Comfort Zone

I like writing code. It's not only something I enjoy, but I like to think I'm quite good at it. I guess it's the fact that it's just me and the machine, tunnel vision, cranking out a solution to a problem.

I took on the extra curricular activity of being a governor at my son's school about 2 years ago. It's been very rewarding finding out how his school ticks. I went on a course about 'Performance Management' which covered what is involved in conducting the Head teacher's performance / pay review. This is proper manager stuff. Trouble was, there was only me and one very new governor that went on the training, so I was therefore the most qualified to lead the review.

I will confess to being more than a little apprehensive. I don't respond well to authority, so actually being the authority made me more than a little uncomfortable. I read through all the notes from past meetings that I could get my hands on, and the various policies and pupil performance metrics etc, but I still felt hopelessly out of my depth as I walked in to the meeting. Fortunately, the Head teacher in question has done a fantastic job, so that was a relief. In the end, the meeting took over 2 hours with me asking questions and examining evidence to assess past performance, before identifying targets for the year ahead. By the time I got home afterwards I was absolutely exhausted.

I learnt a lot from the exercise. I now know that I can do the management type thing if I really have to, and that I should probably have a little more respect for the work that managers do. I know how draining it was doing 1 review ... imagine managing a team of 10 !