It changes the way we behave.

And I firmly believe that when I am positive, it not only makes me better,

but it also makes those around me better.
-Harvey Mackay

A fundamental practice of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses. Doing so enables us open up our thinking to explore our successes and opportunities rather than obsess about our shortcomings or failures. This practice does NOT mean that we sugar-coat or overlook reality. It simply means that we build on our immediate and local assets rather than focusing on what is not there or not desirable.

We all tend to find evidence to support our assumptions and values, no matter what they are. As public servants, we can use this inclination to our advantage in our interactions with both citizens and colleagues. This practice, based on the principles of Appreciative Inquiry, is called finding “the flip.”

This is not the same thing as putting a more palatable spin on a negative topic. Instead, it enables our capacity to recognize any positive assets or attributes that are contained within the hard situation. That’s the positive nugget, the gold. We want more of that.

Consider one simple example. You are leading a staff meeting following a week in which your community experienced conflict or, perhaps, a natural disaster. People are depleted and disappointed, AND there is a lot of work to do. Assume our society and we as individuals share the responsibility in varying degrees for the bad things that happened. Ignoring the weight or reach of the negative experience is not appropriate, and ignoring the work that has to be done today is not an option, either.

Try opening the meeting by going around the table to allow responses to one of the following questions:

• Share one simple action you saw or experienced in the last week that gave you hope for our capacity to act with integrity and compassion, even in challenging situations.
• Our systems were overwhelmed dealing with difficult circumstances last week. Share one small example of a successful interaction with the public that gave you pride in our organization.
• The stressful events of the last week indicate we need to strengthen arenas of both prevention and response. As we begin work to do that, share one practice or asset we have that strengthens our public interactions and should be retained into the future.

By naming that good stuff together first,  we can unleash the potential of that positivity and design the way forward together — a future that includes more of what we desire.

To learn more about using AI in your work in the public sector, join us in Winston-Salem on November 4, 2016, for a one-day workshop on Positive Problem Solving.

The post Appreciative Inquiry 101: Finding “The Flip” to a More Positive Outcome appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

Military training also encourages initiative and independent thought, and, when appropriate, expressing concerns about decisions or a state of affairs. But it also involves understanding that when a decision has been made you must do everything you can to implement it and influence others to act in the same way.

Contrary to what many without military experience may assume, the military teaches leaders not to rely on obedience, and training does not equate the wielding of authority with leadership. All of the branches define leadership essentially as influencing others by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission. They teach that leadership always must be adapted to the circumstances.

The need to adapt is certainly true for veterans who take on leadership responsibilities in civil organizations. They need to keep in mind that public service organizations usually do not share the military’s culture of formal authority. Veterans can be surprised by how much depends on voluntary cooperation rather than adherence to a chain of command. The word “obedience” is not uttered except derisively.

Military leadership training gives developmental experience of this adaptive nature. It involves being assigned responsibilities for peers and supervising their performance. Peers likely will not respond well to an authoritarian approach. Success depends on building mutually supportive relationships. Those who were unable to gain the trust of their peers may not have support when they most need it and it cannot be compelled.

In organizations in which appeals to authority are unlikely to be welcomed, leaders with military experience must be attuned to all the principles they were taught for effective leadership, especially the importance of integrity, communicating a compelling mission, and setting an example of commitment to that mission. Failure to be vigilant about important differences in organizational climate can have unfortunate consequences for both a transitioning leader and the organization. Individuals may speak out, ignore direction, or even act contrary to it. Harmful stereotypes about the military may be reinforced, causing other members of the organization to discount the leader’s ability as tied too much to a hierarchical and authoritarian culture. This can cause long-term damage to the leader’s standing within the organization and even impede openness to veteran hiring or collaboration.

Successful military leaders usually recall rarely having to wield the formal authority with which they were entrusted. They developed relationships within their units based on trust and respect and a unified commitment to mission accomplishment. Though the paths to developing these relationships and commitments may look different, the successful result looks very much the same.

Click here for Szypszak’s recent discussion of Learning from Military Leadership, published in PA Times.  

The post The Military Veteran’s Transition to a Leadership Culture in which Obedience is a Bad Word appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

Try an experiment. Grab three or four people and ask them to look at this painting for 30 seconds then close their eyes and describe what they saw. Don’t be surprised if each person sees the painting in ways others do not.

