When you begin a new job, you’re extended a degree of authority… the authority needed to carry out the duties you’ve been given. Also when you begin a new job, your knowledge about how to do it well is most likely at its lowest level that it will be. In other words, when you begin a new position, you most likely will have a big discrepancy between your authority and your wisdom. During this and subsequent times you are engaged in learning your job… the learning curve we speak so often of is at work.
Over time (how long a time depends on many factors including how quickly you pick up the patterns of the job, the context of the school at large, how much support you have in growth just to mention a few) you are likely to grow in wisdom. Wisdom is described by author Chip Conley (Wisdom @Work) as “being able to see patterns more quickly than before.” One gains wisdom not merely through experience but by intentional reflection on and response to experience. So, you can do something repeatedly and still not “get” its inner workings, its nuances. That typically requires effort and reflection.
Where does all this take you? For one, over time you begin to understand your job more clearly. With that, you probably do it more effectively and are more insightful. That performance often leads your supervisors to extend your authority. You understand more; you’re afforded more authority with which to flex your wisdom.
Perhaps the most contented season of one’s employment is the time when your wisdom and authority are closest to a balance point, particularly if it’s a higher point. You know well, you have authority to do well, and you can make a difference for others given that combination.
Change, inevitably, arrives not long after that period of balance. If your life reads like a book, here’s where the conflict arrives, just after things seemed to be good.
In any job, the level of authority you’re going to be extended is going to cap out at some point. When you hit that point simultaneously with the same level of wisdom, things are good. While the authority you’re given within this job may peak, the wisdom you have about your work is likely to continue to grow.
With enough time in any job, your wisdom will exceed your authority. You will know better, but you won’t be able to immediately do better. You use your wisdom to try to influence the kind of good growth you’ve learned can happen, but sometimes your supervisor isn’t able to permit your ideas to move forward. It’s frustrating, because you know it will work and be the right thing for kids, but you are stuck, knowing more than you are able to bring into existence.
At the time, you think that beginning a job with an authority/wisdom imbalance is hard until years later, you see that imbalance but in the other direction. THAT’S a hard hand to play. You aren’t able to do what you know to do, so it’s easy to be unhappy, unfulfilled at work. You either strategize a plan to gain more authority (hopefully through negotiation and conversation), act out because of your frustration, or begin to look for a new job, one that permits you to activate the knowledge you’ve gained. There is one other option, and that’s to numb yourself to the knowledge you have and learn to cope around it all. Cope, usually meaning lowering your level of commitment to your job and to the school because you can’t (or don’t want to quit) but you also can’t improve your conditions.
Much of this is natural; it’s that tug that tells you it’s time to move up or move on. One thing is pretty certain about your job: there’s a start date AND an end date, and if you’re lucky you get to pick both.
You may wonder about the timeliness of these words, published near the beginning of the year. A good reason to think about these things now is that many of you are beginning new positions at this time of year. You’re very likely to be missing your old position around this time. It makes sense that you WOULD like that older job because… you had been in it long enough to accrue wisdom. New AP? How long were you a teacher before you started this job? 15 years? If you’ve been teaching that long, it translates to 2, 850 days as a teacher (190 days x 15 years). So, at Day 2850, you were most likely pretty good at what you were doing; probably a better Dat 2850 teacher than Day 8 Assistant Principal. Or Principal.
Be of good. cheer! You are going to learn SO much. You’ll teach yourself this new job, just like you taught yourself your last job. And you’ll get more knowledgeable as time goes on. And for a little while, you’ll be both wise and within your authority to do something with it. Then, eventually, you’ll be faced with the decision of what to do with the wisdom you’ve gained in this role. This happened in the last job you had and is likely to be true in this one.
But not today. For today? Listen. Learn. Value what others say and be confident in knowing that little by little you’ll master this position and have so much knowledge that you don’t know what to do with it!
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