Doing Your Situational Best

MY VIEW

When we're little, we often hear phrases from our parents, teachers and coaches along the lines of “do your best,” “you can work harder” or even “was that the best you could do?” And depending on the audience and deliverer of the message, the comments may have had a deep impact on our performance and our feelings at the time.

I view the notion of a school leader always performing at one’s best as fraught with misguided thinking. So much of our work either depends on others or responds to the volatility of the politics of public education.

Many of us who’ve worked in district-level leadership fill roles where the bulk of our work is reactive instead of proactive, further challenging our ability to control the outcome or perform our personal best in every instance.