Passing the Torch

As I mentioned last year, we found someone willing to be president of our PTA. This year I am vice-president, in hopes of helping the new president through her first year. At the end of this year, I do plan to step down as vice-president (which is not a position that needs to be filled for the board to continue).

The problem is I’m evidently horrible at delegating, and even worse at passing along responsibilities entirely. So far I’ve done an absolute shit job of handing over the reins to someone else.

I guess it’s not surprising, since at my job I’m basically a lone wolf who is free to decide what I want to do and then executes those ideas all on my own. I’ve only rarely had someone to collaborate with and even when I did, I’m realizing looking back that I did a shit job of it there too. I like to do things by myself, and when I’m motivated I can get shit done like gangbusters.

I did basically no prep work this summer to hand over the “presidency” of the PTA to my predecessor, who is an incredibly smart and capable woman. I’m sure she could handle the ins and outs of this role herself, if I’d just give her the information and tools to do it.

Instead I spent much of August and the beginning of September doing everything I used to, while only peripherally involving the new president. I realized pretty quickly that I was failing miserably at stepping down from old role, but as I recognized how much work I’d need to do to effectively step down, the idea of doing so felt more daunting.

I finally met with the new president this weekend and officially handed over two major responsibilities. When I articulated her role in an effective way she immediately took concrete steps to assume those responsibilities. It’s clear that she DOES know how to create systems that will allow the passing of the torch to be much simpler moving forward.

The good news is, I have way less motivation to do anything PTA related than I thought I would. I’m pretty much burnt out. So I’m having less trouble not taking on the stuff I used to do. And the reality is I can’t copy fliers anymore (my work gave us “copy codes” at the end of last year and can now track how much we are copying so making 500 copies for the PTA every week or so just isn’t going to fly anymore – even if I’m buying my own paper which I’ve always done). Since fliers going home in folders is our school’s primary way of communicating, we need to figure out something else. The fliers have never really been effective at producing the parent participation we wanted anyway, so it’s easy to let that fall by the wayside as we explore more effective options for communicating with parents. Anyway, it’s been nice to say, I can’t design/print/copy/sort the fliers anymore and also be okay when that means it just doesn’t happen. I feel the tendrils of this position loosening their hold on me. Now if I can just hand over the reins, I can really step into the background.

The book fair is at the end of this month and then October is pretty light. That is when I hope to fully let go of grasp on the position of PTA president. I am so grateful that my predecessor is capable and that I feel confident in her ability to take on the role. I just wish I had done more in the last two years to delegate responsibilities, so I didn’t have so much to hand over.