If what I am about to do is not constructive, I need to discard the thought. If what I am about to say only tears down with no possibility of building up, it is the wrong way to go.
When I think back to the over twenty-five years I spent as a high school teacher and administrator, I remember many an afternoon drive home during which I had LONG conversations with people who were not in my car. I would talk to the principals who may have upset me by making a decision with which I did not agree. I would chat with the department chairs whose policies made it impossible for me to do my job well and to be the best teacher I could be. I would talk to the students who pushed every and all of my buttons during the day. I would have conversation after conversation, often thinking “I wish I’d said that” and sometimes, in the case of conversations I repeated ad infinitum in my head, I would convince myself I had, in fact, come up with the perfect rejoinder in the moment.
Only one person I can think of has ever been able to recreate the circumstances surrounding a conversation to get to actually use such a rejoinder, and it did not go so well for him:
The bottom line on these kinds of conversations is that, most likely, what I thought I wanted to say was, in the end, better left unsaid.
As teachers, educators and administrators, we are called upon to make decisions – all kinds of decisions – sometimes with time to ponder and consider, sometimes in a split second. As educators, we encounter people all day long. Some of them come to us at their best and some at their worst. Most come to us somewhere in between. They come to us with questions, with concerns, sometimes with emotion. They come to us with challenges that, perhaps, they want us to solve or challenges that they are putting to us.
And they find us, because we are human, in whatever state we happen to be in at the time. We might be up or down, happy or sad, relaxed or keyed up. What I discovered in my years in schools is that it rarely mattered (or, rather, it only mattered to an empathetic person) what my condition was when being approached. Typically, when someone wanted something, wanted to talk, wanted to confront, their moment was now no matter how I felt about it.
That is perfectly fine. Administrators especially must be ready for such conversations no matter their mental or emotional state. What are we doing in school leadership if we are not as available, physically and emotionally as we can be, to help, to aid, to assist? I would argue that if being available to those around you is not in your top three goals as an educational leader, you should consider another line of work.
In some instances, these contacts are terrific.
I am not writing about those here.
I am writing about the ones that are not terrific, the ones that get under our skin, the ones that truly bother us and leave us having phantom conversations in the car on the way home.
We get upset. We are human. We get overwhelmed. We are entitled. We get frustrated. Okay, wait… Here is where we need to be careful.
This is where I need to be careful.
“I should have said this” is very dangerous. When I run these moments on a loop in my mind, I become worried that, in a trying moment, I might actually say what I thought I should have said or something like it from one situation to the next. I might get so upset that I would feel justified.
I can absolutely see that happening. If I try hard enough, I can remember times it did happen.
As educational leaders, we can get so overwhelmed we give ourselves a pass. We can get so frustrated that we might cross a line that cannot be uncrossed or burn a bridge that cannot be rebuilt.
We are confronted by such perils dozens of times a day.
We must be careful. We are leaders. We are public figures. And, no matter whether we believe it is fair or not, we are held to a higher standard.
In the heat of the moment or an hour later or in our car on the way home or as we are about to press “send” on that email, there is a simple question to ask: is what I am about to do helpful?
If it is not, I would argue it should not be done. If what I am about to do is not constructive, I need to discard the thought. If what I am about to say only tears down with no possibility of building up, it is the wrong way to go.
Is what I am about to do helpful?
Good question to ask.
Repeatedly.