School Leadership

In this world, people seem so intent on letting everyone know how great they are. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame, and they don’t care who they have to hurt to get it. As far as education leaders go, being humble is the only way to go. You may be highly capable and educated, but don’t brag about it and just let your work speak for itself. Nothing is more frustrating than a person that insists on always singing their own praises. It makes them come across as self-absorbed and as if they are only out for themselves.

A little humility goes a long way

Being arrogant or self-absorbed as an education leader can have negative consequences. It can blind you from what is really important and lead to you making decisions that are best for you and not what’s best for the entire team. Remember, educators should make decisions based on how they will affect students, not adults.

 If you didn’t get into education to help students maximize their potential, then you are in the wrong profession. If you want to get all of the attention, you should have become a boxer, author, or some other profession, where being a team player is not necessary.

Unfortunately, many education leaders have not gotten the memo. They seem more concerned with making themselves look good than actually being leaders. Trust me, being arrogant will not get you far in the field of education. People will grow tired of your oversized ego, and will absolutely abhor being around you. You probably won’t even notice it, because your attention is on yourself twenty-four hours a day.

Concluding thoughts

Do yourself a favor, and be humble and realize that being an education leader is a blessing, not an opportunity to make yourself the new social media star or fatten your wallets. Being an educator is all about serving humanity and helping the next generation of students reach their potential.

Sometimes the best solution is right in front of us, but we are too close to see it. Sometimes it is because of relationships, and sometimes it is just because of our own egos. Education leaders know how to remove themselves from a situation and observe it from multiple perspectives before they make a decision.

Finding your perspective

I am not saying that this is easy, but it isn’t hard either. When I find myself in this position, I like to leave the office and spend a couple of hours at one of my favorite parks. Why, because since I was a little child, I have always found that being in nature calms my mind. Once I am completely centered, I begin the process of looking at the problem from as many perspectives that I can think of, and 9 times out of 10, I find a definitive solution to the problem.

9 times of 10 isn’t bad, but it’s still not 100%. So when I can’t find a definitive solution on my own, I call up some of my most trusted advisors and ask for their opinion. I know that since they are detached from the situation, their perspective is pure. By the time I talk to a couple of them, I can isolate a solution to the problem. Now its time to put my plan into action.

Perspective is a very powerful leadership tool. It allows us to isolate the potential pros and cons of a situation or to find the right solution to a problem. It allows us to make the most important decisions look easy. One this is for sure, you can’t be a great education leader without the power of divine perspective.

Concluding thoughts

If you don’t currently have the power of perspective in your leadership tool box, just know that it often takes a lot of time and effort to perfect this leadership skill. Just keep practicing the skill and solicit the perspectives of others for now, and when the time is right, you will find that you have acquired the ability to view all things with an incredible perspective.

As an education leader, you need to find and address risk so you can positively impact the outcome by handling that risk in the best way possible. They often say, “there is no reward, without risk.” However, effective education leaders know which risks to take and which not to take.

Risk assessment and management in action

Let me give you a scenario. In a lot of areas of the U.S., school districts lease their school buildings out to other organizations, after hours and on the weekend. Your district leases some of its buildings to a church and also a university that uses them to house a satellite campus. Things have been going well, but the university payments have started to become increasingly late. I mean 30 to 60 days.

Do you bring this up to their president, or do you say nothing out of fear of jeopardizing the arrangement? Your school uses this money to make up for funding shortfalls, and can ill afford to lose this revenue stream. As the superintendent, you assess the situation and decide to schedule a meeting with the president.

At the meeting, you ask the president if they are happy with your services, and he says yes. Then you bring up the issue at hand, and he seems puzzled. He was under the impression that we were being paid every month on time. He informs you he will look into the matter, and you can consider it fixed. He also thanks for you letting them know and walks you out to your car. The problem is fixed permanently, and your risk was rewarded.

Concluding thoughts

I used this scenario to illustrate how responsible risk management looks and how you can decide if a risk is worth taking. As a rule of thumb, remember that high risks usually bring high rewards and low risks often bring low rewards. This rule also illustrates the potential rewards that come with each level of risk. If you let your leadership character light the way, you can’t go wrong?

