Education Leadership

Education leaders must possess the self-confidence to be successful. Self-confidence has to do with your capacity to fulfill multiple roles and is built through your experiences and dealings during your life. Unfortunately, self-confidence is one of those things you either have or do not have, but I believe that it can be learned with a moderate amount of work.

Building self-confidence 101

To build your self-confidence, you need to be open to new experiences and be willing to fail, or you will never grow and find the strength required to push the limits of what you are capable of. To begin, you need to confront your fears and all of the things that cause you anxiety. What is it about these things that freak you out? If your worst fears and anxieties come to life, what is the worst that can happen?

Next, make a conscious effort to confront your fears, one by one. No matter have scared you are, dig deep inside and take that leap of faith. What you will find is that on the other side of fear is self-confidence, as you find out that even if you fail, it is not the end of the world. Also, as you continue to do things that cause you anxiety, you will see that in some cases, you become very good at the tasks and duties that frighten you. With some things, you may never be an expert or even a novice, but overcoming your fear and continuing to do it anyway is a victory in itself.

Concluding thoughts

Remember, as a leader, you call the shots, and as a result, your employees will follow your lead. If you don’t feel confident in your abilities, how can you empower them to be confident in theirs? An organization led by someone who lacks self-confidence will not be very successful, and at it its best, it will be lackluster.

Why is this? Because in business and in life, timidity is rarely rewarded. People have inspired by boldness and courage, not cowardliness. That’s because in business and in life, you will undoubtedly face obstacles, and the timid usually give up, and those with grit and resilience usually power through to the other side, where success is located.

Education leaders hold themselves and the people around them to high expectations, both on a personal and professional level. So when its time to make hiring decisions, they work hard to employ people that have the skills, aptitude, and resilience to live up to their high standards. The end result is a team of education leaders and educators that get results and positively impact their student’s academic achievement.

Setting the standard

Education leaders understand that to achieve their expectations, they need to have stout values, hold themselves accountable for their actions, and never ever make excuses. By doing this, they set the standard, and everyone else on the team will work hard to carry on the tradition of excellence. Without saying a word, you become a mentor and role model to those around you. This creates a culture of excellence, and all of the education stakeholders in your community will buy into it

You are the sum of the people you spend the most time with. So make sure that you surrounded by go-getters with uncompromising standards and high expectations. Remember, iron sharpens iron. This even applies to your life outside of work. Your friends should be a close-knit group of high achievers who work hard to support and push each other towards success. If you don’t have this in your life, it will be hard for you to reach your potential as an education leader.

Concluding thoughts

A final note on high expectations. It is up to you to ensure that your employees have the tools, training, and resources that they need to be successful and meet the expectations that they have set for them. If you expect them to perform to your standards without the requisite capacity or resources, then you have failed them, not the other way around. Keep this in mind the next time an employee misses the mark. Before holding them accountable, you have to backtrack and figure out what went wrong. If you missed the mark as a leader, acknowledge it, and figure out a way to rectify the situation and ensure that it doesn’t happen in the future.

Education leaders face challenges with energy and confidence. Even if they are entering uncharted territory, they approach it as just another thing that can be mastered with hard work and patience. Each time they fail at a task, they just see it as another iteration on the pathway to success. Even when things look bleak, they keep going, never giving up until the task is done.

The truth about optimism

Sometimes being optimistic includes being honest with yourself and admitting that you need help. Maybe you need to call a colleague in to help or hire a consulting firm to help you complete the task. Regardless, optimism leads you to believe that the job can and will get done, even if the bulk of the work is done by others. At the end of the day, being part of the solution helps you to gain valuable new skills that you can add to your knowledge base.

Optimism is contagious, so be sure to focus on your attitude and understand that you set the tone for your employees. When they see your resilience and optimism at play, they will mirror it and work hard to be as self-confident as you. This infectious optimism will trickle down all the way to the students, who will work hard to be successful, as this standard has been set by the adults around them.

The class isn’t half full or half empty

Let’s look at a twist on a proverbial phrase meant to explain optimism. It is said that if you take a glass of water filled half-way to the top and sit in from of several people, some people will look at the glass as half-empty, and some will look at it as half-full. The former are pessimists and later are optimists. However, there is a new interpretation of this proverbial phrase that is making the rounds. It looks at the glass as completely full; half water and half air. This is how a modern education leader should approach tasks and obstacles.

Accountability entails accepting responsibility for the results expected of you, both positive and negative. It means accepting responsibility, regardless of the consequences. It means accepting responsibility, even if remaining silent means that no one would ever know. Accountability is not just about accepting responsibility, it is about maintaining your integrity, no matter what.

Don’t play the blame game

Being an effective leader means that you do not blame others or things that were out of your control. You take it on the chin and recognize that you are only human, and mistakes are ok. Once you take accountability, you work hard to make things right, but if this is not possible, you move on. Also, you implement precautions to ensure that it does not happen again.

