On Leadership

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership lately. No doubt some of the impetus is reflection on my own personal and professional experience, but I’ve also seen recent news items: one superintendent changing districts, another retiring, a campus principal and long-time friend receiving national recognition for a simple act. I’ve also heard personal stories from several other friends and acquaintances in leadership roles about their life changes. As someone who’s unabashedly and unapologetically philosophical, things like this get my brain going.

I happen to love leadership. Not from the standpoint of having the illusion of power or the ability to make decisions. I just love stepping up and helping a group get things done. Throughout my academic career, I gravitated toward leadership roles, from being on the old Safety Patrol in elementary school to serving as president of Kappa Kappa Psi, my honorary band fraternity, in college. When I was in high school, I became a drum major of the marching band, something I did through college. 7 years total as a drum major, plus 16 years teaching drum major/leadership camps to high school students. Those 16 years as an instructor are really why I became a teacher, because I enjoyed the learning process so much as I helped students discover their own abilities as leaders. It’s fair to say leadership as a pursuit has helped shape my life.

When I moved to central administration, I pursued a Master of Education degree in Educational Leadership (naturally). I actually had never previously anticipated getting a Master’s degree. I saw myself remaining a classroom teacher for roughly 30-40 years, then walking away. I didn’t want the disciplinary and other hassles that came with being an Assistant Principal, nor the politics that came with almost every position higher than that. But even as a classroom teacher, I was always willing to step up as a campus leader, so when the opportunity to split my work 50/50 as a teacher/“data specialist,” I took it. Campus Data Specialist meant I managed the state and local assessments for the campus. Not a lofty title, but it was leadership – getting things done, and helping teachers and students deal with a thankless but required task. Eventually, I moved up to District Testing Coordinator at central office – also a leadership role, now getting things done by helping campus administrators manage their own thankless but required tasks. And hence, the desire for an M.Ed. to help me fulfill the role better, and maybe move up the ranks if that was in the cards.

“Are you about to segue into a blathering list of all the things that are important qualities of a leader?”

No, you can find that kind of stuff with a simple web search and get all the leadership info your heart desires. What I can offer are a few simple guidelines about what good leadership is, based on my background and experience, along with some examples, good and bad, that I’ve encountered in my career.

So, the rules:

1. Leadership boils down to two things: Inspiration and Influence. The leader inspires others toward the organization or group’s goals based on their conduct and character. The leader influences other sometimes by directing people to do specific things, but mostly by setting an example and doing those same things themselves.
2. The central purpose of the leader is to get the appropriate things done for the group or organization and its members. That often means delegating to others who answer the proverbial call, but sometimes that may mean doing certain things yourself, and you’d better be willing to do it. There’s really only one question at center of the leader’s focus regarding decisions, actions, directives, or behavior: “Does this benefit the group or organization and its members?”
3. If there’s an essential quality of leaders that should reign above all others, it is Humility. Once you’ve convinced yourself that you know all, or you’re above certain tasks or rules, or you should be the sole arbiter of everything, you’re lost. That’s not leadership; it’s power. Humble yourself and recognize the value of everyone in the group or organization.
4. There are multiple “right” ways to do everything. Flexibility is essential for leaders. If you’re not willing to change things up, then you’re not learning. And if you’re not learning, you’re stagnant. Organizations are like rivers: the water’s going to flow as long as there’s a sufficient source. The leader’s role is really to elicit the flow from the source and guide it in the proper direction. But just like a river, the organization can meander over time as needed because of different approaches toward the goal. That’s not dysfunction, it’s progress.
5. There’s really no such thing as a “servant leader” separate from “other” leaders. ALL leaders, if they’re doing it correctly, are serving the group or organization and its members. The term “servant leader” is just virtue-signaling lingo based on the notion that leadership is about power, so somehow the “servant leader” differentiates themselves. It’s a little disingenuous because it assumes the worst in people in leadership roles.

Having made those observations from my own experience, I am happy to say that the majority of the supervisors for whom I served were more good than bad as leaders. My first principal was a flawed individual, but his heart was in the right place, he meant well, and he was generally flexible about how to run the campus and made adjustments over time. My second principal was opening a new high school and was very much the picture of inspiration and influence. She thought more big-picture and allowed others to hammer out the details, and that collaborative approach and helped establish a strong culture for the campus. Principals 3 and 4 were similar to my first principal in that they were good-hearted and flexible, and both were remarkably free from serious flaws. So yeah, I experienced a relatively charmed professional life at my first two campus stops.

