Is “gap overload stressing you out?” (It’s definitely possible.) – SCN Encourager

How many “gaps” are you struggling with every day?

My guess?

A LOT!

We’ve all got our various healthy-wealthy-and wise bases to cover on the home front.

And then at school, we’ve got an entirely different list of shortfalls-deficiencies-and sub-group comparatives to monitor.

As fate would have it, my home and school related “gaps” are tightly wrapped together.

I need to make considerable improvements at multiple locations.

Lucky me.

I hope you’re not similarly vexed.

You’ve got to be better at managing “gaps” than I am!

One significant gap we most likely share as school communicators has to do with how well we think we know the people around us.

By “people around us,” I’m referring to a group of very important people in our lives, primarily our current and prospective students, parents, and team members.

How we retain and recruit families in this group is critical as you know full well.

Now usually we’re happy to remember as many names as we can and call it good.

But we might want to check out bumping up to next level.

A sizable gap still exists because we often will fail to what’s necessary to learn about everyone’s unique dreams, hopes, and fears.

It’s practically impossible.

Learning unique names is one thing.

But connecting names and faces to their personal aspirations is something else entirely.

This is why this particular gap is so huge.

Unfortunately, the main tactic we deploy to fill this gap (and most of the others) involves making quick assumptions.

This is both bad news and good news.

The bad news is: Due to time pressures and busy-ness, the assumptions we make are often dead wrong or inaccurate.

The good news is: We can be aware of our tendency to backfill our gaps with goofy speedy-kwik assumptions, and we can do something about them before we disrupt our people, programs, and budgets more than we need to.

Now this isn’t actually “good news” for me.

Because I’m forced to think about what this “good news” involves.

I can’t help wondering how many of my assumptions through the years have resulted in either upsetting people needlessly or using resources inefficiently.

That’d be awful.

So I’m going to stop reading what I write before I get into too much trouble.

But I hope you’re not thinking this way.

I’m grateful you’ll take the time to read the Encourager every now and then.

And I also hope you’ll be able to close a few of your “favorite gaps” this holiday weekend.

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