BFTP: The Accidental Leader

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post February 8, 2007

 

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve. - Tom Landry

Miguel Guhlin over at Around the Corner started a meme*: “What are 7 qualities we don't know about you that help you be a leader?”  and tagged me as one of seven district level administrators. I’ve mulled this one over for a few days.

I have some issues with the term “leader.” It’s been bandied about way too much and has lost much of its meaning. Being a leader assumes one has followers, and heaven help anyone who follows me since I am usually quite lost. Our current crop of public, political leaders, I am sorry to say, don’t exhibit many qualities with which I wish to be associated.

I don’t know what I can really add that won’t sound cliché, so I will come at this a little differently. These are some of the things accidental leaders, people who don’t set out to direct anyone, do that still makes them worthy of being followed. I can’t claim to have a single one of these attributes, but they are qualities of people I have appreciated as a boss or coworker and do my best to emulate.

1. When asked if something could be done, I like people who say, “Anything's possible." After discussion it might not be practical or advisable, but any idea to my kind of leader always starts out as possible. I admire people who are all about helping others accomplish what they want to accomplish.

2. I respect those folks who show respect for everyone. I like the “leader” who shows as much interest in his foot soldiers and he does his generals. People are people are people and all have value – and not just as employees. This also means being transparent about how decisions are made, giving people credit for having enough brains to understand things like making policies, developing budgets, and having their own visions and values.

3. I genuinely appreciate anyone who accepts responsibility, takes blame, and shares credit. Too many people shirk the responsibility, shift the blame and take the credit. These people are also known as assholes. Or too often political partisans.

4. I admire considered risk-takers. They think things through, but don’t need to know all the answers before trying something. They might well live by Theodore Rothke’s line “I learn by going where I have to go.”  Plus they know when to cut their losses if they get unanticipated negative consequences.

5. My deepest admiration goes to those who can actually turn vision into practice. There seem to be ten educational architects for every educational carpenter in this world. Ask me, the carpenters, who can actually take the blueprint and make it stand against the wind, are not only leaders, but even heroes. I think I liked it best when leaders are actually sitting on the horse at the front of their armies.
    
6. Those folks I like working with have a sense of humor. Especially about themselves. (If everyone else is laughing at you, you may as well join in.)

7. I like anyone with a highly developed sense of perspective. Knowing what hills are worth dying on and which aren’t. These folks who know it is usually not worth spending hundreds of hours trying to write a mission statement no one reads anyway. These are bosses who recognize that families are more important as jobs. People in authority know that the best rule is to sometimes break a rule. Directors who know fair and equal are not synonymous. Coworkers who know most mistakes are not fatal and there are few things that you can do that will actually get you kicked off the planet.

One of the ironies of being in a “positional” leadership role – a director, a manager, a supervisor – is that one quickly finds out how little power one actually has. Ordering a thing to be done or a philosophy to be believed is usually about as productive as ordering a two-year-old to eat his peas – you might eventually get the peas in the kid, but the mess will be so bad, you’ll wonder why you started the process. Even “positional” leaders soon find they can lead best by example, with humility, and with common sense.

If this is a meme that interests any of the Blue Skunk readers, please consider yourself nominated to continue it. Passing on a meme make me feel about as guilty as telling a telemarketer the names of other people who might be interested in their product. People do it, I suppose, but does that make it right?

* Whatever happened to memes anyway?

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The secret to successful supervision

Really. That's the whole secret. While those who hear me say this think it is sort of smart ass remark, I mean it.

I've never taken a class in supervision. But over the last 20 years I have discovered that people who don't need to be supervised are developed as much as selected.

Here are few ideas for creating staff members who don't need supervision:

