Leadership is . . .
Nurturing our human resources
Nurturing our human
resources
• Leaders Nurture Others
Leaders Understand -(It’s all about relationships)
• Listen – take the time to listen. One
thing often overlooked in leadership
is the ability to listen. Listening is so
important to those under your
supervision. “Tips for Becoming a Better Leader”
»
John R. Wooden, June 2008
Nurturing Others is -(all about relationships)
• Care – show you care. A very important
part of leadership is to make those under
your supervision feel you care for them –
not just for the job they do, but you
genuinely care for them personally. You
just can’t tell them you care, you have to
show it.
Nurturing Others is -(all about relationships)
• Be patient – think of the time it
takes for a seed to mature into a
plant - good things take time. And
that’s the way it should be. We don’t
want it that way, but that’s the way
it is.
Nurturing Others is -(all about relationships)
• Win respect – you have to have the
respect of those under your
supervision. You can’t obtain that
respect unless they know they can
depend on you. You earn respect by
giving respect.
The Six Secrets of Change:
What the Best Leaders Do to Help
Their Organizations Survive and Thrive
by Michael Fullen
• Secret One: Love Your
Employees
Secret One: Love Your
Employees
A report from McKinsey & Company
focusing on the top-performing
school systems in the world provides
the central reason why we must value
employees . . .
Leaders understand -We must value employees as much as
customers (children and parents),
because . . .
Leaders understand -“The quality of the education
system cannot exceed –the quality of its teachers.”
Barber & Mourshed, 2007
Leaders Show they
Value Employees
George Bernard Shaw observed, “The
difference between a flower girl and
a lady is not how she behaves,
but how she’s treated.”
Secret Two: Connect Peers
with Purpose
• Peer interaction is much more than
mere collaboration; it is the social
and intellectual glue of an
organization.
Leaders Connect Peers
with Purpose
• Leaders direct and guide teachers to
work with and learn from each other.
Leaders Connect Peers
with Purpose
Through Professional Learning
Communities, leaders –
create the conditions for effective
interaction and intervene when
necessary.
Secret Three: Capacity
Building Prevails
• Leaders develop a culture of capacity
building.
Leaders Build Capacity
• Seek talented people,
and then help them develop,
individually and
collectively.
Leaders Build Capacity
• Seek people who are individually
talented and also system talented –
that is, they work well with others
and keep developing cultures of
purposeful collaboration.
Secret Four:
Learning is the Work
• Learning on the job, day after day, is
the work.
Leaders lead learning
• The goal is to define best practice –
those elements essential to success.
• Then take care that everyone does
those tasks well -- using the known
best methods.
Secret Five:
Transparency Rules
• The first reason transparency rules
is that it’s going to, whether we like
it or not. The second reason it rules
is that transparency
is a good thing.
Effective organizations
embrace transparency
• Leaders share and use data to
measure and evaluate progress, and
to guide improvement, including . . .
Transparency Rules
• When data is presented in a
nonjudgmental way, considered with
peers, and used by staff for internal
and external accountability, it
becomes a lever that moves both
individuals and the group to higher
performance.
Secret Six: Systems Learn
How do systems learn?
• First, they focus on developing many
leaders working in concert.
• Second, they are led by leaders who
approach their work with humility and
faith that effectiveness can be
maximized under any circumstances.
Leadership for Learning
• A cooperative system where
employees and evaluators work
together in an interactive process to
identify needs and seek solutions
together.
Leadership for Learning
• An opportunity for the evaluator and
the employee to analyze, confer,
share, formulate, and experiment
together.
Leaders –Nurture
• Emphasis on a successful working
relationship between the evaluator
and the employee.
Leaders –Nurture
• Evaluators will take a positive
approach to the process in a manner
that encourages mutual growth and
provides support for that growth.
Leaders –Nurture
• Employees can expect an evaluator to
be open and honest, and to listen to
their concerns, and to elicit their
input and self evaluation of their
performance.