the question of how you will define your role as principal. All principals work hard. What distinguishes effective principals from their less effective colleagues is that they identify the conditions most vital to the success of their school and concentrate their efforts on creating those conditions. Warren Bennis (2000) asserts that the difference between managers and leaders is that managers do things right but leaders do the right thing. Both roles are important, and effective principals will certainly manage the building well. However, they will also be driven to lead because they recognize the moral imperative that the school serves. They focus on impacting lives whereas less effective principals focus on managing their jobs (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010). So before pressing on with the rest of this book, take time to think about and ultimately to clearly define your role as principal. If a Martian were to ask you to explain the responsibilities of a principal, how would you respond?
Getting Started
One of the first questions a principal must address to create the conditions that lead to higher levels of learning for both students and staff is simply, Where do I begin? We recommend the following steps.
1. Start with questions.
2. Create a guiding coalition.
3. Build shared knowledge with staff by learning together.
4. Help staff members clarify the school they are attempting to create.
5. Clarify the commitments that are vital to creating the school.
6. Establish indicators of progress and strategies for monitoring those indicators.
7. Develop a critical mass to support implementation and begin taking action.
It is not imperative that a principal know all the answers to the challenges confronting a school; it is imperative that the principal ask the right questions to help identify and focus attention on those challenges. A principal new to a school should meet with the staff in small groups to ask a series of questions, such as:
• “What do you feel I need to know about this school to be effective as its principal?”
• “What makes you proud to be a staff member at this school?”
• “What are some of the challenges that you confront in the school that make it difficult for you to be as effective as you would like?”
• “What would make this an even better school?”
Small-group dialogues have three benefits:
1. They allow a principal to honor the past efforts of staff members and the history of the school.
2. They demonstrate that the principal values the perspective of others and recognizes they have important insights.
3. They make it possible for the principal to present challenges and ideas in the words of staff members themselves. At the conclusion of the process, a principal is able to say, “I have heard your concerns, and you have helped me to understand the challenges you face. Now let’s work together to address those challenges and make this an even better school.”
With some minor tweaking, a principal could use similar questions to engage both parent groups and central office staff in similar dialogue. The initial challenges of a new principal include engaging in a fact-finding mission about the school and establishing positive relationships. This good-faith effort to solicit the concerns and ideas of others is an important step in addressing both of those challenges.
These same conversations can also be helpful to an experienced principal. When leaders help staff identify areas of concern regarding student performance and the operation of the school, admit they don’t have all the answers, solicit advice and feedback from others, and demonstrate a willingness to act on that advice and feedback, they build trust in their leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2010). A survey could also be used to gather information on others’ perspectives; however, surveys are most effective when they are followed by dialogue that allows for further probing and clarification.
Those who study the leadership of both schools and organizations in general would offer very consistent advice to principals: no single person has all of the energy and expertise to effectively address all of the responsibilities of leadership. For example, one study identifies twenty-one different duties of principals and concludes that the best strategy for fulfilling those duties is for principals to promote widely dispersed leadership throughout the school (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005). One important step in fostering this shared leadership is creating a guiding coalition.
There are several different ways principals can structure a guiding coalition. In many elementary schools, grade-level team leaders work directly with the principal to oversee the school’s improvement effort. In middle schools, department chairs often serve this purpose. Some schools have created a school improvement committee of staff members. Others create short-term task forces that call on designated staff to address an identified problem, develop a recommended solution, and help build consensus for implementation of that solution. Although the format of the guiding coalition may vary, principals who lead PLCs never forget that they cannot do it alone, and so before attempting to persuade an entire faculty to support the PLC process, they identify and recruit highly respected, key staff members to help them champion that process.
Build Shared Knowledge With Staff by Learning Together
A defining characteristic of a PLC is that its members begin their decision-making process by learning together. One of the most-important duties of a principal is ensuring staff members are provided with the information and knowledge essential to make informed decisions. Effective principals are vigilant about ensuring people have ready access to the most relevant information and that the group has collectively studied the information before it is called on to make a decision. The assumption here is that when people of good faith have access to the same information, the likelihood of their arrival at similar conclusions increases exponentially. Access to information is the lifeblood of empowered groups.
Initially, this attention to learning together should focus on the school’s current reality and the existing knowledge base regarding effective practice. Working with the guiding coalition, principals provide staff members with an evidenced-based profile of the school that helps them surface the school’s present conditions with a particular focus on evidence of student learning. The guiding coalition then provides staff with a concise summary of evidence regarding the most promising practices for raising student achievement.
All Things PLC (www.allthingsplc.info) provides very useful tools and resources to assist principals in this important step. Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to download the following reproducibles.
• See “A Data Picture of Our School” for a template to gather pertinent information on existing conditions in your school.
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