Four Suggestions to Help You Lead by Relationships and Realize Your Vision

Abraham Lincoln inspired me, like so many others, to lead by relationships. Donald T. Phillips (Lincoln on Leadership) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals) describe that president as a kind, gentle and genuinely personable man for whom many subordinates deeply cared. He got close to his cabinet, his personal secretaries and his generals, and wasn't afraid to let them into his personal world.

But Lincoln never gave up his ideals. He made his vision clear to all and assertively redirected anyone he thought might take the country off his prescribed course. As a school administrator, it took me a while to lead in "the Lincoln way" (I have a very steep learning curve). I've been practicing educational leadership for 16 years in some of the highest performing schools in the country, but only recently recognized the importance of garnering the admiration of my faculty and administration team by developing deep personal and professional relationships with everyone. Like my favorite American president, I have tried hard to be nurturing, personable and caring while being clear and firm in the pursuit of my vision.

The key to building relationships that will strengthen an educational leader's vision is being highly accessible and spending quality time talking and listening to teachers and support staff. This might seem like old news to veteran educators, but with email and social networking as the prevailing ways of communication, it is worth reminding leaders that there is no substitute for pressing the flesh

Here are my four suggestions toward becoming a more effective leader.

1. Make the Rounds

Be a presence in schools each day. I make a point to start my morning in the hallways and then conduct my walks before the day gets ahead of me. Start the day in the office, and you're likely to end the day in the office (save for that weekly administration team meeting). An educational leader's work clock runs at least seven hours. How much time can one possibly spend in meetings and doing office paperwork? Just by cutting one to two hours out of my office day to spend a few minutes in each classroom and hallway of my small school district, I’ve learned more about the little (but often very important) things going on than I would have learned from email, phone calls or hearsay. Besides learning about the evolving culture of my schools, walking the hallways every day and being highly accessible has been key to showing everyone that I care about the school district at every level.

2. Open, Relaxed Conversation

Invite a school leader's cabinet to an early takeout dinner once per month. A conglomeration of parents and teachers sitting around Chinese food can lead to the same open, relaxed conversations we might have on the town soccer fields. A wonderful way to learn about what's really happening in the local community is to break bread (or egg rolls) in a casual setting on a regular basis.

3. Town Hall Accessibility

Hold vision town halls during which you share your short-, mid- and long-term goals in a conversation- style gathering. The meeting could be held in a classroom to set the context. You want to make it absolutely clear that your vision is all about children.

4. Establish a Satellite Office

I have a second, smaller office in another school district location. I took this cue from another American president, Woodrow Wilson, who heavily promoted a change in the way government operated by making frequent visits to Capitol Hill. He set up shop in the building's President's Room as often as three times per week to help him complete his work in the presence Congressional legislators. Wilson used the power of personality to engage the people on whom he depended to enact his proposals, and his satellite White House allowed for this engagement to happen naturally.

I once asked a very successful school district superintendent if it is possible for school leaders to be too visible. He told me that relationships are key to showing everyone that you care about them, their successes and their challenges. Relationships are key, he reminded me, to engendering trust and respect for the vision that you believe will help your school district "go world class."

This article was originally published by EDUTOPIA WHAT WORKS IN EDUCATION © 2013 The George Lucas Educational Foundation All rights reserved.

Source: www.edutopia.org/blog/leading-by-relationships-scott-taylor Links

Machiavelli's The Prince and School Reform

"The long continuum of the dominion obliterates the memories and issues that make men yearn for innovation, for one change will inevitably forge a link to another."

-N. Machiavelli

Changing the culture of a school? Leaders who inherit programs long "held" by "dominions" (i.e. long-standing leadership) will face more daunting challenges. This may seem obvious to many, but this 15th Century verse is a helpful reminder for leaders dealing with people who are mired in doing things "the way they have always been done" and who won't feel the necessity to change their ways.

Never Settle for Mediocrity: Apply the "EIEIO" Test When Hiring and Retaining

Mediocrity is a terrible standard to apply when hiring and retaining teachers. Plenty of research has proven the importance of effective teaching in promoting student emotional, social, and intellectual achievement. 

A friend for whom I worked talked about the "EIEIO Rule" when recruiting new faculty and considering renewals of veteran teachers' contracts. The graphic to the left defines each quality educational leaders should be looking for when building a dynamic and successful school.

Machiavelli's Advice for Growing a Leadership Profession

It took me many, many interviews to land my first leadership position. I was a 28 year-old teacher professionally raised in an idyllic setting (a high performing magnet school of 200 bright and passionate adolescents) and figured I could change the world one principalship at a time. Cracking that first job was hard since I didn't have any administration experience under my belt. I did whatever I had to do to get that first gig, including traveling as far as three hours drive to meet with potential employers and finding myself in some pretty interesting settings- a non-profit think-tank, an alternative school for boys, an infant care facility. I lucked out and obtained my first position in a wonderful middle school in a community that was, fortunately, compatible with my personality (I am a New Yorker by childhood and was working in a New Jersey neighborhood of Brooklyn transplants!).

