My Leadership Profile
A good leader can adequately accomplish many tasks and direct her team to accomplish the goals needed to make her school successful. A great leader will work collaboratively with her team to not only complete the necessary tasks and reach the campus/district goals, but will inevitably make her team members better by empowering them to push beyond what they thought they could. Great leaders facilitate growth and learning while keeping her team positively motivated to reach within themselves and pull out more creative ways of improving their own instruction, while learning new tools from others that they can use in their classrooms.
I have studied the various leadership styles and taken the personal assessments, and I have reached the conclusion that facilitative/ servant leadership best suits my personality. According to the conflict style assessment, I am an integrator. I want the best possible outcome for all parties involved in the conflict, and I am very good at helping others see issues from various perspectives. What is fascinating to me, is that a lot of arguments happen when people process information differently. Two people who have reached the same conclusion will argue over verbiage. For example, Joe will say that the barn is bright red, and Mary will argue that the building is NOT red; it is crimson. They are both saying essentially the same thing, but they will argue with each other for several minutes about the words the other one uses to describe the barn. They may even come to blows if someone does not step in and mediate. The crazy thing is, they are drawing the same conclusion, just using different words. While I realize this example is very simplistic, I see arguments like this almost every day, and sometimes it is a real challenge to get both parties to see that they actually are in agreement. Using an integrative approach to solving these types of arguments is great because I can usually help both parties to reach an accord.
Furthermore, I tend to look for ways to involve others in the decision-making process, which is imperative to getting your constituents to own the outcomes. If the leader makes a policy change that her subordinates do not agree with, they can blame the leader when it fails. However, if the leader involves her subordinates in changing the policy and incorporates input and suggestions into the new policy, the team now has a vested interest in making sure the changes are successful. They can no longer simply place all the blame on the leader for its failure, because they essentially helped write it into existence. It is hard to be wrong, and when others take ownership of the outcome, they tend to go above and beyond to make sure it is a successful outcome.
Similarly, my idealist temperament lends itself very well to a facilitative leadership style. Idealists love collaborating with and empowering others, and tend hold themselves to a high ethical standard. They are masters at building relationships with others, and tend to look for ways to be of service to others. In fact, the characteristics of an idealist are almost identical to those of a leader who utilizes a facilitative/servant leadership style.
Leadership Views
When an administrator is attuned to the feelings and communications styles of his faculty, he is opening the door for suggestions and constructive feedback from everyone involved. This kind of dialog creates a sense of co-ownership of the campus values and vision, and this level of shared responsibility leads to exponential growth (www.leadership-central.com, 2016). Steve Reilly (1996) believes that good facilitative leaders hold themselves accountable for project outcomes and decisions as much as, if not more so, than his employees. Guiding others through the decision-making process empowers them to take ownership of the organization.
One could also argue that facilitative leadership and servant leadership complement each other perfectly. When leaders work collaboratively with their subordinates, there is a certain amount of service that goes along with guiding them through the decision-making process. Servant leaders are often described as good communicators and listeners, credible, competent, encouraging of others, teachers, and delegators. They have vison and people often look up to them. They are great at giving credit where credit is due, and are not worried about making sure that people know what things they have personally accomplished (Avolio, etal. 2009). Like facilitative leaders, they firmly believe that empowering others is the key to growing any business or organization, and they model that belief daily.
One of my assistant principals truly embodies the servant leadership style. Her main advice to me as future administrator was to listen and show love and compassion to all. I see her model this advice on a daily basis. I see the way she interacts with staff, students, and faculty, and she is constantly looking for ways to support and help them. She does not ask them to anything she would not do herself, and consistently guides them through decisions, rather than making the decisions herself. I appreciate the way she leads our campus, and I hope that I can cultivate some of these traits in myself.
Leadership Skills
The case study we dissected really helped me process the skills that I must hone in order to be an effective administrator someday. I have discovered that most issues that need attention are rarely the result of a breakdown of one skill. It is quite the opposite, in fact. A good leader knows this, and a great leader works diligently to hone all twelve of these skills so he can use them interchangeably to achieve successful outcomes. Although I realize that all skills are necessary, developing trust stands out as one of the most important skills to perfect. If an administrator does not trust her staff and vice versa, then very few problems will be solved with good outcomes. I have seen what a distrustful and untrustworthy administrator can do to a school, and it is not pretty. This principal was a great public relations and marketing expert. She made her school look great on paper, and when she talked to the public about her school, she made it sound like her faculty and staff were blissfully happy and the students were all perfect and well-adjusted. The reality was that her staff feared losing their jobs if they disagreed with her because several faculty had already been forced to retire or simply fired on the spot for one reason or another. Her methods for handling discipline were almost grossly ineffective, and the teachers felt like they had no administrative support. The students knew this, and behaved accordingly. There was no clear vision for the campus, because this administrator changed her focus at least once a month. She would introduce a new vision or discipline strategy and expect the teachers to embrace these changes without question. As one might expect, the campus test scores dropped quite a bit.
In conclusion, if an administrator is unsuccessful at developing trust on her campus, then how can she expect his teachers to buy into her vision? Communication breaks down because every email gets scrutinized for his underlying meaning. Every decision he makes gets called into question. Fear becomes the motivation to perform well enough to keep one’s job, and group processes cannot function properly because the leader has created a culture of distrust and fear.
My Leadership Approach
In conclusion, every person I meet has a different definition of leadership. Most agree, however, that leadership is the ability to guide a group of people or an organization in a common direction or to achieve a common goal. Great leaders inspire those who follow them to achieve great things and take ownership of their failures as well as their successes. They allow their team members to fail, knowing that there are valuable lessons to be learned from our failures. They also allow their team members to succeed without "stealing their thunder," so to speak. Great leaders also listen more than they speak and push their teams to think creatively, especially when attempting to solve particularly difficult problems. The best leaders are masters at finding ways to bring out the best qualities in his subordinates. As a coach, I have learned that teams are only as strong as their weakest members. As an administrator, I plan to use this concept someday to help mold the teachers on my campus. Not only do I need to help teachers develop their strengths, but I must also motivate them to take a hard look at their weaknesses and develop them into strengths as well. I want to create a community of educators who put their students and peers first. I want create a culture of trust, cohesiveness and open communication among my teachers and staff that is embedded so deeply that collaboration becomes second nature. I want to be the kind of leader who inspires her teachers to create meaningful projects for their students to learn real world applications for their lessons. In short, I want to be the kind of leader who earns the trust and respect of her teachers and staff, as well as her peers. I strive to be the very best version of myself so I can model that for others. To me, that is what leadership is all about.
References
Avolio, Bruce; Walumbwa, Fred; and Weber, Todd J., "Leadership: Current Theories, Research,
and Future Directions" (2009). Management Department Faculty Publications. Paper 37. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/managementfacpub/37Facilitative Leadership. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.leadership-central.com/facilitative-leadership.html#axzz4Oza52VL5.
Reilly, S. (1996). Facilitative Leadership: Managing Performance without Controlling People.
Seattle, WA: Peanut Butter Publishing
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