First Time in a Position of Authority: Beginning School Administrators Face a Predictable Set of Professional Challenges That Are Very Personal. by Addressing These Challenges as Opportunities for Learning and Growth, New Administrators Can Become Leaders
2009; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 91; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Educational Leadership and Practices
ResumoThe word boss often carries a negative connotation, while the word is positive. All of us aspire to be leaders, not bosses. But using the word here would invite attention away from a seldom-explored reality: To be a leader in an organization, you must first be comfortable in a position of authority--as a boss. To gain comfort, as well as confidence and competence as a boss, you'll face a number of predictable interpersonal and emotional growth challenges that you must use to expand your mind-and-skill set rather than retrench into defensiveness. THE DYNAMICS OF AUTHORITY As a first time principal or administrator, you'll be on the receiving end of the dynamics of authority in your interaction with others, those who report to you and others whose lives are touched by your decisions. How will you know the dynamics of authority? When you're with people who work under you, you'll see, hear, and feel conversation change from inclusion to exclusion in words, tone, demeanor, and content. People will: * Wait for you to speak; * Speak to you, not others in a meeting; * Change the subject when you enter a room; * Talk in a different tone, often about different content than before you were boss; * Constantly interpret what you say, often attributing conscious negative intent; * Scour your words for inconsistencies, contradictions, double-meanings, misstatements, and mistakes; * Quote you mistakenly and out of context; * Give you feedback that makes no sense and is very hurtful; * Attribute words and ideas to you that you don't recognize; * Assume that you have much more power to change people and things than you actually do; and * Say to you, And what are you going to do about that! When you interact with people who don't report to you but must live with the consequences of your decisions (parents and others in the community), you'll find that people will sometimes: * Demand that you do what they want, quite apart from reason; * Threaten to go over your head; * Invite you to events solely because of your role; * Expect you to be instantly available and always accessible; * Gang up on you to exercise influence; * Criticize you in public e-mails, letters to the editor, etc.; * Defer to you in public and work against you in private; and * Say wonderful things about you and give you gifts. CONFUSION IS THE NAME OF THE GAME In your intrapersonal world, you'll suddenly spend a lot time with the onerous task of wondering whether others are reacting to you or to your as an authority figure. The task is onerous because you'll inevitably be thrown back on yourself as never before and experience a heightened questioning of how much of what is going on is me and how much is them responding to my role or the situation. Answers to the questions raised by the dynamics of authority won't come quickly or easily, so you'll spend more of your internal time confused. Your confusion will be exacerbated by the simple fact that you'll face lots of problems that are inherently confusing because they don't have easy, technical answers (Heifetz and Linsky 2002). Initially, you'll tend to be unaware of your confusion or ashamed of it, so you'll hide it and bluff, deny, blame, or take charge, reacting to complex problems with easy, technical answers, which won't work. As a result, you'll be more confused. So, you'll need to look inward and take on the task of discovering and changing your attitude toward confusion so that you experience it not as a liability but as a resource, as a starting place for personal and organizational learning (Jentz and Murphy 2005). FEELING POWERLESS IS PREDICTABLE Your confusion may be compounded by the unsettling discovery that a position of authority actually leaves you feeling powerless to accomplish the significant things that led you to take the position in the first place. …
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