Practice 4

Make leadership a way of life, not a person

Overview

Conventional talk about leadership and leadership development in schools often invokes language like “leader pipeline” and “pool of leader talent” and “leadership bench.” There will always be a need for someone to accept the mantle of overall leadership responsibility; however, it rarely creates vibrant cultures of innovation for a group to relegate the practice of leadership – defined as fighting for the highest possible good in the lives of others – to only that person or small group of people with certain titles.

The primary function of schools is raising up a generation of humans and shepherding them through experiences that unleash their knowledge, skills, dispositions and unique talents. An endeavor this audacious demands leadership be practiced at every level of the organization. Schools that serve thousands of students each day need leadership enacted by students themselves, by teachers, and by classified staff in order to bring about the mission and highest possible good in the lives of students – and the adults committed to the mission. When there is only one person enacting leadership, we get cultures of “just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it” and “If this doesn’t go well, it’s on you” and “I’m just a teacher, it doesn’t matter what I think.”When leadership is a shared cultural practice, there are structures and daily actions that seek out, lift up, and integrate voice from across the school community. There are clear roles and responsibilities that ensure autonomy, mastery, and relatedness, not only for students but for teachers and staff.

To make this a reality requires that people leave behind a scarcity mindset that drives hoarding of information, power, and resources out of fear. It requires a collective practice processing and releasing vicarious trauma that impacts our physiological state keeping us in scarcity mindset. And most of all it requires leader humility and self-awareness to live out the belief that a team is stronger and more effective than a single player, and that each team member has leadership capacity that can be tapped and cultivated.

Quick Start Actions

Share Planning and Facilitation Responsibility for Meetings.

Rotate responsibility for design and facilitation of routine meetings. Establish clear structure (what has to happen at each meeting) and criteria (what is purpose and how do we want people to feel) but give wide berth to rotating teams for adding their own spin to the meeting. This allows multiple voices to be heard and seen in facilitative roles, as well as for the responsibility for meeting success to be shared and felt across the team.

Align Decisionmakers and Decision Processes to Appropriate Level.

Too often, formal leaders are involved in more decisions than they need to be, stymying leadership practice at other levels of the organization. Conduct analysis of those decisions that are root, trunk and leaf level decisions (see Decision Tree resource below) in the organization and establish structures that enable teachers and other staff to fully own or contribute meaningful to making decisions that impact them.

Use Leader Strengths Assessments and Visibly Post Leader Strengths.

Invest in entire staff completing leader assessments to identify strengths. Visibly post those strengths on placards, email signatures, and name tags to reinforce that every team member is a leader with a specific constellation of leader strengths that contribute to collective success.