Random Thoughts from an Accidental Leader

I’ve written before how much a role serendipity has played in my life (Accidental Teacher, Accidental Coach, Accidental Counselor). My life has not been planned, at least not in the big picture. In fact, I’m still not sure what that picture will look like when it’s finished.

Oh, sure, once I (accidentally) became a teacher or a coach (softball, journalism, drama, etc.) or counselor, I tried to control as much as I could, perhaps often to the point of even over-planning (as I’ve also noted previously, I will never get a Staples or Nice ‘n Easy commercial because I tend to overcomplicate things). My father’s son, long-range planning, within those specific corridors, is in my blood.

I also became an accidental leader. Accidental in that I am not a particularly ambitious person, unwilling to pay the price exacted by ambition. My first brush with leadership came at the end of my first year of teaching when I was asked to get involved in Hancock’s nascent teacher union, locked in conflict with an intransigent school board and the incompetent superintendent who was their puppet. I declined. “I’m not interested in that stuff,” I said. Within two years I became the president-elect and (he says, immodestly) and (essentially) the “union boss” for about the next two decades, with power roles locally and regionally, along with two terms (n.b., term limits) on the state board of directors.

So, add leadership to the accidents that shaped me. I eventually recognized that I tended to be a power magnet, accumulating it effortlessly and certainly without any real desire for personal gain. I never really analyzed the why or the how of leadership, I just accepted that leadership was a key piece of my identity and it was easier to just go with the flow than deal with the frustration of resistance. Yes, I suppose that probably sounds, and may be, kind of arrogant and/or egotistical, but my ongoing road to authenticity requires that kind of self-examination.

Interestingly, if you’re still reading, the intersection (collision?) of all four of those accidents has led to what I hope will become a new regular feature on my Facebook feed (joining Wednesday Wisdom & Good News Friday), starting next week, the first Monday of the new year (Happy New Year, btw), the Monday Leadership Memo, because I’m still teaching, or at least trying to, for those who care to keep an open mind and listen (never close to 100%, even in my prime). The four accidental components of teaching, counseling, coaching and leading, mindfully combined. 

“Why?” you may ask (or not, but I’m going to tell you, just like any number of classroom lessons). At the end of this season, my assistant coach and I received a thank you gift from one of our players — the book Legacy, about the All Blacks, the NZ rugby team, and how that team’s leadership values have allowed it to achieve a status that far surpasses what a team from a small nation should be able to achieve, year after year, and how that leadership culture can be applied in so many ways to life as we know it. (Her father is a well-known coach, at least in area soccer circles.)

I started reading, part of the ritual as I prepared for the fitful sleep that defines my nights now (#joysofaging) and at a chapter per evening, finished it fairly quickly. I was immediately struck by the leadership lessons that seem so obvious but which I had never really analyzed (even if I, again immodestly, unconsciously incorporated many of them into my developing character). 

As our nation approaches what may be one of its most historically important elections, a potential turning point to which chapters and undoubtedly books will be devoted, each week (or so) in the months leading up to that pivotal day, I will attempt to get my friends and formers to think (and that was always my only goal) on the fundamental question, “What characterizes true leadership?” While this isn’t a multiple choice question, and, being a “Shades of Grey” kind of guy (Billy Joel, not E. L. James), I’m pretty sure that there are multiple answers, all colored by the lenses through which we variously view life.

Genesis of a Libtard

Unlike Lady GaGa, I wasn’t born this way. I was a disaffected Republican long before I became what I am today, a disaffected Democrat. What follows is obviously incomplete, despite its length. My apologies because the point probably gets made well before the piece more stops than ends; perhaps this will eventually become a chapter in my autobiographical memoir.

Although my (moderately) conservative/Republican roots run deep, I am the outlier in my family. My father probably never voted for a Democrat in his life. In his later years at Friendship Village, he was a regular at meetings of the Concerned Conservative Citizens (aka Cranky Old White Boys Club). My brothers probably tilt farther right than I do left. But my final paper in my senior year of high school (1966) was an earnest assessment of the Republican Party and who in it could best return the country to their leadership. The first group I tried to join at the prep-school dominated Hamilton (named for Alex while he was still alive – old ivy on those walls) College was the Young Republicans.

So how did a white bread suburban boy (from the originally solid Republican Webster Groves) end up inhabiting the left side of the political spectrum? Because I reject simple and simplistic explanations and solutions, you may not be surprised to learn that I believe there are multiple reasons for my evolution and leftward shift.

• Child of the ‘60s: Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Bob Dylan. Conservatives who now control the Republican Party have been consistent opponents to the expansion of civil rights for minorities and women since the ‘60s; Nixon’s “southern strategy” politically solidified that stance. Karl Rove put it in concrete with rebar reinforcements.

