What a month. I hope by now most of you have found your sea legs and gotten into the rhythm. Sara from Amherst emailed me last night stating that things were normalish. Though we have not gotten that stable here, the change fatigue is abating and staff are starting to take on the seasoned staff sergeant persona that comes with trial and endurance.
As we wove our way through April we got to see a conflict of values across the country. Since we do this for a living, I think we had a special perspective on the “end the shutdown” protests as I suspect, like me, many of you saw them as the struggle between the polar opposite values of community versus liberty (Boles value model). The contrast was so stark that it was almost shocking. I saw one car with “your health is not worth more than my liberty” painted on it. We want to jump on the “wow what an idiot” train, but if we think it through it helps us in our jobs. We deal with that all the time. If you have a budget surplus (don’t laugh), are your elected folks likely to use it to hire more police officers, build a park or lower taxes? The answer is based on what they value and seeing that interplay nationally is informative. Since I value community slightly more that liberty, I was on the “wow what an idiot” train, but at least I understood their perspective. Many of these folks have fallen ill and many of them have driven infection rates up in states that were otherwise contained.
We also saw the General Assembly decline to move elections and to keep them nearly as-is (at the peak of the Virginia infection period). Some applaud this and some decry it as risky. Values again. Personally, I am disappointed as the individuals running for office in my community can’t effectively mount a campaign and that erodes the higher moral purpose of the job…enabling democracy.
Many of you have also had a task with the technology divide, not only with your student age population, but with your elected officials. Can you get a 75 year old elected official who has never owned a computer on a Zoom meeting? Can they effectively be a part of the governing body in a format with which they are completely unfamiliar? A number of questions and deficits have been exposed that we will likely work to address as the months roll on.
How are we dealing with all this uncertainty and challenges? My staff and I have fallen back on the basics. I keep reminding people that we won’t be better at this because of how smart we are. We won’t alter the outcome by being brilliant. We can make a dent by being kind, compassionate and caring. Keep your heart in the game even if your head has no idea what the next steps are. Innovation and risk-taking from an emotive position is an easy sell. We launched a massive free food program in partnership with our local restaurants and the normal bureaucratic “head in the game” monster reared its head with “how will we prevent abuse?”, but the heart in the game perspective guided us to move forward with trust and compassion versus extending the design of a program days or weeks to create some sort of needs based solution. This is just one example of lots of micro decisions that we have found easier to make when leading from an emotive perspective.
By now I hope you have seen the announcement regarding our summer conference. We will have a virtual encounter and it will feature an opportunity for you to vote me out of office! We all desperately need a chance to “be together”, to prop each other up and honestly a safe place to have a good cry and be human. That time will come. Until next month, lead from your heart and keep your staff safe and engaged.
