I’ve often been sceptical about peoples focus on well-being; usually, those promoting it are what I call the wandering coffee drinker. Wandering the campus, coffee in hand, complaining about how hard they are working. Those who are dashing between engagements doubt their grasp on reality—sarcastically thinking that maybe they should put down their coffee and actually do some work! Coming from a working-class family, I have a built-in distrust for the validity of “management”. My father had to drop out of school to support the family when his father died, always regretting his lost opportunity to study management. He would complain about the administration at the hospital where he pushed wheelchairs as being detached from reality, expensive, and just ineffective. This same wariness of management has shadowed me in my journey. At my last school I was the one you went to “get things done” or “find solutions”, but I was never part of the “management team”. Instead, enacting as a leader, living by my father’s mantra of “work hard, and get things done”.
Now I find myself reflecting on what leadership means to me, and how I will balance the tensions of leadership and life, without becoming another wandering coffee drinker. Knowing that it is crucial, but still niggled by guilt, hearing my father’s words “work hard, and get things done”. It has become more of an issue as I become busier and more focused on what I am doing. In the readings, this week Reiche et al. (2017) quote Bennis (1989) who wrote: ‘‘Leaders conquer the context – the volatile, turbulent, ambiguous surrounding that sometimes seems to conspire against us and will surely suffocate us if we let them – while managers surrender to it.’’ By this definition, I am a leader; I face the context and create a solution. Not satisfied with the status quo, I am a creator, a builder, and as my father advised I “work hard, and get things done”.
I work in an international school, here we encounter task conditions what are more substantially more complex than typically encountered, and “This is a consequence of operating simultaneously in multiple environments that require continuous updating and integration of this contextual knowledge for decision-making” (Reiche et al., 2017). While exciting, and dynamic, it is also more taxing, and thus it is imperative that I ensure that I focus on well-being to ensure I am effective and am in it for the long-haul. However, I always struggle to switch off, and close the tabs in my mind.
Ironically one of my team commented once that I fall into the typical Chinese leader stereotype, of carrying my tea to my next meeting…
References
- Bennis, W., 1989. On becoming a leader. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
- Reiche, B., Bird, A., Mendenhall, M., & Osland, J. (2017). Contextualizing leadership: A typology of global leadership. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(5), 552-572.
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