What is the "emotional wake" that you leave behind?

When I was in college, I went wake boarding and because I am a large human, it took extra effort on the part of the boat to get me out of the water and up on the board. The advantage of this was that it created awesome water wakes for me to ATTEMPT doing sick aerials. Those aerials never came to fruition, but I do remember trying to get up after a crash only to succumb to some pretty big wakes left behind from the boat. In this situation, I made a decision to do some tricks that I wasn't skilled enough to attempt and the boat operator made some decisions that made it difficult to rebound from my flaws in judgement. I share this story not to highlight my inability to wake board or to infer that my buddy operating the boat was messing with me, but rather to illustrate the impact that decisions we make have the potential to create emotional wakes that impact us and those around us.

As educators, we are charged with making hundreds of decisions on a daily basis. We run these decisions over and over in our head to ensure that we are covering all of our bases and addressing all possible outcomes that may come from making the decision. Sometimes, we can't share the process with others because the content is of a sensitive nature, so we are left with doing things on our own that may have a great impact on others around us. One question that sometimes gets overlooked is whether we are preparing to own our part in the emotional wake that is created from our decisions. No one is perfect and I honestly feel deep down in my heart that people do not make decisions with malicious intent. Keeping this in mind, if we aren't cognizant of the emotional wake our decisions make on those we lead, we are not doing anyone any favors.

The culture of any organization rises and falls on the emotional wakes of our decisions. There is a higher likelihood of a failing culture when we don't take into consideration our reactions to decisions and then creating a greater emotional wake by our responses to the decision. This is why I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook as a social media platform. While the intent of the platform was to bring people together, the emotional wake it created was that it allowed everyone in the world to spread hate, bitterness, and misinformation to a wider audience, which in turn creates even more emotional wakes to the point that everyone is drowning. 

The lesson in all of this is clear. As individuals, be mindful of the emotional wake you create with your decisions and in turn, be mindful of how you react to decisions that impact you so you don't make the emotional wake greater. As Stacey Engel writes on the Fierce Blog, "The value of a conversation with someone else begins with the conversation you have with yourself. Why? Because all conversations are with yourself, and sometimes they involve other people." When we all begin to realize this, we are more likely to understand the emotional wake we will leave behind and hold ourselves more accountable for it.