Acknowledging mistakes

When I was a teenager, a high school friend admonished me for saying “sorry” several times throughout the day. Apologizing came naturally to me then, but it was based mostly on my lack of confidence rather than a real need to apologize for everything I did that was a little off. Fast forward to a few months ago, when the scheduler of a virtual meeting was MIA for her own meeting. My teammate and I waited in the cyber room for 20 minutes, then called it quits.

No big deal—managing one’s own calendar can be tricky, especially if participants are spread across the US. I sent her a quick email suggesting that we reschedule for the following week.

I was struck by her response, though—a couple of lines explaining how and why she had lost track of time and missed signing in. She never really owned the mistake.

I can remember numerous instances through the years where mistakes and follow-up communication have varied. A special education director would regularly show up for a scheduled observation several minutes late and would proceed as if she had not missed the first part of the lesson. Someone we contract with to rent out our house responded to a concern where we noted a mishap in a photograph taken of our home. A painting, instead of hanging in its usual spot on the wall, sat on the floor. When we asked what had happened, he said, “it became dislodged.” Both of these instances seemed to lack the basic courtesy of acknowledging a mistake.

During my tenure as a school administrator, staff would come to me to share a mistake they had made, for example, in a communication with a parent or the student himself. Many would apologize profusely, while others would spend the bulk of the meeting sharing copious amounts of details supporting their wrong-doing. Understanding why a mistake was made is important, but it doesn’t constitute an apology: it just feels like justification.

Like most of us, I have mis-stepped many times. I am reasonably comfortable with acknowledging my mistakes and I typically apologize readily. But HOW I apologize matters.

My take-away: In most instances, responding to a mistake requires a two-line answer: the first acknowledging that a mistake has been made and the second apologizing for it. This communication should be voiced rather than written, but in some cases, following up with a written note can be valuable. Our desired end result should be to acknowledge and then move past the error, learn from it, and not repeat it.

Unintended Consequences

In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action.

That’s the Wikipedia definition. Let’s look at how unintended consequences play out in the workplace.

I was working with a team of leaders in an organization where some reconfiguration had occurred. In typical workplace fashion, decisions had been made unilaterally by upper management, and information about the changes had not been communicated effectively downstream. We spent the better part of a meeting deliberating about what had happened and I’ll admit, most of the talk was negative.

To bring the conversation around to something more productive, I asked my colleagues to start focusing on what they thought might be the unintended consequences of the decisions that had been made. Shifting our focus, I hoped, would help us generate solutions to the issues we were facing.

There are many examples of unintended consequences in history: eliminating a “pest” animal only to find that it served an important purpose in the ecosystem; positioning one curb cut at the corner of a sidewalk as a cost saver, making positioning for a safe crossing challenging for a person who is blind. We often talk about unintended consequences in relation to government regulations and environmental impact. But what do they have to do with leadership?

There are three potential effects of a decision or action that might be unintended:

·      Unexpected benefits

·      Unexpected drawbacks

·      Perverse results

In special education, I saw unexpected benefits to practices that I had initially deemed problematic. For example, a student who was perfectly capable of finding her way between classes held onto the cart that held her gear as a student pulled it along. At first I admonished her for being dependent on her classmate, until she told me that the opportunity to chat during the exercise was helping her make friends.

Of course there are many examples of unexpected drawbacks. A blindness organization chose black coffee cups as give-aways for their marketing campaign, not considering that pouring black coffee into a black cup was difficult for those with low vision. Another organization created an internal marketing campaign around a “promise” that backfired because they didn’t understand the organization’s skeptical culture.

Perverse results are those that have the opposite effect of the intended action. In the ‘80s when deinstitutionalization was in full swing, a well-meaning colleague suggested that children with multiple disabilities who were moving into public school classrooms should be given beanbag chairs and radios as an effective educational model.  Thankfully, her suggestion was overridden by those who actually understood best practice for these students.

So what do unintended consequences have to do with leadership? A lot.

I have been surprised by how little leaders seem to consider unintended consequences. As I moved into increasingly complex leadership positions, I learned to ask those in the trenches what consequences might occur if a certain change took place. I also learned to list potential consequences when making a decision—both positive and negative, in a balance sheet analysis.

For example, an announcement trumpeting a leader’s promotion is best not made on the heels of one about minimal salary increases for those working frontline. Or this one:  After a company-wide “Trust” survey showed unrest and distrust in the company’s leadership, a communication went out that the executive team had heard the concerns and would be communicating soon about their plans to improve… and then failed to follow up. Intentions were good in both scenarios, but each further eroded the relationship between leadership and staff. 

Think about the results of your actions. Think about the impression you are making. And make the effort to identify and then address anything that will negatively impact others. While you can’t mitigate all unintended consequences, getting ahead of them with respect and communication will make you a better leader and help those around you appreciate their jobs AND you.

