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Tim Coleman
April 7, 2012
CAPS Reflection on Seven Leadership Qualities
As an educator and perpetual student, the perception
that the continual evaluation of information and guidance is, even if well researched,
a cascading flood that must be efficiently navigated is a mindset one may
settle into unintentionally. Filtering this
miasma for the crucial bits and pieces to support my leadership skills,
challenge calcified habits hindering my growth, or introduce revisions or
wholly new information I use in the continual refinement of my leadership can
be daunting. Parallel to a classroom
teacher relieved to find a succinct, informed, and easily accessible one-page
informational sheet that serves as a white paper to a piece of technology or
instructional materials, as an administrator I benefit immensely from articles
such as “How Leaders Lose Their Luck.”
The seven qualities listed are comprehensive without being exhaustive or
exclusive. They effectively serve as grouping
themes for my educational experiences and learning, points of essential wisdom
that honestly and naturally encourage one to structure reflection, current
efforts, and future leadership vision in these terms.
I naturally gravitate towards summarizing or guiding
principles in my life and especially in my professional growth. The delineation and specific articulation of
what one does, who they are, and what they believe provides a framework from
which one may self-examine their actions and beliefs in terms of integrity and purpose. Additionally, sharing and displaying these guiding
qualities to others, especially those involved in the work ostensibly governed
by these qualities, provides a self-perpetuating leadership dynamic. In a school setting, the staff, parents, and
students support your leadership because they understand it, they can find it
posted and referenced in principal communications and meetings. This is the most powerful accountability:
intrinsic, humbling, empowering of others, and providing several tracks of
refinement and reinvestment in the leader and those needing leadership. The authors emphasize this, these qualities
prevent stagnation and a retreat of the leadership skills that earned the position
initially, but which stymie in the efforts to maintain.
Using these seven qualities as a lens through which
to view the many people who came to speak with us, the immediate impression is
one of the qualities of professionals at work within the Shawnee Mission
District. I am not so naïve or
pessimistic as to judge each of the speakers in some absolute accounting of how
“good they are” in terms of the seven goals, as the goals are reflective
guidelines in managing the approach to each day, the attitude and effort –
affording perspective. The situational
aspect of the goals in relation to the profession is the most striking. The day after Dr. Krawitz visited with us and
shared his generosity and openness with his work to humble the students and
connect with each using handwritten notes, he was thrust into the news for his
perceived mishandling of a student criticizing a politician. Again, the topic of his leadership discussion
with us is not a perfect alignment for one of the qualities as if his story
were part of a fiction book with all plotting nicely relevant and nicely timed. Instead, I see a principal who strives each
day to make authentic connections to kids who may be maligned and marginalized
by others who see the stereotypes of teenagers or are not aware of the time
needed to create relationships with hundreds of students at a time. I e-mailed with Dr. Krawitz after the media
spotlight came blistering upon him and his messages were all in concern for the
girl, as some students (in misdirected respect for Dr. Krawitz) began targeting
her in the halls and bullying her. How
many have the character and integrity to carry on in such ways when powerful
parents and politicians are leveraging for culture/political war sound bites?
In writing the previous paragraph it strikes me that
the seven qualities are, like many codified systems of belief,
reverse-engineered from what the very best do, to then be abstracted and
offered to those striving first, to emulate, and then to embody the
attributes. CAPS is surely viewed as
many in the district as a selection process for principals-to-be in serving as
an initial screening, a training for those placed into the program, and access
to those who interview and hire.
However, the CAPS program was the ideal method to spend time with those
in the district who have become experts in their specialization. To know that, as a principal, Rusty Newman is
available for quick phone calls when facing a situation that is
ever-so-slightly-different or unique from the guidelines in the Student
handbook. That Ginny Lyon and her team
will scrutinize candidates and send you a list that is the best available from
which you begin your part of the
interview process.
Each night after CAPS, I would drive the 20 minutes home
with my head swimming: leadership goals to implement, district hierarchy to
utilize, decades of specialized experience available with an e-mail or phone
extension, scenarios to test the resolve and fairness of any educator. And although I feel that my own personal and
professional learning has provided me significant growth in all of the seven qualities,
I can say that the one I see the most growth available is within the quality of
generosity, especially as defined by this article. Partly this is due to this quality being more
acute in relation to the amount of responsibility and oversight one has as a
principal. As a classroom teacher,
requests for favors and “value-exchange” relationships are of a limited use or prevalence. However, during internships and shadowing my
principal, the reality of a day-to-day manager of human resources entails
establishing expectations and equity. Of
course, the teacher with a sick child wants coverage for his room for the last
10 minutes of the day so he can make the doctor’s appointment without calling
in a sub. Or the paraprofessional not
clocking in on time because she is pumping breast milk in the conference room
during her very-short break. Such an
anecdotal list could be populated effortlessly and accurately from real life
examples.
The “spirit of generosity” allocated “appropriately”
– being compassionate and professional within the guidelines of the BOE and
negotiated agreements, professional judgment, consideration of the larger
picture, aware of the nuances of the immediate situation, et cetera. In creating a personal growth plan, I see a
reputation of generosity is the foundation.
This quality must be demonstrated in my actions and my beliefs before I
am ever faced with the decision to say “yes” or “no.” To this end, I see my growth plan has
components currently in progress, some coming in the next few weeks, and others
at the close of the year.
In regards to how these areas would improve
achievement in schools, these seven qualities elevate a school from a
functioning assemblage of people and materials that do the job to a community
that serves as the fabric of childhood learning. As I have written elsewhere in my
professional reflections, a school
environment is the very wellspring of human potential to acquire the most
rudimentary skills of survival in the modern-day world while also gaining the
capacity to approach the particulars of life as a dynamic and engaging
participant. In classrooms, children learn not only the curriculum but
also how to feel about learning, their strengths and struggles, how to persevere
and when to turn away from a wrong choice or direction. These essential human skills are,
unfortunately, relegated to just a few ambiguous sections on our report cards
(i.e. work and study habits) but the wise educator or principal will know these
are the prerequisite disposition skills.
By modeling humility, curiosity, optimism, vulnerability, authenticity,
and generosity, we prepare the student for the instructional lessons of the
day. If their character is
underdeveloped, we have failed in teaching, irrespective of assessment results
or indicators of competency. The greatest teachers
show always how they remain students, even to those they teach.
