Not Yet

I was a brand new principal and I was granted a mentor. It was as if she was plucked from the stratosphere and delivered to me shiny and perfect with an orbit all her own. She knew it all. She had done it all. She was given to me so I would know what was expected of me.

She had binders that were themed so I could see how to create a portfolio and she dropped them off to me with great flair, even a tote bag I could carry them in. She would ask questions to get me to be vulnerable and share what was going on with my staff. She would tell me what to say and then check to make sure I said it. I was being made in her image.

At meetings she would talk first. It was assumed we would get in line and support her thinking, cheer her ideas. When we would meet one on one I would voice my ideas or impressions and she would tell me I was not seeing what I thought I was seeing or it was too soon for me to pipe up. I got the message, not yet.

So I waited. I watched. I formed my own opinions and I kept them to myself. For a moment and then not at all. I had stepped out of line. I had made them uncomfortable. I was a bad mentee.

When there is but one way to do things like on an assembly line I can understand the risk of not following the designed procedures, but we were leading humans and had students that needed us to advocate for them, to create situations where each student could thrive which in my mind meant that we had to do things in different ways. I thought I was hired for my brain, my ideas, my innovation, but what I experienced was recognizing I was a cog in a wheel and my job was simply to push on what was given to me and ignore the other things. Get in line. Support. And until you did just that you would not be included. Happy hour invitations, not yet. Group text, not yet. Pre meeting planning, nope, not you, not now, not yet.

I took on the lack of inclusion and would opt out. I internalized that I was not ready when really I was not aligned. I couldn’t ask questions because that was challenging. I couldn’t understand because I couldn’t ask questions. It was a slippery slope and I wore rubber shoes.

My competence was tied to one person’s idea of the job and I felt like I did not have the make up to become her so I had to leave. How many times do we do that–we set someone up to fail because we think we know how it should go. You should look like this, you should say these things, when in reality their voice and style will make us better.

Just this week I heard someone say, they didn’t know how to do something and I chimed in with, Not Yet. And I heard it, an invitation to learn rather than a directive to keep out. Isn’t that all we need, a chance, a moment, a person that sees our potential rather than our shortcomings?

So, here’s to not yet as an invitation to build your skills, to develop your competence in the work, in the way, in the words, to become the best you.