long-term objectives you share with teachers and students, then it is hard to stop those messages once the momentum begins.
Strong leaders understand their purpose, do the hard work, lead selflessly, and build momentum through consistency. If you’re like me, that seems like a tall order. But be encouraged; no one leads perfectly. Studying good models, however, can help us avoid many of the pitfalls of distraction, self-promotion, and unnecessary changes. As you build a system of strong messaging for your school, you must keep in mind the essential elements that move organizations (including schools) from good ones to great ones.
Another characteristic of effective leaders is the ability to positively engage members of the community or organization, and messaging plays a strong role in your ability to engage others.
Show Leadership and Positive Engagement
Gallup’s (2013) State of the American Workplace report analyzes one hundred million American workers and what makes them effective or ineffective in their work. The report shows how engagement practices play a significant role in job performance (Gallup, 2013). The following sections explore findings from Gallup’s report that also apply to leaders of school communities.
Win Hearts and Minds
Gallup (2013) finds that to win customers—and a bigger share of the marketplace—companies must first win the hearts and minds of their employees. For education leaders, this means students, teachers, parents, and the community. This can only happen through engaging in relationships. No amount of communication will be effective unless leaders first understand their audience. Only when we are truly connected to the ideas, activities, and lives of our students, teachers, and families will they respect and be receptive to the messages we send on behalf of the school.
Use Management to Reduce Deficiencies
The Gallup (2013) report notes that the best-managed workplaces have nearly 50 percent fewer accidents and 41 percent fewer quality defects. You might ask how this statistic relates to education. It shows that deficiencies reflect directly on management; it is not a reach to think that schools would have a similar correlation. Consider how your school management directly affects the message you send about your school.
■ Is your messaging positive and focused on the mission? Does it reflect the school culture you seek to build?
■ Are you explaining (in writing, spoken words, gestures, and deeds) what you expect of students, teachers, and parents?
■ Do you follow up regularly with reminders of goals, strategies, and outcomes?
■ Do you reinforce in word and deed the values you want others to repeat?
■ Do you hold accountable those who violate the shared mission and values of your school?
An experienced superintendent once told me that leading a school or a district is like managing a classroom (M. Bias, personal communication, June 15, 2004). When you approach it with the same preparation, planning, monitoring, and attention that a strong teacher shows, you will see good results. That commonsense advice goes a long way in any setting.
Accelerate Engagement
Gallup’s (2013) study finds that organizations see improved results when they enact certain practices to accelerate engagement, such as selecting the right people for the team, developing employees’ strengths, enhancing employees’ well-being, and avoiding using only feel-good incentives.
Select the Right Team Members
The most important way we communicate to our students, staff, and parents the priorities we have for student learning is with the people we choose—teachers and other staff members—to lead and teach. Often when I interview a prospective teacher or staff member, I ask myself the question, “Is this someone I would want teaching my own child?” Keeping that perspective on staffing decisions helps you tie the mission of your school directly to the people serving students. And this serves as a great example when communicating with parents. For example, if you choose teachers with that question in mind, you can tell parents with confidence, “You can trust that this teacher is focused on your child’s best interest.” Messaging about great learning is so much easier when you have team members producing great learning. It is the school leader’s responsibility to seek out and support the right team members.
Develop Strengths
Developing strengths in your team members, students, and parents means you are committed to recognizing and supporting the best characteristics in every member of the school community. Communicating these strengths happens in many ways—with specific feedback during daily interactions, with reflections from observations and evaluations, by celebrating successes, and by providing ongoing professional development.
For example, I once observed a mathematics teacher during an Algebra II class as he showed a video clip on a fascinating study involving chaos theory. The video itself was not directly tied to learning standards for Algebra II, but it provided an excellent hook for connecting students’ learning to other applications beyond algebra. The teacher was helping students see how plotting numbers on a random sequence was actually not as random as expected. This use of hooking students with an interesting mathematics application was a strong instructional choice. I affirmed the choice by sharing a link of the video clip via email with all teachers along with an explanation of the teacher’s lesson. By highlighting the strengths you see in someone else, you affirm what he or she is doing well, and you can inspire others to think about how to keep developing their own strengths.
Interestingly, nowhere in the study do Gallup (2013) researchers find a positive correlation between focusing on weaknesses and increased productivity. In fact, the opposite seems true: when you focus on the strengths of others, not the weaknesses, you inspire them to improve.
Enhance Well-Being
Promoting the well-being of those in your school involves a comprehensive approach to relationship building. Your messaging in this regard should be personal as well as organizational. With students or teachers, provide eye-to-eye contact and consistent feedback on successes and struggles to build relationships and stay connected. In addition, the kind of structures you create for schedules, calendars, and job descriptions should influence the kind of culture and environment that encourages, not discourages, positive well-being.
Avoid Using Only Feel-Good Incentives
During Teacher Appreciation Week, educators often receive many wonderful gifts from the school, parents, and members of the community. But if doughnuts, flowers, and other gifts are the only feel-good incentives the school provides, it has missed the mark for encouraging strong team engagement. The Gallup (2013) study finds that engaged employees are more motivated than those who simply work for perks or incentives. In other words, just because you commit to treating others like you want to be treated doesn’t guarantee good performance. Schools are not for-profit institutions. And proponents of strategies like merit pay, for instance, often fail to understand the point of what makes a true incentive. The Gallup (2013) research asserts that engagement means giving people well-defined roles, helping them “make strong contributions,” staying “connected to their larger team and organization,” and “continuously progressing” (p. 28). In other words, people who understand the purpose of their work and find significant meaning in it derive motivation from it. Messaging cannot simply be built around feel-good moments. As important as those moments can be, you must also keep your communication centered on meaningful contributions and achievements—whether that is in individual conversations, group talks, or digital communication.
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