Writing for Leadership Part 2

So, today was the final day of the Writing for Professional Growth series a colleague and I attended through Oakland Schools.  As the facilitator, Joan, handed back our manuscript all covered in red edits, I struggled to find any enthusiasm.  We had rewritten the entire thing twice already.  “Oh, this is so good,” Joan said while I leafed through the marked up pages.  “So much potential.  Lots of edits is a compliment, you know.”  She must have read my disappointment.  “If it wasn’t good I wouldn’t have had a reason to make any comments.”  Man had I heard that idea somewhere before.  Yet again, the parallels between leadership and writing were calling out to be noticed. And I knew she was illustrating still that writing is like leadership.

Good essays start with ‘good bones’

Leadership is about potential.  Joan pointed out that a good essay is about what it will be, not what it is.  If it has ‘good bones’, a good story to tell with meaning, it will become a good essay through work.  So many people talk about the value of capacity building in leadership.  I was just at a lunch where an assistant superintendent was talking about how a potential employee impressed her with his ability to humbly elevate the work of others.  His work was finding the potential in other people and helping them reach it.

Writers can’t see their own writing

Leadership is about re-visioning.  I worked with a writing teacher who spoke about the literal meaning of revision: to see with new eyes.  Because we know what we mean to write we often misinterpret what we have actually written.  It takes someone else reading our words, new eyes, to give us invaluable feedback on what others are seeing.  I can’t think of a stronger parallel to leadership.  What a leader says and what the audience receives are often different messages.  Without a great peer-editor a leader will often be misread.

Sometimes we just need to rewrite

Leaders are constantly redefining themselves.  I can’t remember what the article was, but the author was describing how GM’s true failure in the 2000’s was that it couldn’t reinvent itself from the 1950’s and was still basically the same company. As there are times where an essay, which still has those good bones (GM’s purpose of selling quality cars to the world is a solid one) but must be totally rewritten, sustaining organizations have leaders who can rewrite themselves.

We write for ourselves

Leading others helps us find ourselves.  One of the reasons I attended the workshop was to help my colleague get published; however, what was most interesting to me about this workshop was how it forced me to clarify and organize my thoughts about the work I have been doing for the last two years.  And the most wonderful result was I found there was meaning in my work, a structure and logic of sorts that once written looked pretty darn good, maybe even worth reading.