Search Guidance: Looking Both Ways AND...

Looking Both Ways And…

As a young child, I was regularly advised to look both ways before crossing the street. Admittedly, things were a little slower back then and looking both ways was sound advice. Recently, I had a new experience while walking in downtown Nashville. The take-away from the experience is that there are more than two ways to look when crossing the street. Or approaching a challenge.

We were walking early in the morning on a busy street that runs east and west.

One intersection was an on ramp for the interstate highway which ran north to south.

As we approached the intersection, the signal at the crosswalk changed from red to bright white, the signal that we could cross the street. At the same moment, the traffic signal turned green rather than red indicating that traffic could go through the intersection and over the crosswalk we were planning to use.

We stood in amazement as cars sped through the intersection and crosswalk while the crosswalk sign remained white. We were looking both ways.

Then, a man who was on the other side of the street looked up at the white crosswalk walk sign and somehow realized that he could twist the pole that was holding the crosswalk signal and align the red-do not walk indicator to our view and the white indicator to the crosswalk perpendicular to our street where it was safe to cross.

Looking both ways may have spared us from getting run over but the man on the other corner looked up and realized there was a solution to the dilemma.

There are clearly some right or wrong issues and challenges that we face in our professional and personal lives. Looking at the two options may work. At the same time, there are many multi-dimensional issues that require us to approach the problems from many directions. People who have learned to be open to a variety of possibilities are solving the increasingly complex challenges we face. They are the inventors, creators and problem solvers who are making life better for all of us. They are twisting the signals to align them so safe and productive activities can occur.

In the work we do as search consultants, we regularly find ways for boards and candidates to avoid either/or problem solving. Helping people to approach a change in leadership as an opportunity to do more than just replace a leader is often our most valuable contribution.When boards and school leadership take on a multi-dimensional approach when addressing changes in leadership, they are doing their job and adding the important AND their work. We found a new leader and we clarified our key goals for the coming years. We found our new leader and we learned how to better support our next head of school. In short, when we learn to look at more than both ways, we strengthen our ability to lead.

What are some of the signal changers you have observed where you live, work and play?

How can teachers, managers and leaders encourage environments and thinking where multiple approaches and points of view are honored and even rewarded? Share your ideas. We need to know them, so we don’t cross into oncoming traffic.