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.