Rather than accepting that perhaps they’re going in the wrong direction most people, once they make a decision, stick by it. There is no openness to any criticism – either from themselves or from others. This is why we frequently hear political pundits and politicians taking clearly absurd stances on issues.  The facts (and frequently common sense) don’t support these views but the facts never enter the thought process. Ultimately, we need to accept feedback before we change our opinions. Then once the contrary views or facts are accepted they must be reconciled internally. This was Einstein’s true genius. He heard contradictory thoughts or saw contrary facts and then kept criticizing his own views until he devised theories which could explain all them.

It takes some ego sacrifice to accept the criticism and it takes a lot of intellectual energy to perform the self-criticism and reconciliation. This is why we seldom hear a politician admitting he or she made a mistake or the transportation department supervisor “owning up” to a poor decision. The practice of accepting criticism and learning from it is pretty rare.

Great managers, on the other hand, are always seeking out reactions – even if the feedback is negative. In fact, you might say they manage by the motto “All Feedback is Good Feedback.”  They seek feedback 60’s style by using suggestion boxes. They seek it 80’s style by supporting employee – management committees. Some even seek it 90’s style by performing customer surveys. But most importantly, the really successful managers seek it by the timeless practice of talking, often one on one, with their employees and their customers.

Here are a few tips for improving your openness to feedback:

1. Schedule one-on-one meetings with all of your staff. While in these meetings, ask honestly for ideas, problems, and criticism.
2. Get out from behind your desk. Even if this means the critically important emails won’t get answered within 5 (or 50) minutes of receipt, making yourself visible encourages feedback.
3. Make up excuses to go into the staff lounge. In my case, that’s where I get my coffee.
4. Praise those who bring up new ideas or spot flaws in existing ideas or practices. That means, instead of ignoring or denigrating the person who speaks up in a training session or staff meeting, go out of your way to value and compliment their ideas.
5. Give effusive credit to the employee who points out a problem. When the problem is fixed, make sure everyone knows and credits that person who first brought it to our attention.
6. Go where the action is. You don’t have to be the “Undercover Boss” to ride along on one of your driver’s bus routes. In addition to building morale, this practice will almost always yield invaluable knowledge of your organization’s strengths and weaknesses.

Now, once you’ve received all of this feedback, you need to perform an honest assessment of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Take the comments, suggestions, and even insults to heart. Don’t think you’ll be perceived of as weak or “wishy-washy” when your self-criticism nourished by timely feedback takes you or your organization in a different direction. Instead, you’ll be following in Einstein’s footprints… and he wasn’t exactly unsuccessful.

So, how do we fly under the radar while ensuring that we’ve addressed today’s concern?  Consider that our priorities of safety, a harassment-free workplace and quality customer service haven’t changed.  And, despite the typical belief that our laws are ever-changing, legal and regulatory compliance sometimes requires that you stay the course.  The conclusion:  Before you drop everything to focus on a policy on tweeting in the workplace, particular bus emergencies, or the like, determine if general policies like confidentiality, nondisclosure, sexual harassment, and crisis preparedness already apply.  After all, if existing policies reflect your core values, they may, in a sense, be timeless.

What can be tricky is striking a balance between the need to communicate important rules to your workforce again and again, and avoiding inciting distracting litigation.  Try keeping the attention local – take advantage of a great opportunity to talk about critical issues in up-coming safety meetings.  Use recent headlines and case scenarios from Legal Routes and other sources to show how your “oldie but goodie” policies apply to matters that are in the headlines and on court dockets.

For example, talk with your staff members about whether existing policies on safe driving cover cell phone use on the road.  Do your “don’t touch a student” policies tell them clearly that they may not forcefully restrain a student? Do behavior management rules obviously cover quieting students with duct tape?  Have you said strongly enough, don’t discharge students at undesignated stops.

Let your own employees tell you when the words that are already on the books don’t guide them sufficiently before creating a new policy to address every issue that arises.  Don’t hesitate to shed a new light on the policies you have to review their relevance and applicability, but, at the same time, don’t leave the porch light on!

In honor of School Bus Driver Day I share the following story obtained from one of my drivers in one of these meetings. It is not by any means unique. Rather, it is one of dozens (or thousands) of stories which demonstrate the caring, attentive, and supportive role that many, many bus drivers serve.

