I keep thinking about what Terry suggested, and this time I came up with the idea of "listen more and talk less." I always tried to keep an open-door policy and then when visited by a person, I tried to follow this advice. I found that when I really listened to another person, they often provided any answer they were looking for and really just needed encouragement to follow their ideas through. They really did not want any suggestions from me for the most part. Frequently, when I mentioned an idea, it was mine and not theirs, and then not always a success. If it came to be a failure, then the failure was mine and not theirs. Lots of days I would go home exhausted, because listening seemed to take a part of me away, and then I needed time and rest to get revitalized.
Finally, you have to learn to not blab all over the place what you have been told. If you can keep to yourself what others tell you, then you earn their trust. That trust must be maintained unless the problem is life-threatening, and then you tell the person upfront that you will be sharing this with the proper agency. One time I had to go get a student who was suspected of murdering a member of his family and bring him to the office to be arrested. I still remember the look on his face when he realized that he would be taken to jail. Sadly, there was nothing else to be done. I always wondered what happened to him.
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When 1HW was an assistant principal at La Cueva, and we had just moved into the brand new building, I had an upstairs room with beautiful huge oval window that looked out at the Sandia Mountains, and an office, since I was Department Chairperson. There were two rooms down the hall from me, one of which had a large window, and one had a small one. Lucy was most unhappy because she had a small window. So he called ME in to hear Lucy's problem, whereupon I offered Lucy my room. Nope, she didn't want my room. I tried to insist, and finally the truth came out. She wanted ALICE's room, probably a grievance left over from their previous schools. As it turned out, Alice was quite willing to exchange rooms, once Lucy asked her nicely, and the problem was settled. When I later asked 1HW what he would have done if I hadn't offered, he just replied, "Well, I knew you would do that. And then she would be happy." He had listened to her and understood what the problem was before he ever asked me to hear it. It worked perfectly. I saw him work things out time and time again that first year.
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