Prioritizing the Priorities

What I Learned In School Today: We must prioritize the priorities.

One of the challenges of being a leader in any field is the need to prioritize. Leaders have their own priorities in terms of how and where time, energy, and resources should be spent in order to achieve goals and move toward the organizational vision. The true challenges arise when others come to the leader with their own ideas and priorities of which they are passionate and driven. Unfortunately neither time, energy, nor money are unlimited in their availability, so priorities must be set and decisions must be made.

Making decisions is part of leadership, but so is empowering employees. In my school, I want to empower my teachers to challenge themselves, explore new paths to learning, and impact kids, but there seems to be a fine line between an empowering utopia and the reality of the restrictions we face everyday. I never want to prevent people from pursuing something they are passionate about when it can help kids, but the means of doing so can vary depending on the situation. That’s when a leader needs to prioritize based on the goals and vision of the school.