Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

Op-ed #16

Is it always in the playbook?

Fact:

Of course not.  If we only had a manual for everything.

No matter how well you prepare, you will always be forced to “audible at the line” and change the play.  You have to be able to think on your feet and make some rapid decisions.  When you encounter a situation that was not in your playbook, and one that you have not prepared for, you must remain calm, process all of the data, and use some good common sense to chart your course and make your decision. 

When you do this, I am sure that you will be able to fall back on your training and experience and yes, your planning and practice of similar situations, and make the right call.  And once your decision is made, run your play, and own your results.  Remember, you are the leader.  If the play that you ran was not a good one, monitor and adjust and run a different play.

People like to do what they are told to do.  Many people do not possess the ability to think quickly and clearly on their feet.  Many are just afraid to do something wrong. They become paralyzed and afraid to act.  This makes me think back to a time when a colleague and I were engaged in a heated argument about some new staff not being able to perform what I viewed as a simple common-sense act.  In this case, it was how to manage a traditional high school homeroom.  You have all been there.  Who can’t manage this process? I was amazed, frustrated and quite angry at the staff for what I viewed as their inability to do this simple task. 

This valued colleague, who I mentioned to you in the previous paragraph, vehemently told me that the staff did not perform this task well because I failed to tell them how to do it to meet my expectations.  He was right.  That being said I quickly developed a book I entitled Frameworks and Rubrics where I clearly outlined how staff should perform just about every single task that they might encounter in the school.  I am sure that you guessed it.  After reviewing this book with the staff and appropriately coaching them, they performed remarkably well on this task and other routine things. 

I can also recall a teacher standing in front of my desk one time, panic stricken, yelling at me to “just tell him what to do and don’t make him think.”  I was appalled by this answer inasmuch as I was working so hard to empower staff to think for themselves.  I was disappointed.  Disappointed in my colleague and disappointed in myself.  Was I failing him as the leader of the school?

So now everyone had the playbook. And I wish I could tell you that every situation one would be forced to handle was covered in this book.  It wasn’t.  People still had to think on their feet. The more they handled unexpected situations the better they became at doing the right thing.  Yes, you can practice handling the unexpected. 

We put our athletic teams through this routine all of the time.  Why don’t we apply the same principle to our staff?  We should.