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.

Admit what you don't know

As a leader, are you able to reveal your weaknesses in order to build a stronger workplace?

Leaders who insist on making all the decisions often find themselves with disengaged employees. If people aren't taking charge in your organization, your leadership style might be the problem. If you have an overly directive approach, take a step back. Acknowledge your failings (whether they be your knowledge base or a particular skill set) with your team. Share your personal and organizational goals. Then, admit that you don't have all the answers and you need your team's help in reaching those goals. This will give your people room to actively participate in the organization's success. This act of humility is often seen as courageous and inspires others to follow suit.

You can extend this idea to actually inviting some individuals to take on certain roles.  For example, if you're bad at remembering the social aspects of the workplace, ask for a couple of volunteers to take on this responsibility.  Another example might be asking for a volunteer or two to help identify what's missing from conversations at meetings.  Certain individuals could be asked to help the group identify perspectives that may be missed when your team gets together to work.  By engaging more staff with important workplace roles, you're sharing the responsibility of leading the school/organization.  You're building capacity, and you're ensuring the workplace is a healthy environment in which to work because responsibility is shared.


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

Take the Work Seriously, not Yourself

As a leader, are you taking the work seriously...or yourself?

If you are serving as a leader, you probably got to where you are because you sought out a leadership position.  Fortunately, many leaders are highly committed to the work they do.  They are motivated by the work, it aligns with their values, and they believe that the work is important.  Unfortunately, we occasionally find leaders who take themselves a bit too seriously.  These are the folks who like the title, the nice office, or sadly, the positional power.  These are the folks we follow not because they motivate or inspire us but because we must.  They are our bosses, not our leaders.

What kind of leader are you?  If a random sampling of your staff members were asked, would they identify you as someone who is highly committed to the important work of your school/organization?  Would they describe you as someone whose actions are driven by commitment to the work?  Or would they see you as someone more interested in themselves and their career? 

As you think about your own leadership.  Pause every once in a while and ask yourself if your words and actions - at any moment of any day - are motivated by a strong belief in the importance of the work you are doing or are motivated by some personal benefit that you may gain.  You will know the answers to these questions and you'll need to respond accordingly.  However, keep in mind the old saying: Don't worry whether they are listening to you or not.  Worry that they are watching.  If you have difficulty answering the question above, don't worry.  Those you lead can always answer it accurately. 

Inspired Leadership

Guest post by Jan Kielven...

Inspired Leadership

Let’s face it, nuggets on paper don’t inspire.  Board plans don’t inspire, neither do schools plans.  They are necessary.  They’re set up to be ‘information’ and they do that extremely well.   They speak to the left side of the brain.  It’s the “What”, not the “Why” of what we do. 

Plans identify the work to be done, often through numeric targets.  Words like ‘a 3% increase’ don’t inspire. In football, this is like the grinding ground game.  No ‘Hail Mary’ passes, no interceptions, no quarterback sacks.  It’s a game of inches and percentages.   In economic terms, it’s like fracking hydrocarbons.  No burst of thick glistening jets from a deep well gurgling excitedly to the surface.  No Ghawar fields.  It’s trying to get a little above breaking even.   ‘Fracking’ may well be the metaphor of our times. 

So, whose work is the inspiration?  We cannot succeed without it, without undue human cost.  One answer comes from Andrew Hargreaves in The Fourth Way.  He actually uses the word, ‘inspire’!  Rare.  Courageous.  He also identifies it as one of the roles of leadership.   He speaks of the need to trust leaders “…to become inspirational developers of their communities instead of mere managers of imposed targets and external initiatives.” (Hargreaves&Shirley, 2008)

Powerful leaders ‘own’ the Board Improvement Plan and the School Improvement Plan.  They have a strong commitment to it, and a passion for achieving its goals – not for the sake of numbers, but because those numbers represent real individuals in their care.  That conversion from data and targets  to individuals’ experiences of education happens when information is transformed into compassion, drive, and yes, inspiration. 

THE FOURTH WAY

 Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP/OCTOBER 2008

Guest author:  Jan Kielven