Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

The dark side-What might Yoda say? (#4)

Know your Darth Vader (part 1)

A Dark Side everyone has, even the best. Accept that, and easier to find the right path will be.

Each school has a Darth Vader?  Do you know yours?

That is correct.  Who is your Vader?  Who is your chief enforcer?

Who is your Lando Calrissian?  He has been described by many as the ultimate con man.  He is the riverboat gambler with no loyalties other than to himself.  Everything he does is driven by the motivation of what is good for him.

Please let’s not stop here.  Who is your Jabba the Hut?  You know that fat ugly slug that has his own special following that only care about meeting the fat man’s desires and needs.

We probably could go on and on identifying and matching characters from Star Wars to the characters in one’s school.  Let’s just agree that these comparisons are there.

These representatives of the dark side are fighting for control of the minds of your staff.  They want to accumulate the minds of your teachers like a fur trader accumulates pelts and then somehow figuratively wears them on their belts. The dark side lives to display its new members.  I have seen this action similarly occur in a school.  Each time a teacher falls to the dark side there is a celebration.  As each teacher falls in that direction it weakens your power as the principal.

The dark side takes time to celebrate this triumph.  These celebrations for the most part, are absent from the light side.  That is an important distinction.  If those on the light side would just pause for a moment and acknowledge and celebrate the works for those on the light side, it would be a better school.  Think about how that middle school student feels when he or she is publicly praised by his or her teacher. Instead of feeling good, he or she is embarrassed in front of his or her peers. And to avoid this embarrassment some may actually stop achieving or excelling. The same phenomenon exists for teachers on the light side.  These teachers are ostracized by those on the dark side and when there is enough of the staff living on the dark side, it becomes just about impossible for that individual teacher survive.  The professional isolation will figuratively kill many of the teachers that are striving to excel, especially your novice teachers.

My favorite dark side character in my school was my union (education association) leader.  He would sit like Jabba the Hut in his lair and direct the activities of the staff.  He physically reminded me of Jabba, disheveled and rude.  His lair was the teachers’ lounge on the second floor.  People would run there to seek his approval and to kiss his ring. There were times that I would ask to meet with a teacher and that teacher would run there to get his or her last-minute instructions.  I actually found this hilarious because our school was not riddled with controversy.  Many staff still sought his approval to speak about very innocuous things.

Of course, I had to have a very thick skin.  You will too.  It may be easy for me to say that his opinion meant nothing, but it did.  He had the power to red light and block any sort of initiative that I had. 

It became essential that I had to learn to work with him.  I like to think that I possessed the skill set to swallow my pride and to invest the requisite time needed for him to sit and “bless” any of my ideas or actions before I sought to implement.  To have power, I had to give away some power. And as a young principal that may have been the hardest thing that I had to do.  It was hard to conceptualize.  I had mistakenly thought that the power came with the position.  If it did not come with the position. Today, any power comes from the individual man or woman in charge.  Generations ago, just by having the title principal gave you power. This is not true today.  In reality, the true power you have is a result of the relationships that you have built with your staff.

I had a previous relationship with my Jabba.  Once I understood the game, I could fall back on that relationship.  But if you are new to a school, you will not have that advantage. This is a perfect example why it is so important to build and cultivate your relationships.  Then, it is essential that you understand these relationships and how they work.  You will then be able to use these relationships to help you navigate all of the minefields that you will face.  Good luck!