Education Leadership

Being decisive is not only about making decisions rapidly; it is about modeling a positive and effective way of thinking and acting. It is about using the wisdom that you have accumulated during your career to create a process of decision making that consistently yields good results. It is about avoiding the agony and pain that comes along with being indecisive. It is about making the best decision possible and moving on to the next challenge, which helps you and your organization be more productive.

Be resolute

How can leaders accomplish this? I am glad you asked. To make the best decisions possible, evaluate and understand each option carefully while getting advice from the right people and sources to help you make your final decision. Sometimes you may even include your entire organization in the decision-making process, using the wisdom of the masses to plot a course forward. Once you have all of the information that you need, make the best decision possible.

Do not let indecisiveness paralyze you. Give yourself a deadline for making decisions and never deviate from it. Once you make your decision, stand by it, and remember that you can’t waver back and forth. That is only acceptable during the decision making process. Just have faith that you make the best possible choice with the information that was provided for you.

A little homework

Over the next month, whenever you have to make a decision, practice being resolute. This means weighing the possible approaches and outcomes and choosing the most desirable solution. After a decision has been made, don’t go back on it, unless there is new information that necessitates a different approach. After a month, what do you notice? You should notice that indecisiveness no longer paralyzes, and you don’t constantly go back and forth when making decisions. In the end, you will save yourself valuable time and avoid the stress that comes along with being indecisive.

Like professional athletes, great education leaders follow rigorous routines to keep their skills sharp and their delivery constant. Education leaders know that that practice makes perfect and the more consistent you can be, the more success your school or district will have.

The marathon never ends

You have to remember that steady wins the race, and this is certainly the case in education. To be a successful education leader, every time you step on the field or court, you have to bring you’re “A” game with you and deliver a great performance each time. If you don’t, your organization will not operate at an optimal level and will experience ups and downs.

To deliver a great performance every time, you have to be prepared for the rigors of leadership. You have to practice giving an optimal performance, even in less than ideal conditions. You have to practice your skills until they become second nature and automatic. Then and only then will you be able to make the right play.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t make a poor decision from time to time. However, even in those situations, failure helps you learn from your mistakes, and the next time you are in the same or a similar scenario, you will know what move to make. The key is to ensure that failure does not happen in succession, which can lead to a leadership slump. Just stick to your guns, and use your skills and experiences to lead the way. That way, you will be sure to be voted MYP (Most Valuable Principal) every year.

Concluding thoughts

I can’t stress the importance of giving a steady performance. Inconsistent leadership is the reason that most schools fail their students. When a leader is inconsistent, they experience periods of being locked into their duties and periods of being totally aloof. To avoid this predicament, focus on giving a consistent performance every day. It won’t be easy, but it won’t be hard either. Remember, steady wins the race.

The education world changes quickly and will continue to do so. Great education leaders can recognize those changes and guide the school or school district accordingly. On the other hand, it is fascinating how many leaders refuse to change the most straightforward aspects of their schools or school districts because they have the “if it is not broke, do not fix it” mantra.

Open your mind, and imagine the possibilities

While that will work during the short term, as years pass, the school districts and their leaders who refuse to grow, learn, and adapt will be left behind. To be a useful educational leader, you need to be open to learning about new things and exploring new experiences.

So how can a closed-minded education administrator become more open-minded? It usually takes decades for education administrators to become close-minded. Think back to when you first started as a teacher. Think about all of the new trends, strategies, and technologies that were coming into fruition. Like most young educators, you were open to change and eager to learn about these new technologies and trends.

If your principal was decades older than you, it probably was hard for them to adapt to the new way of doing things. As a matter of fact, I bet they were downright closed-minded, insisting on doing things the old fashioned way. They probably held that position until they were no longer effective, and then they were sent out to pasture. Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself? You have lost your thirst for innovation, and have become like the principal that you worked for early in your career. Sigh. You promised yourself that this would never be your fate.

Concluding thoughts

Do you really want to end up like that? Then snap out of it, and start to embrace the present, utilizing all of the technologies and innovations at your disposal. Being innovative will make you more effective, as you will be marrying old school know-how, with new school efficiency. In the end, everyone wins.

Anything that can go wrong in an educational setting usually does. From fistfights to broken pipes, you will deal with some of the most random and comical issues. How you deal with these inevitable situations will determine how successful you will be as an education leader. Will you push through and be resilient, or will you give up and cower in your office? Hopefully, you will choose the former. Let’s discuss in detail how effective education leaders respond to obstacles.

Keep moving, keep pushing, and success will follow

Great education leaders face life and career with poise and determination, especially when things get thorny. When most people might give in, that is the exact moment you need to push through and overcome hardship. For most people, it does not come naturally, but all it takes is a defining moment to help you find your sea legs.

