Lackluster Leadership

Self-reflection isn’t easy. Being honest with ourselves is even harder. Recently, I have encountered several education leaders who are taking the following stance … “I know my program/school isn’t as good as it can be, but there’s nothing to change, I’m doing everything right. It’s ‘them.’” Really? How can this possibly be true? There is no doubt that these leaders have sustained passion and commitment for Jewish education, what I think they are lacking is the ability to be totally honest with themselves. Change isn’t easy – it often gets roadblocked by fear of loss. In these cases, it might be that these education leaders fear loss of their jobs if they take too big of a risk and make too many changes and they don’t work. It could be that these education leaders fear the loss of their jobs if they admit that they let things go for too long. It’s critically important in a change process to be honest in self-reflection and include in that an admission that sometimes we get in the way of change due to our fears.