But do you want to?

Am I a leader or a follower? I think the question should really be, do I want to be a leader or a follower? Because at this point in my life, I am perfectly content being a follower. Someone please just tell me what to do and I will happily do it.

I was a teacher for 18 years. I was a leader in my classroom but a follower of the administration. As I was given more and more responsibilities, read that as, more and more stuff to do on top of teaching, I took on leadership roles. I was the chairperson of SO many committees. I was the advisor to lots of clubs and teams. I was a mentor to beginning teachers. All of those tasks were given to me by my principal. She was obviously grooming me to become a principal myself. But the thing is, I never wanted to be that kind of leader. I was perfectly fine leading the kids from the front of my classroom. My anxiety and fear of criticism made me very comfortable keeping my leadership roles limited to kids and a small group of adults from my church and school community. I was good with having a problem and taking it to my principal for help with it. It was a relief to hand something over to her to handle if the situation warranted.

If you’ve been reading my previous posts, you know where I’m going with this. I did ultimately become a principal. My fear of criticism made me also afraid to say no. Well, that and having a hateful, narcissistic principal made me say yes when she asked me to go to grad school and replace her as the leader of the school when she retired.

That year as a principal was hell. And that’s really the nicest word I can think of to describe it. It was worse than that. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. And behind all of that was the same hateful, narcissistic principal—now my mentor—being who she was as she “helped” me through it. I did all the leadership things I had to do, but hated every minute of it. I was the only administrator of the school. Seriously. The office staff was me and my administrative assistant. That’s it. So when the year ended, really, well before the year ended, I pretty much said F-this, I’m out. And I quit. As the director of my masters program helped me to see, I could do the job of a leader/principal, but I didn’t want to. And I still don’t.

Here’s the interesting thing though. I’m actually pretty good at being a leader. Of course that is subjective because as I learned in grad school, there are many different leadership styles. In my new job, I supervise college classes. I have to do very principal-type things on a regular basis. And the thing is, it almost comes naturally to me. If a situation comes up with an instructor or a student that I need to handle, I just either know how to handle it, or I get advice from my supervisor and then handle it. The last thing I had to do gave me anxiety ahead of time. But I realized that it was a trigger from my past experience as a principal. There was absolutely no reason for my anxiety to be triggered other than the fact that the situation I was facing was similar to ones I had encountered in my old job. But again, when I’m in the middle of doing whatever needs to be done, I just do it because it’s what needs to be done. Honestly, I think it comes down to the fact that my one year as principal threw so much at me that I couldn’t have ever predicted that now at my job, I am prepared for anything. And the principal things I have had to do aren’t anywhere near as bad as it was in my old workplace. The best part is, I don’t have that hateful, narcissistic woman in the background to worry about. My supervisor is the exact opposite of everything that woman was.

Still, I can do these leadership things, but I still don’t want to. Even though they aren’t as bad as what I have dealt with in the past, I would still much rather have a job where I’m just doing what I’m told. I don’t want to make the decisions and enforce the rules. In fact, when I was looking for a new job, I applied for secretary type positions. I told my grad school cohort members that I would be happy to just sit at a desk and answer phones all day. I still feel that way. But, when I applied for the job I have now, I was picked out of 28 applicants. So there is obviously a reason that I’m in this role. I don’t know what the reason is. I’m sure I could continue on for several more paragraphs analyzing why I might have been chosen, but for now, I’m o.k. with my job. It certainly doesn’t have the same anxiety my old one did. So, until I’m a writer that gets paid, I’m content being a leader. Still don’t want to be, but for now, it’s just what I have to do.