Aspiring Leaders and Self-Knowledge

"The unexamined life is not worth living," said Socrates.  If it was true for the young men of ancient Athens, for aspiring 21st century public school and district leaders it is even more true. Today has been for me a reminder of just how important it is to know what you bring to the table, and of who you need to join you there because of what you do not bring.

Jim Sweeney, TLA Consultant for Planning & Development, and I were privileged to host a meeting of TLA's Aspiring Administrators Leadership Institute today. We are now matriculating the third cohort of assistant principals and central-service directors in the Wake County Public School System through the second year of the two-year curriculum.

As were their 40 predecessors, cohort three participants were selected for the Institute through a competitive application process. Beginning with cohort two, we have engaged participants in an extraordinary program called, "Shared Leadership through Self Knowledge." It has earned a prominent and permanent place in the curriculum, as far as I am concerned.

Designed and delivered by TLA contract consultant, Gail Ostrisko, the program objective is to help aspiring leaders understand and articulate their natural abilities, recognize and facilitate others' abilities and talents, and engage all abilities and skills through leadership in a team-based learning environment. Doesn't that pretty much sum up what we need in Triangle principals and central-service leaders?

Gail uses her credentials as a Licensed Highlands Affiliate to facilitate participants' self-administration of the three-and-a-half-hour online Highlands Ability Battery. She then uses her expertise as an executive coach and presenter to process Battery results, both one-on-one and in a day-long whole-group session. Essentially, the timed tests assess skills and abilities that psychologists concur are relatively fixed in human beings at about age fourteen. Through coaching and group facilitation, Gail makes sure everyone understands exactly what their results mean.

The big "so what" is obvious: When you work with your natural abilities, you're going with the flow; when you work against your talents, you're paddling upstream. Since the job of leaders and managers is to get stuff done through other people, failure or burnout is likely when leaders do not have people on their team who possess abilities that they themselves lack.

Research has shown that what folk think they are good at and what they are actually good at may be two different things. In other words, even well-intended leaders can be self-delusional. With Gail and Jim's help, TLA is replacing warm and fuzzy delusion with hard cold fact one leader at time. Socrates would be proud.