Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

Op-ed #13

 Does paranoia come with leadership?

Fact:

Leaders can easily become paranoid if they let themselves fall into this trap.

Discussion:

Yes, it happens.  I have seen it occur over and over again.  Colleagues of mine, yes friends, have let paranoia rule them.  It ruled them and ultimately ruined them. And it greatly impacted not only their professional life, but their personal life as well.

I worked for one gentleman who would figuratively throw you overboard if he saw you talking to certain people.  You could be merely standing in the parking lot talking about something as innocuous as a baseball game and you would enter the boss’ doghouse.

Another person, after about two years on the job, ran around asking everyone on his administrative team to sign a loyalty oath.  To my knowledge no one ultimately refused to do this.  I wonder what would have happened if you did?  Would he have fired you?  Who knows?

When you are on the firing line it is easy to become distrustful of everyone.  I am convinced that it all comes down to a matter of trust.  Trust, like loyalty is a two- way street and there are times that some leaders forget this.  Loyalty and trust must be cultivated.

Additionally, when you are the lead dog, everyone thinks that they can do your job better than you can do your job. They see your job as easy.  If they only knew how difficult your job in leadership was, their tune might quickly change.  Saying that, you need to have the utmost confidence in your skill set.  You have to know what you are doing and be able to communicate this in what you do and say.  And more importantly, this must be communicated in the decisions that you make.

At the end of the day, you are going to be seconded guessed.  Get used to that. Grow that thick skin. You may anger fifty percent of the people with each decision that you make.  I can illustrate this with what many people in the school community think is a trivial decision.  Namely, when do you call of school because of inclement weather?  On the surface simple.  However, when one digs a bit deeper it gets more complicated.  Some things people rarely think about are:

• Will this decision cause a parent to take off from work creating a financial hardship?  Yes, schools are the built-in babysitter and I do not mean to trivialize this.  If some parents don’t work, they do not get paid.  And today we are dealing with many single parents.
• Will my students get a good meal today?   Believe it or not, if it wasn’t for the free and reduced lunch program many children would not eat on that day.  Or perhaps, many of them would not stay warm for the day.
• Will we meet the state mandated number of days for school in a year?

Then, after all is said and done, 50% of the parents will be happy with your decision and the other half will be angry.  And each party will be quick to let you know their feelings.  I can only remember hearing one or two phone calls over the course of career telling me that I made a good decision on this.

A former colleague of mine and I were talking about this earlier in the week and we both likened it to an audience throwing knives at you.  You can fend off one or two knives being thrown at the same time, but if becomes impossible to fend off seven or eight knives flying at your face at once.  If you have too many situations defending this magnitude of knives, it will wear you out. And one or more of these figurative knives might actually get you.

I think that I survived this paranoiac leadership creep by having a great deal of confidence in my ability and also by having a pretty good loyal hardworking team around me.  Additionally, I knew when to walk away.  I walked away when I saw the knives coming at a me at a faster and more intense rate.  Thankfully, I was at the point in my career where I could walk away.  Be careful, watch the knives and know when to leave.  The life you save may be your own.