Normally, I don’t identify my specific campuses, districts, or any individuals in my posts because this blog is not about grinding axes; it’s about sharing insights and experiences. But I will occasionally break this rule to call out particularly positive individuals for their contributions to the education profession in general and to me, personally. Today I’ll break the rule three times. Here’s the first one: Dr. Teresa Stegall. She was my first boss in central administration as the Director of the department in which I served as Coordinator. In a word, Impeccable. She embodied every one of the five rules I listed above. The picture of grace and humility. I suspect she maintained such a great attitude because she had literally fulfilled every duty in the department by herself at one time or another in the past, and she had empathy not just for the department members, but for people across the entire district. She knew my own strengths and played to them, including making use of my interest in voiceover. She was also willing to do the work, as well, like the time she asked me to take an online course in Microsoft Access to enhance my skills, then took the course herself along with me because she knew she would also benefit. Her character was, and is, unimpeachable, and she remains both a friend and mentor to this day.

Dr. Stegall ultimately retired from her position as Director, and after some reorganization by the district (another long tale for another post), the department simply didn’t operate the same. So I left that district after 25 years for potentially greener proverbial pastures. And while the upper administrators in my new district were excited to bring my personality and skills to town, I soon found that the new leader of that department would be the absolute worst leader I encountered in three decades in public education. I won’t call out this individual by name (frankly, it may as well be Voldemort, because we do not speak that name), but I recently ran across my exit letter to district Human Resources upon leaving, and Holy. Cow.

The exit letter was very factual and intended to document as many problems with inconsistent and poor leadership of the department as possible. 9 pages, 5,300 words. (!!!) I won’t bore you with details, but here are a couple of highlights to give you a sense of the issues:

• I was hired in part because I brought an innovative approach to training and communication, including better layouts for department documents. When I revised a state assessment annual overview to increase its visual appeal, I was told, “Well, the one we had seemed to work just fine for 7 years.” Uh-Huh. Lack of flexibility: check. Lack of humility: check. Lovely. Passive-aggressive, too? Bonus.
• On another occasion, I requested a testing check-in document from a previous year and was told, “I’m not going to share last year’s because you’ll just change it, anyway.” Wow, throw in some more passive-aggressiveness as the cherry on top.

And where Dr. Stegall appreciated my voiceover aspirations and worked to involve them in my work, Lord Voldemort here seemed to resent them because it meant I wasn’t taking tasks home and working until 9:00pm like they were. What a disaster that year was.

Fortunately, the proverbial skies parted the following year as I returned to a high school campus and served under the next leader who I shall highlight, Laigha Boyle. She was easily the hardest-working principal for whom I ever worked and aLeo embodies the rules I listed earlier. In fact, if there’s a flaw in Mrs. Boyle’s approach to leadership, it’s probably that she was a little too willing to do some things herself at times. But I know as she progresses in her career, she’ll develop more willingness to delegate. I wish her luck, as she has departed Texas public education to continue her career in New Mexico.

But I will save the best for last: Jason Mutterer. You might have heard the name. He is a long-time friend and colleague of mine going back to the late 1990s when we were the only two male World Geography teachers at a dedicated ninth-grade campus for a larger high school. We actually entered the profession the same year, 1994. I tapped out after 31 years, but Jason is still going strong. He endured a fair amount of political nonsense on his journey in educational leadership, but he’s now the principal of the high school we both helped open in 2002, and he went viral on a national (and perhaps worldwide) scale this summer. Check it out if here you haven’t watched it. That action on his part – hand-writing a note to every senior for graduation – reveals his character, his commitment to his campus and its students, and his approach to leadership, in general. I’m certain his faculty and staff can tell stories that reflect his commitment specifically to them. I’ve known of his compassion and character for roughly three decades, and it’s been gratifying to see him persevere through hurdles in his own career, and now to see him receive well-deserved recognition for what is ultimately a simple but powerful gesture. It was a few months ago, but it still resonates, and it inspires others. But if you want to see the real reason Jason is such an effective leader, go to the 4:45 and 7:15 marks of the linked video and listen to him. Humility. “There’s a lot of people who could sit in this chair today.” He deflects the focus away from himself and talks about how his entire staff connects with students, how so many educators are doing similar things to serve their students, and we should celebrate them all. He managed to gain a free trip to New York and an appearance on the Today show, and he used the platform to showcase and uplift others. That, friends, is a leader.