Never Miss a Chance to Pay a Compliment

As a leader, do you use every opportunity to compliment your staff?

Never miss a chance to pay a compliment.  As a leader, your word has significance for the members of your staff.  Paying compliments for work well done means a great deal to all of us - regardless of our roles.  However, as a leader, your staff likely look to you for feedback.  Performance appraisals can provide feedback - but they really serve a different purpose.  Complimenting your staff when they do good work can be motivating and inspiring.  Compliments also indicate that you view their work with a positive presupposition.  You're not looking for fault.  If you believe the work that your staff does is important, let them know by acknowledging it with the occasional compliment.  In the end, everyone wins - especially those your school/organization serves.

Just one caution....don't go overboard.  There's nothing more meaningless to staff members than excessive compliments.  They know when you're being honest and when it's just for show.  Keep it real - and keep your integrity intact.

Don't Stay Late - Go Home!

As a leader, how are you looking after your own well-being?

Do you control your work hours or are they starting to control you? More people are staying late at work and suffering because of it.  Are you one of them?  Before you have dinner at your desk (Yet again!), try these three things:

• Know your priorities. When deciding whether to stay and finish a task or put it aside until the next day, remember what your priorities are. If the task furthers your professional and personal goals, then it may be worth putting in the extra time.  And be honest.  Not all tasks further your goals.
• Agree on expectations at home. Discuss your work hours with the people closest to you—your partner, spouse, or friends—to be sure your expectations are aligned.  Disappointments and resentments can be growing at home and you're not there to 'nip them in the bud'.
• Talk about it at work. Make it clear that you are willing to stay late if there is a legitimate reason, such as a specific deadline. But emphasize that this should be the exception, not the rule.  The same is true of your staff.  You need to attend to their well-being as much as your own.

Adapted from "Should You Stay Late or Go Home?" by Ron Ashkenas.

Drop Your Mask and Be Authentic

As a leader, are you authentic with your staff?

Are you hiding from your staff? Too many leaders try to conceal their flaws and present a polished façade - the 'bluff exterior'. Or they try to behave like they think "great" leaders do. When you try to be someone else, it erodes trust and effectiveness and causes people to question your true identity.  Your staff can see through this behaviour.  So drop the mask and be who you really are. This can enhance your relationships, foster trust, and create better outcomes at work. Be honest about your imperfections and ask others to help you determine how to bring more of your authentic self to work.  By not being 'perfect', you're able to build capacity in your organization/school by cultivating the knowledge and skills of your colleagues. 

Adapted from "Fire, Snowball, Mask, Movie: How Leaders Spark and Sustain Change" by Peter Fuda and Richard Badham.

Do as I Say, Not as I do

As a leader, do your words match your actions?

As leaders, one of our roles is to set direction for those we lead.  We articulate the vision and mission of our schools/organizations and then sustain the focus of the work that flows from the vision and mission.  On a day-to-day basis, our role is to ensure that everyone in the school/organization sustains their commitment to the work, engages in learning to support the work, and demonstrates continuous improvement in doing the work and delivering results. 

This is all well and good for our staff.  But what about us as leaders?  Do we actually do what we say we believe in?  Do our words align with our actions. It's very easy to inform others of their work responsibilities, their need to commit to ongoing learning, and to demonstrate ever-improving results.  But do we do the same?  Are we willing to do what we ask of our staff members?  If not, our words ring hollow - and people see through them. 

Remind yourself every once in a while - especially when you are providing direction to your staff - to ask yourself these questions:

• Am I willing to do this work too?
• How do I demonstrate in tangible ways the commitment that I wish to see in all staff members?
• Do my words align with my actions?
• Do I model what I profess to believe in?
• If I pause at any moment in time, could I honestly say that what I am doing aligns with the direction I've set and the mission and vision I espouse? 

Recognizing and Celebrating Successes

As a leader, how do you recognize and celebrate the successes of your staff?

In the end, people will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

As a leader, recognizing and celebrating the successes of your staff can be very motivating.  Kouzes and Posner (2002) speak about encouraging the heart and its significance for people.  As leaders, we often focus on the front-end deliverables related to planning, implementing, resourcing, and managing.  It can be easy to forget about the power and energy that comes from sincere recognition and celebration of actual accomplishments.  Emphasis here is on the word 'sincere'.  If it's not coming from your heart to their hearts, it's meaningless.  People see through insincerity very easily.

