The Thrival of the Fittest

Shawna was a veteran principal of six years, all at the same middle school.  The API was climbing, and the school had even made all the AYP targets in the latest STAR cycle, thanks to Safe Harbor.  She felt pretty stressed much of the time, and had just learned that she had slightly elevated cholesterol. However, when she asked her teachers to complete an online 360-degree survey about her leadership in implementing the district-adopted core curriculums, she was sure that overall, her staff would say that her leadership was strong. 

When the results came in, she was quite surprised that over half the staff still regarded this nearly three-year-old initiative as “second-order” change – change that requires a sharp departure from the familiar.  But the real shock came when she saw that her scores in Communication and Culture were much lower than she expected.  After a short spate of rationalizing and excuse-making, she mustered the nerve to call in her site language arts coach, Melanie.

She showed the graphs to Melanie and began wondering out loud if the program erred in recording the scores for these particular areas.  Melanie became visibly uncomfortable.  Surprised, Shawna asked if she would be willing to share some honest feedback about her leadership in second-order change.

Slowly, Melanie began to share her own feelings, careful to clarify that she was speaking only for herself.  “When I come in to talk to you about all that’s going on, I always feel like you’re in the middle of something more important.”

Shawna exclaimed that Melanie was certainly welcome in her office, anytime – she had an open-door policy!

“Well, that’s part of the problem.  You’re always looking past me, out into the office.  You’re either waving and saying Hi to someone walking by, or jumping up to run out there and intervene with some situation that’s going on.  Even when it’s quiet out there, like late in the afternoon, you’re always looking at your computer while we’re talking, or just answering an email “real quick.”  Or you’re trying to eat while we’re talking, because I know you never have time to have a real lunch, and I just feel like I’m trying to squeeze in on top of everything that has you so busy.  It’s hard right now, but you just seem too busy.”

With that pronouncement, Melanie slumped down in her chair, clearly wishing she hadn’t said so much.  Shawna, now more shocked than before, stammered out her thanks, and quickly added an assurance that she appreciated Melanie’s candor.  Melanie hastily stood up and shot toward the door, giving her a nervous half-smile, “You’re welcome, I guess.”

Shawna closed her office door and sank back into her chair.  If Melanie, one of her closest partners in all the site’s current leadership endeavors, had all this to say, what was all the rest of the staff saying?

Shawna is a composite of many principals I have known, including myself.  One of the most valuable – and scary – tools a leader can use is a 360 instrument that allows others to express their views of his or her leadership - anonymously.  Writer and diarist Anais Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”  If your leadership is an important aspect of your life, and you have a desire to raise your leadership to a new level, I urge you to find the courage to use a tool that will give you this kind of very personal feedback.

As we reflect on leadership in education today, perhaps no descriptor is more expressive than “frantic.”   The day simply contains too few hours, yet the hours we devote on any given day can be exhausting.  Being completely unqualified to offer advice, I will instead offer a few of the learnings I’ve gleaned from reflecting on my own practice, as well as observing other leaders.

Confronting these “brutal facts,” Shawna made several small though not necessarily easy changes - habits die hard.  She rearranged her office furniture so that instead of being tempted to look past the person sitting in her guest chair out into the office, she could only look at his or her face as they talked.  She forced herself not to look at her computer monitor or type on her keyboard when someone was in her office, and swiveled her chair slightly away from the computer so that she wasn’t tempted.  She couldn’t figure out how to get an actual lunch built into her day and she continued to eat at her desk.  But when someone came in to talk, she stopped eating and started giving the conversation her full attention – with the added bonus of not having to talk with her mouth full.

John Maxwell has written, “No one can lead others until he can lead himself.”  Unfortunately, few of us seem to be able to find the time or energy for the reflection necessary to lead ourselves, or even care for ourselves physically as we should. Although countless experts remind us of the critical importance of breakfast to maintain a healthy weight, Shawna’s commute made this next to impossible.  By the time she actually got to school, no matter how early, it was not unusual for a parent or staff member – delighted by their lucky timing – to accost her as she got out of her car.  She started eating a banana just before she got into the car.  It eased the impact of her black coffee on her stomach, and gave her a few nutrients to boot.  She actually liked oranges better, but who had time to peel one?

Devoted to Books on Tape, Shawna felt that at least she could maintain some modicum of awareness about new professional topics.  No principal she knew personally, in spite of the ironic fact of being a leader in education, had time to actually read.  Then, at the end of one long day, her CD player simply stopped working.  Irritated, she tried the radio.  It was kaput, too.  After a few miles, to her astonishment, she realized that she actually liked the silence.  After about eleven hours of input, the quiet bubble of her car was like a soothing dip in a cool, spring-fed pond.  Having no time to take her car anywhere for attention for anything unrelated to the rock-bottom need for safe drivability, the sound system just stayed broken, and Shawna found that she arrived at work fresher, and at home less burdened.

As she talked through some of her new insights with a close friend, Shawna decided to try one more strategy to carve out some personal time for herself.  She had picked up a copy of Julie Cameron’s Vein of Gold in a bookstore, and had been interested enough to read a couple of chapters although she hadn’t actually bought the book.  It was for artists and creative types, not for someone like her.  Cameron suggested a daily morning ritual called Morning Pages.  Shawna had been intrigued enough to try it, but just hadn’t been able to stick with it.  She did, however, love the quiet time she gained by waking up about a half hour earlier, and sitting quietly with her coffee.  One chilly morning, she lit a very small fire in the fireplace, and her own morning ritual was born.  She learned almost exactly how much small wood she needed for a fire that was finished burning by the time she left for work, and the inner quiet of that solitude generally lasted all the way through her morning commute.  As the weather got warmer, she substituted a few candles for the fire, and enjoyed the same result.  The morning paper and TV news awaited with their noisy, daily reliability in the staff lounge, and if she happened to miss the latest sensational story because of some classroom emergency, she could be sure that several staff members would be sure to mention it in the course of the day, delighted to find someone ignorant of this all-consuming, late-breaking news.