• First Job: Orderly on the men’s ward of old St. Luke’s on Delmar, lots of black patients and co-workers. Spare time reading the St. Louis American. God forbid I actually do any of the assigned reading required by UM-St. Louis!

• Marriage to an intelligent woman (met and worked with at the aforementioned St. Luke’s); father to an intelligent daughter, who has since given birth to an intelligent granddaughter. The goals of the women’s movement were/are obviously important – and personal. (My mother was born too soon and frustrated by the limited roles available to her. That added to the movement’s appeal.)

• Public school teacher in a district that served a population that did not share many of the advantages of their more affluent neighbors, including those in schools I had attended (Webster Groves and Ladue). This changed me on at least three different levels.

      ° I found myself almost immediately thrust into the nascent teacher union movement. Let’s just say that conservatives were not supportive of teachers having any power to advocate for themselves or their students. That being said, it was not always a Republican/Democrat dichotomy, and I voted for several Republican state representatives and state senators. Union endorsements tilted Blue, but were not exclusive by any means, at least not at first. In fact, as I set out in 1976 to find a candidate to support for state representative, Republicans were my first choice because the WG then was reliably Republican and I wanted to back a winner; WG, too, has shifted away from the new Republican Party; those denizens who remain are often derisively referred to as RINOs. As union power grew within the Democrat party, the Republican party countered by moving the right and becoming even less friendly, sometimes seemingly antagonistic, to the concerns of public education and educators (where it remains), as well as unions and workers in general.

      ° The word “underprivileged” rubs many of my formers the wrong way; one reason may be that “privilege” has taken on a different, more politically charged, meaning in the modern lexicon. Maybe they perceive the term as some kind of condescension that discounts what they’ve accomplished in life. Perhaps a preferable term is “disadvantaged.” Those students didn’t understand (and some still don’t, it seems to me) how badly the system is rigged, stacked against them. That many manage to beat the rigged game and still overcome those disadvantages speaks loudly to their resilience, but does not negate the existence of those obstacles they had to conquer to do so.

      ° While it is not a job requirement, per se, most teachers, or at least most of the best I know, are empathetic; we know that no one is solely responsible for either success or failure. Most of us have no trouble with the expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Empathy has become a dirty word to modern day Republicans; and Trumpists, well, that’s a rant for another day, leading to....

• A growing belief that just because something is not MY problem does not keep it from being A problem. I find the left more accommodating of that POV than the right. In my dotage I have greatly narrowed the focus of the problems on which I concentrate, but that does NOT mean I can’t recognize the importance of the oh so many others faced by my fellow citizens. I have used the analogy before, but conservatives’ version of a social safety net is a leftover rope and the admonition to “Pull yourself up.” While liberals seemingly want to solve every problem, no matter how few people it affects, often devising overly complex (and often ineffective) systems that validate the Law of Unintended Consequences, they at least generally recognize that complex problems require more than simplistic solutions.

Finally, or at least my final point, is conservative resistance to the concept that health care is, or should be, a right of all citizens, and not limited by jobs or economic status. I have a daughter and granddaughter afflicted, through no fault of their own, with auto-immune diseases that could block them from affordable access to the health care system without the current protections for those with pre-existing conditions that conservatives want to strip from current law, so this is obviously extremely personal.

As the parties themselves become increasingly tribal, polar and partisan, I am disaffected, and often disgusted, by both. That’s my story and so here I stand, with clowns to left of me and jokers to the right; I certainly lean left now, but really see myself as stuck in the middle (hopefully with you).

Disclaimer: This deliberately provocative title to grab attention does NOT constitute permission to aim such an offensive insult at any other person or group; that would include me.

Give and Take, Credit Edition

As we wait for the Republicans and PEOTUS DJ Trump to come up with their replacement for the Affordable Care Act, and while I listen to announcements on the closing of schools for weather (I still get a charge out of hearing my schools mentioned), I am reminded of the contract negotiations about the calendar and the issue of snow days at Hancock, back in the ‘70s.

Calendar negotiation was a minefield for both the union and administration, because one thing was guaranteed: no matter what you agreed to about the start of school, the end of school, the breaks, both length and placement, a significant number of people would be pissed off and loudly unhappy.

Snow day scheduling was also a challenge for a while. Hancock teachers, being on the bottom as far as competitive salaries were concerned compared to most other county districts, were not inclined to work more days than was required by law. The district, on the other hand, wanted a set calendar and thus insisted on a certain number of snow days to make sure we met state requirements. If we didn’t use them, well, BONUS! (Bonus for the district. anyway.) This was before snow days were as common and state aid was tied to attendance for districts like the Place.