Good Song – Great Use

Albert is a student with special needs whose behaviors have occasionally been extreme. As a result, many bus drivers are worried when the student is assigned to their route. He has been known to get violent and, at times, a gentle touch can turn quickly into screaming, kicking, and punching. In the last few years several drivers and classroom aides have been injured by Albert.

Well driver Ruth loves Albert. He’s caring, friendly, and always happy when on her bus. So what’s her secret?  She has created a CD containing the favorite song of every student on her route. As each student gets on the bus they get to hear their favorite song. (Sort of like the song baseball players hear when they come up to bat.) Albert loves the Rihanna song Stay, which has a lot of piano accompaniment. When Albert gets on the bus he sits towards the back of the bus. When he puts on his seatbelt, the music starts, and Albert is one of the best air piano players in Southern California. When the song is done and Albert wants to listen again, Ruth has taught him to say “More please.”

Each year in our district bus drivers get to bid on routes so Ruth is pretty sure she won’t get this route next year. But she wants to do all she can to ensure Albert succeeds so she has asked for permission to share her Rihanna strategy with next year’s driver. Because of her training, she was sensitive to the confidentiality issues surrounding student data/information and thought she’d check to make sure.  Since next year’s driver has a “legitimate educational interest” in knowing her support strategies not only did she receive approval, but she received encouragement.

Ruth’s strategy has now been shared with classroom staff so that the music can become one of the behavior modification tools used in the classroom. Ruth’s approach is making a significant difference in Albert’s educational day because she refused to believe that Albert is “a problem child”. Instead, she used her training and caring to help address Albert’s “problem behaviors.”

And, on the subject of outright misrepresentation, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that a job applicant who exaggerates on an application – especially with regard to education – does so at his or her own risk.  Such misrepresentation is cause for immediate dismissal in many school districts – even when caught years later.

But it wasn’t that legal aspect which inspired me to write.  Instead, what captivated me most about this article was the observation that “Most titles are self-applied” and generally “meaningless . . .Most titles indicate only intent (“I call myself a ___ because that is what I aspire to do.”

Your school district or company has most often told you what your formal professional title is.  What’s the title you would assign to yourself if you had your druthers?  What title represents what you “aspire to do”?  Is there a close relationship between the title you would choose, based on the “intent” criteria, and your actual “duties as assigned”?

I’ve struggled a bit with my own title now that I’m not in-house counsel for a school district, but am still licensed to actually practice law, but prefer to function as a consultant rather than a lawyer.  I’m “owner” and “president” of Education Compliance Group, Inc., a “consultant” and an “attorney,” but those titles really don’t reflect what I aspire to do professionally – to help you remove legal and compliance distractions and roadblocks that may divert you from your real mission.  Maybe I’ll start calling myself “legal roadblock blaster.”  What title would you choose for yourself?

Organizational tendencies like this one are not just prevalent in universities or giant corporations. They permeate the very establishments we work in or do business with every day. In our own organizations how frequently do we deny, ignore, rationalize, or even cover up inappropriate behavior rather than confronting it and addressing it? If you’re in the student transportation business you know that school site or department that is definitely not doing things right. It’s not your job to fix it, but you’re certain that if it were, you’d address the pattern of not taking action on problems.

Disgraced BP CEO
Tony Hayward

I couldn’t help thinking about Tony Hayward, the former CEO of British Petroleum, as I listened to Rutgers president Barchi joke about how his job is always on the line. His explanation that he’s been so busy trying to integrate a new medical school into his campus that he didn’t have time to pay more attention to this problem caused me to flash to Hayward in the wake of the Deep Water Horizon disaster. While thousands of people in the Gulf had their lives totally destroyed by his company’s negligence, Hayward infamously complained “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I’d like my life back.”

We see this behavior all too often in institutions which have lost track of their purpose. It’s a kind of institutional denial. Instead of owning a problem, they begrudgingly accept very limited responsibility if they accept any responsibility at all. Usually they are led by leaders who aren’t. Leadership requires paying attention to signs that things are going wrong. When there are blatantly obvious facts just screaming for responsible action by key decision makers, ethical leaders don’t search for plausible deniability (a.k.a. covering their butts.)  Leaders require that everyone in their organization (including themselves) adhere to a level of morality. And leaders certainly don’t feel sorry for themselves while people are being victimized by their actions or inactions.

