Doing the “wrong” things for the right reasons

I have learnt that teachers do not like to hear mass lecture from their school leaders/ middle managers about others who are doing things poorly especially when they are doing things correctly. Teachers who constantly submit their work on time may feel unhappy to hear their middle manager question the whole department because other teachers were late. These teachers would prefer that the middle manager to speak directly to these teachers. I too believe that to subject these teachers who are doing their job correctly to reprimands is fundamentally wrong!

I find that the converse is also true. By praising teachers who do what is expected, one can raise the bar for those who are not working up to the standard. This is what I will call “Honoring our superstars”. I gotten this idea from a book and intend to make use of such an approach to help raise the bar for everyone in my department. I constantly reminded myself about this important approach and was careful not to send out general emails to reprimand. However, there are exceptions to every rule. Below is an experience I had recently which illustrate the time I broke this rule.

At the beginning, we were experiencing some problems at our heads’ meeting with professional behavior. It is obvious that the same one or two heads arrive to the meeting early. These early birds are followed by others who cross the threshold. Finally, one or two other heads will filter in late – either bearing an apologetic look or seemingly without care. Initially, I tried to address the issue one person at a time to avoid the trap of seen lecturing everyone. Then one particular meeting showed me that it was starting to affect everyone. Before the start of the meeting, the same two heads were speaking about how embarrassed they were becoming at the meeting – of what our meeting look like to outside observer or in the context of a classroom. What were we as heads modeling to our teachers and pupils? It was clear to me that they probably didn’t know that I was addressing the problem with specific heads. It also became evident that my method of addressing these “minor” problems did not appear to be working. By not addressing the late behavior in a public way, I was frustrating my “superstars”!

Hence, later that same day, I decided to emailed all the unit heads, in which the content concluded with

  “Let us all be on time at 9am so that we can start and end on time!! Hope we can set this general expectation for all our meetings.”

When I went for the next meeting, all heads appeared early or on time!

Although I have broken the rule about lecturing to the entire group, it was clear to me that this was the right thing to do. I have publicly validated what most of our heads had become frustrated with. I believe that this was a case of doing the “wrong” things for the right reasons. And I will do it again!