Our proposal, for several years running, had called for scheduling the minimum number of required days (no snow days), with the proviso that whatever days necessary to meet state standards in the event of a run of bad weather would be tacked on to the end of the year. Every year that proposal was rejected and the fight went on. Compromise wasn’t a dirty word back then and we always managed to reach agreement.

Knowing that our usual proposal was destined for rejection, we offered a variation – scheduling several extra days (we didn’t care how many) but removing any extras at the end of the year. The administrative negotiating team responded that they couldn’t possibly do that, but would come return with a counter-proposal.

And they did. Their proposal: schedule no snow days, but add any needed extra days on to the end of the school year. After we rubbed our sore jaws, removed them from the table, stopped the bleeding from our tongues, and composed ourselves after stifling our incredulous laughter, we caucused and came back to accept their proposal. Once the proposal wasn’t ours, but theirs, it became acceptable. 

The ACA (aka Obamacare, née RomneyCare, spawn of the conservative Heritage Foundation) seems doomed, but Speaker Ryan and PEOTUS DJ Trump both claim to have (secret?) plans to replace it. Mr. Trump even says his plan will cover everyone. Given that I have both a daughter and now a granddaughter with auto-immune diseases that would, pre-ACA, have eliminated them from  insurance coverage due to their pre-existing conditions  (a known problem before the ACA {I’m choosing to use that acronym to minimize the frothing that seems to result in some corners every time President Obama’s name gets mentioned}), that piece is crucial to me and my family.

I admit that it will irk me if the vilified Obamacare morphs into superfantastic Trumpcare or Ryancare or GOPcare (modifications that could have begun 6 years ago had the goal been to actually do something for the citizens and not just deny credit to the president), but, like the snow day policy of so many years ago, I’ll just take the win and move on. 

Oh, and just like you paid for the treatment of those who did not have insurance when they showed up at an ER before the ACA, or got “free” care from a hospital, you’ll also pay for the new and improved health care plan that is coming soon to a neighborhood near you. It just won’t be called Obamacare. And if that somehow makes you feel better about it, well, okay. Health care is all about feeling better.

Also on the Hancock Place, Hancock Place Blog

Annual Labor Day Post

Who will advocate for workers? The bigger the business, the less connected to the workers management becomes. And let’s recognize that the goal of a business is not to take care of workers but the investors (whether public or private); if that goal comes at the expense of workers, well, there are more workers out there, right? 

On my way out the door at Hancock, I was informed by the (then) superintendent, “I’ve got people who can do what you do.” I believe that was shortsighted and, in fact, inaccurate on more than one level. But then he didn’t really know what I brought to the party (honestly, it was a lot more than chips and dip, if I do say so myself) and building management only pretended to stand up for me while actually throwing me under the proverbial bus. But that seems the attitude of modern management in all fields.

(Note, as disappointing and hurtful as this was, it turns out they did me a favor, if perhaps not those students and teachers I might have benefitted by staying. But I landed in a great place to end (most of) my career, my four fantastic final years at Schechter/Mirowitz.)

So, in honor of Labor Day, I’m going to share a few paragraphs from previous articles on the topic:

From 2011:

• Child labor laws

• 40-hour work week

• Overtime

• Workmen's Compensation

• Non-discriminatory hiring practices

• Workplace safety laws

• Unemployment compensation

• Paid vacations

• Retirement pensions

This is just a partial list of gains for workers granted voluntarily through the generosity of businesses concerned for their employees. Oh, wait, no, these things that we now define as givens for a good job came as the result of decades of struggle by organized groups of workers known as unions.

From 2013:

I’ve previously written about the debt that most Americans, with the possible exception of those few whose families have always enjoyed prosperity, owe to labor unions. The growth of the middle class in the United States clearly parallels the growth of labor unions. The shrinking number of middle class households of the last couple decades follows that same trend of declining union households. While I understand the dangers of equating causation with correlation, I find the trend disturbing. I also find the charges of class warfare disingenuous, at best. I find it ironic that those concerns were nowhere to be found as the middle class shrank and income disparity grew, as unions were assaulted and vilified while CEOs saw their pay and prestige grow explosively.

I think our founding fathers were on the right track when they incorporated a system of checks and balances into our governance, trying to establish a system whereby no one person, group or branch was able to accumulate too much power. I further believe that checks and balances must also apply to our economic system, and that unions are a key check to the unbridled power of corporations (people though they may be). Government also has a role, both as a defender of the checkers (both unions and businesses) and as an enforcer/check itself.