Success Through Problems

As a leader, can you find success through problems and not your passion?

When it comes to our work, we're often told to follow our passions. But you might find greater satisfaction - and improved results - if you work on problems in your school/organization.  Choose a problem that you care about — personally — and let this dilemma be your compass. Get out of the office, meet people who are affected by the problem, and connect with those working in this area. Doing so shifts your attention from yourself and your own work to that of others. By becoming less focused on yourself and your own work, you may become more successful with the work of your school/organization.



Adapted from "To Find Happiness, Forget About Passion" by Oliver Segovia.

Want to Change? Choose Just One Thing

As a leader, are you thinking of starting the new year with some new commitments?

New Year's resolutions can be overwhelming and often overly-ambitious. Instead of tackling all of them at once, list all the things you would change if you had the time. Take a good look at the list and think about the one thing that would impact several things on your list. Make it short and simple. Perhaps you need to be more assertive, or maybe you need to slow down, or speak up more often for yourself or your work. If you're not sure, try something for a few weeks and see if it's working. Then, each morning, remind yourself of your one thing. Soon it will become second nature as the results reinforce your commitment to change.

Adapted from "What's Your One Big Theme?" by Peter Bregman.

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? 

Learning Stance or Performance Stance

As a leader, what is your stance?  Learning? Performance? Boss?

As leaders, we can take any of a number of stances.  Historically, leaders assumed more of a 'boss' stance.  That is, they assumed the role of the person in charge and then gave direction to staff in accordance with what they - and more senior levels of their organizations - believed staff needed to do in order to meet the goals of the school/organization.  Thank goodness the days of leaders assuming the boss stance are rapidly becoming memory.  It's a paradigm of leadership that may have worked at one time but it certainly doesn't address the reality's of today's workplace or the needs of the broader community.

Increasingly, we see leaders assuming one of two other stances.  These are the learning stance or the performance stance.  It's pretty evident by the term used that a performance stance is more about how a leader performs.  It's a lot about appearances and being seen to be doing things.  Leaders in a performance stance are always busy and always doing things.  Are they getting things done?  Likely, in some cases.  But it's more by luck than by design. 

As the nature of the workplace changes and the nature of how the public wishes to interact with schools and organizations, we see a different leader stance emerging.  This is the learning stance.  Leaders in a learning stance position themselves less in a hierarchical position and more along a continuum of responsibility where they - along with all members of staff - are engaged in learning while conducting their daily work.  Think about Peter Senge's 'learning organization' or Michael Fullan's statement that "Learning is the work".  Leaders who flatten the hierarchy, position themselves with staff along a continuum of responsibility, and actively co-learn with all colleagues are the new leaders in the current workplace paradigm.  Shared ownership and responsibility for school/organizational outcomes are the order of the day.  Gone are the egos, the performances, the bluff exteriors, and the hierarchy.

What's your stance?  Think about your own leadership.  Does it speak more to being the boss? Performing? Or learning along with colleagues?  Beginning to shift your stance just might help bring about some of the elusive results you are seeking.

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.

Being Optimistic

As a leader, do you demonstrate optimism?

Within the literature on leadership, there are many references to the significance of leaders demonstrating optimism.  As leaders, this is sometimes really difficult to do.  We face challenging situations.  We see results that simply are not good enough.  We see work practices that are not effective.  We see many things that can annoy, frustrate, or even anger us.  There are ways for us to deal with these situations......and publicly is not one of them. 

Demonstrating optimism is a way that you communicate that you believe the work you are doing is important.  You believe the work your staff is doing is important.  You believe everyone has or can develop the skills to do a great job.  You believe great results are achievable.  In other words, you have great faith in those whom you lead.

How do you demonstrate optimism?  You can't fake it.  If you don't believe in the importance of the work you are doing and you don't believe in your staff, you can't pretend.  They'll see through it easily.  You may need to shift some of your own thinking to a more positive perspective.  When you are in the workplace, are you seeing what's not there (the 'witch hunt' perspective) or do you see what's there and potentially there (the 'treasure hunt' perspective).  Draw on your observations from the 'treasure hunt' to build your own sense of optimism about your workplace.  Remember, no one ever does a great job when they feel that their leader doesn't believe in them. 

Performance Appraisals

As a leader, how do you handle performance appraisals?

One of the important tasks any supervising leader must assume is engaging in performance appraisals with members of your staff.  Performance appraisals can be seen as an annoying task that needs to be completed to get it out of the way until the next appraisal cycle comes round......or......it can be an opportunity to celebrate the good work of your staff, to support their professional growth, and to build capacity for ever-better results.  The difference is huge - a mundane task or a celebratory process focused on growth.  What makes the difference?  It's the leader - and how the leader engages in performance appraisal processes. 

