Quiet leadership

By Chris Hitch

Tips for leading effectively behind the scenes.

School executives are convinced that those who manufacture calendars have it all wrong. If school executives developed calendars, they would alter the traditional calendar to accurately reflect that February is the longest month of the year. During February, school executives tend to engage in a fair amount of dramatic leadership, either intentionally or unintentionally, to keep up the morale of their faculty and staff.

Engaging in dramatic leadership through rousing staff meetings, startling public announcements, and sincere heart-to-heart conversations may help a school executive nab the momentary attention of teachers and staff members. Such actions also may give the school executive a fleeting feeling of accomplishment. The wisest of school executives, though, understand that when the drama in their schools increases, the best thing to do is to decrease the “dramatis” and reestablish focus — to provide quiet leadership. Quiet leadership is even more critical during February, when many teachers begin making decisions for next year (transfer, retire, or resign). In this era, it’s a challenge to retain highly qualified teachers, but providing quiet leadership can help teacher retention.

At its core, quiet leadership means finding ways to keep staff members excited and engaged with a minimum of fanfare. Dramatic leadership may include providing food during a staff meeting or sharing treats on teacher workdays. Quiet leadership is much more difficult and complex. In many cases, quiet leadership is transparent. Quiet leadership involves removing roadblocks that keep faculty and staff distracted from their core work. How can you provide quiet leadership? Here are some suggestions backed up by solid research and the collective wisdom of various PEP clients in our programs:

  • Avoid the “Cliffs of Dover” effect. Long ago, the British kept a sentry on the cliffs of Dover to warn the locals against an invasion from the French. This sentry post was crucial when the British and French were enemies. Yet, after the war had ended, the British continued to post the sentry, even though there was no threat. An educational version of the Cliffs of Dover effect is the preservation of rules and procedures that have outlived their usefulness. How many of your school’s policies, procedures, and rules have outlived their usefulness? See if you can find at least five different rules, policies, and procedures that you can eliminate (and publicize their elimination) in the next two weeks? Can’t find five? Ask your teachers. You’re probably not looking hard enough.
  • Shift from “fetch work” to “stretch work.” Fetch work is what your teachers do that is marginally useful (similar to the Cliffs of Dover effect). Stretch work is challenging, engaging, and dramatically advances your school’s goals. Part of helping your teachers move to stretch work is to find those teachers who are quietly creating outstanding results with their students — for example, those who are doing a great job with EC or ESL students. These teachers are your heroes and heroines. Find ways to publicize their work with short, ad hoc conversations you have in the hallway. Offer to cover a teacher’s class for two hours this month while she goes and observes the quiet hero, then has a chance to talk shop during the hero’s planning period. The peer observation and subsequent discussion is “high quality stretch work.” Finding heroes and linking these heroes with other faculty members are essential quiet leadership practices that are especially useful during these long winter days of February.
  • Move from “what” to “how.” It’s unrealistic for a principal to know more about every content area than the teacher in the classroom. However, as the principal, you must know enough about the different curricular areas to know whether the curriculum is being taught. Equally important, you must become more expert in effective instructional techniques. The principal’s job is to monitor the learning and discussing with the teacher what works in the teaching/learning process. Dr. Anita Ware of the Principals’ Executive Program found that turnaround schools (schools that had dramatic improvements in achievement) made the change in instructional conversations from what is taught to how it is taught. The school executive was critical to fostering and cultivating these instructional conversations. (For details on turnaround schools, see PEP’s website.) Exercise quiet leadership during this long month to organize some meetings across grade levels to begin the discussion of “how” the content is taught while there is time to make some mid-year corrections before the end of year testing.
  • Use a personal planning brief and milestones. Many effective leaders can tell you whether they are on track to successfully completing their personal and professional vision. A valuable tool to help you implement your vision is a personal planning brief that outlines critical sub-goals by certain dates (milestones). This personal planning brief is critical to helping you stay on course, especially during February. Milestones should be short, specific, and measurable. If you review your milestones monthly, you can increase or maintain momentum for your vision and agenda. Milestones are powerful tool to review before you meet in large or small groups, so you can celebrate successes with your staff, make corrections if necessary, and sustain your focus. The act of specifying goals and milestones is part of the “behind the scenes” work of quiet leadership.
  • Block time on your calendar. What is the only thing you can actually control? It’s not your teachers, secretary, parents, or students—it’s your calendar. What you have on your calendar is the clearest indicator of what you value and what is important to you. Do you have time blocked out on your calendar for the items that advance your vision or are you bogged down in administrivia? One of the best pieces of advice I was given on time management was by Linda Cowan, then a principal in Anson County. Linda’s advice was to block out three hours every Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon, and Friday morning for observations, making rounds on campus, and other critical leadership tasks. She also suggested blocking out Tuesday and Thursday mornings to do the (necessary but painful) administrative work. Using her model, I was able to spend more time with teachers, with students, and on high priority tasks during the week. Blocking time on your calendar allows you to spend more time finding heroes, showing your faculty that they are important (by your visibility), and allows you to have a better understanding of your school’s strengths and needs, which you then compare against your milestones in your personal planning brief.
  • Avoid perfectionism. School leaders, by nature, want things done well the first time. Perfectionism is good, yet can be counterproductive if taken to an extreme. One counterproductive example is waiting to perfect any of these strategies before trying them. If you wait to try any of these strategies until you get it perfect, you will be paralyzed by your inaction. Choose one or more of these strategies, try it, make mistakes, learn, try again, and adjust. Find what works for you, then continually refine and improve this process. Harold Brewer, in one of his workshops, noted, “Vision creates the structure. Structure creates the processes. Processes drive improvement.”

Quiet leadership, while often invisible in the way it works, maintains and enhances the chances for keeping your staff members excited, engaged, and focused during the long month of February. Reducing outdated rules, increasing stretch work, concentrating on the “how” of teaching, and finding heroes or heroines help your staff maintain their focus, excitement and may also increase teacher retention. Even during leap year, developing and monitoring your personal planning brief, blocking time on the calendar for your important tasks, and trying new strategies to help you improve as a leader helps keep you focused, energized and engaged. Pretty soon, you’ll find February will conclude and you’ll start March with momentum to the end of the year.

If you have other suggestions on strategies that help keep you or your teachers focused, energized, and engaged, please email me.

Thanks to Harold Brewer (ExplorNet), Linda Cowan, Kevin Hill, (Green Hope High School), Dan Lewandowski, Daryll Powell, and Anita Ware (all of the Principals’ Executive Program), for their assistance and comments.