Teachers as Leaders

Opening Thought
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes
up.It knows it must run faster than the
fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it
must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will
starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or
a gazelle.When the sun comes up, you
better start running.
Who or what are the lions and gazelles in
your work setting?

Confront the Brutal Facts
Yet Never Lose Faith
When…you start with an honest and
diligent effort to determine the truth:
• the right decisions often become self-evident.
You absolutely cannot make a series of
good decisions without first “confronting
the brutal facts.”

Brutal Facts
School districts are struggling to attract and retain
qualified candidates for leadership roles.
There is a lack of qualified candidates coming from
outside Frederick County.
Employees in some classifications have been placed
in leadership positions without adequate training.
FCPS employee satisfaction survey indicated
“opportunities for advancement” and “promotion for
field-based and support staff” needed improvement.
Professional development evaluations indicate the
need for more leadership training.

Objectives
Determine:
• if you consider yourself a leader?
• if you need to consider yourself a leader?
Analyze:
• how your school stacks up against some of the most
successful organizations in the United States?
• how you stack up as a leader against some of the most
successful leaders in the United States?
• recent research and literature analyzing how individuals
and organization move from being good or effective to
GREAT.

What is Leadership
• Mobilizing others to get extraordinary things done
in organizations.
• “It’s about the practices leaders use to:
• transform values into actions,
• visions into realities,
• obstacles into innovations,
• separateness into solidarity,
• and risks into rewards.” Kouzes and Posner
“Leadership is a choice not a position” Covey

Review of Literature and Research
Leadership is:
• considered the single most important aspect of effective
school reform.
• important in setting the tone in a school. Climate is the
best predictor if a school will have high achievement.
• positively and significantly correlated to positive working
conditions.
• cause for employees to have an overall increase in
satisfaction.
• a predictor of adequate yearly progress (AYP) status.
• a powerful predictor of whether a school was included in
top school designation categories.

Evaluation of
Literature and Research
These points demonstrate that:
• each FCPS employee needs to recognize him or
herself as a leader.
• Each employee needs to understand their
importance as a valuable contributor in the
education and achievement of our students.

Why Some Organizations
Make the Leap
And
Others Don’t

Common Threads
Level 5 Leaders
First Who, Then What
Confront the Brutal Facts
The Hedgehog Concept
A Culture of Discipline
Technology Accelerators
The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

Level V Leadership
Plow Horse
Or
Show Horse?

Level 5 Leadership
Level 5 leaders channel their egos away
from themselves and into the larger goals of
making the company or organization great.
These leaders are ambitious, but first and
foremost about the cause, the company, the
work—not themselves.

Partner #1
Application
Are you a Level 5 leader?
Amongst the leadership of your
school/work site, how many Level V
leaders would you say are within your
setting?
Think of a Level 5 you have known.
• How did he or she become Level 5?
• What can we learn from that person?

First Who, Then What
People are not your
Most Important Asset
Rather
The right people are!

5 Criteria of the “Right Person”
Share core values
Not a person you need to manage
Key Positions – Could they potentially be the best
in that position?
Understand having a job and holding a
responsibility
If it were a hiring decision all over again, having
worked with this person, would you still hire
him/her?

Partner #2
Discussion
Is your school setting aligned with these
findings?
How might you tell if someone is the right
person?
How might you tell if someone is simply
the wrong person?

Confront the Brutal Facts
Yet never Lose Faith
“There is no worse mistake in public
leadership than to hold out false hopes
soon to be swept away.” Churchill

Confront the Brutal Facts
Yet never Lose Faith
When…you start with an honest and diligent
effort to determine the truth of the situation, the
right decisions often become self-evident. Not
always, of course, but often.
And even if all decisions do not become self
evident, one thing is certain: You absolutely
cannot make a series of good decisions without
first confronting the brutal facts.

The Hedgehog Concept
“Know thyself”
Scribes of Delphi via Plato

And Now a Story
The Hedgehog The Fox

The Hedgehog Concept
A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a
strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best,
or even a plan to be the best.
It is an understanding of what you can be the best
at within your business. The distinction is
absolutely crucial.
The concept establishes unwavering focus around
what a particular organization does better than
anyone else.

Partner #1
Application
Are you engaged in work that fits your own
three circles:
• Does this concept have a place in education?
• What you are passionate about?
• Do you need to change?
St rite, t,
W flec
Re
ar ,
Sh and
e

A Culture of Discipline

What is a Culture of Discipline?
A culture built around the idea of freedom
and responsibility within a framework.
A culture filled with self-disciplined people
who are willing to go to extreme lengths to
fulfill their responsibilities. (They will
rinse their cottage cheese”)

Technology Accelerators
How do great organizations view
technology?

