Speaking Thursday morning before hundreds of high-powered women and a handful of obliging men packed into Georgetown’s Sequoia restaurant, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee shared her most valuable lesson learned in three years on the job.
“It’s OK not to be liked,” she said. “And I’m really good at this right now.”
Rhee spoke at a generally fawning Bisnow Media forum alongside Katharine Weymouth, publisher of the Washington Post, and Katherine Bradley, president of multi-million dollar CityBridge Foundation and wife of Atlantic Media Co. owner David Bradley.
Also discussed was how to maintain sanity amid critical onslaughts. Bradley advised depersonalizing criticism, and acknowledging, always, that no one is ever 100 percent correct. Weymouth emphasized forward motion, even when the magnitude of the mistake (say, inviting interested parties to pay for access to reporters at private events) is enough to make one consider never acting publicly again.
Rhee, sitting several feet from one of her biggest detractors with a video camera in his hand, said she wakes each morning focusing on the end goal.
“People generally have wanted to avoid getting yelled at,” she said. “But that’s never made anything better for our children.”
