Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

Tip Sheet #20

When you see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil you are complicit.

You are expected to be the super hero.  You are supposed to be Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.  You are supposed to be everything to everybody. You are the principal of the school.  You are the leader.

However, when you see things, hear things and fail to speak to someone about them you are allowing bad things to occur.  Although the see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil adage is strongly worded, by your inaction you could be facilitating a culture that allows evil to exist.

Many times, you rely on that sixth sense.  Your intuition. Your gut feeling.  But you worry that your gut is wrong?  It is these situations that concern me and should concern you.

Yet you feel caught in the middle.  You hear things, and you sense things but you do not have what you would call solid evidence.  You are very cautious because you do not want to let rumors ruin someone’s career. You do not want to be the random and reckless accuser. So, you perhaps lose sleep because of your instincts, suffer in silence and in most situations, over time whatever caused your suspicions to rise will dissipate and ultimately you will forget about it.  You forget about it until the next time your personal radar picks something up.  You pray that your gut is wrong.  But you continue to do nothing.

When you allow things to occur that you shouldn’t you become complicit.  This could be something as simple as a teacher being late to a duty. One of your favorite teachers is consistently late to cafeteria duty.  You know it, but by not confronting it you are basically allowing it.  Then one day that fight between students occur and there is no adult supervision present.  Someone is seriously injured.  You can look in the mirror and tell yourself it isn’t your fault but your failure to address the teacher’s failing to perform his /her duties has helped enable this situation. Maybe you could have actually prevented it.

Let’s think about a much more serious situation.  You suspect child abuse.  You know the family and believe that it is a very good family.  But you see some critical signs.   You question your evidence and you question your hunch and so you do nothing.  By doing nothing, you allow the abuse to continue.  Likewise, you suspect an improper relationship between a teacher and a student and you do nothing because you think you just don’t have the facts.

Remember, in these situations, you are not the investigator.  Turn your information over to the proper authorities and let those that are impartial and trained to do the investigation do their job.

At the end of the day, there are some very simple things that you can correct just by being a good principal (for example, the teacher late to duty).  There are other things that go beyond your skill set to solve.  That is why you let the people that have the expertise address the situation.  It is always better to err on the side of caution.

We hear it on the news all of the time.  “If you see something, say something.”  It is far better for your instincts to have been proven wrong than to allow bad situations to linger.

***My condolences are extended to those in Florida that are currently living the nightmare and devastation of an active shooter on campus. The time is long overdue for us as a society to do something about this!