The old adage “oil and water don’t mix” is demonstrably true. Head into your kitchen. Find some oil. Put the oil in a glass filled with water. See what happens. Go ahead. I will wait.
See? What did I tell you?
Oil and water do not mix.
I would like to suggest that arrogance and good leadership are, likewise, incompatible. They, too, do not mix.
Let us not confuse arrogance and confidence. Confidence is an important quality for a good leader. Good leaders possess confidence. Often the confidence of a good leader comes from experience, a record of good decision making and an understanding of what it means to serve a community. Confidence in effective leaders is founded. It is earned.
Arrogance is another story.
Leaders who are arrogant, who believe theirs is the only voice in the room which carries significant weight, are likely to run into problems. Arrogant leaders do not listen well. Good communication is not their default position and why should it be when they already believe they know what is best in most situations? They are less likely to compromise, to collaborate, to empower. Arrogant leaders believe they are the most critical piece in the school. They believe they have to have a hand in every decision and must be consulted and cow-towed to in every circumstance.
Arrogant leaders rarely succeed over the long term. They may have initial success, especially in schools that may need clarity established around procedures and rules and directions, but their arrogance typically hamstrings them sooner rather than later.
Arrogance and leadership do not mix.
Add this phrase to your list of adages that make sense.
Over the course of the past five years or so, I have taken part in a movement among the educational community (and the community writ large, I am certain) to select a word around which to center the upcoming year. I have engaged in this practice and found it grounding, especially as a year begins. As I have commented in previous posts, there is something about beginnings – the starts of years and months and weeks – that really clicks with my internal operating system. If I start something well and begin it at the right time, it becomes a part of my makeup, mindset and motion.
Therefore, I start the year 2024 with the word EMBRACE.
I intend to embrace the year,
embrace challenge and change,
embrace expectations,
embrace the unknown,
embrace gratitude,
embrace whatever is to come, fully and without reservation.
The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung.
Our work reaches beyond us. It reaches through time. It reaches into the future.
EVERGREEN POST
We do not get tired of good Christmas songs. Well, I do not, anyway. I look forward to their repetition each year. When beginning to compose a post for the week before Christmas this year, I realized I had covered the themes I wanted to in posts of Christmas post, so I will present this again here and plan to do so annually. I hope you enjoy it.
On many desks and in many inboxes this time of year, teachers and administrators find all manner of remembrances – cards and notes and gifts, tokens of affection and appreciation. Typically, these trinkets and notes do not fully express the gratitude of the students and staff we serve. They are lovely to receive. They are not always reflective of the appreciation our communities feel for us. Our communities typically love us and are grateful for our service.
And, while It is an appropriate time of year for students and staff to thank us, it is an equally appropriate time of year for us to be thankful.
As many of us finish our last-minute tasks, our baking and decorating and preparing, this is a great time of year to think about another great gift we in education are given: the gift of doing work that influences days to come.
Our work reaches beyond us. It reaches through time. It reaches into the future.
We most often do not see ready results. While some of us have been in this work for an extended period of time and we have been able to watch some of the seeds we have planted grow in the lives our students lead after they have left us, we are typically immersed in the day-to-day, the checklist of the moment, the class to come, the next paper to grade.
It is challenging, then, to remember that our reach exceeds our grasp, ever and always. The work we do influences the world to come. It shapes society. It changes the world.
Changes. The. World.
That’s a gift worth receiving. It’s a gift worth sharing.
A colleague this week asked me if I could distill good leadership to one quality.
Over the course of this first semester, I have had the opportunity to consider – deeply – what I believe are the core qualities that make up a good leader, that inspire a leader who truly serves others.
A colleague this week asked me if I could distill good leadership to one quality. He wanted to know what was the quality I believe is the most essential in an excellent educational leader.
I should, perhaps, have taken more time to answer than I did but one quality immediately came to my mind when I was asked the question and I was answering before I knew it.
Humility.
When I consider my personal journey and all the experiences – wonderful, terrible, and everywhere in between – that journey has afforded me and I reflect on the most salient takeaways I have gained, humility emerges at the top of the list of the most crucial qualities of a leader.
It would take far too much ink for me to enumerate the many lessons I had to work through which helped me learn that I want and need to keep humility at the center of my leadership. I could discuss the times I thought I knew better than the wisdom of the room, the times I got ahead of myself and ahead of process, the times I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge and was afraid to admit that I was not the smartest person in a given conversation and that I did not have all the answers.
I have blogged about many of these experiences in the past. Each and all of them have taught me that the key component of my leadership and the quality I strive to keep foremost in my approach to it is humility.
It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom, said Gandhi. If that is true, and I believe that it is, it is wise, then, to embrace the wisdom of others and to do so in humble humility.
I want humility to be the heart of my servant leadership. I will work to make it so.
