Saturday, April 01, 2017

Pleasing Everyone?

I know that to lead many educators is a challenging role as most good educators are people with a mind of their own, and it's difficult to lead a lot of independent thinkers.

Yet, if you're courageous, you will lead with trust and use the metaphor of the conductor of a symphony or orchestra to lead your work.

Instead of a metaphor such as an animal trainer or father of young children, the orchestra leader works to maximize the potential of each artist in order to produce a wonderful symphony.

It's then not about pleasing everyone, but instead about finding the rhythm that makes beautiful music with many instrumentalists--people who are experts at their craft.

General openness with little judgement can free leaders like this to embrace the creativity, personality, and quest of their group to maximize the collective genius.

What examples do you have of people who do this well? Where have you experienced this inspiring leadership, and what made it occur? I'm curious.