Leaders navigate waters both smooth and choppy. They encounter colleagues, students and parents at both their best and their worst. They inspire positive experiences. They are held responsible for negative ones.

Leaders have histories.

Leaders create histories.

Leaders leave histories behind them in their wake.

And leaders are human. There are moments in their histories of which they are very proud. There are moments in their histories of which they are not. There are students and colleagues they truly enjoy. There are students and colleagues they would like to never consider again. There are signposts they can point to which are very positive and there are those that are starkly negative.

They have met people and done things.

They have left footprints.

The best leaders let all of that go. 

Leaders who are successful understand that, while they have a track record, they do not have to be defined by it. Nor do they allow themselves to be.

They do not live in their successes and they do not dwell in their failures. They do not revisit the past unless it is helpful for them to do so. They neither hold grudges nor are they swayed by their own press.

They live in the present. They work in the now. They plan for the future.

None of this can happen effectively without letting go.

Leaders allow the past to stay in the past. They forgive and actually try to forget. They do not prejudge a situation or a person based solely on past contacts and histories.

Leaders who find ways to let go of the past, to understand that conflict and praise are both fleeting, to look forward and not backward are leaders who inspire.

They are leaders I yearn to follow.

In recent years, a significant thread in educational research around achievement has emerged and it is something that, back when I was in “teacher school” we never discussed. 

As educators, the theory holds, we should encourage our students to fail. We should create conditions in which it is safe for them to fail. We should challenge them to attempt things at which we know they will fail.

Fail early and avoid the rush is a paraphrase of something my father would have said. He would have loved this idea.

When I was learning to be a teacher, failure was not thought of as a function of success. My education classes would, likely, have hammered home strategies to specifically avoid failure.

It turns out that failure is as important as success in development of a growth mindset.

I find that this idea is challenging for many educators to grasp. For many, this is a revolutionary thought. The concept of linking failure to success was outside-the-box thinking. The idea that failure was anything but, well, failure is tough to grasp. 

Let us be honest: in our work in schools where we pin much (too much) of our opinion on of success on scaled benchmarks and grades and academic achievement and where we as professionals are all-too-often assessed on how our students do, the idea that failure is a good thing can be a difficult sell. More challenging still is the growing understanding that excellent educational leaders create conditions in which failure is planned for, is monitored and is celebrated.

However, we are called to create conditions for our students where failure is okay, where mistakes are rewarded, where missing the mark is celebrated as a necessary and critical step towards making it.

Educational leaders understand that this idea applies not only to student mastery work in classrooms, but it also applies to staff work as they attempt new things. Too often we believe that teachers should be able to implement new plans, programs and technologies without a hitch and that growing pains are signs that teachers are not trying hard enough or that professional development around a given topic is lacking. Too infrequently do we build in time to fail and less frequently still do we highlight failures as good steps on the road to successes.

This is not how we have been wired.

Accorting to Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett we should “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Well said, sir. Can we give the guy a little credit for being way ahead of his time on this?

It is time to rewire. It is time to acknowledge and celebrate failure. 

It is time to fail better.

Confession: I am a maker of lists. When presented with a complex task which I know will eat up hours and the completion of which will take a significant amount of time, I get fired up when I chart out potential steps and timelines, chunk together the major pieces, draw it all up on a sticky note or on a far too complex and color-coded spreadsheet.

There is something so gratifying about sketching little squares next to words or designing an electronic to-do list with items organized just so, knowing that I will check them off at some later date.

I completely get into the planning.

Applying this approach to our work as educators has always made sense to me. In my experience, this type ofpreparation is critically necessary to balance all that teachers and administrators must complete in our days, weeks, and months.

From a broader perspective, the creation of committees and the composition of strategic plans are large-scale approaches to making checklists. When addressing issues that are likely more complex than what we approach individually on a daily basis, these marco-structures help move things forward in our schools. I am not sure we could run our schools without them. 

How do we work on curriculum revision? Form a committee. Where do we want to be in five years? In ten? Draft a strategic plan.

Often, when I make a list or sit on a committee, I can find myself overwhelmed by the enormity of the subject of the list or the charge of the committee. What to do then? Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. Likewise, I can also get down deep into the minutia of a task, look at it from all angles of which I can conceive, and break it into its most simple parts. Then, I can assign pieces to timelines, ask people to perform tasks, allocate resources and color in spaces on the calendar. Planning of this sort can be invaluable to our schools.

Until it isn’t.

Here’s the thing: I can spend hours in the planning, days in the design, weeks in the idea. Sometimes I forget it is in the doing that things get done.

I know that I spend a metric ton of time on the planning – the measuring twice, cutting once approach – of my work.

I spend an awful lot.

This is not a bad thing. I am not advocating the abandonment of list making. My God, I would feel lost without my lists. Nor do I think that our schools should disband all committees (though I bet they could do without a few of them) and scrap all strategic plans (but I would be most careful with deadlines associated with them). 

These are tools of the trade: these lists and committees and plans.

But they are not the trade.

It’s in the doing that things get done.

When decisions must be made, good leaders determine what to do based on each individual case, weighing the opinions of others as appropriate, considering precedent if necessary, proceeding confidently into each new area. Good leaders make decisions because decision making is part of the work. They do not shy away from this duty even if they understand a decision may cause dissent.

With that in mind, here is the great leadership insight for today. Get ready. It is profound and powerful.

Are you sitting down as you read? We do not want anyone falling to the floor passing out from the sheer brilliance of what is about to come.

Here it is:

People disagree with their leaders.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Still here? Okay, a few more words, then, on this topic of disagreement and dissent.

Leaders who are just passable in their roles make determinations. Leaders who are simply proficient make decisions. Leaders who are solid and visionary lead their institutions where they may or may not want to go.

Leaders of all skill levels decide directions, accelerate agendas, pursue paths.

No matter the course chosen, there will be those led who disagree. Sometimes, they will disagree quietly. Often, they will dissent vocally.

How a leader responds to dissent defines leadership.

Be wary of leaders (perhaps of yourself as leader) if the goal of decision making is to not offend. Likewise, be aware of leaders (again, this could be you) who make decisions relishing the idea that choices will offend. Look to follow leaders who 1) understand that their decisions may cause waves, and yet they make them anyway and, 2) investigate the waves their decision-making has caused.

Leaders who cannot stand scrutiny of their decisions are not strong leaders. They are leaders who want to be praised for their wisdom without having offered those they lead rationale for that praise. Leaders who will not listen to opposing views are hamstrung in their leadership. They may be respected, they may even be feared, but they will not be truly followed.

Leaders who allow for disagreement, who engage those who disagree and who attempt to anticipate the tension decisions might cause and determine why decisions create friction are comfortable in the role. These leaders know that they cannot make everyone happy and they do not try. Rather they are aware of when their decisions create tension and they consider that tension. They work to understand it. And they do not do this alone.

Weak, arrogant leaders feel offended when you disagree with them. Strong, humble leaders explore dissent.

Giving voice to dissenting opinions is not a sign of weak leadership; it is a sign of great strength.

I want to follow a leader who is strong enough to allow me to disagree with her, confident enough to engage me on my disagreement and wise enough to explain to me when I am wrong. I want to follow a leader who knows my dissent can be a good thing. I want to follow a leader who encourages dissenting opinions.