Great education leaders know that time is their most valuable possession. Contrary to popular belief, it is not money, material possessions, etc. Time is one of those things that you can get back, no matter how hard you try. It’s just impossible. Unfortunately, most professionals do a poor job of managing their time, and it affects their lives in a myriad of ways. As leaders, they find it difficult to properly manage their teams and organizations, and outside of work, it makes it difficult to nurture and develop relationships.

How to maximize your time

Education leaders need to know how to schedule their time by knowing when and where to spend it; on yourself, your colleagues, and family/friends. They prioritize things that are important and table things that can wait for later. This doesn’t mean that they are not proactive, it just means that they are not burning themselves out by trying to be superhuman. They realize that the work will never be done, and when you finish one task, another one jumps into the queue.

So do yourself a favor and use your time wisely, and hold it in reverence. It truly is your most valuable possession, as many people would hand over all of their possessions for more of it. As an education leader, you can use your time to help serve others, but don’t forget to take a little to relax.

Concluding thoughts

Here is a pro-tip, when making decisions concerning time management, if applicable, always consider the opportunity cost of each possible alternative. What is the definition of opportunity cost? An opportunity cost is the consequence of a missed opportunity. This is usually explained in terms of money, but it may also be conveyed in terms of time, or any other resource. Using the concept of opportunity cost has helped me to be more productive and efficient, which allows me to make more money and have more free time for family and friends.

Discipline in leadership is more about having self-control, inner calm, and outer resolve than punishing and rewarding. It is about managing your emotions, working hard, and following through on commitments. It is about being responsible and accountable for your actions. It is about being a rock amid life’s inevitable storms.

A high level of resilience plays a significant part in your ability to be self-disciplined. You have to be resolute in your actions and understand that setbacks will happen. You have to be focused enough to understand that failure is just a part of success, not a destination.

Education leaders who are disciplined, have leadership teams and employees who also exhibit poise. The school culture becomes an environment where discipline is the norm. Unfortunately, many people have the wrong perception of discipline. They believe that to be disciplined, you have to maintain a rigorous standard, and punish those that do not meet the mark. It is about having high standards, but punishment is not a central focus. Those who do not meet the standard are given the supports and resources that they need to improve.

Why discipline is so important

The road to success to filled with people who will find lots of reasons as to why something will not work. You need a healthy level of discipline that gives you a real sense of confidence and will allow you to move forward without excuses, obstacles, or negativity holding you back. No matter the situation, you need to be able to look on the bright side and be optimistic about a situation’s potential outcome, regardless of the circumstances.

Great leaders are not blind to the possibility that some situations will end in failure. However, they are confident that they and their team have tried their absolute best, so there will be no regrets. They don’t look at a glass as being half full, they look at it always being 100% full. How can a glass that is half full of liquid be completely full? Sometimes you have to think of the top half of the glass as being filled with air.

Concluding thoughts

By being disciplined, you are ready for the outcome, good or bad. If the outcome is positive, you are happy. And if the outcome is negative, you are also happy, because you and your team went above and beyond the call of duty. Failure happens, but you have to be ready to turn that failure into success. The next time a similar situation happens, you will have the benefit of experience on your side, and use your prior knowledge to handle things with the benefit of historical perspective.

Opposite to what most people believe, age is not a measure of maturity. I have worked with young education leaders who act like older men and older men who act like teenagers. Maturity comes from knowing how to communicate like an adult and knowing how to manage your emotions in stressful situations. It is not so much about acting your age as it is acting with wisdom.

The power of maturity

Also, your confidence in yourself and your capacity to follow through without excuses are steadfast gauges of how mature a person you are. As an education leader, maturity will either make or break your tenure. Even though immature people make being mature seem so difficult, it really is not. Immaturity comes from a place of selfishness, and the immature people desire to have things there way. On the other end of the spectrum, maturity comes for a space of selflessness and a desire to serve and help others.