What I didn't realize then, which I now do 16 years later, is the importance of finding a professional "match" to my personality, strengths, and weaknesses. I am compelled to think this through after having re-read Machiavelli's The Prince (my first read of this work was in college during a time when leadership was not first and foremost on my mind). This must-read treatise on leadership for educational administrators speaks to the importance of professional compatibility:

"If we examine the actions and lives of Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus [great leaders of the ancient era], we see the only gift that Fortune accorded them was the opportunity that gave them the substance they could mold into any form they pleased. Without that opportunity, their skill would not have flourished, and without that skill, the opportunity would have presented itself in vain."

Different Schools have different growth opportunities awaiting different leaders. There are high-performing communities that require a leader to sustain already planted initiatives, struggling communities that need someone to show them excellence and those districts that lie somewhere "in-between" and call for a leader who can diagnose the good and the bad and then have the skill to make only necessary tweaks, not large-scale changes.

Machiavelli's point is that leaders must know their strengths and weaknesses and then find their professional "match" so they can take advantage of those strengths and shutter away the weaknesses. I didn't heed Machiavelli's lesson as a budding leader but understand now how vital to my success and the success of the community for which I work it is to develop a relationship with schools for which I can actually help.

Are you the Caretaker of a Cemetery, or the Leader of a Dynamic School?

Americans can't help but reflect on the recent travails of the United States Congress. Arguably the most embattled leader through the harried "fiscal cliff" talks was Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner. Trying to hold the Republican Party together during negotiations may have cost him political capital, but what one Representative poignantly said in a recent New York Times article (January 4, 2012) spoke most clearly to the leadership challenge Boehner faced during the talks:

“It’s a little bit like being the head caretaker of the cemetery,” said Representative Hal Rogers, the Kentucky Republican, describing the challenge Mr. Boehner [faced] “There are a lot of people under you, but nobody listens.”

I have come to learn the importance of garnering the respect of my subordinates after experiencing my own trials in various leadership positions. My key to garnering the admiration of my faculty and administration team has lied in my ability to be nurturing, personable and caring while standing firm on my vision and making clear to all that I will not tolerate mediocrity.

The headline of the New York Times article to which I refer, "Liked but Not Feared, Boehner Keeps a Job..." echoes the lesson I learned- be a likable leader, but one who is feared for his willingness to assert a vision to promote world class learning communities the sole benefit being to promote the well-being of children.

On Machiavelli's The Prince and Dealing With Dissension in a School

"You must never allow disorder to develop in an attempt to avoid war, as this way you are not escaping war, but simply postponing it to your disadvantage."

-N. Machiavelli

An educational leader must confront challenges to his push for positive reform, so says Machiavelli. Change is difficult for both the leader and those for whom he serves. As I have come to know, there will be people who will resist my efforts to make research-based change that I have believed is necessary after carefully diagnosing the problems that may face a school. Any attempt to "avoid war" with resistors could have led to nothing more than an eventual conflict down the road, after the changes I intended were put in place.

The conclusion? Leaders must deal with the difficulties of conflict with people who will be unable to adapt to what is deemed to be the necessary changes for the learning community when these people make their resistance known. The fallout from not confronting these individuals could be a problem after the changes are in effect that could siphon away the important intended consequences of such change.

Great Team Building Activities Part IV

Healthy relationships are one of the keys to fostering positive school culture, so says Roland Barth (read his 1990 work Improving Schools From Within) and Michael Fullan (Leading in a Culture of Change). I do my part to bring teachers together by incorporating team-building activities into my faculty meetings, workshops, and curriculum writing sessions. This blog series describes those activities I have found most engaging.

Something Bad, Something Good- The roots of this activity lie in Developmental Designs for Middle School (click for more information about the social-emotional skills building program). You can use it to help participants recognize the common challenges and successes everyone in the group may have experiences when involved in certain situations.

First have everyone sit in a circle. Second, tell the group that everyone will be asked to think about a situation they'll be tasked to consider. Some topics I have chosen to be the subject of this activity include: interacting with children, working with parents, writing curriculum. After introducing the topic, tell everyone you will be asking them to think about the good and the bad experiences they've had related to the topic and to listen very carefully to their peers' share.

Begin the activity by having the first participant describe his/her "something good" about the topic. Then, prompt the next person to reflect on what the previous person said by now sharing "something bad" related to what the previous participant said. So, the dialogue will go something like this:

• Participant 1- "I had a great experience writing my curriculum guide because I got to create the entire program with my own vision in mind."

• Participant 2- "I had a bad experience when I was told to think of my own vision when I was writing curriculum because the supervisor didn't like my idea (even though he told me to go with what I wanted) and I had to rewrite the whole thing."

This will continue one full-circle, with participants saying something good/something bad alternately about the previous statement. Using different topics for discussion can generate genuine discussion about shared experiences!