Skipping Steps

Ringo Starr said it best: “If you wanna play the blues, you gotta pay your dues. And you know it don’t come easy.”

What does this mean for today’s budding leaders? In a nutshell: becoming a successful leader means that you must put in time and effort. It takes GRIT to be successful. There’s no getting around it—in a field where the pool of leadership candidates is small, and training and support are limited, emerging leaders need to make the extra effort to seek out mentors and other supporters to assist them in their quest for excellence.

We often look for newness when we are searching for just the right leader to create change in an organization. We are looking for a fresh perspective and a contemporary skill set. But that risks loss of valuable institutional knowledge. During a recent conversation with a young leader at a nonprofit, he remarked that “admittedly, the staff we are attracting are green”—this after teachers he perceived as rigid and unable to cope with change had left in droves. I thought it was an interesting admission—he had been actively encouraging existing staff to get on board with his ideas and intentions, but seemed content that seasoned staff had found the door and were replaced by younger and less experienced ones.

The idea of turnover during times of change is a blog topic in itself, but today’s commentary is about leadership progression—climbing the ladder, if you will, to positions with more authority and corresponding responsibility, in your own organization or one you have moved to.

My own progression along the leadership continuum was pretty straightforward. After an undergrad experience where I was tapped for various leadership roles, from resident assistant to sorority president to president of the Optometry Club, I arrived at my first teaching position in a rural high school with incredible energy and enthusiasm. I actually taught a class on leadership and ran the school paper. After completing my graduate studies, I embarked on a career as a teacher for students who were blind or visually impaired and worked as an itinerant teacher in a variety of districts. Initially, when someone tapped me on the shoulder to move to a supervisory role, I turned the idea over in my head and answered with a firm “no.”

But colleagues and friends continued to urge me to assume a leadership position, and I became first a supervising teacher and then interim Principal for a School for the Blind. By that time, I was pretty sold on the idea that my many years in the trenches would give me a unique perspective compared to other leaders without that experience.

 In that role, I flourished. The staff I inherited was so in need of someone to listen to, acknowledge, and support their intentions to do what was best for the children they served that I became their best advocate. Together we moved the school forward and built a student population that received an education focused on their unique needs. I participated in a couple of book groups around leadership and developed a respectable group of mentors and colleagues. And then… I was tapped on the shoulder once again to lead another school and its related programs through the recession. During that time, I was able to focus on some of my own special interests: transition and employment.

Unfortunately, politics, personality, and bad timing led me to resign from that position. I sought work on the national level. The Vice President position I landed with a national non-profit allowed me to learn a new skillset in a completely different environment. Today, I am exploring a variety of consulting positions where I could apply my abilities as a researcher, content expert, and systems-thinker.

Why share my personal experiences in this blog? Because my own personal leadership journey is one example of how leaders move along in the very small, specific, and elite world of blindness and visual impairment and sometimes find themselves in a professional role that challenges their ideals, expertise, and skillset.

I remember a conversation someone who had left a position I was considering. “If you’re looking to climb the superintendent ladder,” he said, “this is not the one I would recommend.” I was stunned. There’s a superintendent ladder, I thought? Who knew? I’m just interested in filling a position where I can apply my experience as a TVI and COMS to address the challenges of school administration.

In fact, the position I was seeking involved moving from managing 50 FTEs and $10,000 in discretionary funds to a position where I would be in charge of 450 employees and a $40,000,000 budget. Whoosh. How did I think I could manage such a great leap? What the heck was I doing? Who would help me make this leap? I was fortunate to have great support from colleagues around me, but I eventually sought an executive coach to give me honest feedback and help develop my skills. s

So this is my point. If you are considering a new leadership position or looking to lead an organization that is bigger or more complex than the one you currently serve, PAY ATTENTION.

Ask yourself:

·      Are you up for the challenge this new position will present?

·      Is there a position that might be a better fit for you where you can learn new skills that will prepare you for a future leadership position?

·      How will you manage the energy level this new position requires? Are there resources you can call upon to help you meet the expectations of the job?

·      Whom might you seek out as a mentor or sounding board when you take on a position that is different or more challenging than your previous role?

