Building Islands of Competence

Last year at this time, my brother, his friend, a former advisee of mine and I tackled the Presidential Traverse - a 19 mile, 9,000 foot vertical hike through the heart of the White Mountains. For a middle-aged body with a recent full hip replacement, it was an accomplishment. Throughout the hike, you summit multiple 4,000 peaks, only to look ahead of you and see more to come, leaving you with a feeling of both accomplishment and disappointment. The final stretch of the school year feels the same. We reach false summit after false summit. Exam week. Graduation Day. End of year meetings. Alumni Reunion. More end of year meetings. We think we see the top of the mountain, feel we have conquered the last climb and are ready to sit down with our bag of gorp and water bottle to relish the views. Alas, each time we have one more push that will test our stamina, and push us, again, to rely on each other and our team. 

While we can focus on the disappointment of a false summit, we need to encourage each other that we have still accomplished much, even if we are not yet at the top of the proverbial mountain. As I shared with our team here at Proctor Academy, Commencement was an amazing example of teamwork in action, of each of us playing a role with excellence. Alumni Reunion was the same. Each time we push hard up the incline, with our team by our side, we should celebrate our accomplishments and not feel disappointed that the ultimate summit is still in the distance. 

My colleague, Annie MacKenzie, shared an Atlantic article on parenting that is going to serve as the genesis of a few blog posts for incoming (and returning) Proctor Academy parents over the course of the summer. In it, the author talks about strength-based parenting and the concept of each young person working to establish an island of competence on which they can stand. In reading this piece, an excerpt of which is below, I can't help but think about how we encourage each other in our work, how different seasons of the school year find us "parenting" each other in different ways, often unintentionally. There are seasons when we are focused on achievement, on identifying and supporting growth around weaknesses. Then there are other times of the year when we find ourselves focused on each others' strengths. I'm not sure why we enter these different seasons of team dynamics and interpersonal relationships, likely it has to do with sleep, winter weather, and stress, but it is something I am hoping to better understand in the future as I become more intentional in my own interactions with others. We need to build each other up, especially when we know there are multiple peaks yet to summit for our team. 

Research suggests, as the article notes, that when we focus on each other's strengths, we build resilient teams composed of individuals who are confident in their work and their contributions to the whole. One line stood out in the piece that felt worth sharing (read the whole piece HERE), "Confidence is contagious: When we’re good at things, our courage rises. When young people experience themselves as strong and capable—as an artist, an athlete, a leader, or a friend—they are better equipped to persevere through obstacles in other areas of their life." Replace young people with adults and I don't think much changes. We all thrive when we feel confident in what we are doing, and we each struggle when we don't feel confident.

As we find a summer rhythm, still busy, but different, my hope is that we can work to identify our "island of competence", to name it in our own lives, to build on it, to use it to work on our areas of weakness, and to help this approach build shared confidence within your larger teams, and ultimately, as an organization. When we are confident in our work, we do better work. Plain and simple. Help each other find that competence and celebrate all the false summits along the way - they are still significant accomplishments.