If we see things so differently, what might each of us missing? Leaders need to be continually aware of what they and others may be missing. Our brains are constantly painting a picture of the world around us. Leaders need to understand what others do and do not see in order to tap into and shape a common picture of the future—whether that means convincing people to launch a new business or take action to protect the environment. Effective leaders look for ways to bridge their own and others’ mental pictures so everyone shares a sense of why their work is important, how they will get things done, and what they will accomplish.

We start constructing an understanding how things work as soon as we are born. Early in life, we see the world as it is. Imagine a 2-year-old child’s jaw dropping as grandpa pulls a coin from behind her ear; children exist in the moment. As our brains develop, we learn things may not be as they first appear. When we aren’t looking the coin is hidden behind a finger. We become aware that words and actions are not the same—I’m not really going to “pull my hair out!” We build a mental model to explain why things are as they are and how the world works. Each of us believes our model is right. Uh oh. Now what?

As leaders we first need to accept that our own mental models may be wrong and incomplete. As Kathryn Schulz writes in Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, this is really hard—first, it’s hard to accept you’re wrong most of the time (trust me, I’m working on it) and, second,  it’s hard to help others recognize what they may be missing. That doesn’t mean it’s not important. In fact, it’s an essential leadership skill.

Every day we see leaders who are afraid of admitting their mistakes. Does anyone not make misteaks? Who has all the information they could possibly need before making an important decision? Still we decide things everyday. Should I be writing this blog post or doing something else? It’s always a choice and, if I miss something because I’m writing this, in retrospect, I may have made the wrong decision.

I admire leaders unafraid to make mistakes and curious to learn what they don’t know. I challenge you to be a leader who learns from others and the world around you. Going around having to be right all of the time is exhausting. Try asking yourself, “What am I missing?” I’ll bet you look at Renoir’s painting differently after hearing other people’s perspectives. Just imagine how asking what you’re missing might change your picture of the world.

The post What Am I Missing? appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

Like many organizational issues, this one was not restricted to one department, so she pulled together a cross-functional team of employees to identify the source(s) of the errors and recommend ways to fix them. These were smart, dedicated folks who had a proven track record of getting the job done.

Months later, the team had made little progress. When some team members suggested possible solutions, other members reacted defensively and interpreted the suggestions as criticisms of how they were running their departments. Meetings dissolved into blaming and finger-pointing. The team had virtually ground to a halt.

The assistant manager was considering replacing some team members to jump-start the group. Will that help?

According to recent research conducted by Google, who is on the team is far less important than how they treat each other when they get together.

In 2012, Google set out to discover the secret of how to build the perfect team. The research is described in more detail in Charles Duhigg’s new book Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business (Random House, 2016).

After tracking over 180 teams for several years and measuring every variable they could think of, the researchers found lots of data about what didn’t seem to make a difference.

Factors that didn’t affect a team’s performance include:

• Personality type
• Socializing outside work
• Gender balance
• Length of time working together
• Educational background

And on and on. No matter how the researchers arranged the data, they couldn’t find patterns that indicated that the team composition mattered much.

So what did make a difference? Group norms: the “unwritten rules” of how team members behave toward each other. Specifically, two group norms showed up consistently in the high-performing teams:

1. Conversational turn-taking. On the best teams, everyone got a chance to talk. If only one person or a small group of people spoke all the time, the collective IQ went down.
2. High social sensitivity. Team members were good at picking up on what others were thinking and feeling, based on nonverbals like tone of voice and facial expressions. They noticed when someone was feeling upset or left out.

Taken together, these two norms are important aspects of psychological safety: a sense that the team is a safe place to take risks, and that people won’t be embarrassed or punished for speaking up.

Touchy-feely? When one of the premier data-gathering organizations on the planet finds these results, maybe it’s time to eliminate that phrase from our vocabulary.

The post Worried About Getting the Right People on Your Team? It’s Not as Important as You Think appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

While female representation at all levels of government in the U.S. has more than doubled since 1979, it does not appear gender disparities in political office will change any time soon.  Studies estimate it could be between 100 and 500 years before women reach political parity in America.[1] ^[2]

We know women are underrepresented at all levels of government, but do women in government affect other women? The focus of my research project for a graduate course, Analysis & Evaluation, [3] was to determine — without taking any other factors into consideration — if women between the ages of 18 and 25 are more likely to run for political office when they see other women in political office.

Women in this age range represent the next generation of female political leaders, and while it is unlikely they have the resources to run for political office at this point in their lives, they might one day. If they are willing to run for office at a young age, it may be indicative of a desire to run later.