What are you worth?

Money. Not the first thing we think about in schools, state agencies, or nonprofits, is it? But for leaders, money drives many things. Leaders manage budgets, make staffing decisions based on available resources, write grants, appear before state and national legislatures asking for funding, all in the name of having what they need to get the job done.

There are so many branches on the money tree that it is hard to choose a leadership stone among them. But here goes. I am setting out here to support the theory that you must pay well to get the best people on your team, and that the concept applies to ALL members of the team.

One of my greatest frustrations in an organization where top-tier leaders were paid well was the fact that those doing front-line work were drastically underpaid. We limped through the recession, a time when I was forced to trim $1.5 million from my department’s budget. Staff salaries remained nearly flat during those years. When the recession eased, I assumed we would play substantial catch-up with teachers and instructional assistants… but it did not happen. Instead, we continued with minimal yearly pay increases and no provision for mimicking our public school counterparts that implemented steady salary increases and step raises. The most important teacher-leaders and staff in our school seemed to be valued the least, if pay was any indicator.

Now don’t get me wrong—I am not one of those who complain when the CEO of a large nonprofit agency is paid well. Nonprofits are incredibly complex, and some of the best CEOs I have known are working 60-70 hours a week managing multiple departments. Fundraising, developing legislative relationships, and keeping the ship pointed in the right direction require great expertise and incredible effort, which should be appropriately compensated. Every position is important, however, and compensation is part of the formula that indicates a person’s value in an organization.  

Since half of my career has been spent in leadership positions, I have been privy to a great deal of financial information from various organizations. And because I practice servant-leadership, I have tried to advocate for my own compensation in a way that keeps it in line with others providing similar services but also takes into consideration that any organization faces finite resources. The more I take as an administrator, the less there is for others on the front line.

The most disturbing phenomenon I noted both in schools and nonprofits is the pervasive attitude that educators and their counterpoints should be grateful for the pay they receive. A board member of a nonprofit stated that teachers in private settings should accept lower pay because they had a better working environment than their public school counterparts. A leader in that same organization stated that we needed to offer better pay in our development and communications departments so that we could attract the “best” people. See the irony? Me, too.

In addition, I have observed systems where top-tier employees were held to a lower accountability standard than others in the organization. Confidentiality keeps me from going into details, but I was surprised when percentage raises were regularly granted to top employees with no performance measures attached to those raises. And since percentage raises pay off, literally, more for top earners, shouldn’t they be based on performance?  

I know—I’m mostly complaining here. Where’s the leadership stone, you ask? The stone I cling to is more of an “ought to” than an ism. Leaders ought to focus on pursuing excellent compensation for ALL employees whose work they value. And for me, that’s everyone who is working toward the organization’s mission and meeting mutually agreed upon accountability standards.

The concept of “socio-economic value” was invented to account for the social value of educators (and other front-line workers) who may not be compensated in accordance with their true value to society, but we should not ignore the economic side. We have lost many great staff because of low pay in this field. Let’s not do that any more.

On Decision-Making: Beyond Black and White

When I began my position as the interim principal of a school for the blind, I expressed concern that I was not prepared to manage student discipline or behavior. My experience up to that point had primarily been as an itinerant teacher, and discipline was not within my purview. “There’s an extensive discipline policy,” I was told. Don’t worry. Just follow the policy.

I did just that, following the policy to a T. Under my leadership, police were called anytime an encounter involved a student hitting another. We frequently suspended students, requiring parents or districts to travel long distances to take them home. Much of this did not sit well with me, and I wondered if we were doing the right thing.

During my leadership journey, I did my best to follow each organization’s policies precisely, fairly, and consistently. It wasn’t until I crossed into my fourth state and began applying my knowledge of special education and human resource law there that I started to wonder if policy was an exact science. How was it, if the rules were clear and steadfast, that different agencies and schools applied the rules in different ways?

One example sticks out. In one state, I asked for the files of past Child Protective Services cases shortly after I began working there. People seemed confused by my request, but I finally got the information. I was astonished by how few CPS calls had been made and learned that if abuse was suspected, a school employee would first call the parents to get further information. There is one law whose intent is clear: taking the reporter out of the equation allows the system to investigate allegations without bias and without implicating the reporter. Black and white application of the law is important, but was not followed in this case.

At the same time I found that this school’s discipline policies allowed for consideration of what was best for the student—how the student would learn best from the school’s discipline policy. Overall I was surprised by the flexibility but also impressed by the results staff were getting with their approach.

These seemingly contradictory approaches to the application of policy illustrate just how challenging decision-making can be for a leader. I’ve learned to apply a few tests to complex issues requiring decisions that I’d like to share here. 

The first recommendation is probably the most important: What are the unintended consequences of the decision?