If you'd like to lead a work culture that doesn't fear but embraces performance appraisals, it's up to you as the leader, to change your processes.  A few things to consider when doing performance appraisals:

• Who does the talking?  Is it you, the leader/appraiser, or do your staff members have more of the 'air time'?  This is a chance for your staff to present themselves and their work to you.
• Do staff members have a chance:
• to articulate their work,
• to explain why they work in the way that they do,
• to talk about what they believe their greatest strengths and accomplishments are,
• to describe from their own perspective where they believe they need to grow?
• Do you use coaching questions in the conversations?  True coaching questions mediate thinking and are non-threatening.  They open up honest conversation.
• Do your staff members have an opportunity to provide evidence of their work that demonstrates their strengths and accomplishments? 
• Who decides what the next steps - or growth goals- are?  As the leader/appraiser do you tell your staff member or do they have the opportunity first to explain to you what their growth needs to be.  You might be very surprised that they likely know even better than you what they need to learn next in order to grow professionally.
• Once the performance appraisal process finishes, is that it?  Done?  Or do you take the opportunity to check in with your staff to see how they're doing with the growth goals that were set?  Friendly, on-going monitoring - if done well - can be encouraging and motivating without seeming like you're checking up on them.

Performance appraisals can be a time-consuming, routine task or it can be a growth-oriented celebration of each staff members' work.  It's up to you as the leader, to create the culture by your actions.

One Small Thing

As a leader, what one small thing might you do today that could make a difference in your school or organization?

As leaders, we often think that big, bold, new initiatives are needed to bring about change.  We hope that these new initiatives will make a difference in terms of the work we do and the results we'll get.  Today, I'd like to propose that we flip that idea around.  It's not to suggest that bold initiatives don't help us accomplish what we need.  What I want to suggest is that they can work hand-in-hand with small things, thus, my question at the top of this post: What one small thing might you do today that could make a difference?  A few starting thoughts follow.  What might you like to add to this list?

• Get out of your office and wander the building - even more than you normally do.
• Reconnect with a staff member or two.  Do you really know how they are doing and what's important to them?
• Compliment people who aren't expecting it.
• Help someone you've never helped before.
• Speak with someone you don't normally speak with (e.g. a student, a parent, a client).
• Thank someone for something that seems small or insignificant.
• Ask someone - whom you've never asked before - for their opinion.

These are a few ideas.  Corny?  Perhaps.   But the point here is to do things in a different way and see what happens.  Remember, if we continue to do the things we always do, we'll always get the same results. 

Leading For Results

Current leaders can learn so much from the leaders that have come before us.  We all benefit from knowing what has worked for other leaders and getting insights into the question, "If you can only use a few leadership practices, what is likely to have the greatest results?"  For example, what leaders do in schools can have a significant impact (positive or negative) on student learning.  In a meta-analysis of 30 years of research on leadership, Waters, Marzano, and McNulty (2002) identified 21 leadership practices that enhance student achievement.  Savvy leaders actively seek to use these practices:

1. Building culture by fostering shared beliefs and a sense of community and cooperation.
2. Maintaining order by establishing a set of operating procedures and routines.
3. Protecting teachers from distractions that will take away from their teaching time or focus.
4. Providing resources such as professional development and materials to support staff to do their jobs.
5. Directly involving themselves in the design and implementation of curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices.
6. Establishing clear goals and keeping the focus on meeting them.
7. Being knowledgeable about curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices.
8. Having quality interactions with staff and students and being visible.
9. Recognizing and rewarding individual accomplishments.
10. Communicating effectively with staff and students.
11. Reaching out to stakeholders and being a strong advocate for the school.
12. Seeking input and involving staff in decisions and policy making.
13. Recognizing school accomplishments and acknowledging failures.
14. Building strong relationships with staff.
15. Being change agents willing to challenge the status quo.
16. Providing leadership and inspiration for new and challenging innovations.
17. Taking action based on strong ideals and beliefs about education.
18. Monitoring and evaluating effects on student learning.
19. Adapting leadership style to the situation and being tolerant of dissent.
20. Knowing the school context and using your understanding of people and situations in your context to solve problems.
21. Ensuring that staff have opportunities for intellectual stimulation around the work of teaching and learning. 

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

Celebrate, Recognize, Reinforce, Reward

As a leader, do you Celebrate, Recognize, Reinforce, and Reward your staff?

The kind of significant, sustained improvement that we need in [organizations] will not occur in an isolated, free-lance culture, where no one knows what anyone else is doing or what each other's operative goals are.  That is a system in disarray.

[Organizations] improve when purpose and effort unite.  One key is leadership that recognizes its most vital function: to keep everyone's eyes on the prize of [improvement].  The crush of competing agendas and distractions does not make that focus easy.

One of the most effective means to cultivate a goal-oriented culture is to regularly reinforce and recognize improvement efforts, both privately and publicly. 

From: Results by Mike Schmoker
(Published by: ASCD - The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)