What is Leadership?

“Image courtesy of  Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net” 

What is leadership? When you look up leadership in the dictionary or via Google you find multiple definitions. Business News has a blog post titled 30 Ways To Define Leadership. Generally, leaders are people who know how to achieve goals and inspire people along the way. Dwight Eisenhower once said that leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. John Maxwell simply defines leadership as influence.

I remember my first year as a principal. I was directed that there needed to be major organizational, academic, and cultural changes immediately at the school. These changes would require realignment and restructuring of staff which would ruffle many feathers, especially for teachers and grade levels directly affected by the changes.

Major change is not a practice experts usually recommended for new leaders, the recommendation is that new leaders observe and gradually make changes the first year and then make the major ones in subsequent years. This was also my introduction to Turn-Around principals and schools. 

Leadership requires thick skin. I am not going to say the first year was perfect in fact I learned real fast some things not to do when it comes to leadership. I realized that you will never make everyone happy and if you continue trying to make everyone happy you will be the one unhappy on that quest. I learned not to take things personal. I also realized that everyone will not like you or respect you just because you are the formal leader.

Leaders must rely on both types of leaders--informal and formal. The informal leaders are sometimes the catalysts to getting initiatives done. Most people value the opinion of the informal leaders. When I think about my role as a leader, I think about how much and how little influence I have. Early in my career as a principal, I recognized who the informal leaders were almost immediately. These were the people that would come to me saying several people have asked me to ask you this or that. They would ask me to reconsider some of the changes I wanted to implement. I recognized that I had to acknowledge this informal authority and utilize this hierarchy to get some buy-in for a first win. So many times new leaders go into situations wanting everything to be about them. They have the "my way or no way mentality" and want to change everything to how they like it. I shared with the informal leaders why the changes were being made and how it would impact the students. 

I discovered that at the end of the day leadership is about making decisions based on the facts you have at that moment and keeping the main thing the main thing (student achievement and success). I also understood that there is always more than one way to come to a solution. 4+5=9 but so does 7+2, 1+8, and 6+3, you get the point. I realized that I must keep an open mind and take into consideration suggestions from other people. 

The most important lesson I learned is that you have to build relationships with everyone, regardless of your personality style. If you are an introvert you have to learn how to function as an extrovert. If you are an extrovert you have to learn how to function as in introvert. 

Communication is vital in any position. My mantra is that 99.95% of any problem is either miscommunication or no communication. It is very difficult to over communicate in fact I don't think it is possible to over communicate. And if you fix the communication issue the problem will usually get solved.

What are some best practices you learned as a leader?

What are some things you learned not to do as a leader?

How well do you communicate as a leader?