For me, my defining moment was early in my deanship when I realized that the situation that I landed into was worse than the VP of Academic Affairs had originally told me. The professors were subpar, and the students were not ready for the rigors of college work. I didn’t give up; I dug in, and after a year, started to see outstanding results. This would not have happened if I gave up and accepted that the best that the professors or students could be was mediocre. No, I believed they could meet my standard of excellence, and they eventually did.

Concluding thoughts

Life will always be full of roadblocks; how you choose to deal with determine how successful you are. Effective education leaders approach roadblocks with a high level of positivity and innovativeness that allows them to overcome situations that others might run away from. When resilient leaders look back over their careers, they can do so with no regrets, knowing that they gave their best every time. And when times got tough, they got even tougher and stayed the course.

When faced with a challenge, smart education leaders can find creative solutions to problems. Being innovative involves understanding all the resources at your disposal, adapting by applying your collective experiences, bending the rules from time to time, and never being afraid to take a chance.

Innovation, a rare education leadership skill

Innovativeness is one of those education leadership skills that can’t be taught in a college course. It has to come to you naturally or be birthed in the fire of a defining moment. It is in our defining moments that we find out how resourceful and strategic we can be. We find out who we truly are and what we are made of. Our character, good or bad, comes to the forefront. There is something about having your back to the wall that brings out our hidden talents and skills. As the old adage goes, necessity is the mother of all inventions.

I was listening to an interview that someone was doing with Elon Musk that I found especially interesting. He said that once he starts a new venture, he gives himself a minimum amount of capital to start with. Just enough to provide the company with the essentials. Even though he has billions of dollars, he wouldn’t dare tap into it to help fund a new venture.

Why? Because there is something about having to figure things out with limited resources, and building something from scratch, that brings out the innovation and resourcefulness in us. The pressure from this practice is how Elon Musk was able to build from scratch and then sell PayPal.

Also, keep in mind that innovation requires a good amount of experimentation and risk. Because of this, you want to test the viability of innovation before committing resources to it. This allows you to learn from your mistakes, as it may take several iterations or prototypes before you perfect your innovation.

A little homework

Over the next several months, commit to developing an innovative product, tool, initiative, or product for your school or district. Go through the entire innovation cycle, seeing your innovation through to fruition. What did you learn during this process? How did the final project turn out? I suspect that the responses will be a mixed bag, as attempts at innovation do not always bear fruit. However, your attempts at innovation will never end in failure, as you can use your experiences to help you during your next attempt.

The antithesis of proactive is reactive, which means you react to the world around you instead of taking steps to affect the outcomes positively. Proactive education leaders have a do it yourself mindset and approach problematic situations with enthusiasm. If you want to affect your life and the lives around you positively, start by learning to control situations, instead of waiting for things to happen.

Becoming more proactive

To become a proactive leader, the first thing that you need to do is to be able to find and isolate potential issues before they become full-fledged problems. Then you can come up with a solution for solving the issue before it actually becomes widely known. The process of solving problems before they begin is not easy to do. It takes a total understanding of your organization and the forces and pressures that surround it. Then and only then can you begin to predict potential issues and landmines with great accuracy.

As a result of being proactive, you only have to be reactive when problems arise spontaneously without prior signs and warnings. This is less than 5% of all problems, and they happen every once and a while. This allows your school or district to avoid major crises and operate with a minimum number of disruptions. This allows students and educators to operate at an optimal level.

A little homework

Over the next month, use your instincts and intuition to spot potential problems and issues in your environment. Then work on finding viable solutions to them before they become nuisances. During this process, what are you learning about yourself and your ability to be proactive? I suspect that you are learning that you had this skill all along, but you rarely used it. This is probably because, in today’s fast-paced world, things happen so quickly that we rarely have the time to dissect them. When we do, we gain greater control over our environment, bending it to our will.

People in leadership positions often have flexible schedules. Sure, we all work for someone, but we usually can make our schedules. Education leaders need to use this flexibility to become more accessible to the people they lead.

Can you be a little more flexible?

Now, I am not going to lie to you, it will probably take some sacrifice on your part. For instance, to increase your flexibility, come to work an hour or two before anyone else arrives to complete paperwork, reports, outstanding projects, etc. That way, you can ensure that during the school day, your schedule is flexible enough to accommodate impromptu meetings, water cooler conversations, classroom chats, etc.

Being flexible allows you to be there when your teachers and leadership team need you to the most. It’s like being the free safety on a football team. The free safety is a defensive position in American football. They line up ten to fifteen yards behind the line of scrimmage and are considered the last line of defense. Because of this, they need to be good tacklers and strategists. They are considered the “quarterbacks” of the defense. Exactly what a good leader does with their ability to be flexible.

