100,000 Bent Nails

Summary for Educators

By Dan Rockwell | Leadership Freak | September 28, 2026

Leadership often reveals itself in what we do with people who struggle.

In “100,000 Bent Nails,” Dan Rockwell uses a memorable story from Donald Hall’s String Too Short to Be Saved. Washington Woodward reportedly collected discarded boards, removed their bent nails, straightened them, and saved them for future use. By the time he died, he had accumulated roughly 100,000 straightened nails. His guiding belief was simple: good material should not be wasted.

Rockwell turns that unusual habit into a leadership metaphor: What happens when the “bent nail” is a person?

THE BIG IDEA

Schools are filled with people who occasionally become “bent”—a teacher struggling with classroom management, an assistant principal who makes a poor decision, a student whose behavior masks potential, or a staff member whose performance has slipped.

The easiest leadership response is labeling: difficult, ineffective, unmotivated, negative, or simply “not a good fit.”

Rockwell argues for a different starting point. A bent nail is not automatically useless; it may simply need attention, support, instruction, and another opportunity. Leaders cannot—and should not—“hammer people straight.” Instead, they can create the conditions in which people develop. That means teaching, coaching, giving honest feedback, recognizing present contributions, and continuing to see future potential.

For school leaders, the message is especially important because educational organizations are supposed to be places of learning. Adults should be allowed to learn, too.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Avoid defining people by one mistake. A poor lesson, mishandled conflict, unsuccessful initiative, or difficult year should not automatically become a permanent label.

• Development requires truth. Supporting people does not mean ignoring weak performance. Rockwell specifically emphasizes telling people the truth without abandoning them.

• Second chances matter. Improvement often requires opportunities to try again after receiving coaching, feedback, or additional training.

• Notice what is already working. Leaders who focus exclusively on weaknesses can overlook useful talents and contributions.

• Look for potential, not merely current performance. Strong leadership asks not only, “How is this person performing now?” but also, “What might this person become?”

• Examine the organization itself. One insightful response to Rockwell’s article raises another leadership question: if an organization has enormous numbers of “bent nails,” leaders should investigate what in the environment may be bending them.

WHY IT MATTERS

Schools frequently talk about having a growth mindset for students. The more difficult leadership challenge is applying the same principle to adults.

A principal's calendar, meetings, evaluations, coaching conversations, and responses to mistakes communicate whether development is genuine or merely something written in the school improvement plan.

When employees believe that one error will define them permanently, they naturally become defensive and self-protective. Rockwell argues that treating people as disposable encourages exactly those walls.

A developmental culture does something different. It combines accountability with the belief that improvement is possible.

That distinction matters enormously in schools, where leadership development, teacher growth, mentoring, and succession planning depend upon people being allowed to become better than they currently are.

LEADERSHIP ACTIONS

1. Replace labels with diagnoses.
Instead of saying, “She is a weak teacher,” ask, “What specifically is preventing her from succeeding?”

2. Separate the person from the performance.
Address the behavior, decision, or skill gap without turning it into a judgment about someone's overall worth.

3. Provide a genuine second attempt.
After coaching someone, create an opportunity to demonstrate improvement.

4. Match support to the problem.
Some people need training. Others need clearer expectations, mentoring, feedback, resources, or perhaps a different assignment.

5. Ask whether the system is contributing.
Repeated performance problems across many employees may indicate unclear expectations, poor onboarding, weak professional development, excessive workload, or ineffective leadership practices.

6. Know when development has reached its limit.
Believing in people does not eliminate accountability. Occasionally separation is necessary. The important question is whether leaders made a serious effort to develop someone before concluding that separation was required.

LEADER REFLECTION

Think about someone in your school whom you may have quietly labeled a “bent nail.”

Have you decided what that person is—or are you still helping that person become what they could be?

And perhaps an even more challenging question:

If your organization seems to produce a lot of bent nails, what might the organization itself be doing to bend them?

Original Article

------------------------------

Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com