The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

One measure of a good leader is the degree to which they look for opportunities for followers to succeed.

I was reminded of this today when my son came home from high school sporting a yellow disciplinary sheet from one of his teachers, for me to sign. His infraction? It wasn’t that he had been smoking in the boys room, doing crack in the gym, fighting, swearing, or having an illicit relationship with a teacher. No. Instead, he had neglected to get me to sign an information sheet from his French teacher notifying parents that they were requested to supply a sample of French cheese for the upcoming observance of National French Week.

For this, his punishment was to receive a zero for a homework grade, and to suffer the humiliation of having to confess this misdeed to his parents.

Give me a break, lady.

Keep in mind it was not for failure to bring in the aforementioned Camembert, Pont-l’Évêque, or Selles-sur-Cher, but for the failure to bring in a signed acknowledgement of his having shared the information sheet with his parents. Sacre bleu!

This is my son’s third year of French, a language which, we’ll just say, he’s not so much trying to learn, as to survive. We’ve tangled with Madame on previous occasions. But this one takes the cake (as in, let them eat…)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for high academic standards. And we ride our son pretty hard on doing his homework, studying, excelling on tests and other assignments, and all the rest. If you’ll allow me a moment of parental privilege, this kid’s no slouch. He’s an A-B student in a highly challenging college prep high school, and next week he’ll have his Eagle Scout Board of Review.

I don’t know about you, but the way things are around our house, I’m really not looking for another piece of paper to have to handle, or to sign, to prove that I looked at it.

Look - we’ve all got plenty of opportunities to fail. True leaders actively seek opportunities for others to do well, rather than going around creating opportunities for a zero homework grade.

What do you think?

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