study to gain insight on the critical skills that make or break a leader. The study concludes that the ability to communicate is the most important characteristic of an effective leader (identified by 43 percent of respondents), and poor communication skills are an ineffective leader’s most significant leadership flaw (identified by 41 percent of respondents; Ken Blanchard Companies, 2016). Those who rated communication as an effective leader’s most important skill share that leaders who are good communicators have the ability to listen, read body language, provide feedback, and generate effective two-way communication. These communication skills allow them to fully and effectively engage in their work. Conversely, those who identify poor communication skills in their leaders share that their leaders did not communicate at all, over-communicated, communicated through outbursts or anger, or communicated very vaguely (Ken Blanchard Companies, 2016). Most important, poor communicators fail to articulate roles, goals, expectations, and the importance of specific behaviors, which undermines productivity and performance.
Communicating involves many facets. This skill includes the ability to articulate thoughts, listen to others, exchange ideas, read body language, have an awareness of tone, and understand timing. We have identified two essential communication abilities for school leaders interested in transforming their cultures and improving student performance: (1) understanding and confronting relevant data and (2) using persuasion. A leader has to create a compelling, fact-based case for change, and then use his or her ability to convince people to make the organizational challenge their personal challenge.
Understanding and Confronting Relevant Data
To help a person understand why he or she should commit to a change, a leader has to provide clear evidence—data—that current practice or policy is not working. Too often, school leaders promote change in practice without providing tangible evidence about why the school needs the change. We have witnessed department and grade-level leaders express that a change is “something the principal wants” when justifying it to their team. Subsequently, the principal says the change came from the central office, the central office identifies state leaders as the source, and state leaders name federal leaders as responsible. A leader who cannot own the change that he or she promotes does not put him- or herself in a good position to expect or demand a staff’s commitment.
Leaders who provide tangible evidence exhibit what Stephen R. Covey (1989) calls principle-centered leadership. A principle-centered leader focuses people’s attention on concrete principles and shared values, and by doing so, the leader empowers everyone who understands those principles to monitor, evaluate, and correct their behavior based on their connection to those principles. Covey (1989) contrasts this with a personality-centered leader, who depends on charisma, personal magnetism, and positional power to inspire change and improvement in others, which, in essence, manipulates people, instead of cultivating a real personal commitment. One of the ways principle-centered leaders build commitment to organizational improvement is their constant focus on emphasizing we instead of me or I when engaging in change focus and strategy. This selflessness focuses subordinates on the goals and not the ego or personality of the leader (Bandsuch, Pate, & Thies, 2008). Commitment in a personality-centered environment is unstable and changes as the leader—or leaders’—personality changes. Principle-centered leaders create intrinsic commitment to core organizational values, which leads to a commitment to improvement that goes beyond the current leader’s tenure. Developing principle-centered commitment requires a clear understanding of facts, what Jim Collins (2001) calls confronting the brutal facts. In studying why some companies make the leap from good to great, Collins (2001) discovers that great companies rise in part because of their willingness to confront the brutal facts (but never lose faith):
All good-to-great companies begin the process of finding a path to greatness by confronting the brutal facts of their current reality. When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident. It is impossible to make good decisions without infusing the entire process with an honest confrontation of the brutal facts. (p. 88)
Collins (2001) balances his analysis of using brutal facts to stimulate organizational focus and growth with a warning to also never lose faith. He warns that organizations need to use facts in an inspirational context; they can actually use facts counterproductively if the facts lack connections to reasonable goals and a theory of action. Organizations can lose faith if the improvement goals are too high or unreasonable, or if the stark reality is clear, but a plan for improvement is not.
The skill of analyzing data will have great value to a transformational leader who seeks to build a strong commitment to change and a willingness to confront brutal realities. However, keep in mind that exposure to data alone does not always lead to widespread substantive growth. For example, policies like NCLB provided schools with large amounts of data on student academic performance, but the policy did not produce the intended improvement (Guisbond, Neill, & Schaeffer, 2012). An effective leader understands how to use data to create a commitment to goals bigger than the individual and stimulate lasting and powerful intrinsic commitment. Lorna M. Earl and Steven Katz (2006) write about the challenge of using data to motivate change:
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