School Leadership

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.

Contrary to popular belief, imagination is not something people are born with; like many leadership skills, it can be learned. Think about how imagination played such a key role in your life as a child. Unfortunately, as children get older, schools and society, in general, tend to downplay the importance of imagination, in deference to practical thinking.

The power of imagination

However, those of us in the know understand the powerful influence that imagination can have on leadership. It can help give you a competitive edge by allowing you to explore angles and avenues that your practical thinking peers scoff at.

How can you unlock your imagination, after it has been imprisoned for so long? You need to go out of your way to try new experiences, learn new things, and practice inquisitiveness by continually asking further questions. In doing so, so you will unlock your natural creativity and innovation and discover a new way of looking at things. Then you tap into this power, the more skilled you will become at using.

Over the next 6 months, practice using your imagination to dream up new initiatives and projects. Think of initiatives and projects that could give you a competitive edge and help your teachers and their students become more productive. Ask your leadership team, teachers, and students to help you during this process.

How did it turn out? I suspect that it turned out well and that people are lauding you for your imagination and innovation. Also, other education leaders and contacting you, asking you to help them develop similar initiatives and projects. If you are not careful, you might win some distinguished award like “administrator of the year” or “education innovator of the year.”

Concluding thoughts

Education leadership is certainly not child’s play, but when you use your imagination to help you become more effective, it can sure seem like it. So, don’t be afraid to venture into new ways of thinking, new trends and technologies, and new pedagogical methodologies. What is in our imagination today will be commonplace tomorrow.

Education leadership is often about following your intuition. It can be hard to let go of logic in some situations, but uncertainty is natural in the field of education. Learn to trust yourself and not everyone else.

Trust your instincts

When making decisions or even planning an event, I seek out wise counsel and listen to the suggestions of my team. But at the end of the day, I make the final decision, trusting they my intuition won’t fail me. It can be hard for new leaders to trust their instinct. This is mainly because many of us have been trained to use data and facts to make our decisions. To do otherwise would be foolishness.

However, you have to careful when utilizing data and information that you did not collect yourself. The thing about data is that it can be organized and cherry-picked, which can lead analyzers to make false assumptions. Sometimes this is done consciously, and sometimes it is done unconsciously. If the data that you are presented with does not mesh with what your observations tell you, you may have a major dilemma on your hand. Do you trust your gut, or do you trust the data?

It is hard to stand in front of your team and tell them that you are choosing a course of action that seems counterintuitive and against conventional wisdom. And if the data points to a more effective course of action, and you go with your gut, people will think that you have gone mad. However, to the experienced education leader, data is not always right, and sometimes you have to trust your instinct and intuition.

Trusting your instincts, high risk, high reward

If your decision bears fruit, you will be lionized. If you fail, just know that you will probably be demonized and painted as being incompetent or losing a step. Effective leaders don’t care about what people think of them, they only care about being good stewards and making the right decisions. If you have good instincts, just remember, they will rarely point you in the wrong direction.

Even though being an education leader usually means that you are the head honcho, you must seek out the advice of trusted advisors if you want to be truly successful. Why? Because it allows you to tap into perspectives that are different from your own. It allows you to see the big picture of a decision, as well as all of the scenarios in which your initial plan could end in disaster.

Creating a “team of rivals”

As counterintuitive as it might sound, you do not want your leadership team or team of advisors to be comprised of people who think as you do. Also, in certain situations, it might be a good idea to add a few of your rivals to your leadership team. You know, those people who always choose a position or solution opposite of yours. Even if this is intentional, it does not matter.

Having a “team of rivals” vetting your decision making can be a productive and eye-opening activity. They can point our possible obstacles that you can not see. In the end, the decision will be your own, but at least you have left no stone unturned during your search for the appropriate course of action.

A little experiment

Let’s do a little experiment. Over the next 3 months, whenever you have a major decision to make, convene a group of advisors who you trust and who have different personalities and business approaches. Discuss the decision with them and allow them to help you brainstorm possible approaches and the pros and cons of each approach. After you have narrowed your decision down to 2-3 possibilities, choose the one that you feel most comfortable moving forward with. Inform your group of your choice, and thank them for their help. It would be a good idea to make this a working breakfast or lunch, so you can provide them with a great meal to show your appreciation.