I conducted an experiment to collect data, creating two versions of a survey. Demographic information collected included age, ethnicity, and level of education. Participants were asked whether, after surveying the competition and determining all potential candidates had similar qualifications, they would run for the open seat.

• Survey one presented a scenario where women and men are equally represented on a city council. One council member is not seeking reelection, meaning there will soon be an open seat.
• In survey two, the scenario was the same, except women are the minority on the council. Again, participants were asked if they would run for the open seat on the council.

While I can draw several conclusions from my research, for the purpose of this blog post I will focus on the answer to my main research question. The results showed women ages 18 to 25 are influenced to run for political office when they see other women in political office: Women are actually more likely to run for an open seat on a city council when women are the minority on the council, not the majority (43.2 percent of survey one respondents would run, while 56.8 percent of survey two respondents would run).

Since women are so underrepresented in the political arena, the findings could indicate more women will run for office in the coming years. Young women may have a desire to be change makers, to move particular issues to the forefront of discussion, or to continue leveling the playing field.

There is evidence that the role model effect—which is the effect of visible female role models on adolescent women and their intention to engage in political activities as adults —exists, but as more female politicians become nationally recognized—like Hillary Clinton, who is in the middle of her second campaign for president—will more women actually run for political office? We do not have an answer at this point, but more research can and should be done in the coming years, as it may be possible for women to reach political parity sooner.

[1] Baer, Denise, Heidi Hartmann, Celinda Lake, Bob Carpenter, Shauna Shames, Shifting Gears: How Women Navigate the Road to Higher Office. Political Parity, a program of Hunt Alternatives,  LLC. Cambridge, 2014.

[2] Hill, Steven. “Why Does the US Still Have So Few Women in Office?” The Nation, March 7, 2014.

[3] A course required in the Master in Public Administration program at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

The post Ready to Run? Gender Disparities in American Political Office appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

Having a dream gives us something to work for. Without a clear vision of what we want to create, it’s hard to stay focused on priorities. When nothing is a priority, then everything is.

What are your dreams for your community? How do these dreams match the priorities for your local government? Do others share your dreams? How do you know if you and others are working toward the same goals?

If you aren’t sure your dreams are the same, or if you find people are focusing on too many little details consider taking time out to create a strategic plan. There are many ways to design strategic plans and it is beneficial to select a process designed for your situation. At a minimum, a good plan will set forth a long-term vision of what people want to their community to look like and identify a handful of broad goals (3 to 5) that will move the community toward this vision.

Strategic planning can help turn your dreams into reality. Developing a long-term plan and getting buy-in may seem like a waste of time, but the failure to plan usually results in wasted effort and resources. Here are some benefits of strategic planning from my experience.

Plans save time. It takes less effort to align people and resources around clear and common goals than it does to reorganize every year in response to changing priorities. Without shared goals, management is less efficient because attention and resources are divided and the public is unsure if leaders care about the community’s “real” priorities.

Plans provide a path to success. Building on what was done before and setting forth goals that keep major project moving forward is how organizations produce results. When we lack a plan to achieve desired outcomes we are more likely to pursue small goals that satisfy individual interests rather than tackling big issues that extend beyond any individual’s term in office.

Plans anchor priorities. Candidate’s short-term promises often conflict with a governing board’s long-term goals. When elected and appointed officials agree on strategic priorities for a community it is easier for everyone to succeed. Few public issues are resolved in a single term of office. All elected officials benefit when they can point to how they are making progress on strategic issues for the community.

Plans reduce conflict. If people agree on big goals, it reduces bickering and conflict over smaller decisions about what to do. Well-crafted, big picture goals provide community and local government leaders a framework for gaining buy in and agreements about how to allocate resources and take action.

Plans increase efficiency. Clear goals help focus limited resources on agreed upon priorities. Without clear goals, resources may be insufficient to meet critical needs or worse, used in ways that undermine important objectives.

Plans offer stability. Elected and appointed leaders move, retire, and shift roles in local governments. Changes in leadership can result in a revolving door of priorities. Well-developed long-term goals provide a foundation around which new leaders can be oriented, budgets can be organized and outcomes can be measured.

The post Dreaming Works appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

There are no indicators that challenge is going to get any easier or less frequent given the “seismic shifts” identified in The New Breed: Understanding and Equipping the 21st Century Volunteer. The authors are youth ministers who are adapting their strategies of engaging volunteers in response to the generational and technological shifts we are all seeing.

