Public Charter School Alliance of South Carolina
12th Annual Conference
Leading Change
Dr. Buddy Coleman
Associate Professor
UNC Wilmington
Leading Change
Session Topics
• Effective Leadership
• Gaining Followership
• Achieving Goals and Objectives
Guiding Questions
• What does it take to lead people through school
change?
• How do charter school leaders provide what
teachers, students and parents need for them to
support school change?
What does it take to lead people?
• Understanding:
– their needs, emotional maturity, job maturity &
preferences
– their acceptance versus resistance to change
• Developing goals and objectives that support he
school’s mission and purpose
• Gaining “buy-in” from followers by aligning their
needs and interests with the goals & objectives
Operational Definitions
Define a leader
– “A leader is someone who has… followers”
Define Leadership
– “Guiding followers to accomplish goals & objectives”
Organizational Components
•
•
•
•
Leader
Followers (people)
Goals & Objectives (tasks)
Interaction of Tasks and Relationships
Guiding Questions
• How do charter school leaders provide what
teachers, students and parents need for them
to support school change?
• For example, what about a change process to
try and meet state and federal student
achievement standards?
Alignment
• A effective charter school leader successfully
guides followers towards achieving the goals
of the organization.
• The leader strives to ensure that all
instruction, resources, activities and
evaluation aligned with achieving the goal of
the charter school.
• What is the goal of a charter schools?
Maximizing Student Outcomes
Goal of Charter Schools
Tested Curriculum
Alignment
Taught Curriculum
Written Curriculum
Ensuring Charter School Alignment:
A Function of Leadership
• An Effective Charter School Leader
– Gains followership among teachers, students and
parents to achieve goals & objectives
– Monitors instruction & student achievement by
collecting, analyzing and evaluating data
– Modifies & changes instruction & support Services
based on
• Student needs
• Teacher need
Effective Charter School Leaders
• Operationally defined as individuals who live,
work and perform at their very best
• They accomplish this by being keenly aware of
their beliefs, their preferences and their
personalities
• Most importantly, they modify their thinking,
behaviors and decisions based on what
they should do rather than what they want to
do.
The “O” in your Soul
•
•
•
•
Your core values – what is my purpose
Your orientation – personal and professional focus
Student-centered
Emotional Intelligence & Job Maturity Indicators
Emotional Intelligence & Job Maturity
• High Emotional Intelligence
– Impulse control; objective & rational
– Empathy
– Understanding
– Taking the high ground
• High Job Maturity
– Be able to stick with a job until it is finished.
– Be able to bear an injustice without having to get even
– Do your job without being supervised.
Objectivity & Rationality
• Critical to a leader’s effectiveness & success
• High emotional intelligence and high job maturity
• Modifying initial responses and behaviors (decision
making) based on rational and objective analysis
• Effective, successful charter school leaders focus on
students’ needs and goal achievement rather than
their needs
Needs Theory
• Leader’s Needs versus Stakeholders’ Needs:
– Successful charter school leaders focus on the needs of
their students, teachers & parents.
– Your ego, your feelings, your needs, do not matter
• For example, if our goal is to implement a new
instructional program to maximize the learning and
development of students, then we, as professional
leaders, must do whatever is necessary to achieve
that goal – regardless of how we feel.
Leading Change:
Disrupts Our Comfort Zones
• What we want to do; given the same situation and
the same set of circumstances – over and over
again
• Staying in our comfort zone limits our effectiveness
and causes us to ignore important information,
data, variables and outcomes
• Doing what we should do may cause us to become
stressed and very uncomfortable
Self-Awareness & Self-Evaluation
• Critical factors in determining a charter
school leader’s success
• Leaders with clear understandings of their
personalities, their beliefs and emotional
intelligence are more likely to be successful
leaders.
• Self-awareness & self-evaluation should be
ongoing.
Leading Change
• All leadership is personal
• To be successful, charter school leaders must
establish high quality, trusting personal
relationships with their teachers, parents and board
members
• This is accomplished by:
– Being open and willing to listen to others’ views,
opinions, and ideas
– Leading through personal interactions rather than
positional authority and allowing time for followers
to process issues and decisions.
