Tag: management

Jaws & COVID: Decision Making When Good Options Don’t Exist

Posted on by MichaelPortas

My superintendent career began in September 2019. Six months later, school buildings closed for COVID, which led to a 3-month remote learning slog to the summer, The elation of finishing the school year quickly gave way to the gut punch of planning for the school year to follow. It was awful.

That August, in a Zoom meeting with my county colleagues, I made a reference to feeling like the mayor in Jaws. Some of my fellow superintendents, nearly all of whom had considerably more experience, tactfully helped me realize that they thought I was an idiot. I sat quietly for the rest of the meeting.

So who is the villain in Jaws?

It’s not the shark, which is simply doing shark things. Nor is it Quint. Chief Brody gets slapped in the face, but it’s really not him either. Though he’s really trapped in an impossible situation, it’s the mayor. 

If he plays it safe and keeps the beaches closed, the economy of Amity will completely tank and the mayor will be vilified in the court of public opinion.

If, in the face of a known danger, the mayor opens the beaches, he risks a shark attack that will cause him to be vilified in the court of public opinion.

What’s the right decision? None of the above.

What’s the best decision? It depends.

And therein lies a powerful lesson for leaders. Unlike episodes of Barney in which situations have a clearly defined right and wrong response, life is much more complicated and we often have to make decisions based on what we determine to be the least awful option.

When helping my team with difficult decisions, I like to use the analogy that you can’t turn right and left at the same time. Leaders can’t do nothing. Regardless of whether there is reasonable hope of achieving the desired outcome, you have to do something.

In educational leadership, as in most other fields, we work with myriad stakeholder groups and often have to consider that any significant decision is going to displease someone. I generally apply the principle of thirds, which dictates that whatever you do, ⅓ of the audience will likely support it, ⅓ will probably oppose it and then there will be a middle ⅓ that will ultimately determine the popularity rating of the decision.

That principle helps relieve some tension as you have to accept that whatever you do, your decision will make someone unhappy. That’s the constant. The variable comes back to your capacity and judgment, which you have to trust. 

Acceptance is enormously helpful with the worst part of the school superintendent job, at least in the Northeast: making snow day calls. Call it the night before and people appreciate the courtesy, unless the forecast shifts and you’re wrong. Wait until 4:30 in the morning and people appreciate the precision, unless you have to delay or cancel and then you’re an inconsiderate jerk who left people in a lurch trying to find childcare. The least awful approach is to follow your gut based on circumstances, take decisive action and then avoid all social media for the ensuing 24-36 hours.

No matter your leadership role, whether as a teacher, parent, principal, assistant to the regional manager or otherwise, you will be forced to make unfun decisions that will leave you wondering if you even agree with yourself. 

Keep in mind the virtue of a true dilemma, which logicians conceptualize as a situation in which you will be gored by a goat’s horn and have to choose which. You can pick the right one or the left. You cannot, however, choose whether to get gored. It’s going to happen. Both choices are equally lousy, but inaction is still not an option.

Make the decision and stand by it. Just be careful with any “the beaches are open and everyone is having a wonderful time” rhetoric. That hollow optimism tends to age like milk in the sun.

Carry Your Backpack: In Support of Independence

Posted on by MichaelPortas

“Helping is not always helping.” -Family adage shared by a very smart friend

I don’t spend a lot of time in the produce section, but an impromptu exchange on Sunday got me thinking. A young father asked “Why should I have to push her doll around in the cart? She can carry her own toy.” He was being funny but also serious and another guy his age turned from the cucumbers and added “Yeah, and why don’t kids have to carry their own backpacks anymore?”

I listened quietly while I finished making my selection and then told them as I walked by, “My father would still be laughing at me if I ever asked him to carry my backpack.”

So does it really matter if kids carry their own backpacks?

Actually, yes. Yes it does.

On a literal level, it forces kids to learn not to pack more than they can carry. There’s a pretty good metaphor in there as well. 

Also on that literal level, you deprive kids from building strength when you take away the burdens they can manage. Yes, that’s metaphoric as well.

This principle carries over from parenting to the management world where we sometimes have to remind ourselves not to solve other people’s problems. We might be helping them, and likely ourselves, in the short run, but we’re essentially disabling them in the long run by forcing them to depend on us to act for them. Eventually we won’t be there for them – then what?

