The antithesis of proactive is reactive, which means you react to the world around you instead of taking steps to affect the outcomes positively. Proactive education leaders have a do it yourself mindset and approach problematic situations with enthusiasm. If you want to affect your life and the lives around you positively, start by learning to control situations, instead of waiting for things to happen.
Becoming more proactive
To become a proactive leader, the first thing that you need to do is to be able to find and isolate potential issues before they become full-fledged problems. Then you can come up with a solution for solving the issue before it actually becomes widely known. The process of solving problems before they begin is not easy to do. It takes a total understanding of your organization and the forces and pressures that surround it. Then and only then can you begin to predict potential issues and landmines with great accuracy.
As a result of being proactive, you only have to be reactive when problems arise spontaneously without prior signs and warnings. This is less than 5% of all problems, and they happen every once and a while. This allows your school or district to avoid major crises and operate with a minimum number of disruptions. This allows students and educators to operate at an optimal level.
A little homework
Over the next month, use your instincts and intuition to spot potential problems and issues in your environment. Then work on finding viable solutions to them before they become nuisances. During this process, what are you learning about yourself and your ability to be proactive? I suspect that you are learning that you had this skill all along, but you rarely used it. This is probably because, in today’s fast-paced world, things happen so quickly that we rarely have the time to dissect them. When we do, we gain greater control over our environment, bending it to our will.
