What is a Setback?
Understanding the Challenges We Face
If you are anything like me, you like getting things done! As an Assistant Principal and a mother of one and five-year-old daughters, who was also completing a credential program and Master’s degree, nothing was accomplished without a Get It Done List. The Get it Done List applied to personal and professional tasks and what I planned to accomplish in the next three to five years. I embraced the notion that “a dream written down with a date becomes a goal”. As a lifelong learner and high achiever, I live by SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable, and Timely). When one goal was accomplished, I prepared myself for the next goal. In a nine-year time period, I became a principal, led 2 schools to be awarded a California Distinguished School Award, led a successful turnaround network, became a Superintendent, and earned a doctorate in Educational Leadership. I led many schools through successful goal setting until I couldn’t. I experienced a major setback that derailed my trajectory, but in hindsight, it became a pivotal moment in turning setbacks into success, allowing me to shift gears and make a deeper impact than I could have ever imagined.
A setback is defined as a delay or impeding the progress of someone or something, but it can also serve as a stepping stone in turning setbacks into success with the right mindset and reflection.
When Setbacks Feel Like Failure
A Personal Experience
In 2021, amid the pandemic, our community was forced to close a school and displace an entire K-8 community of students. This treasured neighborhood school was a safe haven for students and a responsive anchor for families in the local area. Additionally, not only was the school forced to close, but every student was displaced to a lower-performing school that was no longer within walking distance from their homes.
Despite our best efforts and every indication that a thriving community school would remain open, and despite every goal, action plan, and effort we exerted, we could not keep the school open to continue to serve the community. This setback was not only devastating for the students, and organization that rallied hard to keep the school open, it was deeply personal and catastrophic for me. For the first time in my career, I could not create an environment where students were safe and better prepared for their futures. In this circumstance, they were worse off.
Turning Setbacks into Success
The Power of Reflection
This turn of events, a setback, caused me to pause, reflect, and consider goal setting—reinforcing that turning setbacks into success requires adaptability, alignment, and purpose-driven leadership. Researcher Jennifer Porter (2017) shares that the practices allow the brain to pause, reflect amidst the chaos, and sort through individual and collective observations and experiences to consider multiple interpretations and create meaning. The meaning is that learning can inform future actions. In short...
the roadmap to proactive leadership is adaptable, inspires a culture of preparedness and innovation, and fosters environments where teams thrive irrespective of external pressures.
What Great Leaders Do Differently
Great leaders recognize that turning setbacks into success is not about avoiding failure, but about leveraging every challenge as a learning opportunity. Bailey and Rehman (2022) identify reflection as an integral practice that separates mediocre leaders from good leaders and good leaders from great leaders. A key reflection factor is recognizing the emotions and lessons of surprise, frustration, and failure and leveraging those insights to transform them into core stepping stones for future success.
This learning from this particular setback illuminated and reinforced my personal “why” as an educator- to create opportunities and access for exploration, growth, and, ultimately, liberation. I reflected that in the process of advancing and goal setting, I stepped into roles that were not closely aligned with my personal why. I realized that if I was not aligned with my why, my intentions may always have the potential to be misaligned with my impact. While I know on a cognitive level that I was not responsible for the school’s closure, as many social and political influences determined the school’s fate, perhaps my influence, efforts, and energy could have been more aligned with my why. This realization led me to create new goals aligned with my why and, ultimately, a new career path where my time and energy is closely aligned with the impact of creating opportunity, access, and liberation. I now have a practice of reflection in goal setting, where I can determine when I am misaligned and proactively recenter. My new goal-setting process now incorporates reflection SMARRT (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Reflective, and Timely).
Setbacks are fundamental next steps in turning setbacks into success when we incorporate our reflection, align with our purpose, and proactively prepare for the future.
Source Citations
Bailey, J. & Rehman, S. (April, 2022). Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection. The Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2022/03/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-self-reflection
Lynch, M. (2019). Effective School Leaders are Reflective Practitioners. The Edvocate. Retrieved from: https://www.theedadvocate.org/effective-school-leaders-are-reflective-practitioners/
Porter, J. (2017, March 21). Why you should make time for self-reflection (even if you hate doing it). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-you-should-make-time-for-self-reflection-even-if-you-hate-doing-it
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