Back to the education world, as a high school English teacher, I provided feedback to my students on their essays, which I fully expected they would revise. Sometimes students would see me about the comment “Unclear phrasing” and ask me what they should do. My response was “Make it clear.” They did not love that answer but usually understood that I wanted them to figure it out, maybe struggle with the language before finding that just right diction or syntax.

Struggle builds strength. It’s true for weightlifters. It’s true for staff members. It’s true for writers. And it’s true for young backpack carriers. Each of those three groups has a supporter in a leadership role, whether it’s a spotter, supervisor, editor/teacher or parent, all of whom are close enough that they can jump in if needed, but far enough away to allow growth to occur.

When we carry people’s backpacks for them, we do so from a position of caring and good intentions. But if we want to give the gift of independence, maybe it’s best if they figure out how to manage the burden themselves.

Merchant of Joy, Part I: Lessons from Elementary School Teachers

Posted on by MichaelPortas

“Contrary to what we usually believe … the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times [….] the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to the limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Premise: The secret to life is joy, which allows us to reach the ultimate goal of fulfillment. Both require work. Without persistent open-minded perseverance, neither can be achieved.

After teaching high school English for fifteen years, I thought all teachers were pretty much the same. The six years that followed as an elementary school principal very quickly taught me  that I was wrong.  In short, elementary school teachers are different. A quick summary:

  1. They work incredibly hard at things like planning for six subjects, updating bulletin boards, rationalizing with the irrational, and more that I hadn’t really considered.
  2. They communicate with the 20+ families on their rolls more in a month than I ever did with the 100+ on my rosters in a year, and it isn’t even close.
  3. A team of them could figure out world peace if you gave them a few hours of dedicated work time, a 42-minute prep and several pots of coffee. You’d have to construct the team like a boy band (The Super Organized One, The Elitely Calm One, The Frenetic Tornado of Productive Energy One, and The Sharply Intuitive Who Never Hits Reply All), but they’d get it done.
  4. They have empathy beyond description.

That last point presents itself generally in positive ways, but occasionally manifests itself in their feeling deeply hurt. With my underwhelming emotional capacity, I felt limited in my ability to offer true support beyond listening. I’m typically a fixer but couldn’t fix that so usually I didn’t say much, but did make it a point to check in frequently.

Since they gently tolerated my overt nerdiness, I did, however, occasionally dip into my English teacher toolbox and talk about how the Greeks nailed the human condition in their tragedies. The often misunderstood concept of the fatal flaw was particularly relevant as it’s essentially the quality that makes us great, but when taken to an excess, can bring about our demise. The applicable traits are legion: stubbornness, pride, passion, compassion and lots more.

The tricky part of compassion and empathy is that they require us to treat our emotional front more like a screen door than a sliding glass door or the sturdier and more impenetrable option, a reinforced dungeon door. Beauty, joy, fun and more pass freely in and out though the screen door, but there’s an inevitable vulnerability that comes along with it. And I say it’s worth it.

What I often observed in elementary school classrooms was joy shared between unhindered children who know that the educators in the room care deeply for them. That’s the trick with high school kids, too: if they know you have their back, they’ll work for you and take healthy intellectual risks. But the intensity of nurturing the same group of kids for the entire day has to drain even the strongest soul, and yet I can attest to the power of kindergarten therapy (hang out in a classroom for 5 minutes and your day gets significantly better). 

So where do they find the energy to keep up? Joy. They start with the mindset that their calling is to shape learning experiences for kids. What’s next is letting the screen door approach work its magic. hey feel the elation of their students’ successes by listening to their stories, celebrating their moments and sharing in the breathless excitement of curiosity and discovery.

We’re looking at a new year in the education world (it’s mid-August as I write) and that provides a rich opportunity to resolve to be something even better than what we’ve been before. While no one really gets a completely clean slate (no tabula rasa, sorry), we do all get a fresh start each school year and we each have the opportunity to define how we want to assert ourselves in the days and months ahead.