• Make sure everyone knows the big picture. The "why" of a project, especially in education, is often overlooked. We in education have the greatest mission in the world: making kids successful. If that is at the root of all our efforts, we naturally do our best. But everyone has to see the link - although sometimes long and nearly invisible - to one's work and its impact on students. (See also The DJ Factor.)
• Jointly set clear goals, establish time lines and help prioritize work. Then get the hell out of the way. Establish what needs to be done and let others figure out the best way to do it and the parameters under which they are working.
• Provide resources for success. The supervisor should be the go-to person if your staff needs training, equipment or cooperation from other people.
• Expect and analyze failures. When you try new (hopefully more efficient or effective) ways of doing things, failures will occur. (If you are not making mistakes you are probably not making anything, as the pundits tell us.) Don't blame a person, figure out what went wrong and how to make a different mistake the next time.
• Use employee evaluations to help build, not pull down. Personally, I think formal evaluations of staff are worthless unless documenting for dismissal. I have always found good people are very self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Use evaluations to help people meet their personal challenges and goals.
• Run interference. If your people are having problems getting something done because of the actions or inactions of others, intercede. (My nickname is The Plunger in our department.)
• Meet regularly. Scheduled face to face meetings with a running agenda regarding tasks and projects keeps the lines of communication open and you informed without having to look over people's shoulders.
• Accept and build areas of expertise. I don't need to know the technical and other special skills of those in my department (thank god). I only want to know the reasons people do what they do in terms I can understand - and can then relay to other non-technical people.
• Be flexible with schedules. I expect people to work beyond their normal paid hours when we have deadlines or emergencies. I also expect that there will be times people come in late, leave early or need a day off. 9-5 mindsets are a thing of the past. Trust is implicit if you don't want to have to supervise people.

I personally have never liked to be micro-managed and fortunately I haven't been for many, many years.

Isn't there this rule about "do unto others...."?

Any other ideas for creating people you don't have to supervise?

TIES Conference take-aways

Our state technology conference, TIES, was Monday and Tuesday of this week. Just a few thoughts before my Half-heimer's (not quite as bad as Alzheimer's) kicks in ...

I am once again reminded that technology conferences are the most exciting educational events one can attend. I love the new ideas, the new toys, the new teaching strategies - the sense that change in education really is possible and that individuals, not institutions or governments or consultants, will bring that change about. It is our state's most enthusiastic, optimistic group of educators who attend TIES.

I'm always struck by the disconnect between what I encounter at any tech conference and what seems to be happening in the rest of mainstream education. The big themes this year at "It's Personal" were implementing cloud-computing to facilitate collaborative learning, using technology to encourage creativity, establishing a BYOD program to improve access to classroom technology and taking advantage of the inherent engagement that technology contributes to the learning process. The big (tech) themes in mainstream education seem to be using technology for testing, for data mining, and for remediation/programmed instruction/intervention. It's the "learning how to problem-solve" vs. "how to get the right answer on the test" philosophies: the first at the conference, the second in practice.

Some really good sessions included "iPads and Apps for Administrators" in which an elementary principal talked about how his use of the camera in the iPad made for richer post-observation conversations. Chris Dede's analogy of how summative assessment is like closing the store to do inventory instead of doing a running inventory (formative assessments) with technology. He suggested that if the formative assessments are good enough, you don't need the summative. I suspect that's true from an educational perspective, but not politically feasible.

A library media director from Wisconsin did a great session called "Creating Student-Centered Mobile Learning Environments Using Facebook, Twitter and Cell Phones." He described a dozen ways that as an English teacher he used these tools to not only teach, but to communicate with parents. He said students prefer using Facebook to using Edmodo or Moodle for the same reason they want Fruit Loops rather than Fruity-Os - they want to use the "real thing," not a "knock-off." One problem I did have with his methodology is that he had students sign up for a second "professional/student" Facebook account which violates Facebook policy. I think Facebook should change their terms to allow both personal and professional accounts, but until then I have a hard time purposely violating a terms of service agreement with kids watching.

Jim Hirsh from Plano TX talked about his big district's move to the cloud and Tim Wilson from Osseo discussed that district's BYOD program, Copernicus. Both these sessions made me feel pretty good about where my district is in these efforts. (Ahead of Plano and just trailing Osseo.) 

The keynote speaker on games in education was entertaining, but games have been “the next big thing” in education for the past 20 years. I see kids playing the same dumb games on iPads that were being played on Apple IIe’s back in 1982.  My understanding is that there is no financial reward for developing sophisticated games for the educational market rather than recreational market.

I was very happy to see both our high school principals in attendance along with the usual assortment of teachers, media specialists and techs from our district. Every year, the interest and attendance grow. 

So maybe I am not the only one who thinks technology conferences are fun and exciting places. I hope they stay that way. These conferences, more than any other, are places for the change agents and subversives in education to congregate, commune, commiserate, and conspire. And if I might paraphrase Barry Goldwater:

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I just have to get this off my chest. Is this the worst named breakfast cereal in history? We have a box in cupboard so I know they are real.