a lot to swallow your pride and own what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter if it was something you should have known better than or a mistake that happened by pure happenstance, it’s hard to know you messed up.
You have to own your mistakes though. It’s essential. It lets people know that you not only are you wiser than you were before, you’re trustworthy. The world around us has conditioned us to deflect things away from ourselves; to make sure that you protect yourself at all costs no matter the long-term repercussions. The big problem with this thinking is that if you don’t own your mistakes, your mistakes will eventually own year. This happens through either a lack of growth and learning (repeating the same basic mistake over and over again) or a compounding effect where one mistake leads to multiple others. Soon, you can’t keep up. If you will own your mistakes, and own them sooner rather than later, you’ll be amazed at the responses you get. You’ll move from the feeling of someone giving you corrective action to the people knowing you will correct your actions, with the likelihood you will never end up with that mistake again. Remember, people expect from you only what you give them. The world is not looking for people to be mistake-free despite what you hear, it’s looking for people who will grow from their mistakes. Start owning your mistakes now, otherwise, they’ll start owning you. There’s a lot out there on leadership. TED Talks, books, articles, top 10 lists and more are easily accessible. Leadership has evolved over time away from titles to more of a personality. Anyone can be a leader at any time and any place is more the mantra these days. It’s a great mantra. However, the one thing you don’t read or hear much about is following. In fact, I would venture to say that most people reading this would list leader and follower as antonyms. This is the notion that I really want to challenge.
The premise I have is simple: great leaders are also great followers. How can you be both? Well, it’s situational. Great leaders are so aware of their own capabilities that they also inherently have an amazing grasp on their limitations or areas where they still need development and growth. A great leader knows when it’s time to defer to someone else’s area of strength. They know when it’s time to get behind someone. They utilize their unique skill set to empower someone else’s solution. They follow and contribute to the group even if it’s not their own, original idea driving the group's focus. Great leaders don’t just empower others or follow in their footsteps, they make sure that the credit goes to the appropriate place as well. Great leaders don’t “need their name in lights” or live for a headline. They get their greatest sense of joy and satisfaction from the successes of those around them, not their own personal gains. They would rather see their team win and be a “role player” than have a superstar performance going down in defeat. You can be a leader. You can be a follower. Knowing which one to choose and when to choose it is what sets great 21st century leaders apart from the others. Relationships are the foundation upon which education is built. I would even dare to say that there may not be a more people oriented business than being an educator. As I returned back to work this week I was reflecting on last year, thinking about those students that I know I really need to build relationships. As I was reflecting I began to think about all the times we talk about building relationships. While it’s great we talk about it so much I feel like we’ve begun to see this as somewhat of a one-way street.
If we focus on relationships as something we build with kids only we will miss the mark. As an educator, some of the greatest moments in my career centered around times where kids invested in me, made me feel safe, made me feel like I was valued. Building relationships is a two way street. If we spend all of our time investing in the kids but we don’t allow them to invest in us our relationships will never fully materialize. Doing this will require us to be vulnerable. We may have to share things or exhibit certain behaviors that we’ve played close to the vest for a long time. It will require us to admit that we don’t have all the answers and that we can learn so much from our students. It means that sometimes we need a little help to make it through the class, lesson day or whatever is in front of us and our students can provide just that. The bottom line is that if we look at relationships as something that educators pour into students we will miss that the reciprocal of this is also necessary. Without the reciprocal, you’ll find yourself stuck in very superficial, if not artificial relationships that will likely end up doing more harm than good. You can read a lot on the topic of leadership. There are so many choices; books, magazines podcasts and the lists just go on. There’s an unspoken sentiment that underlies much of what you can consume regarding leadership: don’t isolate leadership as a position or title. Start acting on your leadership abilities right now. You see, you already are a leader. You always were and likely always will be. Leadership exists, in some capacity, in everything we do in life, both professionally and individually. The question is not do you want to be a leader, the question is how are you already leading? Are you leading from seat 1A or from seat 52E? It’s a reference to the choices of seats you have when flying a commercial airline. Seat 1A is a first class seat at the front of the plane. The seat lies flat so you can sleep, there’s a window and nobody next to you so you can easily access the isle. It’s got everything you need to be as comfortable as you can at 40,000 feet. Seat 52E has none of that. You’re in the middle section of the plane. There’s people on both sides of you, you have no aisle access, your seat doesn’t recline and you’re all the way at the back. You can hear the noise from the galley and all the opening and closing of the lavatory doors. You can see everything happening in front of you. The analogy is not meant to be a cheap shot at people who fly in first class. It’s supposed to illustrate the qualities of effective leadership. In seat 1A you can be isolated from all that is going on around you. Nobody really knows that you’re a part of the flight at all with the exception of a few individuals. On the opposite end, in seat 52E you likely boarded last, everyone on the plane had a chance to see you and you them as you walked to your seat. In flight, you can see everything in front of you. You know everything that is going on because you can see it and hear it. You’ve got people on both sides of you, often a great chance to strike up a conversation and get to know some really cool people. We often look at leadership the way we view seats on an airplane. Most of us are stuck in coach, looking toward first class and think about how nice it would be to be there, if only a chance would come our way. We want to lead but we feel like the opportunity never comes our way. Each day in life is like a flight, you take off, you journey to a destination and then you land. The truth is, the ride in seat 52E might be the best way to bring out our own leadership abilities and opportunities. Thoughts, reflections, challenges? I'd love to hear what you think. Just comment below.
|
AuthorJeff Lahey Archives
January 2020
Categories
All
|