“As we approached the end of the 20th century and entered the new millennium, developments and trends evolved that changed the way we need to operate. Whether we like those changes or not, they’ve produced a new breed of volunteer…In the last 20 years, we’ve observed 10 seismic shifts that have shaken the world of volunteer management and have catalyzed this new breed of volunteer.”

This post will emphasize five of these identified shifts because of the challenges they present to both the time management of the volunteer coordinator and the task of keeping volunteers aligned towards the achievement of a particular goal.

1. Flexibility: From rigid scheduling to volunteer availability.
Rather than being recruited to fill defined roles, volunteers want to be able to define how and when they work.
Challenge: Managing schedules and monitoring individualized work efforts

2. Generations: From experienced veterans to novice Gen Y.
“Loving what I do” trumps “making a big salary.” The New Breed is tech-savvy and holds different views of what “appropriate” dress/conduct/outcomes or “success” are.
Challenge: Negotiating differing expectations for the work or for interactions with colleagues and service recipients

3. Professionalism: From skilled workers to knowledge workers.
Knowledge workers want to be empowered to make decisions.
Challenge: Negotiating mutual expectations of authority

4. Episodic Volunteering: From long-term commitments to short-term projects.
Time constraints make short-term projects more attractive.
Challenge: Managing more volunteers doing discrete, short-term projects

5. Speed: From slow movement to fast responses to change.
All reactions are expected to happen on a fast time-line.
Challenge: Managing expectations about response time, particularly in regard to decision-making processes

Most nonprofits and many governmental efforts rely on volunteers. These trends are as likely to apply to members of a governmental advisory board as to a mentoring program. Neither type of public organization is likely to have staff who solely focus on the care and nurturance of volunteers. There are generally many other responsibilities written into those job descriptions.

While these seismic shifts have many implications for the dynamic with public volunteers, one big challenge is this: If an organization has carefully defined standards, how can it also be flexible enough to meet these highly individualized expectations?

The New Breed summarizes the emerging volunteer with the following attributes:

•  Is very busy, has many obligations, and often volunteers for multiple organizations.
• Wants flexibility.
• Expects to be empowered.
• Won’t tolerate working alongside incompetent volunteers.
• Is tech-savvy.
• Doesn’t want to simply make a contribution; they want to make a difference.
• Doesn’t want to be micro-managed.

Well, this should be interesting….

The post The New Breed…of volunteers…of staff…of us appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

Policy on the use, storage, and access to the videos of various police encounters was completed in mid-January. All patrol officers are using BWCs.

For some legal aspects on the use of Video Surveillance Cameras (not specific to BWCs), see this School of Government blog post by Jeffrey B. Welty.  A more recent post discusses “Body Cameras and the Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment.”

For leadership insights, John Stephens talked with Chief Medlock in mid-December, 2015. He summarizes the lessons in leadership gained on assessing technology, communication about change, and public and private meetings at the end of this post.

1. Chief Harold Medlock, how did you make the decision for the Fayetteville Police Department (FPD) to implement BWCs?

I am a huge believer in dash cam and digital video recorders. I think they reduce complaints against officers. Secondly, for my leadership team, they can also identify an officer’s approach which may benefit from feedback from his or her supervisor. My experience in helping write the policy in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, when I was a sergeant made me familiar with key choices on how cameras are used, when and how the videos are accessed, etc.

BWCs are another step in being able to protect officers and have a key record of interactions with the public. These cameras, unlike the dash cams, “sees or hears what the officer sees or hears.”  This technology can be another part of FPD’s steps to do more to instill public trust and confidence in our officers.

Finally, cost has been a limiting factor: costs for acquiring and maintaining the cameras, plus data storage costs. Luckily, costs have started to come down, and we benefited from a federal grant program available to local law enforcement for purchasing BWCs.

2. How did you assess community perceptions and other factors related to BWCs?

We began talking about them to the community, in 2013, at community watch meetings, business watch meetings, and at faith-based organization meetings.

In December 2015, I held four meetings. Three were open, public meetings, and one was with faith leaders in Fayetteville. I’ve met with the faith leaders group in the past. I wanted a separate meeting with faith leaders – all denominations and races – to hear their candid views. They are, in many respects, the informal leaders and have become very trusted advisors to me. I think I have built trust slowly with them. We have worked on the relationship.