Until you hold yourself accountable, you are a victim. Moreover, being a victim is the exact opposite of being an education leader. By being a victim, you leave your career in the hands of outside forces and in the process, make yourself weak. Higher-ups don’t want to promote or elevate leaders who can’t take responsibility for their own actions. They want to promote optimistic leaders who understand the things that are outside of their control and those that are.

If you want to reach your potential as a leader, you have to embrace your power to influence the outcome of a large number of situations. Great education leaders take the initiative to influence the outcome and hold themselves accountable for the results.

Concluding thoughts

So the next time a situation arises in which you are tempted to blame outside factors and entities for the failure of a project or for an obstacle that is in your way, remember that effective leaders take responsibility for their actions and the actions of other people on their team. Extreme ownership can be difficult, and it can seem unfair, but at the end of the day, heavy is the head that lays the crown. If you can not deal with this reality, then you are in the wrong profession.

Leadership occasionally involves making unpopular decisions which requires a certain level of courage. You might feel fear and anxiety, but instead of reversing course, you stand your ground and stick to your guns. This may seem cut and dry, but what will you do when your unpopular decision makes you the most hated person in your entire school community?

Bravery can be a lonely road

What will you do when friends and family members give you the cold shoulder because they disagree with your stance or new policy? You won’t know until it happens to you. Hopefully, you will stay the course and do what is best for the students in your district. It might take some time for people to come around, but once they see the positive effect that your decision has on academic achievement, they will come around.

If you want to be brave, you need to try new things, trust others, as well as be able to confront problematic issues that others would leave unresolved. Also, you should never hesitate to have crucial conversations with your peers and subordinates. These types of discussions are awkward and uncomfortable, but if you don’t have them, the individual in question will never grow, and you will never grow as a leader or live up to your potential.

Concluding thoughts

When it comes to self-improvement, I find that a lot of people say they want to become a better version of themselves. However, when it comes to putting in the hard work that it takes to make it a reality, they reverse course. Nothing in life comes easy, and if you think it does, then you don’t have what it takes to be a leader. Stick to your convictions, and the rest will work itself out. The people who questioned your leadership will all of a sudden laud you as a hero, someone who had the guts to the right decision, even though you knew it would bring you grief.

Great education leaders can focus their attention on the problem at hand without being distracted. They roll up their sleeves and make sure they are totally engaged in the administrative process. Even when your busy, you need to make sure that you are right there in the trenches with the rest of your team.

Being engaged signals to the rest of your team that everyone works hard and plays a part in the organization’s success. No job or task is insignificant. This will energize your leadership team and the rest of your staff to put in maximum effort. They will be inspired by the fact that you not only talk about changing things for the better, you also are willing to shoulder your fair share of the work.

A case study in aloofness

The concept of being involved is especially important for educational leaders. I personally observed one principal lose the confidence and respect of their teachers and leadership team all because they were uninvolved with the day to day running of the school. Whether it was true or not, since the staff rarely saw the principal in and around the building, they believed that she spent most of their time in their office shopping on the internet while everyone else slaved away. I have no idea where this rumor started, but it spread like wildfire.

She delegated the jobs of instructional leadership and discipline to her assistant principals and instructional coaches, which was a great strategic move on her part. This freed her up to attend meetings, complete paperwork, and complete other pertinent projects. This is to be commended, but in the midst of this, she became uninvolved with the day to day operations of the school. This also fueled the rumors about her laziness and aloofness.

Once she became aware of this rumor, she addressed it head-on in a staff meeting. She then recounted a typical day for her, so employees could understand her lack of presence. She also vowed to become more visible and accessible, as she realized how important it was to the growth that the school so desperately needed. We can debate whether addressing it head-on in a public forum was the best way to handle the situation, but this, coupled with her increased involvement, did the trick, and she managed to gain back the respect and confidence of her staff.

Education leaders have personalities that make them individuals. They are full of idiosyncracies and not afraid to stand alone and be different. To be a great educational leader, you have to be comfortable in your own skin. If you can’t be comfortable with yourself, how can you expect others to be comfortable with your leadership?

The importance of being authentic

Be yourself, and know that you are more than enough. You don’t have to speak like Martin Luther King or have the charisma of JFK to be a great education leader. You just have to be willing to work hard at your craft, understand how to manage a learning environment, build a great leadership team, communicate with others, etc. If you can do that, you are ahead of the curve. 

Transformational education leaders understand that the things which make them different are the things that define their character. Just be yourself, and people will favorably respond to your authenticity. Think about this, how do people feel when someone they know is not being their authentic self? We are initially a bit shocked and turned off by the fact that the person either: isn’t confident enough to be themselves, doesn’t respect us enough to be themselves, or is playing a fictional part to manipulate us for their own gain.