·      What are you good at? Whom will you need to call on to complement your current skills, support areas where you are not as strong, and candidly offer feedback to help you to grow as a leader?

This third bullet point is perhaps the most important. Let’s say you have climbed the ladder quickly, skipping over positions that might have taught you new skills and otherwise left you with deficits in your leadership abilities. What can you do to assure your success in your new role? Finding a leadership coach or mentor who is by your side as you transition is critical to your success. You will need to be able to look critically at your role and recognize where your deficits and inexperience limit you. You will need to be reading and writing in order to continue building on your previous leadership experiences and seek honest feedback about how your efforts are perceived. You will need to have someone – or someones—to talk to about all of this.

Above all, recognize that you have room to grow, and work hard to develop your skills while you are carrying out the role. … and you will likely need help to achieve leadership excellence.

One way or another, you gotta pay your dues.

On Being New: Snapshots

One of the most frequent complaints I hear about newcomers is their tendency to draw conclusions too quickly. They see one snapshot of a situation and assume they understand what is going on. We all do this—it’s called first impressions. But for a new leader or someone new to an organization or position, it is a risky habit. Acting on or sharing information taken from one encounter can lead to all sorts of problems, including the immediate erosion of trust.

What sorts of snapshots are we talking about? One comes upon all sorts of situations on school campuses or at the office that, taken by themselves, seem off. If I come upon a student-staff situation, for example, where a student is clearly struggling, I am more likely to ask the staff member if he/she needs assistance, rather than jumping into a situation I don’t understand. If I see an employee hanging out in the hall on a personal call when there’s a meeting room waiting for his/her arrival, I wonder what’s going on. But I don’t report the behavior to someone else or interrupt their call unless I have grasped the full picture.

In the world of blindness education, I’ve encountered many student-staff interactions that have caused me to raise an eyebrow. “Human guide” that looks more like “human push.” Staff speaking for students instead of allowing them the time to speak for themselves. A white cane that is bent and too short for the student to use properly. Certainly I’ve watched administrators and staff become lulled over time, setting up an environment where little is expected. But acting on each behavior or situation that seems amiss can be just as damaging.

I stepped into one leadership position where my predecessor had repeatedly acted on snapshots. How do I know this? Because it was the first thing staff shared with me when I started touring programs. This leader’s behavior had left a lasting impression on staff that they projected onto me—I was viewed as suspicious in this well-established organization before I even opened my mouth.

It is natural that you will develop impressions of the people and circumstances within your job. But should you comment on or intervene as each incident unfolds?

It seems like our intentions as new leaders will most certainly be misunderstood.  But there is a relatively simple approach one can take, and it has four parts.

1.     Take your snapshot. Observe and reflect on what you think you have seen, heard, or observed.

2.     File that snapshot away in your brain as one data point, and as you see other examples, add them to the file. Perhaps the other examples will confirm or contradict the first example.

3.     Ask questions or gain further information about the situation(s) you observed. Make sure you ask in a way that is respectful and genuinely curious, and do it in private if you can. Aim to get the whole picture.

4.     Act on the observation if and when it rises to a level of concern. Continue to revisit the issue as you make further observations so that your actions are appropriate and effective.

It’s not hard to understand the harm one can do by jumping to conclusions, and yet this is an error nearly everyone who is new makes—sometimes repeatedly. I recently heard an interim minister reflect on his first weeks at his new church. The first thing he shared was that the art on display (portraits of past members, landscapes, etc.) were outdated and did not seem important. He proposed taking things down temporarily while developing a process for reviewing and prioritizing what would be hung where.  

Really? I thought. That’s all he’s got? The congregation is reeling with change after enjoying one leader for over thirty years and he zeros in on what’s on the walls? Let’s just say that I did not feel particularly supportive of the new guy based on his decision to share this relatively inconsequential issue.

The point is to take on the things that are a priority, not just pick out whatever seems amiss to you at the moment. And do so thoughtfully, after you’ve listened, learned, and decided what is most important. What you take on doesn’t have to be the biggest or the hardest thing, either—it just needs to be important in some way. As a new leader, you don’t want to be labeled as reactive or insensitive. Ask your questions. Listen to the answers. Then begin forming your plan.