Thoughts on leading ... from my fishing hole.

A school district leader needs to be an expert at balancing competing demands and learning from as many sources as possible.

Such a statement comes as no shock to almost anyone in public school leadership. Whether deciding what to cut from the budget, how to redraw school attendance boundaries, which mathematics curriculum to adopt or whether to call off school because of inclement weather, those of us in school system leadership must recognize that our judgment calls are only as good as the information we have in front of us.

We realize some of our decisions will be unpopular, maybe even despised, and some may make us heroes, at least in the eyes of some community group. While we're only human and we know we are bound to sometimes make mistakes, we must always remember to rely on the data we have gathered and understand the competing demands at work in our decision.

Two Passions

In an attempt to make my point more clear (and to help me get my mind off the fact that the temperature is hovering in the single digits at the moment), allow me to provide a warm-weather metaphorical look at leadership.

When summer is upon us and the lakes of northern Minnesota are free of ice, I find myself juggling a couple of disparate demands, each of which plays an essential role in my life--fishing and leading a school district.

For my entire adult life I have been studying, observing and reading probably hundreds of books on the topic of leadership. For an even longer period of my life I have been studying, observing and reading probably hundreds of articles on the subject of sport fishing. So I recently found myself wondering about the relationship between these two endeavors.

Below are my Top 5 observations that link the topics of leadership and fishing that provide a little glimpse of simplicity into our complex leadership lives.

Buried Gems

Our profession demands rigorous, fast-paced and relentless learning on incredibly wide-ranging and diverse subjects: intelligent design, infiltration of diesel fumes into classrooms, bond-refinancing rate analysis, community/voter demographics and summer learning regression by our students are but a few. We lead organizations with core missions centered on learning and growth. As leaders we can iii afford a personal summer learning regression. Fishing just might offer a partial solution to avoiding this summer learning regression by superintendents.

The formal study of leadership is important and we need to keep our professional edge by reading and attending professional conferences and workshops. However, the lessons and secrets of leadership are not always buried within the pages of the latest bestseller or on the lips of the best educational consultant.

The best lessons are all around us, just beneath the surface of the water waiting to be caught and reeled in. Listen to those around you who are competing for your attention. Make a conscious effort to learn all that you can from a variety of sources. In doing so, you are ensuring your decision has been made based on the all the information available. That's the sort of leadership our public schools need.

I look forward to seeing you at an AASA conference ... or perhaps at your neighborhood fishing hole this summer.

Ted Blaesing is superintendent of the White Bear Lake School District, 4855 Bloom Ave., White Bear Lake, MN 55110. E-mail: [e-mail]

FISHING                              LEADING

  Some days, but not always,           Some days, but not always,
fishing is fun and exciting.         leading is fun and exciting.

  Many times fishing is enjoyable      Many times leadership is
not because of the act of fishing,   enjoyable not because of the act
but because of the people you are    of leading but because of the
with and the good will, banter       people you are with and the good
and humor that occurs while          will, banter and humor that occurs
fishing.                             while leading.

  Most of the time, patience is        Sometimes leading involves being
very important in fishing, and as    very patient on your end of the
the old saying goes, "fishing is a   line while you are being informed
jerk on the end of the line          by the voices on the other end of
waiting for a jerk on the other      the line that you are truly a
end of the line."                    jerk.

  Sometimes fishing requires using     Sometimes leadership requires
everything in the tackle box to      using everything in the toolkit to
get the smallest of results.         get the smallest of results.

  Some days, in spite of your very   Some days, in spite of your very
best efforts at fishing, you are     best efforts at leading, you are
disappointed, and other times when   disappointed, and other times when
least expecting it, you get          you least expect it, you get
terrific  results.                   terrific results.
Many people call this luck.          I call this solid, hard work.