Leading is. . .

By Gary Gruber 

I have been using the following idea recently at the end of my email messages: "Leading is building collaborative energy, listening, asking questions, discerning, and helping groups move forward with a purposeful, shared vision." 

There are six main points in that statement about leading, perhaps too many to digest in one quick reading.  However, here is an attempt to define those six characteristics of leadership in a summary fashion, as the March Seminar is an opportunity to explore these behaviors in depth and understand, appreciate and utilize them to enhance our roles as school leaders.

First is building collaborative energy.  Everyone is talking about collaborative models of leadership with precious little time given to the energy required and the synergy that results.  When the outcome is greater than the sum of its parts, you can at least sense that you may be headed in the right direction.  The leader's job is to marshall and harness the energy of one's self and your colleagues with whom you are collaborating and your role is to keep that energy focused on the issues that merit your attention and focus. Of course, you may have to decide which ones rise to the top and which are less important and why.

Second is listening, taking the time to be fully present with another person or a group to the extent that they know they are being heard. Feedback helps the others know that you have indeed listened carefully and attentively to their ideas, to their concerns, to their suggestions and to their contributions to solutions to any shared problems.  Whether or not you have achieved consensus will be revealed as you start to move forward later.  It is better to have the disagreements earlier rather than later.

The third characteristic is asking questions.  As you know from having been in the role of a teacher, sometimes the best response to a question is not the answer but another question that is designed to take both of you farther and deeper into the issue.  There you may find more specific and concrete details that heretofore were undisclosed.  That gives you a greater likelihood of a better response, one that is more comprehensive and thorough.  And that will be more satisfying than the quick and easy answer.

Discerning is often defined as "keen insight and good judgment" and yet those are somewhat relative terms. Understanding what needs to be done may well be the first step while having a plan to get a  job done is equally important.  There can be tons of understanding with little or no resolution.  Making good choices that are reasonable and realistic with attainable goals shows a measure of good judgment when assessing  projects that are deemed important, even critical to success.

Helping groups move forward and not simply be content with the status quo means that you will often have to become the "captain at the helm" and give directions and instructions to the crew.  Each person on the team has specific contributions to make to the entire operation and the leader is very much like the director of the symphony, putting all the parts together and making it look and sound terrific.  However, it is not just an appearance or an impression but about the reality and how it plays ouy and how it wears over time.  In the final analysis you can measure progress.

Finally, using your mission, vision and values' statements, you must demonstrate in your own actions some kind of purposeful engagement that is both visible and palpable.  People will take their cues from you in terms of what you share with them as being important and how that contributes to making your school community a stronger, better place. And then, they are much more willing to be an active participant and share some responsbility for helping the organization move forward.

Would you like to put all of that together in one leadership profile and make it work better for you?  I can think of no better way to do that than to invest three days with us in Santa Fe, March 20-23, and see for yourself, first hand, how you can reform and reshape your leadership to being closer to your ideals.

Santa Fe Leadership Center in 2011

The SFLC will be at NAIS this month and we hope you will join us for our session, Emerging Paradigms for Leading at the Santa Fe Leadership Center, Thursday from 1:30-2:30 pm. Come learn what we have discovered through the work of our 2010 fellows. We will also host a reception at the Westin Hotel at 5:00pm Thursday evening for all of our past participants, members of our advisory board (Los Sabios), friends, and for anyone who is interested in learning more about the SFLC, our work, and upcoming seminars. Please join us. RSVP to Carla Silver and specific location details will follow.   

The SFLC has set the complete calendar of seminars for 2011. March 20-23 we are offering "The Spirit of Leadership: The Formation and Reformation of School Leadership" with guest faculty, Peter Cheney, a longtime school leader and former Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools. This seminar is designed for experienced school leaders.   

This summer we are excited to partner with Hillbrook School and bring the the Santa Fe Leadership Center to the Bay Area for "Leading from the Middle (or vital center!): A seminar for Team Leaders," July 10-14. Guests include: Management Consultant, Debbie Freed, Tomi Nagai-Rothe from The Grove, and Rachel Switzky from IDEO. Los Gatos is located in the heart of Silicon Valley at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains and is approximately an hour from San Francisco to the north and Monterey to the south. 