A little homework

Over the next month, work on becoming more flexible. You don’t have to go overboard, as you must find a healthy balance between flexibility and inaccessibility. Giving people too much access to you can be counterproductive, as you never have time to concentrate on essential tasks.

After a month of being more flexible, what are you noticing? Is your team more productive? Are you more productive? More than likely, the answer is yes. Being flexible allows teachers to have access to important information and resources in real-time, and it allows you to ensure that you are meeting their needs. In the end, it is a win, win situation that is sure to positively impact student outcomes.

To think four steps ahead, you need to develop a long-term outlook, using research to make decisions and take time to reflect on them. When you make plans for the long haul, you can create your strategic plan, then take actionable steps towards your goals.

Let’s get to planning

As we have already alluded to, creating your plan is the first step in thinking tactically. Education leaders should not create strategic plans in isolation, they should include their entire organization in the process. Let’s look at the process through the eyes of a school superintendent. I would start out by thinking about the vision that I have for my district. Decide if you want to create a 5 or 10-year strategic plan. Next, start thinking about the goals and objectives that you need to meet to realize your vision. Next, start thinking about the benchmarks that each goal or objective has to meet to be deemed successful. Benchmarks are the standards by which your goals or objectives will be measured or assessed.

Now that you have a rough outline, you can present it to your leadership team. I like coming up with a rough outline first, because it helps to frame the strategic planning process, and it is more efficient than starting off from scratch. Then you can go through each goal/objective, their benchmarks, and timelines, and make major and minor adjustments as needed. Make it known that you are not married to the skeleton outlined that you provided, and nothing is safe.

After your leadership team completes its version, I would present it to the school board for preliminary approval. I say preliminary because although you want them to see the strategic plan early on, you also have more people to win over. After the school board approves the preliminary version, I would present it to school principals and teachers, and finally, the community at large. Their feedback will be valuable in helping you to spot potential issues and make adjustments. Finally, you can present the final version to the school board for approval. And that is the strategic planning process in a nutshell.

After any failure, you usually have two options: give up or figure things out. Education leaders know when it’s time to double down, and when it’s time to fold, and they manage risk and uncertainty by making thoughtful decisions on next steps.

How education leaders manage uncertainty and setbacks

So here is the scenario. You are the 3^rd year principal of an elementary school. You decide to purchase a new software application that is supposed to help your students develop foundational math skills as well as math fluency. You have 300 students, so you purchase 300 copies. You did your due diligence. You researched, vetted, and demoed the product and allowed the company to make a presentation to your leadership team and your teachers. Everyone, including you, thought it was a good product.

Fast forward to the next year, and its time to roll out this new math application. It does not go according to plan, and the rollout process is a disaster. It turns out that although the app is compatible with your student’s devices, it does not work at an optimal level with them. The teachers love the potential of the app, but when used on their student’s tablets, the app is too glitchy to be effective.

You contact the company, and there is nothing that they can do. You ask for a refund, but the company is playing hardball. Do you abandon the product and find something else? If you continue to use an app that is not working at an optimal level, you run the risk of setting your students back academically.

What would I do? I would make it clear to them that they can either run the risk of being sued by my district, or they can do the right thing and either fix the compatibility issue or give us a refund. Also, I would ask them if they want the bad press of being sued for defrauding a school district and putting student’s math fluency at risk. I guarantee you that they will fix the issue or refund your money promptly. By taking a risk in a situation like this, you can avoid your students being setback by something that is outside of their control.

You cannot run your school or district if you are not organized. Education leaders know the power of keeping their personal and professional lives in order. If you don’t believe me, visit the office of successful and unsuccessful education leaders. The successful ones have organized office spaces, and unsuccessful ones have cluttered office spaces.

Let’s get organized

I am not exaggerating, being organized can change your life. How can you accomplish this? If I were you, I would bring my administrative assistants in on this. Why? Because by nature, administrative assistants are organized and can help you devise a system. All you have to do is ask. Also, they need to understand any system that you put together, as they will be working with you hand and hand during your tenure as a leader at that school or district. Once you get your system together, make sure you stick to it, as it is easy to go back to the old way of doing things. Then you are right back where you started, an unorganized mess.

Once you get the hang of things, your life will be so much better. No more spending precious minutes searching for a hole puncher or notepads, as you know exactly where they are. No more spending hours looking for expense reports, as your filing system is easy to follow. Being an organized education leader will make you a lot more effective, I promise it.

Concluding thoughts

So what are you waiting on? There is no time like the present. Commit yourself to become more organized today, and tomorrow it can come true. Believe me, I know. I was once a partially organized education leader, but I turned things around. Once I did, I became more productive and efficient, and I was able to complete projects quicker, which allowed me to enjoy more free time. If this wouldn’t have happened, I will have surely burned out, like so many unorganized leaders before me.