Mediator Musings: Managers
By: Sara Barnes
If you want to see some real managers at work, go visit a third-grade classroom. There you will see model practices of management as the eight-year-olds, guided by their teachers, benefit from some excellent managing. Materials are organized, the schedule is displayed, each voice is invited and quieted in an ongoing balance of time and participation. Children each face each other in their own home base cluster, the chairs fitting snugly in the desks, and the spacing is carefully planned so no one bangs into anyone else. The children’s precious work is hung up on the bulletin board, and materials are accessible and labeled, coming out on cue for use and then put away in carefully choreographed intervals.
Last Friday I was in one such a classroom visiting my colleagues Jenna and Kim at the Tisbury School as they presented the Peace Curriculum workshop. As teacher managers they too demonstrated excellent timing and careful planning, flowing with each other in a tightly woven 45-minute lesson. “What do you think an escalator has to do with conflict resolution?” they asked, managing the students’ thinking and wondering as they introduced the young peacemakers to conflict escalation and de-escalation concepts.
The Good Kind of Managing
Managing and management gets a bad rap sometimes. After all, no one likes being managed, beloved sports managers a notable exception. At least not the kind of managing we think of as synonymous with being manipulated. I am not a fan of being manipulated, either; I think managers should try hard to interact with others as full human beings and to not treat them as pieces on a checkerboard. People want to be included and informed when their lives are being directly impacted by management actions.
As I was thinking about managers around me, watching eight-year-old junior managers managing themselves and their classmates, I thought about the others I was going to encounter as my Friday unfolded. I began to make a complicated mental Venn diagram with managers as the intersection. Mediators as managers, check. Board members as managers, check. Committee members, yup, they are managers too. Restaurant workers, check. Postal workers, check. Managers play a big role in my daily life. Yours too, I imagine.
Read the full version of this Mediation Musings essay here.