We showed video clips from other jurisdictions demonstrating the use of BWCs – to show how they work and to be realistic about what is captured. I found the community meetings led to different views about how public the videos should be. For the faith leaders, I showed them an officer involved deadly use of force.  The video caught everything, especially the actions leading up to the suspect pulling a gun.

People at the community meetings raised some of the key questions about BWCs, or any video of police actions or investigations.

The main question is this: What is and what is not appropriate to video?
One speaker said: “You need to keep the camera going for all exchanges and make it all public.” Another resident said, “But what if someone has been raped? Do you want the police interview videotaped and public?” The first speaker could see this as a reasonable exception. This is one example of the power of the BWC, and the concern by people when they may be on camera.

I found the community forums good for educating the public about some choices and tensions about transparency and sensitive situations.    [Editor’s note: State law does not define police videos as public records, which was noted in newspaper coverage of one of the meetings  ]

3. Do you have advice for leaders making a decision that not everyone in the organization may want?

I do not see any great resistance (direct or indirect) from officers. I think a lot of that comes from FPD officers coming through a rough time 2010-12. They felt pretty beat up.

As the different models of BWCs were shown and assessed (2013-2015), officers realized that there is a trend for this technology. Even more so, there is a trend for more openness about police work. Greensboro and Charlotte-Mecklenburg have adopted BWCs.

One communication tool I use is quarterly Chief’s briefings for all employees. It is a meeting with all sworn officers and other FPD staff. They can ask me anything. I have woven in BWC information and concerns across those briefings. This was one important way to talk about and show the value of dash cams and BWCs. The recordings often show that there is no basis for a complaint about officer conduct.

Reflections by John Stephens on Chief Medlock’s thinking and actions:
1. Assessing technology –Each jurisdiction will have to address the opportunities and risks of computer and communication technologies. Chief Medlock’s successful strategies include introducing the BWC well in advance of making the decision whether or how to adapt the technology, involving many people in assessing different models, and making himself regularly available to his officers to share information and address technical concerns.

2. Community Dialogue – The Chief used community meetings for mutual education and building trust. He encouraged the exchange of differing community viewpoints – both with him and with each other – which surfaced key questions to address about transparency and privacy.

3. Public and private meetings – Chief Medlock used both to build trust with the community. He noted that faith leaders are key partners for many aspects of community safety, respect, and trust. Sometimes private meetings are appropriate. The meetings, however, were not secret.  The Chief shared information about holding the meetings and who participated.

The post Leadership Lessons on Police Transparency: Body-Worn Cameras in Fayetteville appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

Collective leadership is not facilitative leadership on steroids. It is not tied to the formal or informal power of any single person, position, or entity. It is also not leadership that is delegated to a select team. Instead, it is leadership capacity that lives in the network of individuals and organizations that make up a community, however that might be defined.

Petrie gives the example of the 2011 uprising in Egypt that toppled President Mubarak. The media tried to identify “the leader” of the movement but was unable to do so. The effort was enabled by many people in many places using social media tools to work towards a single shared interest.

Wow. We can have sympathy for a new collective power being applied to overthrow an oppressive regime, but we might also view this trend as a threat to a fundamental purpose of government, namely, to hold and wield centralized authority that serves a greater good.

Does the concept of collective leadership make sense in the daily life of our public sector and not just in the context of radical politics or revolutions? Let’s consider some every day applications of this concept:

• We should be consistent in (1) recognizing that any change has a ripple effect and (2) involving those who are informed about or affected by it. Working across organizational and geographic boundaries is becoming the norm rather than the exception now. The old silo mentality – in applying expertise or in making change happen – is simply inadequate any more.

• We need to improve in developing the leadership capacity of all staff everywhere instead of relatively few people in prominent positions. Anyone could potentially hold or discover useful information that applies to design or change processes. Similarly, anyone might naturally have opportunities to share information, guidance, or motivation out into less visible or connected corners of the community.

• We need to re-think how we invest in and recognize individual contributors, given that shared responsibility for success “lives” in the network through our collective intelligence and resources. Excellence in performance will have less to do with the capacity or talent of any individual and more to do with how any individual contributes to or monitors the capacity and talent of the network.

• We should broaden the role of public organizations as conveners. Innovation “lives” in the network, too. The state of any art is being collectively defined by the creative applications simultaneously developing in many places at once, not by a lone inventor. We all know how to seek answers via Google. Perhaps the public sector should take the initiative more often to name our needs and challenges, and then provide venues for collecting or developing pieces of the solutions.

