The Comfort Zone and School Restructuring Unfortunately, life in the comfort zone is addictive for many. Once we have tasted the security and predictability of life in the comfort zone, our desire for comfort often seems to grow and we require ever larger doses to maintain equilibrium. Comfort is normal, we feel. Discomfort is abnormal. Risk is an enemy because it threatens disruption.
Adventure is a high stakes gamble.
Leadership is the ability to provide and maintain comfort, raising high the walls which keep outside pressures from penetrating and upsetting the normal way. It is not the kind of influence once provided by whaling captains or wagon masters. Schools are especially vulnerable to the phenomenon of the comfort zone because so many people have done their best to make life uncomfortable for us in recent decades. Our need for comfort is probably exaggerated because we have suffered frequent, intense criticism during a time period when our jobs became especially challenging as the society and the nature of families dumped huge new responsibilities upon us. The society has done little to provide schools with encouragement for innovative solutions.