Three Strengths and a Weakness

I was recently asked by my headmaster to identify three of my strengths as a rising school leader and at least one blind spot. Here's what I came up with, posted for our small world to see:

It’s like Three Men and a Baby, except there’s just one of me, and no baby, and not much humor. So, never mind. Let’s get the weakness out of the way first. I work too hard. I care too much. I’m too humble. That’s three actually, and they’re largely not true. I will share three, but I’ll go ahead and save them for the end. First, the strengths:

1) I’m entrepreneurial. I have a habit of seeing something that could be better or that doesn’t exist and then bringing it into being. In my school, I’ve been part of doing this with our common planning time manual, the International Baccalaureate program, the independent reading program, Facing History and Ourselves, a school library, AP English, portfolio-based assessment, Teaching for Understanding, a cross country team, and more. Most all of these have involved great partners, but I’ve played a substantial and often primary role in getting them off the ground. I think that fundamentally this strength springs from intangible qualities I’ve had since my youth: idealism, self-confidence, hope, and the habit of seeing ideas somewhat fully formed in their details.
2) I have an unusual mix of intellect and leadership skills. Again, from youth, I’ve always been tagged as a “smart guy,” and have sought to maintain and further my intellect through broad reading, studies, and life experiences. Unlike some intellectuals, though, I communicate and lead fairly well. So I’ve tended to be put in places where both formally and informally, a mix of intellect, communication, and leadership are required. This was true in my non-profit work, true in my ongoing volunteer commitments, and true in my school.
3) I have compassion for others and a habit of seeing things from their perspectives. There’s something to being a middle child here, and something too to having experienced a degree of personal brokenness. I assume that all people are flawed in a number of ways and that these flaws are part of a human core that is both awesomely beautiful and frighteningly damaged. This tendency toward empathy can become its own internal burden but it has seemed valuable in winning trust and honoring others.

An Interlude

It’s been said that inside every white man there’s a serpent waiting to reveal itself. I may not be a serpent, but I’m not only a white man, but one that hails from a well-privileged suburban school system. Though myself from a family with all kinds of working class routes, my background is strikingly different from the students in the schools I’m drawn to. That itself isn’t a strikeout, but it is an initial strike against me, and rightfully so. Too often privileged outsiders have maliciously used working class people of color, and so I should have to earn trust, given who I am. I’m also aware of and sobered by what an African-American colleague called a habit of white men to treat urban schools as playthings with which to experiment and prove their ingenuity. I don’t want to be in this for myself, but for the schools: for the families. I also have cultivated as cross-cultural a life style as possible, from my friends to my own nuclear family to travel experiences to explicit training in cross-cultural living and work. There’s a reason that my resume says that I’m “experienced in and passionate about cross-cultural relationships.”

Three Weaknesses

1) That said, I’m impatient. My tendency toward compassion often lends me great reservoirs of patience, but there are people that I just cannot abide. I can’t stand people that ask no questions or assume they know everything. I also struggle with conservatives – not necessarily politically so, but simply risk and change averse. So when a teacher asks no questions and makes no apparent moves to improve practice but then acts as if small changes are threatening and require training, well, that’s both issues right there, and I just bite my tongue.
2) I bore too easily and can have a hard time completing things. (See the flip-side, strength number one.) I’ve become a reasonably organized person and a competent manager, but neither comes naturally, and I struggle to stay engaged at the ends of tasks.
3) As a school leader, perhaps most obviously I lack experience. What I bring from my five years of experience in non-profit leadership and seven in teaching is valuable, but I need more. I have insufficient experience in issues around school law, special education, organizational budget management, urban community relations, and student discipline on a larger level. I hope to gain significant experience in some of these areas during my principal residency.