Soft Lessons of Leadership # 3

INTEGRITY

In the last blog entry, I talked about courage as one of those critical “soft” lessons of effective leaders. However, as important as courage is, it is not enough. One can be courageous on behalf of values that destroy and diminish others and their cultures as well as those that uplift and empower. I’m certain there are those who could admire Hitler’s “courage’ in risking the world’s scorn by instituting the practices we now know as The Holocaust. But how much different was the quality of Dr. King’s or Muhammad Ali’s courage to risk their country’s scorn for opposing the Vietnam War? The same manifestation of courage might be found in a principal’s defense of practices that segregate groups of students as well as those practices that integrate groups of students. Thus, there is a form of integrity that must accompany courage.


It’s not just the courage to act in the face of opposition, but the courage to act and defend what is right, just, and moral. This quality represents the ability to decide that there are issues and concerns larger than the self, and that a leader’s obligation is to acknowledge and respect the needs and rights of others. Note that I didn’t say agreement or acquiescence. I use the term integrity because it represents the joining of trust, honor, justice, and equity with courage.


Sergiovanni tells us that “What a leader stands for is more important than what he or she does.” According to this personal view of moral leadership, the principal not only “walks his/her talk,” but also proclaims his/her values to the world. We like to know where our leaders stand. At the very least, we want to feel assured that a leader’s actions are shaped and framed by values we know and respect. Murphy and Louis tell us. “Principals today have a special responsibility to serve as advocates for the just treatment for all. They also have the responsibility to ensure that such treatment is woven into the cultures, policies, and structures of their schools. Within their institutions, they must be unflinchingly critical of social arrangements, pedagogical strategies, and organizational designs that perpetuate unjust, dehumanizing conditions.”

Sergiovanni describes one of his tenets of moral leadership as “Leadership by Outrage.” These principals, acting on the principles that shape their integrity, cannot tolerate people trashing other people’s sensibilities, traditions, or heritages. These are the principals who intervene when male students say publicly demeaning things about girls. These are the principals who ended tracking practices that had the effect of resegregating classrooms because it was wrong, not because a judge told them to do it.

RELATIONSHIPS

One theory of leadership suggests that a leader is defined by the quality of relationships he/she establishes. More fundamental to that however, is the fact that how we treat people creates the environment within which people can either flourish or wither. Relationships based on mutual respect and personal regard are more likely to further the aims and goals of the organization and its people than relationships based on fear and disempowerment. Covey, in his “Seven Habits” framework talks about the power derived from continually investing in another person’s “emotional bank account.” The metaphor is a shorthand for building trusting, respectful, and responsive relationships with others. Deming, in one of his fourteen quality principles, tells us to “Drive out fear. Substitute leadership.”


It is the moral responsibility of the leader to create an environment where everyone is cared for and everyone’s work is respected. Gene Maeroff quotes two high school students who moved from a large high school to a small alternative high school. One said, “In a big high school, teacher don’t pay that much attention to you. Some teachers don’t even know if you come to class at a big high school. Here [alternative school], our teachers know everyone by name.” Gardner reminds us: “Leaders must understand the needs of the people they work with – their needs at the most basic level for income, jobs, housing, and health care. Leaders must also understand; people’s need for a measure of security; their need for confidence in the stability of the system of which they are a part, including the capacity of the system to solve the problems that threaten it. They need a sense of community, of identity and belonging, of mutual trust, of loyalty to one another. They need recognition, the respect of others, reassurances that they as individuals are needed, new challenges, and a conviction that their competencies are being well used.

Students, parents, and teachers have the same needs. Principals interested in creating an environment where respectful relationships exist often are characterized as mentors, guides, facilitators, change agents, philosophers, visionaries, enablers, and coaches.

Leadership Lessons - Part 2

In the last blog, I talked about integrity (Go home with what brung you to the dance) and there being no substitute for passion. I want to post my next two sections on the "Soft" lessons of leadership, which are, as it turns out, not so soft as one might suspect.



Here is the third lesson on leadership. It involves Trust.



