Sunday, December 14, 2014

Quote-A-Day: Day 349

 means nothing if you refuse to  from it.        

I remember going on my first string of interviews for an educational leadership position.  I remember a few that I clearly bombed, but also a few that I knocked out of the park.  One, where I was a finalist, ended sadly with a call from the building principal at the time to tell me, "We loved you, Fred, and we knew you would be a great AP, but we went with a candidate who had AP experience."  That one hurt a lot, particularly because I felt such a bond with the school and its team.  Happily, the school and district have excellent leadership, and the decision they made was a good one. :)

But, this example also speaks to the danger of relying on experience as a prerequisite for excellence.

As I've learned, experience means nothing if we refuse to learn from it.

And, somewhat surprisingly, there are many in our profession who look at experience as a badge to wear, rather than a book to gain insight from.

Maybe it is an assumption that as we gain experience, we gain knowledge, but I've seen many leaders with loads of experience that I would feel have much to learn, and leaders with little experience who could share mountains of knowledge with the educational elite.

As we consider our leadership teams, and as we consider expanding or changing them, experience should only matter if we're going to dig deeper and find out how these potential leaders have used their experience to make their lives and the lives of those they serve better.

Otherwise, what difference does it make if we've led for two years or twenty?  Time matters not, if we haven't changed for the better.

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