You may think that you are fooling others by playing a role, but at the end of the day, people will figure out that you are an imposter, and in one way or another, you will be ostracized for it. So do yourself a favor, and just be yourself. People can try to imitate you, but you are the only one who can pull this role off.

What does Shakespeare have to do with it?

“All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players” is a phrase that was coined by William Shakespeare. The meaning of this phrase is that this world is like a stage show, and all human beings are merely actors. I think that to a certain extent, this is true. So, why not play the role that you were born to play on the center stage?

Many education leaders are perfectionists, which tends to make them critical of themselves and the people around them. They believe that an educational environment should be professional and formal at all times. Also, they want the school day to be predictable and for things to happen exactly as they planned it.

It’s ok to laugh

However, let’s face it, what can go wrong, usually will go wrong. That is life! It would be best if you had a healthy sense of humor about life and not take yourself too seriously (which can be difficult when you want others to take you seriously). Educators and students alike don’t want a be led by a person that is all work no play. If you have ever dealt with a strict, no-nonsense boss, then you know that they can be extremely hard to work with.

Education leaders who take themselves too seriously risk isolating people and driving educators to quit. Also, students who attend schools that are strict are often bored and disengaged from their studies. It’s ok for the science class down the hall to be a bit noisy, and just because you hear lots of laughter and giggles, it doesn’t mean that things are out of control. It just means that the kids are having fun while learning. There is nothing wrong with that.

Find humor in life’s imperfections

Effective education leaders can laugh at themselves and understand that they are only human and can make mistakes like everyone else. It’s ok to be a perfectionist, but when things go wrong, it’s ok to find it humorous. Even if you can’t bring yourself to find the humor in everyday life, don’t be the one to rain on everyone else’s parade by creating an environment that frowns upon laughter.

On the other side of the coin, you also have to make sure that humor is utilized inappropriately. You should never tell jokes or find things humorous that degrades, embarrasses, exploits, or bullies another individual or group. This rule should be enacted and understood by everyone in the school environment. Make sure that you enforce it at all times.

Passionate education leaders often have a robust desire that pushes them forward. This desire drives them to be the best leader that they can be and to help everyone in their school and district to be successful. They accomplish this by practicing invitational leadership, which invites everyone in the organization to lead in their own way.

The amount of passion you have affects your energy and that of your followers as well. Use your enthusiasm and to kindle the passion of your followers! With everyone inspired to help students succeed, there is no way that your school or district can fail. Even if you move on to another position or retire, your legacy of passionate leadership will live on through the leaders that you created.

Be like Harriet

Writing about leadership passion makes me think about the life, times, and adventures of Harriet Tubman. During the 1800s, she was a slave in Maryland that endured unspeakable torture, punishment, and tragedy during her lifetime. Through it all, she never gave up hope, and always believed that one day she would be free, alongside her family and friends.

She eventually escaped to freedom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but her passion would not allow her to enjoy it for long. Not satisfied with just securing her own freedom and living out a life as a free woman, she immediately went back down south to rescue her family and friends.

Patiently, one group at a time, she helped her relatives escape slavery, and eventually guided hundreds of other slaves to freedom in the north. Traveling under the cover of darkness and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or “Moses,” as she was called) “never lost a passenger.”

After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she guided slaves farther north into modern-day Canada and helped newly freed slaves find work. This would not have been possible if Harriet did not possess an unbridled passion for justice and peerless leadership skills.

Having strong morals is an essential leadership trait because it will allow others to understand where you are coming from. They won’t have to wonder how you will react in a situation, because they know that integrity will always guide your decisions.

Your moral compass will never fail you

In challenging times, you can always count on your moral compass to help steer you in the right direction. You won’t have to wonder how you will react, because you know you have been battle-tested, and you have always chosen the right course of action.

Moral leadership also involves being transparent and allowing your constituents to know what is going on, good or bad. Even if being transparent might shed a negative light on your administration, or cause you your leadership to be questioned, you do it anyway because it is the right call.

When making moral decisions, great education leaders should do so per their code of ethics and ensure their actions are positive, not damaging. Being principled as a leader means that you are led by a moral compass that is uncompromising and always helps you to make the moral decision. It always points due north, even if it is pressured to go in another direction.

Also, when you govern the integrity of the people you are leading, you can establish an unspoken moral code that helps better guide their decisions and behavior. With everyone using their moral compass to lead the way, a principled, human-centered learning environment is established. As a result, the job satisfaction of your employees will go up, and students can learn in a safe, protected environment.

Concluding thoughts

So take my advice and be the moral leader that everyone wants. If you don’t, you probably won’t have longevity in the field of education. Why? Because, as an education leader, are charged with the duty of helping to shape and mold impressionable children. If people get the sense that you are amoral, they will think twice about placing you in a position to be a role model for tomorrow’s leaders.