Welcome mistakes; through mistakes we learn Helen Kinsey-Wightman
One of the enduring images of post-lockdown New Zealand will be Ashley Bloomfield’s stricken face, as Health Minister David Clark threw him under a bus. Stopped by media outside a Parliamentary select committee and asked whether he took any responsibility for the border failures, as Bloomfield stood silently behind him, Clark replied, ‘The director-general has accepted that protocols weren’t being followed, he has accepted responsibility for that and has set about putting it right.’ In an opinion piece for Stuff, entitled The Art of Throwing Someone Under a Bus, Sue Allen comments, ‘No matter that it’s probably technically correct that responsibility for quarantine testing sits with Dr. Bloomfield and the Ministry of Health. Noone cares about that. Dr. Clark could have come out a winner if he’d done the right thing immediately and backed his officials.’ In contrast, Dr Bloomfield’s response to press questions was to take responsibility, to apologise and to admit the personal impact of his department’s failures, ‘I’ve certainly been upset by it,’ he said. The rest, of course, is history and Ashley Bloomfield and David Clark command quite different positions in the esteem of our national psyche and notably, only one of them has been forced to clear their desk . . . I think that the notion of authentic leadership, as shown in this
diagram from Halo Psychology, is a useful way of summing up the strength of Dr. Bloomfield’s leadership and conversely the failings of Dr. Clark’s. As a school leader, taking responsibility for our own failings – and very frequently those of others – is challenging and humbling. However, a quick shuffle through our mental data base of influential leaders will probably reveal that authentic leadership is a trait we value highly in others. As you may recall I am currently on study leave working towards a Diploma in Te Reo Māori me ōna Tikanga. The whakatauki we have embraced as a group is ‘Nau mai te hapa; ma te hapa ka ako’. Welcome mistakes; through mistakes we learn. However, the daily reality of immersion in another language, having the mental capacity of an adult with the language capability of a toddler, is demanding. Following a particularly challenging Zoom hui which left me devoid of growth mindset and in full ‘Dobby the House-Elf mental selfflagellation mode’ (After writing this I discovered it’s a real thing – Psychologists actually talk about the Dobby Effect! Nelissen and
Zeelenberg 2009) I came across Eduardo Briceno’s TED talk: we are always on show, not only in our workplace but in the How to get better at the things you care about. supermarket, on the sideline at Saturday sport, at the pub and Briceno talks about his personal experience of failing to get in our virtual online worlds. better at the things he cares most about, despite hard work. He suggests creating ‘a low stakes island in a high stakes He talks about how successful learners go sea’ firstly for ourselves through finding safe through life alternating between 2 zones, He says that as places to reflect and practice, through working the performance zone and the learning with a mentor and talking to our leadership zone. In the learning zone we focus on leaders we tend teams about the skills we want to deliberately improvement, concentrating on activities practise. we haven’t mastered yet and expecting to to spend almost all We can also change our workplace cultures make mistakes. In our performance zone, of our time in the through lowering the stakes for others through our goal is to do our best, our focus is on modelling being in the learning zone. By exercising skills we have mastered and performance leading in a vulnerable way, by sharing what we minimising mistakes. He says that as leaders want to get better at, by asking questions about we tend to spend almost all of our time in zone which hinders what we don’t know and seeking feedback as the performance zone which hinders our our growth we practise new skills. growth and also our performance. Briceno Finally, going back to the Dr. Bloomfield then breaks down examples of carrying out and also our vs. Dr. Clark approach to dealing with our deliberate practice in the learning zone. inevitable mistakes, I would suggest that this He suggests that we create unnecessarily performance. example from our own backyard should give us high stakes environments where being encouragement in working towards authentic in the learning zone is difficult. Interestingly, he gives the leadership, owning our mistakes and resisting the urge to throw example of schools where the focus for students is on getting others under the bus . . . correct answers, as well as ‘flawless execution cultures’ in our Nau mai te hapa; ma te hapa ka ako! workplaces where employees feel pressure to succeed and therefore stay with what they know and resist innovation. As I listened to him, it struck me that school leadership – much like political leadership – is a constant high stakes performance,
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