Successful Leadership

Educational Leaders have the potential to influence their staff to go well beyond their own expectations and achieve success.  Given our reading on authentic leadership and accountability, think about when and how you have seen these drivers in action. What are the habits and steps to becoming  a better leader? Connect these concepts with your real-world experiences.


In education, I have experienced leaders who have been a driving force of positivity and productivity, and I have also experienced leaders who have been a detriment to growth and cultivate a negative culture. Through my experience, I have come to realize the significant importance of leadership as an essential influence for staff to achieve success. In my most recent position I experienced two leaders who attempted to change systems, processes, and the way of thinking in the special education department in two very different ways. The first used Second Order Change, and attempted to make major structural changes very quickly. She was not wrong in thinking that things needed to be different, but what ended up being a detriment to the change was making this sweeping changes very quickly and without developing the relationships needed to support the change. This created a lot of resentment amongst staff, and although the changes were for the best, they were never fully sustained due to the nature of the implementation. For example, a procedure set in place for when a 1:1 aide was requested it became a 60 day assessment conducted by the school psychologist. Once the assessment and report were completed, the school psychologist would meet with the person in this position and review the results and an aide would either be approved or not be approved. This was a huge change for the school district, since before then if an aide was requested it was either approved or denied.
Recently, someone new has taken that position and is implementing First Order Change. As she comes across processes and procedures she has begun to tinker with them. So instead of changing the aide assessment process, she tinkered with the meeting component of it and now comes out to the school site and meets with the entire team to give feedback on the assessment. This small change made the assessment process a much more acceptable process because they now know that they will have an opportunity to gather as a team with district level administrators to review their results and argue their case. I have learned through both of these experiences that change can happen, but it has to be strategic, not all at once, and done through building relationships.