Leadership in America<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I learned about leadership early in life. I was in Boy Scouts at its height of popularity back in the sixties and early seventies; we had a troop of forty or fifty boys, with a leadership structure: Patrol Leaders who led groups of ten, Assistant Senior Patrol Leaders and the Senior Patrol Leader, older boys, who were \u201cin charge\u201d of the troop. Those boy\/leaders were advised by even older boys, Junior Assistant Scoutmasters, and adults, the Scoutmasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My troop in Cincinnati, Troop 819 in Wyoming, Ohio, had adults who were committed to letting the kids do the work. Clayton Warman, my first Scoutmaster there, had fought his way across Europe in World War II, earned a battlefield commission, and three Purple Heart medals. He was a career Proctor and Gamble man, which was all I really knew about him when I was a kid. I just knew that Mr. Warman was a very \u201cproper\u201d man, who wanted the kids to lead the troop. He saw himself as the advisor, who helped make decisions, but also let mistakes happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was followed by Tom Morgan, another career P&G guy, who navigated strategic bombers in the Air Force after the war. Tom was a lot more relaxed, and was dedicated to letting kids lead the troop, without much interference from the adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that\u2019s how I learned about leadership, first as a Senior Patrol Leader, then as a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster.\u00a0\u00a0These men knew to let us go, encouraging us in the right direction, but allowing us the \u201crope\u201d to learn about how to lead, and how to get others to follow to reach our common goals.\u00a0\u00a0It worked:\u00a0we had a tremendously active troop, out every month (even in sub-zero weather) with two weeks of summer camp where the younger kids learned, and a \u201chigh adventure\u201d expedition where the older boys were challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the leadership model I thrived under in my life. Luckily for me, most of my \u201cbosses\u201d believed in that model as well; they gave me a job, and let me have the space to get it done the best way I could. Whether it was in political campaigns as an operative, in the classroom as a teacher, or in athletics as a coach; they let me find my own way to succeed. It\u2019s the same model I used with the folks I worked with, my assistant coaches, my staff on campaigns, and the groups of kids I helped. Here\u2019s the job, let\u2019s find a way to get it done together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first Principal, Pete Nix, passed away yesterday. He was another of those Clayton Warman kind of guys; strong, determined, and willing to let you do your job. Pete believed in \u201cdoing what\u2019s right for kids.\u201d That was his most important goal, and he hired the people for his schools to get the job done. He was a model of an administrator, he could be stern (I broke a window in my classroom \u2013 reporting that scared me to death) but he could also be fun (as an Alabama man, he made it clear that not standing for Dixie was a serious employment risk.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids will remember him as scary, but also as the best pep-rally speaker ever. When he got done, the whole school was ready to take the field. He motivated, he lead, but he allowed others to lead as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That model of leadership seems to have been lost. In schools, \u201cdata-driven\u201d decision-making has become a cover for micro-managing. \u201cData doesn\u2019t lie\u201d is the line; but of course, data doesn\u2019t tell the whole story of human interactions, what schools are all about. But administrators are too afraid to allow their staff the room to lead, every box must be checked, every step coordinated. No wonder those administrators look so weary, they spend all of their time trying to do everyone else\u2019s job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This form of \u201cleadership\u201d does not allow for creativity, or for mistakes. It presses everyone into a common \u201cform\u201d so that they are easily controlled. Trying to \u201craise the worst\u201d has resulted in \u201csmothering the best.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s not just in the schools, this is the new \u201cAmerican Way\u201d to lead.\u00a0\u00a0It must be some great new academic model, get your \u201cdata\u201d and keep those you lead \u201cin line.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0But it\u2019s not the model that Clayt Warman or Tom Morgan or Pete Nix (or Marty Dahlman) used, and it\u2019s not the model that encourages new leaders to learn and improve.\u00a0\u00a0It makes the numbers look good.\u00a0\u00a0But numbers aren\u2019t faces, whether it\u2019s kids in school, or employees doing their job.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. Warman and Mr. Nix are gone: I hope the next generation will find the kind of role models that those men were for me, and find that faces are more important than data points on a graph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"