No Excuses Leadership

Model: Creativity

None of us are immune to burnout.  Some of you are going through it right now. Typically, people deal with burnout in two different ways.  Some retreat and find rest.  They take a break from their regular schedule, give themselves grace for past mistakes or for feeling negative about their work or their attitude, and make plans to "get back at it" after a certain period of time goes by. Sometimes it takes a week or a month, but sometimes it's much more.  That's why this method of dealing with burnout can be so dangerous to us as professionals. Many simply don't recover and spend the remainder of their years in a professional purgatory of burnout.

The second method of dealing with burnout is much more productive.  Instead of finding rest, we can reignite our motivation by pursuing creative alternatives to the way we've been doing our work in the past. From finding a new method to get great results, to creating a new tradition of celebrating with our colleagues, creativity is better solution to our burnout problem.  And that's the big difference between No Excuses Leaders and naysayers. For us, experimentation is not a suggestion, but an expectation.  We know full well that change is constant, but find great excitement in that change.  

TAKE ACTION

 How are you modeling a spirit of creativity to your colleagues?  Which mechanisms are in place within your school culture to ensure that everyone is constantly being encouraged, and expected to do things differently? 

BE BOLD

Jeffrey Brusso is a good friend of mine and an NEU Principal.  We've developed a special relationship grounded on constantly challenging one another's perspectives.  This has led to lots of creative solutions. Like many of you, he posts regularly on his blog. I've enjoyed it and think it's worthy of passing on to you as well.

Bru's Views: Alternative Perspectives in an Alternative World