Shawna began to examine other aspects of her leadership, too.  She had become proud of the fact that she had actually, finally, learned to delegate.  But the 360 results suggested that this might not be as positive as she had believed.  One day, she happened on a brief article that described the difference between distributed leadership and shared leadership.  She realized that she was distributing – delegating – some leadership tasks that she should be sharing.  Shared leadership empowers teacher leaders to begin, side-by-side with the principal, to shoulder the responsibilities for significant work toward improving student achievement, through the process of the principal’s modeling, co-planning, co-facilitating, and debriefing leadership experiences.  To be sure, delegation is easier, but the level of broad-based teacher ownership and learning is greatly diminished.  Delegation really has its place in lower-level tasks that do not require the same level of learning and importance as responsibilities that should be shared.  A leader who is growing in wisdom learns to know the difference.  One principal who had truly fostered her own teachers as leaders remarked, “I’m not the only voice anymore.  There are lots of us, all saying the same thing.  It’s finally about the kids.”  What a relief, to be able to share this paramount leadership responsibility with teachers!

Finally, my conjured Shawna represents our universal, lifelong career struggle as educational leaders to Get Organized.  I had hoped to have mastered this by the time I was eligible to retire, but I regret to report that I have failed within that timeline.  I sometimes think I’ve bought every book ever published on the topic.  I once bought a small gift book called Organized Serenity.  Before I could get around to reading it, I lost it forever – probably in some morass of piled files and papers.  My latest find – How to Get Organized Without Resorting to Arson – is my favorite so far, and I have actually put a few ideas into practice and they seem to be sticking.  I’m trying the Control Folders at home and at work instead of To Do lists, and Backwardsing Up for projects.  Those familiar with Understanding By Design (UBD) will quickly relate to Backwardsing Up.  The book is written in a wonderful, no-nonsense style as entertaining as the title suggests.

My most life-changing Get Organized seminar was one I attended with Malachi Pancoast, The Breakthrough Coach.  His training is specifically designed for site administrators, but even as a county office administrator – more of a “technician” in Malachi’s nomenclature – I have found valuable components that work for me.  I no longer have files, piles, books, or bookcases in my office.  All of these are kept under the authority of my clerical staff.  I no longer have a desk.  I sit at a long table, with a couple of extra chairs for guests, with a phone and my laptop.  Malachi urges getting rid of the computer, too, but as a technician - planning and facilitating or presenting staff development - this may be a step outside my reach in my current career position.

My boss does point out that in order to implement this model, extra file and bookcase space is needed somewhere outside one’s personal office, but after purging significant amounts of paper and files, this is greatly reduced.  Many people find it difficult to follow the directive to remove all personal décor items – photos, awards, knickknacks, and personal and professional momentos – from the office.  I have very nearly done so, and I have found the empty space to be as mentally and visually liberating as Malachi promised.  My “hot files” of current working projects are kept on a secretary’s countertop, and most of the time, I honestly work on only one at a time.  All my reference material, program records, and older files are kept in a cabinet opposite her station.  I have maintained a pile-free office for the better part of two years.  I believe that this is similar to a weight loss program – if you can go this long without backsliding, it can probably be termed a personal success, and I can say without reservation that my energy and focus are vastly improved as a result.

For Shawna, the point of the Breakthrough training is to get her out of her office a minimum of two to three days per week, and into classrooms, and to go home at a reasonable time at the end of the day.  This is defined as sans-briefcase, since it almost never gets unpacked anyway.  Malachi calls these compulsive briefcase behaviors, “Giving your stuff a ride.”  The data he collects on long-term clients – many of whom sign up for more advanced training – suggests that principals and APs who implement what they learn do spend significantly more time in classrooms.

For the sake of the students, educational leaders must not only survive, but thrive.  We need every tool and strategy we can find that we can personalize to work for us, especially including those that tell us how we’re doing.  The shock of learning what your followers really think has value beyond what I can convey to you in a few paragraphs. Our county office has begun using an electronic 360 instrument developed by The Flippen Group, which is used in conjunction with its leadership training.  Mid-Continent Research in Education and Learning has developed the online survey Shawna used.  In my principalship, before the time of online tools, my feedback came from paper/pencil surveys, based on a model from a district where I had been a teacher. Out of it, perhaps my most valuable lesson was the essential, compelling message of the need for a leader to go within. This is a human - not simply a leadership - need, although leadership gurus allude to this when they write about the necessity of reflection.  Every spiritual tradition has its teachings on attending to the life within.  It is truly a universal human need, sorely neglected in our modern, frantic culture.

I hesitate to use the airline metaphor, because a participant in a training group once demanded, “So the plane is going down?”  No, I do not believe it is, but the cabin pressure may be a little low from time to time.  So please, leaders, put on your own oxygen mask first, before assisting others.  Get a read from those you lead.  Adjust your behaviors, using what you learn. 

Reflect.

Go within.

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