Ego and Leaders

San Francisco - Spent much of a long flight from JFK to SFO on-line via American Airlines' new GoGo service.  In-flight Internet is way, way overdue on every plane!  C'mon AA, how tough can it be?  Not every road warrior flies mostly between coast-t-cost.

What time I wasn't getting work done, my thoughts turned to the topic of ego and leadership.  Specifically, how much is too much or too little.  There is clearly a minimum threshold for ego and leadership or one wouldn't take on the role, particularly at senior and highly visible levels.  And just as clearly, too much ego translates into arrogance and abuse.

The ditches on both sides of the road are easy to see, but calibrating the placement and width of the roadway itself is a real challenge.  Perhaps what makes it so challenging is that too many other factors conflate with ego to determine one's odds of success or derailment. A partial list:

• Size of school
• Type of school
• School philosophy and mission and history
• Geography
• School culture (itself conflated with all of the above)
• Other aspects of personality such as introversion/extroversion, etc.
• Propensity or lack thereof to smile
• "Niceness"

  And more, no doubt.

That's what makes complicates headship: what works splendidly in one community, school, and pedagogy might be an unmitigated disaster in another.  A head who is reviled one place may become a legend at another.  What appears self-centered and obnoxious is, in another context, charming.

As I said at the beginning, these are just some thoughts.  More to follow.