Pushing for change with unanswered questions

“The essence of leadership is being aware of your fear and seeing it in the people you wish to lead. Awareness is the key to making progress.” – Seth Godin, Tribes

Many times leadership requires me to push in a direction that still has unanswered questions. I’ve been given advice from other leaders who say that you must lead from your experience and if you haven’t walked the road yourself then you can’t expect others to follow. In some cases I agree but in most cases I would say that isn’t possible. I would say most of the time leadership is stepping in a new direction with unanswered questions. The change we need requires the whole team to move in the same direction at the same time. I can do my best to learn from other teams who have made similar changes but I can’t accurately predict how our team and each member of our team will react to the change. For this reason I think it’s enough to identify the needed change and then move ahead with the best available strategy. Then along the way I can listen to the team and either make small adjustments to the plan or accept that the plan is not going to work and start again from the beginning.

I am currently working with our team of high school teachers and students to practice grade level consensus meetings in which topics are generated from students and teachers and each member’s opinion is given equal importance. I’m convinced of our need for this change but my fear of the unknown makes me doubt that we will have success. The change requires a considerable amount of patience and flexibility since the meetings are scheduled for one hour and on average only two topics are addressed during the hour.  These two skills, patience and flexibility, are exceedingly difficult for me to do in my personal life and even more difficult in my professional life. I take pride in my getting things done work flow and disconnecting for an hour interrupts my fast paced day. Although I’m confident that these meetings are key to building a positive school culture, I fear the loss of time and slow progression towards change. I also fear the increased workload that will come when I need to make deep changes to our traditional school practice.

Despite these fears I cannot stand still and do nothing. Now that I’m aware of our need for student voice I must move in that direction.