How Trustworthy are You as a Leader?

As a leader, how might your staff rank YOU in terms of trust?

Facets of Trust

Benevolence:

• caring
• extending good will
• having positive interactions
• supporting teachers
• expressing appreciation for staff efforts
• being fair
• guarding confidential information 

Honesty:

• having integrity
• telling the truth
• keeping promises
• honoring agreements
• having authenticity
• accepting responsibility
• avoiding manipulation
• being real
• being true to oneself

Openness:

• engaging in open communication
• sharing important information
• delegating
• sharing decision making
• sharing power

Reliability:

• having consistency
• being dependable
• demonstrating commitment
• having dedication
• being diligent

Competence:

• setting an example
• engaging in problem solving
• fostering conflict resolution (rather than avoidance)
• working hard
• pressing for results
• setting standards
• buffering teachers
• handling difficult situations
• being flexible

From:  Trust Matters by Megan Tschannen-Moran
Published by: Jossey-Bass

Sustainable Leadership

As a leader, how are you engaging with the principles of sustainable leadership?

Hargreaves and Fink (2006) lay out a radical agenda for shaping the capacity of school systems to engage in continuous improvement.  Their seven principles of sustainability in concert focus on sustainable leadership as the solution:

1. Depth (sustainable leadership matters)
2. Length (sustainable leadership lasts)
3. Breadth (sustainable leadership spreads)
4. Justice (sustainable leadership does no harm to and actively improves the surrounding environment)
5. Diversity (sustainable leadership promotes cohesive diversity)
6. Resourcefulness (sustainable leadership develops and does not deplete internal and human resources)
7. Conservation (sustainable leadership honours and learns from the best of the past to create an even better future: pp.19-20)

From:  Turnaround Leadership by Michael Fullan
Published by: Jossey-Bass and OPC

The Six Secrets of Change

As a leader, do you know the six secrets of change and do you know how to use them?

The Six Secrets of Change


1. Love your employees - The key is in enabling employees to learn continuously and to find meaning in their work and in their relationship to coworkers and to the company as a whole.

2. Connect peers with purpose - ...foster continuous and purposeful peer interaction. ... The job of leaders is to provide good direction while pursuing its implementation through purposeful peer interaction and learning in relation to results. 

3. Capacity building prevails - Capacity building entails leaders investing in the development of individual and collaborative efficacy...

4. Learning is the work - ...there is far too much going to workshops, taking short courses, and the like, and far too little learning while doing the work.  Learning external to the job can represent a useful input, but if it is not in balance and in concert with learning in the setting in which you work, the learning will end up being superficial. 

5. Transparency rules - By transparency I mean clear and continuous displays of results, and clear and continuous access to practice (what is being done to get the results).

6. Systems learn - Systems learn on a continuous basis.  The synergistic result of the previous five secrets is tantamount to a system that learns from itself. 


From:  The Six Secrets of Change by Michael Fullan
Published by: Jossey-Bass

Facilitative Leadership

As a leader, are you facilitative or directive?

Facilitation is a way of providing leadership without taking the reins.  It's the facilitator's job to get others to assume responsibility and take the lead. 

Here's an example:  Your employees bring you a problem, but instead of offering them solutions, you offer them a method to guide the members with which they can develop their own answers.  You attend the meetings to guide the members through their discussions, step-by-step, encouraging them to reach their own conclusions.

Rather than being a player, a facilitators acts more like a referee.  That means you watch the action, more than participate in it.  You control which activities happen.  You keep your finger on the pulse and know when to move on or to wrap things up.  Most important, you help members define and reach their goals. 


From: Facilitating With Ease! by Ingrid Bens
Published by: Jossey-Bass

Learning for Leaders

As a leader, do you continue to learn?  If so, are you learning 'in context'?

Learning in Context

...learning in context over time is essential.  Let us be precise here  because aspects of this lesson are counterintuitive.  Attempting to recruit and reward good people is helpful to organizational performance, but it is not the main point.  Providing a good deal of training is useful, but that too is a limited strategy.  ...  Learning in the setting where you work, or learning in context, is the learning with the greatest payoff because it is more specific (customized to the situation) and because it is social (involves the group).  Learning in context is developing leadership and improving the organization as you go. Such learning changes the individual and the context simultaneously. ... Opportunities to learn through study groups, action research, and the sharing of experiences in support groups create real supports for principals so that the complicated and difficult problems of instructional leadership can be addressed. 

From:  Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan
Published by: Jossey-Bass

Defining Trust

As a leader, do you trust others and are you trustworthy? 

Most people rely on an intuitive feel of what is meant when we say that we trust someone.  Trust is difficult to define because it is so complex.  It is a multifaceted construct, meaning that there are many elements or drivers of an overall level of trust.  Trust may vary somewhat depending on the context of the trust relationship.  It is also dynamic in that it can change over the course of a relationship, as expectations are either fulfilled or disappointed and as the nature of the interdependence between two people changes.  Reoccuring themes emerged as I examined various definitions of trust in the literature, which led me to the following definition:  Trust is one's willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent (Mishra, 1996; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 1998, 2000)

From:  Trust Matters by Megan Tschannen-Moran
Published by: Jossey-Bass

Trust Matters

How is your leadership informed by trust?

Key Points About Why Trust Matters

• School leaders that have the trust of their communities are more likely to be successful in creating productive learning environments.

• Trust is a challenge for schools at this point in history, when all of our institutions are under unprecedented scrutiny.

• Much of the responsibility for realizing our society's vision of greater equity is vested in our schools.  Consequently, higher expectations are especially brought to bear on those who educate our children.

• Without trust, schools are likely to flounder in their attempts to provide constructive educational environments and meet the lofty goals that our society has set for them because energy needed to solve the complex problem of educating a diverse group of students is diverted into self-protection.

• Trustworthy leadership is the heart of productive schools.

From:  Trust Matters by Megan Tschannen-Moran
Published by: Jossey-Bass

Understanding the Change Process

As a leader, do you need to manage change?  If so, how do you approach it?

Understanding the change process is less about innovation and more about innovativeness.  It is less about strategy and more about strategizing.  And it is rocket science, not least because we are inundated with complex, unclear, and often contradictory advice. ... The goal is to develop a greater feel for leading complex change, to develop a mind-set and action that are constantly cultivated and refined.  There are no shortcuts.

Understanding the Change Process

• The goal is not to innovate the most.
• It is not enough to have the best ideas.
• Appreciate the implementation dip.
• Redefine resistance.
• Reculturing is the name of the game.
• Never a checklist, always complexity.

To find out more.........

From: Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan
Published by: Jossey-Bass

Leading In A Culture of Change

As a leader, how do you manage change for those whom you lead?

"Change is a double-edged sword.  Its relentless pace these days runs us off our feet.  Yet when things are unsettled, we can find new ways to move ahead and to create breakthroughs not possible in stagnant societies.  If you ask people to brainstorm words to describe change, they come up with a mixture of negative and positive terms.  On the one side, fear, anxiety, loss, danger, panic; on the other, exhilaration, risk-taking, excitement, improvements, energizing.  For better or worse, change arouses emotions, and when emotions intensify, leadership is key. 

From:  Leading In A Culture of Change by Michael Fullan
(Published by: Jossey-Bass)

Leaders Foster Renewal

How do you foster renewal in yourself and those you lead?

Leaders Foster Renewal

Leaders must find respite in the whirlwind.  They need to develop habits that restore energy and vitality amidst the buffeting forces of busyness and intensity that mark the ambiguous, result-driven, and highly pressurized contexts of their work.

From: Leading from Within by Intrator &Scribner
 (Published by Jossey-Bass)