Here’s my challenge to you: be a merchant of joy. Start the new year with a perspective that allows you to both feel and spread joy. Yes, by May we’ll likely start giving each other the stink eye when we notice who chews too loudly in the faculty room or always parks over the line next to your spot, but we can start from the best place. Easy? No. Vulnerable? Yup. Rewarding? Definitely. It starts with your mindset, demands commitment, and hopefully pays off both in the joy you receive and the fulfillment you feel.

Be a merchant of joy. Have fun and Happy New Year! 

Leadership: Accountability & the Diffusion of Responsibility

Posted on by MichaelPortas

This 5th installment of my vision statement series is the 1st in the Leadership thread. Accountability & the Diffusion of Responsibility focuses on the natural tendency of people not to take action when they are in a group and can look for someone else to step up. My challenge to leaders is to move counter to the sheeple and be the one to act. Enjoy!

“The New York Times published an article indicating that 38 people witnessed the murder of Kitty Genovese, but none took action.”

The social phenomenon of the diffusion of responsibility essentially dictates that the more people there are who can take action, the less likely it is to get done. In other words, if one person witnesses an incident, that person is likely to take action. If there are 30 witnesses, the odds diminish significantly.

As with anything in life, these are not hard and fast rules, but you have likely observed a version of the phenomenon at some point in your experiences. One of the more famous examples is the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964. 

While the New York Times article that reported that no one took action has been largely debunked, the truth remains that if someone had had the courage and leadership to take charge of the situation, she more than likely would have survived the attack.

Leaders define themselves by their willingness to step forward and take responsibility. There are certainly situations in which there is great comfort in staying in the shadows or hanging in the rear, but those are also the situations in which those who you expect to follow you most need for you to assert your role. 

Acting fearlessly does not mean that leaders lack fear; rather, it means that they put aside that fear for the sake of supporting those who depend on them. If it means taking a few hits to protect your stakeholders, so be it. The difference between the average person and a leader is determined by who steps up to initiate action.

Leaders are also able to recognize the perils of the dreaded Sheeple Effect, which I can define easily with a personal anecdote. My wife and I were in Kohl’s with our children, who were very young at the time, and an alarm sounded, presumably from a smoke detector. 

As people around us stood still with bewildered expressions, and looked at each other for guidance on what to do next, we began to make our way towards the exits. We never exited the store (false alarm announced when we were at the door), but when my wife asked me why so many people didn’t move, my response was “They’re sheeple.” 

As leaders, you have the ability to change the course that others will follow. If there is a shoddy resource or practice in place because “that’s what we’ve always used/done,” someone needs to step forward to intervene. Sure it’s easy to stay the course and not risk being chastised for implementing something different that might not work, but that alternate resource or practice that might fail could also produce the benefit of improving the experiences of our students and the staff who provide for them.

In breaking the ranks of the sheeple, leaders do run the risk of incurring blame for decisions that are not perfect in their outcomes. Fine. Keep in mind that assigning blame is a generally stupid and evasive act, and often done by those who aren’t willing to accept responsibility. True leaders can further define themselves by demonstrating a willingness to accept and even embrace accountability. 

If things go well, credit those who work with you. Deflect praise. 

If things don’t go well, take the hit. Accept the criticism, but don’t allow it to be a terminal point. Instead, without excuses or apology, express that you will work to ensure that things improve. 

It stinks to be the lightning rod, but that’s the leader’s role. Your willingness to step in front of conflict also usually helps to engender loyalty and support, and encourages others to be willing to take smart risks without the fear of being undermined.

Ultimately accountability boils down to how someone embraces one of these two options: giving excuses or getting results. One is certainly preferable, and the hallmark of successful leaders. 

A relentless focus on results, which are sometimes simply incremental gains, helps to prevent getting trapped in the quicksand of productivity, which is excuse making. 

Success demands outcomes, and those positive results demand recognition as well as celebration with those responsible for the accomplishment. Recognizing how that work bore fruit should employ inclusive language (the pronouns we and us go a lot farther than do you and I) and commend the efforts of those who followed your lead. 

Here the leader might find comfort withdrawing into the shadows to allow the team to bask in the spotlight, all while quietly knowing that the group’s attainment reflects that someone provided leadership. Someone needs to take that first step towards success. That’s leadership.

Vision Statement: Most people are comfortable being bystanders. Leaders are not most people.