Heroes or Humor. Take your pick. – SCN Encourager 11/19/2013

This is one choice I won’t offer school communicators.

Not even on a bet.

Here’s why.

I meticulously scrutinize and analyze the responses I receive back from readers of the Encourager.

I’ve already told you that I use an incredibly tough-on-self assessment tool to sort and chart your feedback.

Every reply lands in one of these two columns: high praise or undecided.

The replies I received from yesterday’s Encourager (about noticing our heroes and telling their stories) are instructive.

About us… about our tribe.

They were split about 50% / 50%.

Some wrote in to essentially say,”Hey, thanks. A timely message for us today.”

These were nice to have.

They didn’t make me nervous.

The others were the ones that caused me to “over think.”

All I can tell you is that school leaders and communicators possess unlimited affection for humor.

Which is probably a necessity given the stress of our responsibilities.

Two examples will show you what I mean.

Now remember… these were triggered by an Encourager about heroes.

One person picked up on my phrase which described some people as “glass half-empty-or” types.

She sent me a cartoon that shows a “glass half full or glass half empty” personality profile.

 

I hope you can see it without having to click over to the Encourager website itself.

I laughed before I saw the guy on the lower right — this personality type hits too close to home.

Example #2 came in with a note and this image attached from FactHive, a no-named-person entity that tweets out facts about 8 times per hour everyday.

 

 

 

 

Now why would someone send ME — of all people — a little ditty about IQ?

I hope I’m not the only one puzzled by the point FactHive is trying to make.

Isn’t it logical that 50% would be below average?

Or am I missing something?

And please, this is a rhetorical question… you don’t have to write back and add to the growing stack of folks I’ve pigeon-holed into the “undecided” category.

Tom Page, SCN