In his book Drive (2009), Daniel Pink cautions us that an excess of recognition and celebration can actually de-motivate people.  Staff learn quickly that if there is no 'reward' on the way, the work is either not important or it's not worth doing because recognition won't come on the heels of completion.  When recognition becomes routine, isn't sincere, and doesn't recognize truly worthwhile work, it means nothing.  

For you as a leader, it's a case of knowing your staff and how much recognition and celebration are appropriate.  Here are a few questions to guide your thinking about when and when not to praise.

• How often will it be given?  In what forum?
• Does it always come from you?  Can it also come from colleagues?
• Is it done publicly or privately?
• Is everyone recognized at some point?  Is anyone left out?
• Do people know what merits recognition or does it appear to be arbitrary?  Does recognition come when school/organizational goals are met?
• Are people praised for results, effort, or other reasons?  Why?
• What have your staff told you about what they'd like in terms of praise, recognition, and celebration?
• Is it sincere and honest?

From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press

Leading Meetings

As a leader, how do you lead open, honest, productive meetings?

Meetings without outcomes are a waste of time. Yet, many meetings fail to produce results because the conversation circles around the issues rather than focusing on them. To make sure decisions happen and people take action, you need to have a productive dialogue. Here are five things every meeting
should be:

1. Open. The outcomes of your meeting should not be predetermined. Questions like, "What are we missing?", "Who else needs to be here?", "What voices are not represented at this table?" signal honest searching for a range of perspectives and more broad-based thinking.
2. Candid. Encourage people to air conflicts. When people express their real opinions, productivity increases.  A quick 'go round' of the table to ask "What;s working for you and what isn't?" can help surface issues that need to be tabled. 
3. Informal. Keep it loose. Conversations should be unscripted with honest questions and spontaneity...yet with meeting processes in place so that it's not unending.  This in itself takes lots of practice as the leader of meetings.
4. Conclusive. Everyone should leave knowing exactly what they are expected to do.  A quick check-in helps.  Again, a quick 'go round' of the table to ask, "What's your action coming out of our meeting?" helps solidify the actions and confirms that the meeting had purpose. 
5. Reflective - a few days after the meeting, check in with a few people to ask how it went.  Are meetings helping us accomplish what we want to accomplish?  Being sincere in seeking this input helps staff know that you're serious about their opinions and that you value both their opinions and their work.  

Adapted from Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions.

Getting Feedback as a Leader

As a leader, how do you get feedback on how well you're doing?  No leader improves without feedback from multiple sources. But getting people to be honest about your performance isn't always easy. Be sure to give your staff (students, parents, clients, customers) a way to supply you with the candid information you need to improve.  A simple Stop/Start/Continue process will work.  You can do it by asking these three questions:

• What should I stop doing? Ask which behaviors stand in your way of success.
• What should I keep doing? Inquire about what you do right, and should continue to do.
• What should I start doing? Once you've stopped unproductive behaviors, you'll have more time and energy for new behaviors.

Adapted from "Three Questions for Effective Feedback" by Thomas J. DeLong.

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

Capacity Building

As a leader, how do you build the necessary capacity in your staff to meet the demands of the work that needs to be done?

Two key principles should permeate your capacity-building work:

1. Minimize blame and focus on improvement.  If people fear blame, there will be less transparency and less insight into the root causes of problems, which will inhibit capacity-building.  Instead, build a culture in which struggles or challenges are viewed as opportunities to learn and further improve delivery.  It is important to communicate that people are being judged in order to strengthen performance and not for the sake of laying blame.  In practice, a culture of no blame needs to exist alongside a culture of taking responsibility, so plain speaking and honesty will be crucial.  As Michael Fullan (2008) explains in his book The Six Secrets of Change, "This doesn't mean that you avoid identifying things as effective or ineffective.  Rather it means that you do not do so pejoratively."

2. Create a culture of continuous learning.  To truly sustain the capacity to implement change, all system actors responsible for delivery must be constantly going through the cycle of acting, reflecting, making adjustments, and trying again, each time refocusing their efforts on the actions that are found to be most effective.  In this culture, all contributors to delivery are constantly increasing their effectiveness.  As Michael Fullan (2008) put it, "Learning on the job, day after day, is the work".

From: Deliverology 101 by Michael Barber
Published by: Corwin Press, EDI - U.S. Education Delivery Institute, OPC - Ontario Principals' Council

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