As the head of any organization whether it’s a university, an oil company, or a transportation department, you are personally responsible for the organization’s failures. The decision to not act when necessary, regardless of the excuse, demonstrates a lack of leadership ability. Failure to act to prevent abuses also proves a lack of morality.

Rice was fired for his mistreatment of players after his outbursts went viral on a video that sparked national outrage.  Sam McDowell, reporter for the Kansas City Star, noted that “what may seem more stunning is that those familiar with the sport say it’s not surprising that Rice wasn’t challenged by his players.”  McDowell noted that players are “at the total discretion of the coach” for playing time.  Here’s what caught my eye:  “The players become acclimated to the coach’s role, for better or for worse.”  Mitch Abrams, a NJ sports psychologist noted “players can begin to accept inappropriate behavior as appropriate.” And, “as is the case with instances of domestic violence, those kids develop a learned helplessness.  They’re stuck and they accept it.”

Picture: Heavy.com

As I retold stories of child abuse by school bus drivers and monitors directed mostly at students with special needs, I highlighted that, often, such students have cognitive impairments that don’t enable them to understand the true nature of conduct directed toward them.  They may be “trapped” in safety vests or wheelchairs.  They are at the mercy of other students and, even more sadly, the adults on the vehicle.

I also know stories of students who wanted to advocate for the victims of bullying but were afraid to speak up.  They had learned helplessness.  We may be teaching passivity when we want to teach confrontation skills.

The story is, for me, a reminder of the power we and our staff members can too easily abuse.  Be sure you’re taking adequate steps so that our youth, and those who support them, don’t learn to be helpless

The challenge, as a pessimist, is to not let your expectations bias other people’s actions. For example, whether or not I believe that the Zags (Gonzaga) will go out in the second round of the NCAA championships, despite being ranked #1 in the nation, shouldn’t impact how the team will play. If I were the coach however, it would be best if I kept my doubts to myself.  As a leader, it is important to project confidence and a “can do” attitude. If you let your pessimism (or skepticism) rule then you are far less likely to succeed.

To lighten things up on our blog I’ve created the following quiz to help you determine if you’re a secret or out-of-the-closet pessimist too.  Count the number of statements you agree with.

1. When I don’t hear anything on the dispatch radio, instead of believing everything is functioning smoothly, I’m more likely to believe the radio isn’t working.
2. When no one raises any questions after a complex training, I’m as likely to assume they didn’t “get it” rather than assuming we did such a good job teaching and they did such a good job learning.
3. When the kids were young and they were “playing quietly” I just knew something was wrong.
4. When the host or hostess tells you it will be a ten minute wait for your table, you know it’ll be longer (but they don’t want to lose you as a customer.)
5. “No news” probably doesn’t mean “good news.”
6. When you see a pint glass that has only 8 ounces of water in it you think either a) half empty or b) someone’s inefficiently assigned the wrong size glass for that water.
7. When the weather forecaster says it will be clear with light breezes this weekend he is just as likely to be describing what’s going on in his head as the actual weather forecast.
8. When the service company says they’ll be there between 8 and 12, they really mean they have no clue when they’ll be there and they’ll probably be there at 12:15 just after you’ve left home.
9. The bus inspector will almost always choose to inspect the one bus that we were too nauseous to finish cleaning last night when returning from a nausea-inducing ride down the mountain.
10. I’ve always had a fondness for the saying “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.”
11. Rush hour seems to change based upon the time I get on the freeway.

If you agreed with 6 or more of the above statements, welcome to the club, fellow pessimist.  Hold your head high (but watch out for low hanging objects.)

At the Transporting Students with Disabilities Conference in Frisco TX last week, I was reminded of the importance of language.  What you say can make such a difference.

The first story is one I heard from an attendee in one of my sessions.   When a driver, whose primary language is not English, called dispatch to complain that a student had insulted him, the dispatcher heard, instead, that a student had “assaulted him.”  The dispatcher immediately called 911, law enforcement arrived in force, and the “molehill” became a “mountain” quite quickly.