Trust is the highest form of human motivation (Covey). This thought is echoed by many in the field of leadership development. The process of building trust is all about the predictability of relationships. No one feels comfortable in an environment where he/she is uncertain that the leader is going to “do the right thing.” or not. In our school organizations, I contend that the major distinction between followership and compliance is directly related to the trust one has in the leader. Trust is the foundation for a moral contact between two or more people, where each is assumed to do what is expected and preferred at all reasonable costs. Without it, the process of growth and productivity slows to a crawl and and relationships are framed by suspicion and uncertainty. One of my favorite authors on this topic is John Gardner, former HEW Secretary in John Kennedy's administration and later the founder of Common Cause. When he spoke of trust, he said: “For leaders seeking to win trust, another requirement is fairness – fairness when the issues are being openly adjudicated, and, equally, fairness in the backroom. Contending elements seek private access to the leader, and if it is believed that such offstage maneuvering works, the system is in a constant turmoil of suspicion. Nothing is more surely stabilizing than confidence that the leader is unshakably fair in private as well as in public.”



The fourth leadership lesson involves courage, certainly not a soft quality, but a critically important one. Courage requires that the leader take on unwanted and unanticipated challenges with the same modeling behaviors he/she expected of their leaders when he or she was a classroom teacher. Being popular is nice, but being right is nicer. How often have you despaired over a leader who made the wrong popular decision rather than the right, more difficult one? This gets at the issue of fairness as well. We expect leaders to have a moral core that guides their decision making. Covey compares this to an internal compass, always pointing to true north. It's not just bravery (although that's important), but persistence over time and the ability to snatch victory from defeat, as well as the ability to bounce back and move on when victory is elusive. Listen to John Gardner once again. He said: “Clearly a leader needs courage – not just bravery of the moment but courage over time; not just the willingness to risk, but to risk again and again, to function well under prolonged stress, to survive defeat and keep going.”



So, two more lessons, one on being trustworthy and the other on being courageous. I'd apprecaite your reflections on these thoughts. Please post your comments so we can have more interactive "conversation" going. I'd like to know what you think. I'll post a couple more soft lessons next week.

Lessons of Leadership

Last night (October 7), we talked a bit about various leadership models, and they presented a pretty structured research-based view of leadership. However, there are some aspects of leadership that are a bit "softer", but just as important. what follows are some of my thinking over the years about this "softer" side of leadership. My first two thoughts are posted here. I'll have others in subsequent blogs.




1. "Always come home with what 'brung' you to the dance." We all came into this profesion for an assortment of reasons, many of which might seem "corny" but for many of us, our motivations ow are not much different than when we were a twenty-something. If you're still in this profession, and you're looking for even more responsibility, more opportunity to make a difference, more capacity to influence others, it's important to always remember your professional roots and where possible deepen and strengthen them. but that can't happen if you turn your back on those core motivators. Max Depree, in Leadership Jazz expressed this idea very well. He said:



“Beliefs and values are the footings on which we build answers to the questions ‘Who matters?’ and ‘What matters?’ The promises we make as leaders must resonate with our beliefs and values. Otherwise, they ring false, and people know it. In our lives as leaders, we frequently find ourselves in situations where skill and technique fail us. At times professional qualifications simply aren’t enough. We need to resort to deeper resources, resources beyond technique and the jargon of seminars, resources rooted in our beliefs and values."



2. "There is no substitute for passion." We've all experienced work where we go through the motions because we have to and we've all experienced the feelings of fulfillment we get when we do a really good job on simething that really matters deeply to us. While the word passion sometimes has a salacious connotation attached to it, being passionate about improving the learning and development of all the children in your charge is anything but salacious. Passionate leaders seem more engaged, they get other engaged, and they are relentless in their pursuit of excellence. Dr. Mary McDuffie, a one time Wachovia Principal of the Year and Northhampton County Superintendent and currently the Executive Director of NCCAT, said it well when she said: “Commitment comes from passion. In our case, passion about teaching and learning, passion about people, passion about being a part of something good.”



These are the first two. I would appreciate any comments you'd care to offer. I'll post the next blog with two more leadership lessons next week.