The last leadership challenge is called, Enable Others to Act. Since this week's blog has a low response, please respond to this week's AND last week's blog if you have not done so. I can tell the summer fun is well under way...that is a good thing!
I will email you the field visit schedule for Wednesday, July 8th. Also, I have my new Park Ridge Email up and running. Finally, We will meet for our final class at Champs in Old Orchard Mall across from Niles North HS at 5pm. I was unable to reserve a room at the HS.
Thanks!
I know this blog says "enabling others to act," but I am certain that I and many others have already responded to that. For this reason, I am blogging to the "Encourage the Heart" leadership challenge. Encouraging the heart is something that in my experience I have found is more difficult than it sounds. In many cases, leaders believe that they are better at this than they actually are. The essence of "Encouraging the Heart" is making sure staff feel rewarded, recognized, and routinely re-fueled. While this sounds easy enough, there are many ways to do this ineffectively.
ReplyDeleteMany leaders have read somewhere, or perhaps believe in their hearts, that recognizing staff accomplishments is an important component of effective leadership. The problem is that when such efforts at recognition seem contrived, scripted, or overused, it does not have its intended effect and may have the opposite. The trick is to become and continue to be aware and genuinely appreciative of all that others are doing in their work. Recognition and praise seem to feel most rewarding and heart-encouraging when it is spontaneous, specific, and clearly genuine. Too often people praise others because they feel that they have to and it feels awkward rather than encouraging.
Hi Kevin & everyone,
ReplyDeleteWe already blogged about Enabling Others to Act during the week of June 6th. Would you like more blogging? :)
"Leaders foster collaboration and build spirited teams. They actively involve others."
ReplyDeleteI will take part of that to pat myself on the back, and the other part as a moment of honest self-reflection.
Something I learned from teaching in Las Vegas was that I can either spend 5 minutes of class time correcting negative behaviors and stop class to discipline/dismiss a student or I could spend the same five minutes taking time to talk to the students and build a relationship with them. Something as small as finding out what they were doing after school that day could serve as a means to bridge that gap so that when the time came to correct a behavior we already had some sort of a connection and little by little the misbehaviors calmed down and were much less severe in nature. I bring this idea into my teaching now. I address each class as "team" I spend nearly a week at the beginning of the year breaking down barriers and getting the class to be comfortable with each other and the results are profound. The quality of their group projects and their willingness to interact (sometimes to a fault) is evident.
Now for the, perhaps negative, self-reflection: I love putting my class into the hands of my students and much as possible, but there are times that it makes me nervous. At times I am ok with a discussion or topic drifting in a natural direction. I like to let kids lead the class in a discussion about an article/topic, but at times it really freaks me out to let go of some of that.
I attempted to have the kids lead the discussions on a series of articles. I had always been the lead in the past and felt that things had gotten stagnant and wanted my kids to give a new take on the passages. After about the first 3 groups went, I could see that the student-led discussions were not adding any benefit-- frankly I thought "I could do this better myself" and I took over from there. I think at times not being able to let go of that lead makes for a one-dimensional class that I don't know how to get over the fear/ego that I should be the one out front even though I know, at least in words, that it should be "their" class.
Here is a copy of what I wrote for "Enable Others to Act..."
ReplyDeleteOn paper it makes sense. The best leaders are able to make those around him or her feel that their work is valuable to the success of the organization, and that their opinion counts. I believe that Henry Ford said that a happy worker is a good worker. These leaders also realize that motivating the people around them will also make them better leaders. I recall from Lynche's class we talked about not only getting the right people on the bus, but also in the right seats. The tough part is getting those off the bus who don't like the direction that it is going. We all want to fell that our leaders trust us and value our work, and our leaders want to get the same feeling from their employees. Creating a sense of trust and dignity in the work environment is laying the groundwork for making changes as smoothly and effectively as possible.
Johnny mentioned fostering imagination in the facutlty. If the teachers feel that they can imagine a better way of doing things and then feel comfortable presenting the idea to the principal, then the teacher feels a sense of worth. The principal then gets to evaluate the idea and push it towards implementation or discard it in the good ideas that will never work box.
I feel that these two items really go together. A good leader must enable others or encourage others to participate in the process but in order to be truly effective a leader will allow their compadres chances to work on what they truly feel is their calling. For example, my role as an instructional coordinator not only allows me to take on leadership roles and have a strong role in developing professional growth initiatives, but it allows me to work in an area that I really enjoy. Allowing teachers to work where there heart is almost assures that the teacher will put 110% effort into it and will garner successful outcomes. People working on things that there heart truly is not involved in may lead to burn out and frustration rather than success. The exceptional leader knows the strengths of his people and allows them to work on those strengths. I've spent a good deal of time over the last couple weeks working with teachers new to the district on setting up and dealing with our electronic gradebook, even on weekends using SKYPE. This is something i really enjoy so the assistant principal has turned all that over to me. He doesn't even bother trying to answer questions. Because it is "where my heart is" I will spend hours trying to resolve a problem or work with a teacher. Other people get easily frustrated with technology so this would not be a good match for them.
ReplyDeleteI am in such agreement with what has been said so far here. I think it's about buy-in. If your students or staff have a vested interest or a passion for something, they will perform so much better. I like that analogy of the bus. It seems like I am on a bus at my school where the driver is afraid he is going to be locked out at the next rest stop, so he keeps us strapped into our seats with no opportunity to shine. I have often wondered about this style of leadership and still not am not able to understand why it is so common. Who does it benefit? Certainly not the kids when so much talent in the building goes untapped. I recently had a discussion with another teacher who did an intership at our school like I did. We compared notes and her discipline plan is sitting on a shelf gathering dust just like the professional development plan I did for Marzanno's strategies. It was not implemented at all.
ReplyDeleteIt is such a breath of fresh air to be interning this summer in District 63 where I can see the staff will not only use what we have created for RtI, but are appreciative of whatever we provide. People are even willing to chip in and no one feels threatened or is wanting their name on anything to get credit for it. Lori and I both know what areas we need help in, and we have tapped into the individuals with those particular skill sets. The results have been phenominal. I think it makes the staff feel rewarded too because they know that someone has noticed their hard work and they are being recognized for it.