The other day I was brainstorming with a former colleague of mine on problem solving a situation with a student they had been working with. They laid out the issues that were preventing the student from being successful including, but not limited to, chronic absenteeism, failure to turn in work in a timely manner, and lack of support at home. This was part of an overall conversation on student engagement at school in general, but as most of our conversations go, it quickly turned to specific students because it personalizes the issues when we can connect them to real life examples rather than working off anecdotal situations. As the conversation carried on, I found myself fighting the urge to swoop in and attempt to solve the issue on my own. I had gotten to that point because the conversation was dragging on and my colleague had offered up a variety of potential solutions, but kept second guessing themselves about the success of the solutions, so they backtracked and started talking in circles. I understand that patience is something I need to work on and I think my colleague could see my body language change. That is when they told me that they didn't need me to swoop in and fix the situation for them. What they needed was a thought partner who could help them think outside of the box. Needless to say, this person gets me and the reason we are such good colleagues and friends is because we have the ability to call a spade a spade and tell each other exactly what we're feeling without hurting each other's feelings. In this moment, they provided me guidance that I desperately needed to hear. Fighting the urge to swoop in and fix something is robbing others of the opportunity to grow and stretch themselves.
We have all been in this situation at one point or another, whether it be our significant others, students in our classrooms, our own kids, or our friends who are really struggling with something. I believe there is something in our human nature that wants to help others who are trying to figure something out or who are dealing with difficult situations that we have experienced before. We feel like we know the answer and it pains us to see them going through significant struggle to figure it out how to solve it. That's when our fixer mentality ramps up and we swoop in to save the day, not realizing that by doing so, we are actually enabling them to not go through the lesson of struggling in order to grow.
I do not claim to have all the answers and I have failed a lot in my lifetime. Fortunately, I have learned the skill of failing forward so I learn and grow from each mistake that I go through. This skill has been built up over a long period of time and I have had to experience a lot of grief and heartache to get to this point in my life. The problem is, I sometimes have the tendency to not allow others to do the same thing because I recognize how hard it was for me and I don't want them to suffer the consequences of mistakes that I have made because I care for them. This is a double-edged sword because on the one hand I am helping them, but on the other hand, I'm giving them a pass to learn from the struggle. My swooping in is serving my needs and not the needs of others.
The lesson in all of this is that we all need to fight the urge to swoop in. Watching others struggle and seeing them fail is hard. That failure, however, might actually be what the person needs so they have the opportunity to learn and grow. We would actually be doing them a disservice by fixing the issue for them. We can still be supportive and provide advice, but we must be intentional about not swooping in and solving the issue for them. If we do, we run the risk of actually clipping their wings and prevent them from learning to fly on their own.
#OwnYourEpic #Embrace
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