What a sixth grader taught me about staying agile when the unexpected comes from the person you least expect it from
You just never know what — or who — is going to show up on any given day in your journey as a team member or team leader. This particular experience I am about to share greatly underscored just how agile and prepared you must be for the unexpected. In this particular case, it was an experience I had during my first year as a school principal.
It Started With a Snort
I was standing at the coffee pot, still working on my first cup, when my office manager walked over with a warning. A sixth grader was on his way to see me. During a serious class exercise, he’d made a noise best described as a snort — and then done it again, and again, until his teacher had finally had enough. She sent him to me with one condition for getting back into class: he had to walk into my office and snort for me, twenty-five times, since he apparently found it so hilarious.
I thanked my manager for the heads-up. I was going to need it. How was I supposed to keep a straight face through that?
The Question Under the Question
When he came in, we prayed first. Then I asked him what was going on. He didn’t dodge — he told me about the snorting, no excuses. When I asked why, he just shrugged. I didn’t let that go. There’s always a reason, I told him, even when we don’t want to look at it. He eventually admitted he thought it was funny, and that it got him some attention.
That word — attention — is usually a thread worth pulling. So I pulled it, and stepped into water I knew could get deep fast. I asked how things were going outside of school. He talked about his siblings, his mom. Then I asked about his dad.
“New Jersey,” he said.
“When did you last see him?”
“Over three years ago.”
Where It Turned
He went quiet. Tears started welling up. He didn’t say another word, and he didn’t need to — the weight of it was written all over his face. I kept my own composure and gently turned the conversation to his mother: how much she loved him, how much she sacrificed for him. That’s when the tears actually fell. I’ll admit, it took everything I had to hold it together on my end too. Principals aren’t supposed to cry.
I told him this:
“There is greatness within you. God has placed it there through your relationship with His Son. He has great plans for what you’ll do. Keep your eyes on others, build trust with them — that’s what will prepare you for what’s ahead. But, in order to embrace those plans, you must forgive your dad.”
I gave him a minute to collect himself, then walked him back to class. On the way back to my office, it hit me: what started as a discipline case had turned, on a dime, into a heart issue. I prayed I’d helped that heart heal, just a little, for the road still in front of him.
Agility Isn’t Just for Hard Days — It’s for Hard People
Here’s what I kept relearning in that job: the plans I showed up with rarely survived the first contact with the day. I can walk in with an agenda, a calendar, a to-do list — and it takes one office manager, one hallway conversation, one kid who won’t stop snorting, to scrap all of it.
But the deeper lesson isn’t about schedules. It’s about people. I expected a discipline problem. I got a grieving son. The unexpected didn’t come from a fire drill or a broken pipe — it came from a twelve-year-old who’d learned that making people laugh was easier than talking about his dad.
That’s the kind of agility leadership actually demands: the readiness to set down the story you walked in with the moment a person shows you a truer one. If I’d stayed locked onto “discipline problem,” I’d have handed out a consequence and missed a kid who needed something else entirely. Staying agile meant staying curious past the first answer — pushing gently on “I don’t know” until something real surfaced.
You just never know what’s waiting to unfold on any given day — or who’s about to hand it to you.
Oh…by way of a postscript to this, he has reconnected with his Dad. Healing has begun.
Kevin Lewis is a certified Maxwell Coach and Consultant specializing in organizational effectiveness, team communication, and leadership development.