Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

30 second time-out #4

Can you avoid mediocrity?

The easy answer is yes.  But………….

Of course, you can avoid mediocrity, but it is hard.  Think about the following two quotes:

“Fighting for a higher degree of mediocrity is not a formula for long term success.”  (Cameron White, ESPN)

“Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.” (Vince Lombardi)

Most of us want to be great.  But do most of us want to pay the price for greatness?  That is probably the real question.  Because pursuing excellence and greatness is hard work.

As I reflect upon my leadership career, I find that the times that I sacrificed my pursuit of excellence I did so because of expediency.  And as I work with new educational leaders, especially principals, I try to drive home this point.

I know that in one’s day, consumed with juggling multiple priorities, it is just easier to accept mediocrity.  Accepting mediocrity helps you get through the day.  I get it. But I think that once you accept mediocrity it becomes easier and easier to accept a subpar performance.

We do it all the time.  We hold our thoughts or paint our feedback less than candid because we know that by being truthful, we are probably setting ourselves up for a mountain of paperwork and a seemingly endless amount of time wasted explaining ourselves or pacifying the recipient of our observations.

Pursuing excellence is physically and emotionally challenging. People become cynical and perhaps that might be the single biggest obstacle in our pursuit of excellence.  For whatever reason, bitterness sets in.  And when a person becomes bitter and cynical moving toward excellence is impossible. For that, I am sure. 

A colleague and I were going down memory lane yesterday and we were talking about many of the educators that had recently retired and we could not come up with one person that did not leave bitter.  I am starting to think that it just might be a normal phase or retiring.  I hope not.

So, to break this cycle of mediocrity one must work daily to “avoid the sin of cynicism.”  Cynicism will destroy an organization and cynicism runs rampant in our schools.

 I will close today’s article by sharing with you a thought that I share with all of the new principals that I mentor. I implore them and implore you to: “Never sacrifice excellence for expediency.  For if you do, you will live to regret it.”  (And you can quote me on that!)