I have just signed up for my committee service for this year. I signed up for the same two I did last year, but with one big difference: This year, I'm not chairing either of them.
I figured out long ago that I'm not suited to leadership. I hate conflict. I fear putting my foot in my mouth. And the few times I made a "we're gonna do it this way" decision, the result was... not good.
So what I'm looking at here is more or less the same type of work, but my job is to be a worker among workers, and leave the planning to those more suited to it. Part of me feels badly for taking such a passive position. But a much bigger part of me feels a wonderful sense of calm.
3 comments:
total score. So long as you don't you chair you can kind of stealth through the meetings, zoning out during those awkward and tense moments.
Calm is good!
This post could be written about me. I am often a work horse around my campus. I've edited an accreditation self-study, and I'm on a bazillion committees because I work on campus assessment efforts. But lately, I have found myself saying "no" to several things: chairing the curriculum committee, being the sole coordinator for assessment efforts, being faculty chair of program review, etc.
All this is to say, I have realized the same thing. I don't want to be division chair. I don't want to chair committees. I don't want (God forbid) to ever be on the union exec board again. And it's all because of pressure and conflict. In my experience, at my campus, leaders are treated poorly, and I have no interest in leading the herd of angry, big cats that are my colleagues. And I don't want them to hate me.
So I let other people lead, but I still do my share (or more) of the work. I love being a "worker among workers." Three cheers for your worker status!
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