Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.
PRIORITIZE
I have written in a prior blog about a school leader who commented to someone that an individual’s email was “a snowflake in my blizzard.”
I do not love the statement.
I do not love that statement, especially when delivered to a person who sent the email hoping for help, but I hear the sentiment behind it.
Leaders in schools are often inundated with questions and concerns and decisions and conversations all of which cry to be attended to, many of which cry to be attended to with some alacrity.
There are times it is relatively easy to know what to do first. When a car is on fire in the parking lot (something that really happened during Parent/Teacher Conferences at a school where I worked), a leader knows that situation has to be addressed. immediately.
A leader I very much respect referred to that kind of prioritization as “The Tyranny of the Immediate.” No big thinking involved. Just get it done.
However, the non-immediate but no less critical issues also call for a leader’s attention. Good leaders have methods by which they prioritize. They have a system they follow to be sure things that need to happen, happen. They have a structure by which they order what comes next.
Good leaders can prioritize and the must to be effective.