‘The Chair’ comes with conditions

The Chair is where the person in charge sits.

If you are an employer, a business owner, a coach, a teacher, an elected representative, a school superintendent, or president of The United States, you sit in The Chair.

As publisher and editor of The Community News, I sit in The Chair.

The Chair is a tricky place because it’s not necessarily sought.

You may have wanted to be a coach all your life, but you never once thought about The Chair. You just wanted to coach, not realizing that being a coach is not just being a coach. You will have people that cheer you on and you will have critics and detractors who don’t like how you coach.

It’s true for all.

When you sought or attained the position that led to The Chair, you might have thought about the position as a place of distinction and authority. And while The Chair can be a place of distinction, it’s also a place of responsibility and service.

One of the prices The Chair extracts is that you can be a target of criticism. Whether you are a boss, a congressman, a coach, or a teacher, if you sit in The Chair you will rightly or wrongly be criticized.

How people in The Chair respond and react to both praise and criticism says a lot about their leadership ability. One bit of advise is not to necessarily believe the praise, and to take seriously the criticism.

Abraham Lincoln famously brought three people who had run against him into his cabinet — the noted “team of rivals.”

It was a leadership example we could all learn from. If you are in leadership and everyone on the team is always in agreement with you, you don’t need the team. Dissenting voices often turn out to be correct.

President Lyndon Johnson, more crudely, was attributed to have said, “better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

It is a mistake to assume that those who criticize or disagree with you are doing so from an adversarial standpoint. People who disagree with you aren’t necessarily enemies, or even opponents. They just disagree.

Some of the most pointed criticism I have received in my life came from people who sincerely wanted the best for me — it would have been a mistake for me not to have listened.

I think it’s a lesson that could be learned in Willow Park in regard to the two city council appearances by Amy Fennell, who was shut down from speaking at both.

When Fennell approached the podium in Willow Park for the first time, I think an effective leader would have allowed the criticism and then continued with the meeting.

Fennell would have had her say, the meeting would have continued, and it might have been a bullet point in a city council story — in any event, it would have been over and done with.

Imagine, for a moment, how things might have been different.

What if city council members had been given a seat at the table instead of being shut out of the process of nominating members to the city’s Home Rule Charter Commission? In the end, the charter might have some differences, but it might also not have met with the opposition that led to its postponement.

That’s the way to sit in The Chair — you bring your opponents into the tent; you accept the criticism and move on, either heeding it or rejecting it.

The Chair is not a throne, it is a two-way street. If you are sitting in it just so you can have the license plate and revel in the title, you are there for the wrong reason. The chair requires service, sacrifice, and the ability to listen.