Presentation of Impact: Generating a User's Manual

From February 2017 through October 2017, I was a member of Cohort 1, of the Margaret Waddington Leadership Initiative (MWLI), a collaborative effort of the Center for Creative Leadership and the Vermont Principal's Association. This piece is adapted from the reflective writing I produced about the MWLI.

The Presentation of Impact caught me by surprise; I totally forgot about it until I arrived at the October session. I remember sitting there thinking that I was screwed – although, I would score very high on the Fliegelman Procrastination Scale. I have often put things off until the deadline only to produce some of my best work. In the hour or two before dinner, I remember thinking that I will find a way to put this all together in time for the next day. Since I know that not preparing at all was a bad idea, I spent part of that evening going through the documents I’d collected at the various MWLI sessions. I decided to put my money where mouth is and tell a story (so many workshops over the last few years have emphasized using stories as a vehicle for delivering the message). I told the story a couple of months earlier when I presented my Owner’s Manual to my staff (much more about that later). When the time came, my group chose to sit in the small game room in the basement of the resort. The comfy chairs and relaxed atmosphere was just what we needed. Each of presented our impact statements. I went last and knocked it out of the park. My small group even clapped for me. Here, to the best of my recollection is most of my story:

When we moved into our 200 year old farmhouse, we bought a big chest freezer. Then we decided we needed a generator. I figured it would be no problem to get this thing started. So I put some oil in, and I put some gas in. Then I pulled the cord, and then I pulled the cord again. Then I pulled the cord again and nothing happened. Growing frustrated I wondered if the thing were broken. My wife handed me the owner's manual for the generator. Interesting idea; read the owner’s manual. Well, I used the owner's manual to follow the directions. I put the choke in the right place and turned on the switch. Then I pulled the cord and the generator started right up.

After the July Waddington session, I knew that I had to share what I’d learned about my leadership with my staff. I struggled throughout August to figure out the best way to share all this information during in-service. A couple days before in-service began, I came across a Blog about writing your own user’s manual. It was clear to me right away what I had to do. So I took the Waddington instruments, took notes on each item, and created the first draft of my user's manual. This first draft of the manual was long and very detailed. I realized that there were things missing that weren't covered in Waddington and things from Waddington that I didn't need to share in detail. Then it hit me, Mel, my mentor, had mentioned that I over-communicate, use too many words, and don't keep it simple enough. So, I pared down the user's manual, leaving it much shorter. I did keep the original work at the end in case anybody wanted to read it.

I went on after that to describe the process I went through of setting and revising my key leadership challenge. I also spoke about how I was already using that work to improve my school and my leadership (much of that is detailed further in this paper).