School Leadership

Even though having a consensus is beautiful, it is rare and unnecessary. As an education leader, remember that, on average, 20 percent of everyone in your school or district will be against something. You will never come remotely close to having a consensus on your vision or on a solitary initiative. But that is quite ok.

Are you sure I don’t need a consensus?

You are the leader, and they pay you to make the tough decisions, not to get people to unanimously agree on a course of action. When you understand this, you realize that you don’t always have to compromise; you just need to make the right decision for your organization, whether everyone likes it or not. If you always try to reach consensus, you are being influenced and led by 20 percent of your employees.

Lions do not care about the opinions of sheep, and education leaders do not care about the opinions of others unless they have some validity. They make the right decision at the right time, and if people don’t like it, they can find another job, as your boat only has one captain.

I know that I might get some push back on this one, but tell me, when was the last time you were able to reach a consensus with a group larger than 10? If you did, it was difficult, and you had to negotiate and make a lot of concessions. Also, to please everyone you, you may have comprised your original goal or objective. In the end, everyone loses.

Concluding thoughts

Now don’t get me wrong, allowing stakeholders to help you make a decision is a good thing, as they can help you think about all of the possible ramifications of various choices. However, once they have done so, you have to be one that makes the final decision based on the information that you have gathered.

As an educator, you will be faced with many tough decisions. Sometimes it will feel like you are sailing in the dark, with no way of knowing how to get to shore safely. However, if you never want to feel this way again, all you must do is stay student-centered. If you use students as a compass to help you lead, you can never go wrong.

How can I accomplish this?

You accomplish this by factoring in how your decision will affect students. Recognize that many of the adults around you want you to keep their best interests at heart, but remember, it is not about them. They were hired to help students grow academically, psychologically, and behaviorally, so ultimately their job is to serve, not be served. Always do right by your students, even if it means making the tough calls. Always do what’s best for the kids.

Being student-centered does not mean that you cater to them; it means you do what it takes to help them turn into good citizens. This might mean suspending the football team for an entire year because of a hazing incident. Or asking teachers to buy into a new curriculum that adds a little more work to their plate, but has the potential to dramatically increase academic achievement.

Concluding thoughts

Now while being student-centered, don’t be anti-teacher. Remember, for students to grow up to become responsible adults and citizens, they will need a lot of great teachers to help them along the way. It’s ok to factor teachers into your decision making because they are the engines that keep the education train moving down the track. When it comes to making decisions that are student-centered, they will be some of your staunchest supporters. However, if you make decisions that negate their value and well being, you might have a mutiny on your hands.

Education leaders understand that timing is everything. Knowing how to make the right decision is one thing, but knowing how to make the right decision at the perfect time is even more critical. For instance, when does an educator need an inspirational pep talk, and when do they need a challenge to step up? When is the best time of the year to purchase a new education app? When should we implement our new bullying awareness campaign? When should we build a middle school? These questions might seem trivial, but they are not. Making the right decision can help your school to be extremely successful, and getting it wrong can complicate your already full leadership plate.

Timing in action

Understanding timing is all about seizing opportunities at the right time and helping your school or district to move forward. Leaders who understand the importance of timing in decision making end up having long careers in education. Everything they touch turns to gold, and their organizations seem to outperform all others in their industry. Those that never learn leadership timing end up being forced out of the field.

The enemy of timing is impatience, as it makes us experience an unrealistic sense of urgency that disrupts the natural flow of things. For many, impatience is a compulsion that they must fight hard to resist. Even though you know that it is best to be patient and wait to act or decide, there is a biological urge to go against your better judgment to move now. In times like these, remind yourself that if you give in to this urge, there is a high probability that you may undermine all of your hard work and make a mess of things.

As an alternative, until you become better at leadership timing, ask your leadership team for advice. They will be able to help you sift through the pros and cons of acting now and waiting a while.

Concluding thoughts

Do yourself a favor and start to consciously work on anticipating the right time to make a decision. It may take some time and experience to get good at it, but when you do, you will realize that it was worth the wait. It will allow you to stay one step ahead of everyone else, and write your own ticket. Yes, timing is everything.

Motivated education leaders want to achieve above and beyond what is expected of them. It is just in their DNA. No one has to tell them to work hard, or to put in extra hours, they just do it. It is what separates great leaders from good leaders.

So, where does this motivation come from? It comes from their passion, pride, and the desire to help students grow up to be well-educated citizens. They understand that for their students to grow, they need to do all that they can to create an environment that is conducive to learning. This does not happen overnight. It takes months, if not years of hard work and dedication. I would compare it to building a house one day at a time, brick by brick. To complete your house of learning, you have to stay motivated and work hard each day.

Ok, what’s the secret to staying motivated

To succeed as an education leader, you need to be motivated, and no one else can do that for you except yourself. If you are an education leader that doesn’t possess a high motor or self-motivation, you may be asking yourself, how do I develop these skills? Thankfully, self-motivation is a skill that can be learned and perfected with focus and hard work.

When you wake up each morning, remind yourself why you do what you do. Why did I become an education leader? How can I better serve the school district I work for? I can’t answer these questions for you, but I know that the answers to these questions can be extremely motivational. I know because I used to perform the same exercise when I did not feel motivated to teach. You know, those days when you want to call in sick, but you force yourself to keep pushing on.

Self-care is pivotal

While staying motivated, make sure you create a self-care regimen. A self-care regimen is meant to keep your mind, body, and soul in equilibrium and to prevent you from burning out. It can mean mandatory relaxation time each day, weekly trips to the masseuse, making time for family, friends, hobbies, etc. Your self-care regimen can look however you would like it to look. Remember, it’s hard to stay motivated when you are constantly tired and burned out.

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.