Continue, Stop, Start
Self-Assessment
• Continue doing what is working for you
• Stop doing what is not working for you
• Start doing whatever is necessary to take your
leadership to the next level
• Develop action plans to diminish ineffective
leadership responses and to increase effective
leadership responses
Leadership Change
Steps
•
•
•
•
Stakeholder Involvement
Develop goals and objectives
Longitudinal student data base
Develop an evaluation plan to monitor the
change process
• Benchmarks and timelines
• Interim and summative reports
Stakeholder Involvement
• Stakeholders: Teachers, Students, Parents & Board
Members
• Stakeholder Communication Plan:
– Emails, announcements, web pages, flyers, information
sessions
• Professional development for teachers:
– Need a clear understanding achievement strengths &
gaps
– Design best practice lesson plans for all grade-levels.
– Evaluate impact of instructional practices.
Goal Alignment
• Are your goals SMART Goals:
– Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic & Time Bound
• Are you goals aligned with the requirements and
standards?
Longitudinal Student Achievement Data Base
• Target completing & maintaining 3-year trend data:
– Quantitative data - Test scores collected on student
subgroup proficiency and growth results, participation
rates & achievement gaps
– Qualitative data – Open-ended surveys, observations,
and interviews
Ongoing Evaluation Plan
Critical to assess change process
– Interim, periodic benchmark assessments with
established dates to determine what is working and
what is not working
– These must be drop dead dates; no exceptions.
– Identification of support services needed to intervene to
help struggling students
– Repeated focus on SMART Goals and Objectives
– The leader must constantly keep all stakeholders “on
point.”
Leading Change
• Effective Leadership
– Stakeholder Involvement
– SMART Goals
– Evaluation Plan
– Longitudinal student data base
– Benchmarks and timelines
– Interim and summative reports
Leading Teachers
Key Factor
• Gates MET, 3-year million dollar report on
student achievement validated the
importance of quality instruction and
effective teachers.
• The report revealed that this was the most
important factor in ensuring high student
achievement levels.
• The 2nd most important factor was the school
leader
Situational Needs Theory
• Schools are basically organizations that have Tasks
(T) relative to providing instructional and student
support services and relationships (R) which would
include interaction between principals and
teachers, among teachers and between teachers
and parents.
• All teachers, staff members and parents, (and
people in general) have preferences relative to
“tasks” needs versus relationship needs.
Hershey & Blanchard’s
Situational/Needs Leadership Theory
• Most individuals fall into one of four quadrants
based on Task/Relationship preferences
• High Task/Low Relationship – HT/LR
• High Task/High Relationship – HT/HR
• Low Task/High Relationship – LT/HR
• Low Task/Low Relationship – LT/LR
High Task/Low Relationship – HT/LR
• These individuals are extremely dependent,
prefer to be given specific directives and
usually avoid and do not desire or need
interaction with others
• Sometimes can be difficult complying with the
leader’s requests and make an effort to meet
the standards and expectations
• Usually have low emotional intelligence and
job maturity levels
High Task/High Relationship – HT/HR
• High task focus, high relationship focus
• These individuals are somewhat dependent,
prefer directions, detailed tasks and high levels of
interaction with the leader
• Usually have moderate levels of emotional
intelligence and job maturity
Low Task/High Relationship – LT/HR
• When the teacher can do the job, but is refusing to
do it or otherwise showing insufficient
commitment, the leader need not worry about
showing them what to do
• Instead the concern is with finding out why the
person is refusing and then persuading them to
cooperate.
• Very independent, moderate levels of emotional
and job maturity
Low Task/Low Relationship – LT/LR
• When the teacher can do the job and is
motivated to do it, then the leader can
basically leave them to it, trusting them to get
on with the job.
• High competence, high commitment
• Teacher is able and willing
• Very high emotional intelligence and job
maturity levels
Situational/Needs
Leadership Theory
S3
LT/HR
S2
HT/HR
S4
LT/LR
S1
HT/LR
Leading Change
• Gaining followership based on teacher
Task/Relationship preferences
• Collaborating with LT/LR teachers to assume
leadership roles with other teachers
• Allowing the leader to focus teachers who
need more assistance and interactions
Case Study
• Identify specific ways to communicate
information about your school’s educational
goals and expectations to all of your faculty
members
• Establish an efficient and effective system to
provide appropriate supervision & support for
all of your teachers