We know that parents react quite differently to the word “harness” than they would to  “safety vest.”  The federal government has, over time,  become more sensitive to the reactions of students with special needs and their parents by changing the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142, enacted in 1975) to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997).  In 2010, with little fanfare, President Barack Obama signed legislation known as “Rosa’s Law” requiring the federal government to replace the term “mental retardation” with “intellectual disability” in many areas of government.

When I referred at the TSD conference to “mufky pufky” meaning (to me, anyway) “hanky panky” of a sexual nature between students, I got a big laugh and a request to tell the world about my creative term. When I googled the phrase just now to see where I got it, I saw a 1965 birthday wish from one person to another, lovingly sending “Mufky Pufky and Ish kabibels” to the birthday girl, and a reference in a language that I don’t know but that sounded like something my grandmother from “the old country” would have said.

Words can be fun, mis-leading, provocative, and insulting – or is that, assaulting.  Let’s all keep that in mind as we talk with family, colleagues, parents, and especially students.

In 1839 H.C. Andersen published The Emperor’s New Clothes. It was originally going to be a simple morality story which taught a lesson about vanity. If you’re not familiar with it, do a quick internet search. (I’ll wait.)  At the last minute the author decided to change the ending. Instead of everyone just seeing the king naked and admiring the invisible clothes, Andersen added a small child who reveals the emperor’s nakedness. This changed the moral of the story significantly. There was still a lesson about vanity but now we all have an invaluable lesson about “speaking truth to power.” That little boy also holds the secret to a truly creative workplace.

Many of us identify with that little boy. When we see things that are wrong, we feel compelled to speak up. However, most organizations don’t encourage or even tolerate that Andersen’s child in us. They don’t want us to expose their weaknesses or they don’t want to be challenged. Maybe they know things are wrong but they really don’t want employees or customers throwing it in their faces. Since these organizations don’t welcome feedback they are often exposed (both liability-wise and otherwise.) They don’t correct problems that are obvious to others.

Another, less obvious problem caused by squelching or ignoring feedback is that it also hinders creativity.  Great organizations encourage the free flow of ideas. In this environment anyone can raise an idea to improve things. Those ideas don’t always see the light of day because everyone in the organization is able to (and even required to) check the idea against reality. If the idea’s not going to work, every person in the organization must shout it out. Every member of the best organizations is obligated to be Andersen’s little boy. Because of that, everyone is encouraged to come up with great ideas without worrying about going out into the world with no clothes.

Try it in your organization. Next time someone points out a reason why an idea won’t work, instead of being frustrated with their negativity, try thanking him/her but keep thinking up ideas.  Some of them will be great.

Just last evening, a woman I admire, with academic and career credentials anyone would be proud to have, described her inability to ask a person whom she had hired to do work in her home to deliver the result he had been hired to deliver.  The problem wasn’t that the worker was unable to meet my friend’s needs, but that my friend was uncomfortable simply asking for what she was paying for.

Maybe my friend’s reluctance was a creature of past discouragement.  If one doesn’t think “asking” will work, why put oneself “out there”? Poet Maya Angelou said “Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”  Maybe we’re somehow afraid of success.

Or maybe self-advocacy is too often identified with being “pushy” or “aggressive,” rather than task-oriented and self-assured.  Are people reluctant to go after their needs because they simply are insecure about how to do so?

But let me encourage you a bit, at least as self-advocacy applies to your position as a pupil transportation professional.  Consider carving out those requests that you must make for the sake of your student riders, from those things you’d just like to have in your work environment.  Practice asserting yourself with supervisors to get the equipment, the changes, the personnel that you need to keep students safe.  When self-advocacy is, in reality, for the benefit of students whose safety depends upon you, you’re obligated to take the plunge.  Maybe if you (1)  identify what they need;  (2) develop a plan to get it for them;  and (3) carry it out with good timing, respect, and awareness of the style and limitations of the people with the power to give you what you need for students, you’ll find you’re successful – at least some of the time.  Maybe, then, you’ll try it in your personal life as well.

Long-time star of the Tonight Show, comedian Johnny Carson frequently played the role of Carnac the Magnificent, a “mystic from the east” who could psychically “divine” unseen answers to unknown questions.  When student safety is in your hands, you can’t depend upon others being mind-readers.  You’ve got to ask for what you need to keep students safe.