Seven times. That’s how many interruptions occurred during my meeting with the principal. Someone came to his door, and then another person, then another person… We finished 20 minutes of conversation in an hour and 13 minutes. I wish I could tell you that each case was an emergency. The fact of the matter is none of the scenarios was an emergency. One person needed to find out about the timing of an afterschool program. Another wanted to confirm that the principal got a document in his mailbox. Another wanted to figure out what day he could go to a PD. The list goes on. There were no deaths, and no incidents that needed his consultation. There was not an earthquake or anything that everyone would agree warranted the principal’s attention. He had an open-door policy.
The problem with his open-door policy was that it interrupted the in-the-door activities. An open door does mean, “Come in whenever you need to.” At least that was what I was taught as best practices when I was training to become a principal. That is exactly what I did when I became a principal. No situation was too small or too big for someone to come in my room and interrupt what was happening in there. It was not until my mentor helped me see that I was accomplishing very little with those who were actually in my room.
Imagine sitting down for a post-observation with me. We are unpacking what happened during the class. I ask you, “if you could change one thing in your lesson, what would it be?” You think for a moment. You gather a brilliant answer, and you get ready to share. Just when you are about to speak, someone comes into the room and asks where she can get an extra chair for the new student in her classroom. I answer the person. Then I change my answer. The person nods to my response. I turn back to you and you realize you forgot the answer to the question. Even worse, what about if you were about to tell me that you were frustrated with your co-teacher but interrupted your courageous moment to approve someone’s request for a personal day.
Regardless of the circumstances, meetings with personnel or anyone should be sacred. It is imperative that the leader is present and focused on his or her constituents while participating in a meeting. When leaders are not, the people in the room do not feel valued. When people do not feel valued, transformational leadership weakens and culture suffers. I would also add that trust deteriorates.
If I had to guess where the open-door policy idea came from I would guess that someone thought it made people feel heard. Unfortunately, it spiraled into a customer service structure that resulted in a principal decreasing his or her productivity level. Here are the issues with an open-door policy that looks like what I described earlier:
1. By allowing anyone to come to my door at any time, I give every person access to the highest power. Therefore, if anyone wants immediate action, then why go through the other channels. They could go straight to the top of the ladder. This creates a dependency on the principal to resolve personal situations.
2. It also devalues the other positions that folks were supposed to speak to or use to resolve the situation. That can be frustrating for other personnel in your building. It could also enable people to avoid work.
3. If anyone can come to your door, then the fluidity of your conversations, your thinking, or your attention are sacrificed to appease one individual. You are basically trading in one person or team for the satisfaction of another. An unnecessary decision to fulfill this concept of access to the principal.
4. Most initiatives have a higher success rate with a plan. Plans require you to use your time effectively to monitor, revise, and contribute to those action steps. Therefore, as a principal, you will need to set aside time to do all those pieces. If visitors to your office are going to disrupt that, then the plan will eventually fall apart.
So how can we still provide people with a voice but not disrupt the productivity of the leader. Well, if you have read my work previously, you would know I always share solutions. Here they are:
1. Build systems to handle questions that you should not be answering. If people need a chair, who should they go to? If people need supplies, who should they go to? I know one person they should NOT go to, it’s the school’s leader. If you are in a small school, then build a system that has people communicating to you through email or during certain periods. This will push your staff to plan and prepare. I just had a flashback of making copies for a teacher for her class because she forgot. That was not a good use of my time. During my best years as a principal, such situations never interrupted my meetings.
2. Only allow emergencies to interrupt your meetings. The key piece in this aspect is for you to define what an emergency is. My staff knew that if no one’s health was at risk, if it was not above a level 3 incident, or if it was not the superintendent then no one was allowed to enter my office. For the record, I was hardly ever in my office except for meetings (this is a whole other topic for another day). Another way to communicate this, if you can email me about it then it should not be brought to my immediate attention. Then enforce that policy or else it means nothing.
3. Do not enable your people by letting them skip the systems. Suppose someone has an issue with a policy. In that case, they should go to the head of the department first (if he or she exists), then to the assistant principal (if he or she exists), and then you should get an email describing how they went to those people and they were not happy with the response. If someone skipped any of those steps, I would ask them if they did those steps first. If they did not, then I would direct them to do so. The same went for students as well (as much as I wanted to help them every time they asked!). Helping people skip steps weakens the system and increases the flow of people coming to you to resolve their issues. That is not your job. Your job is to make the vision clear to all constituents and move everyone toward the vision. Not rescue your people.
4. Make sure there is time in your schedule for people to stop by your office. The key concept in the open-door policy is people need a way to share their voice. Sometimes people need to air their frustration or vent about the stress in their lives. They need a safe place to do this. Very often, your office is the place to do that. I would ensure I had a period each day for people to stop by. I tried to line them up with the most common periods that hosted the teachers’ preps. Most of the time, it was during at least one of our student lunch periods. I would use this time to check my email if no one was in my office or I would eat lunch…or both. I shared those periods with my staff on a weekly basis because they changed week-to-week due to meetings, observations, and walkthroughs.
The myth about the open-door policy is that you should always be accessible. I highly disagree with this. If you are not in classrooms moving instruction, then you are letting your students down. If you are not giving meetings your undivided attention then you are disappointing your constituents. There is a way to give everyone access to you and still be productive. It requires you to be a systems thinker and disciplined in ensuring the systems are successful.
I will leave you with this last thought. Most leaders I work with who allow people to access them at any time, usually have a low trust rating with their staff. Meaning that their staff after all that sacrificing for them, still did not trust their leader(s). In the end, people need consistency. They may not like you but they will always trust consistency. You can’t get more inconsistent with impromptu resolution-seeking individuals who consistently interrupt the experience of your followers. Now go be systematically accessible and consistent.
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