Everyone needs a game plan for moving forward toward their vision and goals. “Without a vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29) At the same time, adjustments need to be made when called for in terms of what was going on in a game as we saw Sunday in the two playoff football championship games. We see this as well in our personal and political life. Adjustments are necessary, but the important thing is the game plan, the vision. However, the whole game plan for the San Francisco Forty 49ers had to be thrown out once their fourth string quarterback was injured. It wasn’t an adjustment as much as it was a total change in their vision of how the game would now have to be played.
I was struck by an article by Matthew Lee in yesterday’s Inquirer, “Israel-Palestinian calmed urged by Blinken as violence sours.” My reaction to that was you traveled all that way to “urge” the two groups to do something. Lee put it as follows, “Yet aside from appeals for de-escalation and restraint, Blinken did not publicly offer any ideas for calming the situation, and it was not immediately clear from his meeting with Netanyahu that the administration would be proposing any.” He will be meeting with the Palestinian leadership and likely wouldn’t be proposing a game plan for de-escalation there either. The plus to his approach is the power of persuasion. “You get more with honey than vinegar.” To have a game plan does signal what you want and what you need to get there. Both a game plan and persuasion are needed as well as, in my opinion, keeping your vision fixed squarely on the game plan, the vision.
To contrast this approach with Time Magazine’s Man of the year, Volodymyr Zelensky, he knows exactly what he needs and wants to have regarding certain instruments of war and lets us know why he needs them. He has a game plan. Although Elizabeth Warren was made fun of for always responding to a question with, “I have a plan for that.” Whether I agreed with her or not, I liked her approach.
My often-used line, “Life is a two-edged sword” is applicable here as well. What some see as a strength, others may see as a liability. The “eye of the beholder” of people who evaluated me at EA are important as the feelings of others that are as important as my own. The key is to have a balance between the game plan and adjustments, or persuasion and a vision. You have to use discretion. However, I have found that people could view the same decisions that I made about students or programs as part of a game plan or acts of persuasion on my part as positive or negative in terms of their particular perspectives.
My own mother was critical of my unwilling to let go of an issue when I thought I was right and something needed to be done. She called me “Johnny Bull” accusing me of being bull headed. She was probably right. Some faculty evaluations of me at EA contained the word stubborn, others wrote that “he is like a dog with a bone.” Sometimes he takes too many chances with chapel programs such as diversity initiatives. Of course, I saw things differently. I think the role of a leader is to take a community where they sometimes don’t want to go, but the reward is when we are in a better place for everyone when the vision becomes a reality. I admit that my mother was, at times right, but I also prefer Lady Gaga’s line, “I was born that way.”
Like Babe Ruth, who hit a lot of home runs but was also known as the Strike Out King, I have made many mistakes. But one situation still informs me today. We had to expel a student who had a pattern of egregious behavior. I was part of the people and process to expel him. It was the right thing to do. Later he came to me for counseling and I referred him to get additional counseling as well. We put together a game plan of what he needed to do. The independent school community is a small world. No local independent school in the area would touch him. He asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him which was an opportunity to see how far he had come and what I thought he would do in the future. I met with him and told him I would do it after a direct conversation. There were no conditions. He knew what he needed to do.
Vicki and I were vacationing with friends who lived on outskirts of Bowdoin College. Late in the summer I got a call there a few weeks before school started from the Head of the only school that would take the student who asked me if I was still good with my letter of recommendation. He tracked me down and indicated that he would admit him just on that letter with the implication, “You better be right!” I told him that I was still good with what I wrote. I never heard back from the Head. I never heard back from the student. I lost track of him. About eight years later I got a call from him during Christmas break. The former student wanted to see me. We met in my office. I could tell that he was nervous. I let silence enter the room as I had no idea why he wanted to meet. There was the usual how are you and what is your life’s work. He got out his wallet and showed me pictures of his wife and children. I told him how proud I was of him. He looked me in the eye and said, “Thank you!” He left the office, and I never heard from him again.
Game plan or persuasion or both?
Without a vision, the people perish!
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