Technology Accelerators
Great companies avoid technology fads.
The key question about any technology advance is
where does it fit within the Hedgehog Concept.
Used technology as an accelerator of momentum,
not a creator of it.
80% of the great executives didn’t even mention
technology as one of the top five factors.
When they did, the median ranking fourth, with
only two of 84 executives interviewed ranking it
number one.

Partner #2
Discussion
If technology cannot make or break a level of
greatness, but only serves as an accelerator of
greatness or demise already in progress, then why
did everyone fall in love with technology for
technology's sake during the 1990s?
What role does technology play within your
classroom?

The Flywheel
and
The Doom Loop
“Revolution means turning the
wheel.” Stravinsky

The Flywheel Effect
Belief in “tremendous power exists in the fact of
continued improvement and the delivery of
results.”
Point to tangible accomplishments (however how
incremental) and show how these
accomplishments fit into the overall concept.
When done in such a way that people see and feel
the buildup of momentum, they will line up with
enthusiasm.

The Doom Loop
These companies pushed the flywheel in
multiple directions.
They would change, searching for the
“silver bullet.”
After years of lurching back and forth,
comparison organizations fell into the
“doom loop” rather than building and
sustaining momentum.

Whole
Group Discussion
Can you think of a flywheel example at
your school?
Can you think of a doom loop example?

From Effectiveness to Greatness:
How Individuals
Make the Leap
And Why
Others Don’t

The Pain, The Problem,
and
The Solution

The Pain
People face increasing expectations to
perform in an increasingly complex world
and are limited in their use and talent.
People don’t think they can change much
within their organization.

Execution Gap
Individuals within an organization:
• 37% said they have a clear understanding of what the organization
is trying to achieve
• 20% were enthusiastic about the work
• 20% see how their work contributes overall to the work of the
organization
• 50% were satisfied daily with their accomplishments
• 15% felt organization enabled them to execute goals
• 15% felt they worked in a high-trust environment
• 17% felt the organization fosters open communication
• 10% felt the organization held them accountable for results
• 20% trusted the organization
• 13% have highly trusted cooperative working relationships

The Problem
The main drivers for prosperity is materials,
machines, and capital-
Things
Often, we manage people like things!
When managing people like things, they
stop believing that leadership is a
choice.They think only those in authority
can be leaders

The Solution
Learning and identifying our true nature and gifts
Knowledge of our gifts lets us take initiative and
take great understanding of the needs and
opportunities around us.
We meet needs that match our talents and tap out
higher motivations and that allows us to make a
difference.
Covey calls this finding and using our voice.

Voice
Where would you like to make a difference?
How will you know that you have made a
difference?
or
Have you succumbed to “traditions of the past”
and took the road to mediocrity?
How do you get everyone in an organization
speaking with a single voice?

A Third Alternative
“Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict,
but rather see it as an opportunity.”Bennis
What do you think? Do you?
The third alternative is not my way, or your way,
but rather our way.
What would your staff say was the environment of
your work setting?
Complete application three

Leadership:
Finding Your Voice
and
Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice

The Leadership Challenge
is:
Inspiring Others to Find Their
Voice

Four Roles of Leadership
Each role directly or indirectly affirms people’s worth as
whole people and empowers the unleashing of their
potential.
• Modeling (individual, team) – Inspires trust without expecting it.
Modeling produces moral authority.
• Pathfinding – Creates order without demanding it. Pathfinding
produces visionary moral authority.
• Aligning – Aligning structures, systems, and processes the spirit
of trust, vision, and empowerment. Aligning produces
institutionalized moral authority.
• Empowering – Unleashes human potential without external
motivation. Empowering produces cultural moral authority.

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our
inner fire goes out. It is then burst into
flame by an encounter with another
human being. We should be thankful for
those people who rekindle the inner
spirit.” Albert Schweitzer

Thank you!
For completing your evaluations and
leaving them on the table.
For your time
For being a learner
For the work you do everyday!!!!!!!

Leaders are not born, they are made!
Lombardi
L
An opportunity to soar……
Leadership Development

Bibliography
Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. New York:
Harper Business.
Covey, S. (2005). The 8th Habit: From
Effectiveness to Greatness. New York: Free Press.
Kouzes, J and Posner, B. (2002). The Leadership
Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.