Every day, mature leaders are constantly looking for ways to serve others and help them win. Whether it’s mentoring a new leader or making sure the current leadership team has the supports and resources that they need to launch a new initiative. When something goes wrong under their watch, they may hold others accountable, but ultimately they take responsibility for the failure. On the other hand, when the team experiences success, they step out of the spotlight and let others shine. This is what separates mature leaders from immature ones.

If you are an immature education leader, just know that you are working against your own interests. You want to climb the leadership ranks in your district, but your higher-ups don’t want to promote leaders who are not mature and disciplined enough to put the needs of the team before their own. They are looking for selfless individuals whose sole aim is to help everyone around them get better. They are looking for people who work to make a difference in the lives of children.

Concluding thoughts

If you an immature leader, you don’t meet the qualification for a promotion. Its good that you are finding this out now because this gives you time to work on your leadership character. If you do, you can learn to be compassionate, selfless, and trustworthy, which will help you become the mature leader that your district needs.

The modern public education system in the United States is behind the curve in so many areas, eschewing innovation and the cultivation of tomorrow’s leaders (and their untapped emotional and intellectual potentials) in favor of an outdated system which places the onus on assignments and grades. For a school to really give tomorrow’s leaders a fair shake in becoming fitting to the roles they will assume as they grow older, it has to look at its practices and agendas and how one-size-fits-all education and bureaucracy is stifling growth in our student populace.

A culture of following blanket directives in fear of discipline isn’t one which promotes the individuality necessary for a student to take their own initiative and become a leader. Sacrificing creativity for rigor, innovation for the grades necessary to make the next level, our students are placed into stifling educational environments which punish deviation and reward groupthink. 

What fear does to tomorrow’s leaders

One high school in Washington D.C., known to be one of the hardest schools in all of the United States, has built such a culture of fear that students skip class to hide in the library in hopes of acing the next big test on the docket. It’s a grading culture which tells students that their entire futures are predicated upon the approval of the system. Top-achievers live in constant fear of slipping up, watching their potential careers vanish as others race ahead of them who are much more adept at playing the game.

While testing and its consequences have their place, such a culture of fear turns students into anxious followers rather than potential leaders. The best entrepreneurs aren’t afraid of failure. In fact, they embrace the potential of failure in hopes of the next successful venture. Students who are afraid of their own shadows in school aren’t given the opportunity to embrace such an entrepreneurial spirit. They’re taught that their fears are always valid and worth fearing. That’s no way to build a future leader.

The Mark Cuban effect

Schools aren’t changing their didactic ways anytime soon, or not fast enough to really cultivate a culture of budding leadership in their student populace. So, it behooves students (and concerned parents) to look at sources outside of the educational system which reflect how success can be achieved without playing the follow-the-leader games of public education. Billionaire entrepreneur and media personality Mark Cuban was once suspended from high school for wearing a shirt with the word “bullshit” on it. He constantly got into trouble, unable to reconcile his own desire to lead with the bureaucratic structures of the educational system.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success,” Cuban once said. If students can find a way to experience and learn different modes of grading success and failure, especially with their own ethics and wants and needs into account, they can break from the backward nature of the public education system and build themselves internally as confident leaders unafraid of a bad grade or a bad decision.

Deeds speak louder than words. The educators you work with can tell if you are dedicated and working hard to make your school the best it can be. However, if you are lethargic and do not care, your team will note and mirror your effort. Sooner than later, you will have a culture of lazy educators that see themselves as glorified baby sitters. In the end, your students will not grow academically, and your district’s central office will come through and purge your school of its lethargic leaders and educators and start over. What a sad turn of events.

How to lead by example

Great education leaders always lead by example. They put their nose to the grindstone, and they get things done. In the end, others follow this positive example, and things get done. Unfortunately, many leaders practice what I call death by delegation. Don’t get me wrong, delegation is a good thing, but only if you are doing your fair share of the work. I have listened to a lot of teachers who complain that their principals stay in their offices all day and delegate the heavy lifting to assistant principals, and other members of their leadership team. It doesn’t matter if they are wrong or right, if the optics are bad, the perception will become a reality.

This is not what leadership is all about. Leaders don’t sit in their office all day while others do all the work. Real leaders spend as little time in their office as they can. They spend their hours walking the halls, going from classroom to classroom where the action is. They see themselves as instructional leaders first and take the lead on boosting student achievement. Along the way, they set the tone for classroom conduct, and ensure that students can learn in classrooms that are conducive to learning.

