Seeking Out Thoughtful Leaders and Keeping Little Scott in the Back Seat

 

According to Initiative One, a leader's choices when it comes to "thoughtful leaders" within the organization are the key to their ability to rise above Level One or Level Two leadership.  

Effective leaders don't wait around for their TLs to knock on their door to deliver unpleasant information.  Effective leaders knock on TL's doors and ask for it.  When the TL delivers the unfiltered facts, the effective leader controls their emotions, then expresses gratitude to the TL for sharing this information.  In this manner, trust is built and the TL is increasingly likely to support the leader in their vision and activities to build a strong and resilient organization.

In my first two years in my current district, I have had a few staff members share their thoughts, observations, and sometimes rumors.  In almost every case, the news brought out my Little Scott, expressing fear, anger, defensiveness, and just about every other behavior that destroys trust.  I can beat myself up after the fact, but in every case, I squandered an opportunity to build support for my vision for technology integration.  And what is so great about my vision anyway?

No, I have got to get this under control and be more intentional about suppressing those involuntary responses.  I have too much confidence in my ability to read people's intentions when delivering information, and I discount a few people who I judged as self-serving and fearing change, when more effective leaders have identified them as TLs.  I think what I have been seeing is my own lack of relationships with them, and when people don't show me the love, support, and appreciation, they are immediately sidelined in my head.  Initiative One reminds leaders that every move to a new organization reduces their trust and leadership capacity back down the ladder to Level One.  Some leaders can, with mature leadership behavior, quickly build trust and respect.  Others rely too much on memories of great respect that may not have even been justified and now are forgotten in the new setting.  Maybe that is what I have been doing and seeing.

This summer, I want to develop more activities and strategies for testing out this model.  Mike assures me that it has been one of the most important lessons he has learned in the past few years.  I know he walks the walk in this manner, and I am always hearing him talking with various people in order to get better information and invite them to shape whatever he is working on.  Where I previously saw him as a visionary and committed to seeing his ideas realized, I now understand that it is more nuanced than that.  Mike starts with a vision, often sparked by the words of someone he sat next to at a meeting or played a round a golf with.  I have never met a person who spends so many hours doing what he loves while simultaneously promoting the district, Initiative One, or the work of someone else.  He is consistently humble in his own contribution to the process, yet I also know he is excited to see the results his own work is getting.  Who benefits?  The students, of course.  That is pretty hard to criticize.