This may sound like a strange blog to begin with but I think it sets the tone for what is about to come. This blog is about what you can do to take control of your own leadership journey. It is not about pointing fingers at who has and has not helped you along the way. So if you need to leave something behind in 2019 make it the search for your hero or educational saviour, the person with the golden key, the answers and a personality that sets the room on fire. We have a tendency to really lap them up in education, the next big thing, but we all know they go as fast as they come.
I’m going to be honest I’m a sucker for a hero, I watch all the marvel movies, I love the underdog, I love the triumph of good over bad, I love wise people taking others under their wing and I have been looking for my hero for a long time. Someone to take me under their wing and show me how this god damn education thing works, The Mr Miyagi to my Daniel Son (Please reassess your life if you do not know what movie this references ;))
I have looked everywhere, Conferences, Unconferences, work, obviously, Twitter, Facebook and my hero is nowhere to be found. Before you roll your eyes no I am not about to tell you that you are your own hero and turn this into some blog that will lead you to your spiritual awakening. But what I can tell you is every time I have settled upon a role model/hero/mentor whatever you want to call them they have disappointed me not because of who they are but because of who I need them to be. I need them to be a superhuman figure who has all of the answers. What I really need to get my head around is that if they are human they are figuring it out just like me. I said this to my husband earlier this year when I exclaimed, I don’t know if I can’t find a mentor because I don’t like people or because I’m a pain to manage and there is probably a grain of truth in both of those statements. But each time I have been disappointed in a role model or mentor it is because they have acted in accordance with themselves rather than me. I have resented them for acting in a way that is not in line with my values. But they are just that, my values. So I need to stop expecting other people to live up to them.
In the end I have come to the conclusion that you are better off surrounding yourself with lots of people that you admire for lots of different reasons, their reasoning skills, business acumen, empathy, ability to get people to carry out instructions, but good luck with finding or being someone with all of them. The first time this really struck home was when I was meeting teams doing lesson study. I was going round meeting lesson study groups and discussing what they would be focussing on and asked some challenging questions. This may have caused some groups to rethink what they were doing. When I got back to the office a member of staff popped in to tell me that I had upset a lot of people. At first this really upset me. As that was not my intention at all. But then I can honestly say after thinking about it I had to let that go. Because those questions needed to be asked, and things to be straightened out. I may not have done what staff wanted me to, such as agree with them after a long day, but I did what was right. In the same way I hope my previous heroes don’t give a hoot what I think either. I hope they keep strutting their stuff and are their own heroes rather than pandering to my needs.