Finally, we will be back in Santa Fe in November for our signature seminar "Deciding to Lead: the Art and Experience of Leadership."   If you have questions about any of these seminars including which one would be best for you to attend, contact Carla Silver at carla.silver@santafelead.org or 408-348-8617.

 
Visit the Santa Fe Leadership Center website for complete details and registration information. 

Leader as Physical Therapist: What Tim's New Knees Taught Him 

By Timothy McIntire

Since the last day of November of last year, my life has been consumed with physical therapy and those who deliver it.  An active baby boomer having two new knees installed is hardly unusual, but the processes of elective surgery and then extensive rehab opened for me new perceptions in actions that we take as leaders in our schools.  It was not only the therapists' methods but their very uses of language: "That wound is not looking angry," for example, to describe the lack of infection, animating the parts and processes of the physical body as if they were individually sentient.    

In addition, the pain medication necessary for having new knees installed produced amazingly vivid dreams - both sleeping and waking - that both entertained and informed while my traumatized body healed.  While any Neo-Romantic Age poetic revival was lost and I failed to capture the meaning or language of all-things-made-clear during those dreams - recording neither a 21st Century "Kubla Kahn" nor even a single new verse to "Riders on the Storm" - I did learn that pain management is an essential element in effective therapy.

The analogy that formed came to fascinate me during recovery.  Primarily it spoke to appreciating the healthful side of outcomes that we often see as simply serendipitous that actually result from intentional and active therapy.  I liked the idea that the school leader studies the workings of the school in order to prescribe and deliver a therapy that brings wholeness and strength of functioning.

Recently, I employed this analogy with the faculty of a large K-8 where I was visiting 100 days after the installation of their new head.  I told the faculty about my knee surgery - they were darling in their expressions of empathy and compassion - even the guys on the back row - and they seemed to value the comparison between the body of the school and our own bodies.

Their School over the last three years: long-term head left for a different headship; interim head appointed and served the year; search process; permanent head arrives and begins tenure effectively.

The Body: need for surgery; surgery; rehab; therapy, and recovery.

The beauties of the analogy with the faculty seemed to reside in two truths.  First, each step takes time and a major setback can occur unannounced and undeserved.  Second, during the therapy phase, for it to work, the body must perform during the pain of healing, and this therapy touches everything, not just new knees but nerves and muscles and emotions.  During therapy as during the final event of the Search Process a remarkable bonding happens between and among those involved, "patients" and "therapists" alike.  Spending two days at a school that I had worked with intimately over two years, I could see among the faculty and other constituents the many successes from the therapy of a new chief leader being installed and going about his work.  In sum, I saw impossible-seeming problems being resolved and significant issues being rehabilitated just as nerves and tendons benefit from the knees' rehabilitation.  

The therapeutic designs that we employ, then, actually work and they benefit the school in systemic ways that we too often don't anticipate.  The beauty of school heads who have served long is that they understand this truth and they know that discipline in therapy will yield results even in the face of the impossible.

Following my stay in the rehabilitation hospital with its own cadre of interesting therapists, I returned home and began out-patient therapy.  My chief therapist introduced himself and his name is Sledge.  Honestly. He shared a New York Times article from a few years back that speaks to the phenomenon of bonding that occurs among those in therapy and their therapists.  Each week, I observe this phenomenon during therapy with rehabbers from all walks of life, and realize vividly that I have observed this same phenomenon over and over again in schools where intentional therapy is applied by knowledgeable and caring leaders.  

In schools, as in rehab, we are intellectually able to envision the necessity of therapy, but only through actual intervention and manipulation. If you plan intentional therapy and then perform it, health and strength result.  We can also anticipate how pain may interfere with rehabilitation and apply appropriate palliatives in preparation for the therapy.  To be honest, my new knees hurt.  But they hurt differently from the old ones. Every successful initiative and positive change in a school will hurt, but only an intentional therapeutic one will bear the pain of healing, health, and wholeness.