En Route

I've been thinking a lot lately about my six years working with Triangle-area districts and schools. The obvious explanation has its roots in my imminent retirement, of course, but it goes deeper. Here's the thing: most people with whom I have worked were en route to something or somewhere else.

Take, for example, the way I spent yesterday. As a networking and learning opportunity, we convened Wake County School professionals from two cohorts of what we called Aspiring Principals and later, Aspiring Administrators, Leadership Institute. We billed it "Revisit, Review, Renew."

The event was co-designed and delivered by Gail Ostrisko who is licensed to facilitate and coach people who have engaged in the online self-assessment of The Highlands Ability Battery. I have previously written about the assessment and will not reiterate here its intended outcomes.

What is important to know now is that, since we did not know Gail when we implemented Aspiring Principals Institute I, we invited only Institute II and III participants who had taken the Highlands, this both to follow up on and take a deeper dive into what it means to deploy one's natural strengths and abilities as a leader.

Knowing, however, that in Institute I we had many professionals who had been appointed principal and that these individuals represented a kind of "step ahead" group with which aspiring principals could relate, we invited them to serve on a panel to talk about their experiences. Volunteer panelists included Malik Bazelle, Lisa Cruz, AJ Muttillo, and Eloise Sheats.

We are indebted to Malik, Lisa, AJ, and Eloise for outstanding leadership within their school communities and for their contribution to leadership succession planning in Wake County Schools. What I have come to view as a major take-away of the panel discussion is the questions posed by the audience, most of whom were hoping one day to be what they panelists already were--principals.

Following an introduction by each principal--where they led, how long they had been there, a brief sketch of their school community, a strength that has served them well, and finally, one thing that would be different if they had known on the first day of the job what they know now--I posed questions written on index cards that originated with the audience. By thematic clusters, here is what our aspiring principals wanted to know:

Cluster One: Was it difficult to trust the people around you when you first became a principal? What was most challenging as a new principal?

Cluster Two: How did you learn the budget process? Was training provided? How did you manage the budget at first?

Cluster Three: How long did it take you to become a principal? How many schools did you apply for before you got a position? Please tell us about a strategy for obtaining the principalship?

Cluster Four: How do you promote the leadership growth of your assistant principals while ensuring the school operates as a well-oiled machine?

Cluster Five: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your job? Are you happy that you are a principal?

Aren't those amazing questions? If Wake County Schools or for that matter, any public school district, has an interest in growing its own leaders, I would hope the superintendent and members of the board of education can read between the lines of those questions, so to support and capitalize on professionals who already know the culture, assuming the indigenous culture matters.

As both former principal and life-long learner, I judge the quality of leaders by the questions they pose. If one is en route to somewhere or something else--and leaders always are--I would hope the quality of questions principal aspirants across the entire Triangle are at least half as good as the ones on the minds of our Leadership Institute participants at our Wednesday event.

In actuality, everyone of us is en route to somewhere else. I have often said, at minimum we are each leading our own lives. What are you asking yourself? With whom do you expect to make the journey? What awaits you at the other end? When you arrive, will you be happy? God speed to each and every one of you who reads this blog. In some way, you are all going with me.

Hate the Sin, Not the Sinner

I put it off long enough. I'm starting to clean out my office. My goal is to look at bare walls and bookshelves no longer than I absolutely have to, so the packing of the last item must be meticulously timed with the savoring of the last minute come the end of the month and my tenure here.

Not surprisingly, my slow and steady hand is surfacing one professional treasure after another. An inscribed pen here, a photograph there, a hand-written thank-you note from a principal beneath a stack of memos--all rememberances of my six years in the Triangle. Sometimes my treasures are less personal. Take today, for example.

Before me is a copy of an article from Educational Researcher, one of the American Educational Research Association periodicals to which I subscribe. As for why you should care, understanding this article and its implications promises to help you focus on what matters most in attaining sought-for outcomes, whether improving student learning or moving product.

The article by Mary M. Kennedy is titled, "Attribution Error and the Quest for Teacher Quality." In it, Kennedy evinces the ways researchers and policymakers overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the influence of situations on observed behavior of teachers.

Kennedy argues that it is teaching quality, not teacher quality, to which we must attend if we are to appropriately account for improvement in student learning. The parameters of teachers' work--including schedules, instructional materials, and assignments--combined with students, school incursions into classroom life, and reform clutter are a few of the situational variables over which teachers have little or no control. My teacher wife reminds me nightly of the many things that cause her to be grading papers and planning lessons at our dining room table rather than at her teacher's desk.

Yet reasonable people firmly believe that "good teachers" may be evaluated for their caring personality, credentials, licensure test scores, skill sets, and personal values without giving a moment's notice for all the things outside the teacher's control that may also bear on performance. Situations matter.

Without treading deeper into Kennedy's weeds, I want to invite you to consider people you lead or manage. Are they resourced with what they need to do the job? Do workplace rules and routines facilitate or hinder job performance? What degree of autonomy do workers have in attaining expected outcomes? Are other workers enabling or disabling individual job performance? Students of TLA understand such questions as a search for sources of influence.

Bottom line: If you want to improve workplace quality and organizational outcomes, It's time to look beyond the worker to the working situation itself. Enable the worker, provide social supports, and structure the job to maximize what you want. Hate the sin, not the sinner.