In Dare to Lead, Brenè Brown writes, “I want to live in a world with braver, bolder leaders; and I want to pass that world on to my children.”
This is a vitally true statement for school leadership. School leaders in a variety of roles must be brave and bold to support quality education for all
Brave and bold leadership starts with relationships. Creating and maintaining relationships makes decision making, change, and action easier and effective… or at least provides a foundation for understanding the decisions, change, and action in an organization.
Brave and bold leadership is centered on relationships and the people you serve. Being brave and bold requires developing principles and practices that create trust. Mistrust creates frustration and doubt and damages relationships over time. People may be willing to forgive once, but less often twice.
In my experience as a school leader, I prioritized relationships and worked to develop several attributes that framed brave and bold leadership. Here are those attributes:
Seek feedback: Performance expectations for school leaders mandate reflection and a review on how actions affect others and influence progress toward school/district goals. Feedback is key for reflection. Ask others how they perceive decisions and actions. See feedback as a gift.
Understand the need for change: Little to nothing is ever perfect. There are opportunities to improve with change. Complacency is an enemy of innovation. Do not get too comfortable. This does not mean everything needs to constantly change. It means be open to innovation and seek opportunities to better educational experiences for all students.
Collaborate: Share ideas with others. If it is good for one classroom, one site, one district… share and listen to the ideas of colleagues. Work with people.
Be consistent: People pay attention to your actions and your words. Consistency means you are not sending conflicting messages and that your actions match your words. Consistency builds trust.
Flatten the organization: Flatter organizations increase creativity and collaboration when leadership is shared. Management is embodied in hierarchical structures. A flatter organization reduces the negative impact of positionality and allows people to flourish with responsibility.
Be compassionate: When tough decisions must be made, talk through the rationale and the thought process of how the decisions were made. Discuss why a policy or action is needed. Honesty and compassion are born from a commitment to transparency.
Brown (2018) has a mantra before she takes the stage for a presentation. She writes about human connection and states it in a simple way: people, people, people. What leadership is really about is people, people, people. And in the case of school leadership, it is truly people, people, people. From the classroom, to the site, from the district to the state, and even on the national stage, it is about people, people, people. If school leaders forget that very simple mantra, relationships, decisions, policies, and actions may be doomed to fail.
Reference
Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts. New York: Random House.
I am One Voice 