Mention your workload and what you really mean is you want an easy ride. Question one new initiative and obviously you're against all change, forever. Ask for planning time and you just want more hours away from your class. Suggest a restorative approach and you want a free-for-all with no consequences. Adapt a task for one child and you're lowering the bar for the whole class. And a head working away in their office is, of course, a head who does nothing all day.
Read that back. Not one of them is what anyone said. Every line takes a sensible point and quietly swaps it for a stupid one, because a stupid argument is so much easier to win.
That's a straw man, and it's the subject of this week's episode of Education Leaders.
There's a physical moment, right before all of this goes wrong, when you can still stop it. You float a reasonable idea in a meeting, someone fires back a version you never said, and you feel it. A small jolt. A flash of "hang on, that's not what I meant." Most of us feel that and push straight past it, because we're already scrambling to defend ourselves. And the second you start defending the cartoon, you've lost. You're now arguing for a position you never held, and the room has quietly decided the daft idea was yours.
So treat the jolt as information. When you feel it, something's been swapped, and your job isn't to answer the swapped version. Pause for a beat. Put your real position back on the table, calmly. "That's not quite what I'm suggesting. I mean less book looks, not none." Then point at the actual question worth deciding and talk about that instead. Three moves, about ten seconds, and the conversation's back on something true.
In the episode I go through the four shapes a straw man takes and how to catch each one while you're still in the room. Have a listen here: https://educationleaders.co/podcast/165/
Then tell me which one turns up most where you are. Reply and let me know. I read every one.
Shane
PS If handling the conversation in front of you, rather than the theory of leadership, is the bit you want to get sharper at, that's most of what we do on the Education Leaders Intensive. More here if you're curious: https://educationleaders.co/intensive/
Listen to the latest episode
Click here to listen to this week's episode of my chart-topping podcast, Education Leaders