TEMPTATION No. 1—to consider programs more important than people—to be less concerned about the welfare, feelings, and self-respect of the people working on the program than about the welfare of the people for whom the program is designed. To escape to the routine of desk work because the development of staff is the more difficult and frustrating of the two tasks, and then to make the desk work itself look very important.
TEMPTATION No. 2—to indulge in immediate decisions because the administrative role is seen as demanding quick decisions. To forget that it sometimes takes more courage to delay a decision in order to ponder its impact upon others, and perhaps to prepare them for it, than it does to give a quick decision in order to free you for something else. The quick decision takes it off your mind but it may have done great damage to someone else.
TEMPTATION No. 3—to consider the group more important than the individual. Here again the role of an administrator is that he is seen as one responsible for the group, but he may forget that often the individual staff member with whom one is patient and constructive may later on spark the group and benefit the institution most. To fall for the rationalization that the group is suffering and that something must be done; whereas, it is your own peace of mind and your particular way of doing things that is suffering. The group is not as troubled as you are.
TEMPTATION No. 4—to be so coerced by the need for the approval of others that your personal values and convictions suffer in the decision that is made. To forget that if you lose self-respect, you lose the one essential quality which enables you to retain the respect of others.
TEMPTATION No. 5—to believe that you should always have the answers because the administrator is supposed to have answers. To think that it is a weakness to admit that you do not know. To neglect the opportunity to ask the other person what he thinks and to draw upon his knowledge, since this will increase his respect for you more than for you to attempt to have the answers at all times.
TEMPTATION No. 6—to be discouraged because you see little change or improvement in your program that attempts to work changes in people and procedures. Both of these involve time and faith in people. To rush the process, not because this helps the situation but because it helps your peace of mind and makes you feel that you are getting somewhere. To neglect to include in your long-range plans some intermediate steps with short-range time tags, so you can get some feelings of encouragement for your long-range run.
TEMPTATION No. 7—to talk about democratic policy but not to demonstrate it in your behavior with staff. To be self-deceived in this matter. You raise questions for discussion at staff meetings, but in raising them state your own opinion first and then believe that you can get uninhibited agreement or disagreement from staff. To forget that you are not a person but a title and an authority figure, and that if you wish democratic policy-making you will have to keep your own conclusions to yourself until all others have had ample chance to state theirs. To fail to state the limits of a legal, financial, or public relations nature within which policy decisions may be discussed, and then to be so disappointed with the way in which the decision turns out that you openly disapprove, shows clearly the risk the staff takes the next time in attempting a policy statement which is not theirs but yours.
TEMPTATION No. 8—to blame a situation for the wrong outcome rather than to examine one's own part in it. If the other fellow had acted differently, or if the situation had been different, then you might have been successful, at least so you believe.
An ancient quotation neatly points up this type of psychological escape. (It is offered here with humility, for the writer is well aware how clearly the preceding sentences describe some of his own behavior.) "The same fire that melts the wax, hardens the steel." It is not the fire that causes the difference but the amount of steel in the person.
