Rhoda Bernard, Ed.D.

Leadership has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I have recently read a stack of books about leadership and communication. I have also attended several sessions on leadership as part of a training course being offered at work.

What has stood out for me in this exploration has been the many ways that leadership and teaching resonate with each other. Both leadership and teaching take place through relationships.

Effective leaders lead through their relationships with those around them. They establish trust and safe communication with the people with whom they work. They communicate effectively and facilitate conversations so that all involved feel valued and have the opportunity to contribute. They make judgments about when they must make decisions unilaterally, when they can solicit input but be the person who decides, and when decisions can be made by group consensus.

Much the same can be said for effective teachers. Teachers must establish trust and safe communication, particularly in their classrooms. They must communicate effectively with students, administrators, community members, and parents. They must facilitate discussions in their classroom (when appropriate). They determine how decisions get made in their classrooms.

There are some critical differences in the ways that relationships play out in leadership and in teaching situations. Leadership and teaching may not both involve the learning and growth of others. While we hope that students wish to learn and grow and are motivated to do so, and we know that a teacher’s job is to help students to learn and grow, not all adults who are led wish to learn and grow. Some are threatened by change, either for themselves or for the organization.

Leadership and teaching both take place within a context. And while teachers can have a tremendous influence on the culture that is created in their classrooms, leaders operate within a larger institutional culture that (often) they have a smaller role in creating. And, of course, teachers are only one part of a larger school culture, as well.

Of course, while relationships are a key, there are other elements to leadership and teaching, such as skill sets that leaders require (working with forecasting, strategic planning, budgeting, etc.) and teachers must possess (subject matter expertise, pedagogical content knowledge, etc.).

But from my perspective, the power of an effective leader lies in his or her ability to create, nurture, and sustain effective relationships with superiors, colleagues, and those who report to the leader. And the true power of an effective teacher lies in the relationships that he or she creates, nurtures, and sustains with students (first and foremost), parents, colleagues, and administrators.

At my massage earlier this week, my masseuse and I got to talking about the importance of taking the time to take care of ourselves. I have several recurring and annoying back/shoulder issues. I have learned that my body responds really well to heat and massage, so I have made it a priority that I get at least one professional massage a month, and I supplement that with a heated neck wrap and a couple of plug-in massage pillows whenever I can.

At times I feel guilty about all of the attention that I give my back (feeling good about taking care of myself is such a challenge for me), but mostly I really enjoy how relaxing and soothing it feels. I was delighted to learn at my massage this week that the self care has been paying off – my persistent shoulder issues (including pain and weakness) have healed to the point that they are barely a factor in my daily life, and they are barely noticeable by a masseuse. I credit the various forms of self care with making these changes possible.

Another way that I try to take care of myself is through paying attention to what I eat and exercising every day. Given that I have the metabolism (and the genes) of a Russian peasant, if I don’t work at staying the same size, I will balloon to a much bigger one. I know – I have been there. I do let myself splurge occasionally in the food department (about once a week, except during the holidays, when it’s more often), because I feel strongly that inflexible deprivation does more harm than good and that most things in moderation are not that bad. But when I splurge, I immediately return to my more mindful habits so that the splurge is contained and becomes more of a blip in an overall healthy eating pattern.

I recently learned that this form of self care has benefitted me in a number of ways. I began working with a new primary care physician, and she ran a full battery of blood tests and physical tests. The results were excellent across the board, even in areas like total cholesterol, where I have a family history of issues. We discussed that paying attention to what I eat and exercising regularly certainly played a role in these areas of my overall health.

Rather than feel guilty about self care, I am going to take a new tack and be proud of the ways that I am good to myself. I am also going to look for new ways to be good to myself. All of this will make me healthier, stronger, and better able to give my best to others.

It’s New Year’s Day, the time when many of us make resolutions for the coming year (or sometimes for the rest of our lives). I used to be part of the resolution bandwagon. Every year, I would think about and write down my resolutions, all of the ways that I wanted to better myself and all of the things that I wanted to work harder at. It was easy to come up with resolutions, and it was easy for me to keep them.

Recently, I have determined that, like most things in the world, resolutions don’t work for everyone. And they don’t work for me. But not for the reason that you might think. Unlike other people who have abandoned resolutions, my reason for doing so is not that I end up breaking the resolutions, anyway, so why bother?

In fact, the reason that resolutions don’t work for me is that I am too good at resolving and following through. And being too good at this is hazardous for my sense of balance in my life and my mental and emotional well being.

I am a very disciplined person who spends a lot of her time (too much of it, frankly) trying. Putting effort into things. Much of my life has been a series of instances or periods of time when I have grappled with  learning to let go. Being a “try-er” by nature, I have had to learn repeatedly that in nearly every case, I am better off when I let go rather than try. The trying part comes naturally – I will try when trying is appropriate (which is much less often than I think it is). What is much more challenging for me is letting go when letting go is appropriate.

So many of the ways that I spend my time, from singing to playing the piano to swinging a golf club to teaching to leading discussions to running meetings to managing people to directing programs to social interactions to staying healthy to relaxing to just living in this world consist of a delicate balance of trying and letting go.

Resolutions are not about letting go (I guess they can be if one resolves to let go, but that feels like an oxymoronic resolution). They are about trying – the determination to do something differently, to stop doing something, or to start doing something, and then they are about following through towards meeting a goal. I need less of this way of thinking and being in my life, not more.

So I refuse to resolve this year. I am letting go of resolutions.