The differences between high-performing schools and low-performing schools within the public education system are stark and varied, yet it’s the culture of leadership which is either cultivated or not by school leaders which serve as a catalyst for either growth or utter, inefficient chaos. With that truth in mind, here are 5 effective ways school leaders can build a culture of leadership within their institutions.

Do not be afraid to embrace the duality 

The best leaders in any business field understand both their own duality and the duality necessary to lead. Equal parts modesty and will, humility and fearlessness, a true school leader must never be afraid to take control but must also never be afraid to concede control and learn when the situation requires such. A true leader’s example must be one of flexibility, malleability, but a singular resolve that will take on any problem with appropriate force and fire.

Be professional, not a savior

Education is a hard field because there is an inherent structure of altruism within it which can cause some school leaders to misappropriate themselves as saviors rather than business leaders. To try and save every student and/or try to maximize the talents of every teacher is a Herculean task which will end up crushing a school leader under its weight. To build a culture of leadership, school leaders must be able to delegate and organize in such a way that other leaders are built up and their own reserves of energy aren’t depleted.

Understand your importance

Studies show that one transcendent classroom lecture or interaction with a member of the school leadership can change a young student’s life trajectory completely! School leaders must remind their entire staffs of the importance they have in shaping children’s lives. A true culture of leadership in the public education system embraces the power of simple moments of genuine connection, cultivating compassionate leadership who keeps the best interests of the student populace at the forefront of their everyday efforts. 

Leave your ego at the door

School leaders who wield their positions of leadership as weapons in hopes of boosting and placating their own egos create cultures of distrust and resentment which can permeate all levels of an institution.  Confidence is key. Ego is not. A school leader must remain confident as to maintain the respect and trustworthiness necessary to make the tough decisions, but drop the ego in favor of the betterment of the school. A culture of leadership is built upon confident actions removed from personal ego and gain.

Walk how you talk 

In business, brand respectability and loyalty are cultivated through being genuine and transparent with your customer base. That same transparency and genuine nature must serve as the backbone of school leadership. If you are humble, people will view you as such. If you are fair, people will view you as such. School leaders must stress to all faculty and members of leadership that it’s their actions which carry the weight, not the words they use to describe such actions. This pushes other school leaders to act with equal parts thoughtfulness and clarity, building a culture of leadership immune to the toxicity which can bring institutions down in short order.

Concluding Thoughts

While building a culture of leadership may not be the top priority amongst many educators, it should be. It can make a team easier to run, which will help students feel more comfortable and perform better. This leadership can help develop the school into the education system that a district is proud of. 

“Its all about who you know.” Smart leaders know that there is much truth to that saying. Education leaders understand the value of building rapport with people in their field and make a point to pursue partnerships whenever they can. As we observe in children, the ability to build relationships is not a hard skill to master.

Relationships matter

All it takes is the ability to form a mutual bond and rapport with another person. A successful relationship has been established on truth, honesty, and a genuine desire to give selfishly to the development of the friendship. From there on out, the rest takes care of itself. Sure, at times, your friendships will be tested, but if they have the right foundation, things will always work out.

Establishing a network of key people is critical for your long-term success as an education leader, and in your personal life. When you first start out as an assistant principal, literacy coach, etc. your circle may be relatively small, but that will change fairly quickly.

Since you have likely come up through the teaching ranks of your district, there are new education leaders that you know that have done the same or are on the precipice of doing the same. Maybe you taught together years ago or met at a district-wide professional development session. Right off of the bat, you have relationships that you can cultivate.

Making lifelong connections

Also, as a leader, you will attend meetings all over your district, at state and national conferences, and also in your city or county. You will meet leaders from various industries and professions, and in the process, build professional and personal relationships that may last a lifetime.

So when your school needs donations for the renovation of its football field, you can call up the business leaders that you know and ask for help. They all have charitable giving departments that give away financial and in-kind donations to deserving causes. If we want to be successful in our field, take my advice, and focus on relationships.