From the Memory Box 

Issue No 12

Dilemmas and sliding door moments provide us with ample opportunities for reflection and growth. In so doing they have also great capacity to bedevil us; shake our confidence to the core. At worst - paralyse our decision-making capabilities. School leaders encounter this apparent paradox quite regularly. There’s a certain irony at play given the contrasting meanings between dilemmas and sliding door moments and it is within the irony that lessons can be learned. 

Dilemmas, for their part, place us in situations in which a difficult choice has to be made between two contrasting options. Sliding door moments refer to seemingly insignificant incidents that change the course of future events. Both raise the spectre of that infuriatingly impossible question - what if? 

In preparing for this piece, I couldn’t help but reflect on my career and some dilemmas and sliding door moments I have encountered and found it to be quite an intriguing activity.

My focus started with a dilemma and much to my surprise, I settled for, what on reflection, I’m not sure qualifies as a dilemma. I made an initial decision without any anguish, then later changed it, again without anguish, yet the resultant outcome has had a profound impact on my career. Was it then a real dilemma or merely two sliding door moments wrapped in one event? 

Back in 1989 when I was the principal of South Melbourne Primary School, a small school with a student population of just 115 students, I applied for several principal positions of larger schools, plus that of Berwick Lodge Primary School, a new school yet to be opened. Of the four schools for which I was shortlisted, after some deliberation, I placed Berwick Lodge fourth because I had no experience of a new school, and thought no more of it. I later changed my selections and placed Berwick Lodge first on the advice of a trusted friend who convinced me that other applicants would most likely have no experience of opening a new school either. Furthermore, to open a new school, in his opinion, was a rare privilege, one experienced by only a few members of the teaching profession. I was sold on his advice and, with hindsight, forever grateful.

Was I lucky? Had I invested my trust in a less knowledgeable and wise friend, who knows what the outcome might have been. I’ve done that before in my life! 

Beyond the obvious lesson of choosing carefully from whom to take serious advice, my takeaway message from that decision-making all those years ago taught me to be very mindful of the advice I give to others. 

Sliding door moments, for their part, take care of themselves - they just flow through our lives. The most fascinating aspect of them is the ease with which the decisions from them occur, no matter the potential profound consequences that which later might prevail, unbeknown at the time. What are we to make of that, that could benefit our future decision-making? I don’t know. 

Dilemmas, with which we are all more than familiar enough, on the other hand, can haunt our every waking moment. Managing that well, now that is no small part of the grist of our work.