Petrie concludes this discussion by stating that collective leadership is more likely to flourish under these five conditions: open flow of information, flexible hierarchies, distributed resources, distributed decision-making, and loosening of centralized controls. Some of these conditions would challenge the foundation of our public institutions, as they are now designed. Traditionally thinking baby boomers might well consider the implications and conclude that retirement will arrive in the nick of time.

Collective leadership takes teamwork to a whole new level, not unlike the difference between playing checkers and three-dimensional chess. Seriously, how ARE we going to adapt the authority, practices, and roles of the public sector to this concept? Let’s figure it out.

The post Collective Leadership: Not who is it, but where is it? appeared first on The Public Leadership Blog.

One of the best books on leadership is one we use here at the School of Government as a core text of our Public Executive Leadership Academy (PELA): Leadership on the Line by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky (2002, Harvard Business School Press). The authors make a case that “exercising leadership can get you into a lot of trouble.” The reason why is because leadership is about change.

To lead is to live dangerously because when leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear—their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of thinking—with nothing more to offer perhaps that a possibility. (2)

This kind of change is what the authors call “adaptive change.” Adaptive change is distinguished from technical change, which is akin in my mind to the functions of management. With technical change the problems are clear-cut as are the solutions, which are simply about applying “current know-how.” But adaptive change requires learning new ways of doing things and changing from comfortable patterns of the way things have always been.

I’ve experience the perils of adaptive change up-close and personal the last couple of years as I have served on the board of directors of a public charter school, most of that time as board chair. When I initially joined the board it was simply a response to more-or-less being recruited and a way I felt I could give back to a school that had been serving my children well and whose mission I believed in. But within months of joining the board, I realized that I was in for a bumpy ride. The director was retiring just as the school was going through significant change with grade expansion and the recent purchase of the building that was previously being leased. Further, once we hired a new director, it became apparent that the financial picture much worse than we ever realized. In fact, as we learned more about the larger financial picture, we realized we had a crisis on our hands.

To make a very long story short, the school had (barely) gotten by financially for many years thanks to some fortuitous circumstances that were evaporating quickly. The size and grade distribution of the school made the model it had existed under for almost a decade unsustainable. The new director, working with the board, implemented several major changes in a very short timespan to get the school on a more sustainable track. Many hard choices were made. And the blowback from many in the community was strong.

Heifetz and Linsky point out that at the heart of the “danger” of leading adaptive change is “loss.” They note “habits, values, and attitudes, even dysfunctional ones, are part of one’s identity. To change the way people see and do things is to challenge how they define themselves.” That sense of loss has been acute in some segments of the school community these last two years. Increased enrollments and changes to the way classes were scheduled—necessary components of putting the school on a sustainable path—created a deep sense of loss for some people, particularly those that had been around when it was a very small school of less than 100 students. Even though enrollments were increasing steadily for three years prior to the new director, a lot of that could be mentally written off as expansion to other grades (in additional space). Now we had existing grades growing, and that growth could be seen and felt in the hallways and in some classrooms. The sense of being this small, niche school was being threatened.

As board chair, boy have I heard about this sense of loss, mostly in the form of angry emails from one or two particularly disgruntled parents. Some of these have devolved into personal attacks (something Heifetz and Linsky specifically talk about as one of the dangers of leading adaptive change). I also know that some long-term teachers have felt the stress acutely, and it weighs on me as board chair.

We (as a board) are working hard to deal with these perils of change so that the community as a whole can be more unified on the other end of this. We are finishing a strategic planning process now that has helped to clarify and articulate core values. We are working on listening better, specifically to teachers who have a heightened sense of loss. And there are a lot of other things going on that go well beyond what I can put in this post.

But the bottom line is the past few years working on this board, with an organization going through significant adaptive change, has really, for me personally, shined a spotlight on the real dangers of leadership. Being on the end of personal attacks is not fun. Seeing people you admire struggle with changes and question your motives really hurts. Being board chair has been a serious source of stress. But what keeps me invested and willing to work through these challenges is a belief in the school and the people I am working with, and seeing a bright future for the school as an institution. The board collectively feels the school’s best days are in the future, not the past, and that excites us and keeps us moving forward. Leadership is about stepping up. If there were no challenges, if change were automatic and frictionless, leadership wouldn’t be necessary.

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