For example, does the presence of a police officer on campus for relatively small infractions change the behavior of the students involved or other students in the school? And my favorite: was a student’s propensity for lying best handled by a suspension or through a behavior plan that helped him find alternatives to that habit?  

Does disallowing an employee to take paid time off to be with a dying relative in another state set a bad precedent for others to abuse policy, or does it allow him or her to manage a tough situation in a healthy way? Leaders have pocketsful of stories where they are confronted with decision-making like this, and following policy without consideration of surrounding circumstances is almost never the answer.

My second recommendation might seem obvious, but is one I’ve seen few people follow. Attempt to answer this question: What have others done in similar situations and how can that inform a decision for this situation? In an earlier blog, I referenced finding a village. The leadership stone here is simple: find a group of trusted colleagues with whom you can talk to about complex issues. Those folks need to be able to reflect honestly on your issues—to help you see where your buttons are and who is pushing them. And those who have tackled similar problems can give you feedback on what worked—and what didn’t. Most importantly, your village members need to people you can trust not only to give honest and wise feedback, but also to keep the discussion to themselves.

Black and white makes a striking outfit. But remember—tuxedos are mostly for show. Black and white application of policy may look good to outsiders, but a nuanced approach will likely have a better outcome.

Too many ideas; too little focus

Focus is a topic that gets a lot of attention in leadership. Greg McEown’s book,  Essentialism, talks about the pitfalls of trying to do too many things at one time. Prioritization is touted as an essential part of execution: getting things done. But most of what I read focuses on the leader’s vision and focus. What can a leader do to help others achieve and maintain focus?

One of the most challenging situations for me as a leader has been managing outside influences that distract me from my focus. The source of those outside influences? My own supervisors, aka the leaders of the organization. CEOs, presidents, and superintendents can unintentionally damage the focus of their team by peppering them with too many ideas. A visionary is an asset in an organization, but a leader who has vision but cannot bring it into focus can hold a whole organization back from progressing toward the envisioned goal.

After working with a number of visionaries, I coined the phrase, “Anyone can have a fresh idea. Few know how to execute that idea.” Here’s what happened. When I took a position with one organization, I had a clear idea of where transition services for our students should be headed. I was well versed on the technical side of things: I had read the research on transition for students with disabilities and what led to positive outcomes, I had extensive experience in providing transition services, and I understood self-determination and the need for students to have opportunities to function independently. I began looking for resources to implement these important principles and found many talented and enthusiastic individuals among the staff.

I worked under two different leaders while trying to implement my focused plan. One had a habit of coming back with new connections, new gadgets, new ideas, every time he was on a work trip. He would gather us together in an attempt to implement these new ideas—all of them.

The other decided to spread the information-gathering net wider, to hear new ideas from his own connections in the for-profit world. Each time a new idea was thrown to me, I was asked to investigate it. I became unable to move forward with the plan already in place as I had to repeatedly revise or abandon its details. I spent hours drawing new schematics, offering up new program ideas to meet the perceived priorities of my supervisor. As a result, I fell short both in my own initiatives and in those I was asked to initiate.

This issue became concrete when I was working on recertification for my professional licenses a few years ago. I started thumbing through my files of CEUs and other certificates of participation collected over my career, making sure I had earned enough credits to recertify. Acronyms and phrases started jumping out at me: EEI, SEI, PMP… each certificate evidence of the training du jour during that time period. I wondered: if we had actually stuck with one trend, trained well, determined desired outcomes, taken data, and adjusted our work, would we have made significant progress in educating our students? Instead, we jumped from one thing to the next, depending on the vision of the leader of the moment.

It’s clear that focus problems are not unusual in organizations. When I have brought the issue of multiple foci up to others in leadership positions, I have been constantly rebuked. I was identified as the problem: I was resistant to change—inflexible—stuck. And yet I feel that our lack of prioritization and focus consistently keeps us from meeting with success and growing more deeply as a field.

What can a leader do to help those around her maintain focus—to set a goal and stick with it? If you are the leader, encourage open dialog about each team member’s part in reaching an organizational goal. If someone who reports to you has a goal to achieve, support the process of meeting it. What tools, resources, skills, and support does he/she need to be successful? Ask clarifying questions. Expect and ask for regular report-ins so that you are part of the goal and its success. Remember that you are part of the team that will result in furthering your own vision.

And if you’re the visionary with a goal in mind, communicate your vision clearly, succinctly, and with an eye toward implementation. Help those who report to you understand their roles in achieving the goal, and support their efforts by listening to their ideas, providing resources, and redirecting if they veer too far off-path.

As a leadership stone, focus is foundational. It needs to be a big, sturdy stone on which others can be placed. But it is the one I feel is most out of my reach. We have increasingly become what I call a “bumper sticker society,” depending on one-liners and marketing campaigns to determine what is most important. If we are to make true, sustainable change in our organization or the field of education, we need to focus: to develop priorities and build structure around them. Be a leader: focus!