A Coach's Playbook for Leaders
Jim ClemmerAll organizations have access to more or less the same resources. They draw from the same pool of people in their markets or geographic areas. And they can all learn about the latest tools and techniques.
Yet not all organizations perform equally. There is a huge gap between high- and low-performing organizations. What accounts for this huge gap is leadership.
Leaders develop and bring out the best in people.This dramatically expands the performance capacity of an organization. With a strong leadership foundation, management systems and processes, as well as technology and technical expertise, expand to their full potential.
That's why coaching has become such a key management development topic in so many organizations. Too many managers are bosses, technicians or even bullies. They kill team spirit, arouse mediocrity and suck the energy out of the room. The results are poor morale, loss of talented people and low performance.
Effective leaders, by contrast, develop people. Rather than running around solving problems, while overflowing e-mail and voice-mail boxes suck up huge amounts of their time and energy, strong leaders empower and enable others to solve daily operational problems.
Of course, successful leaders also direct and control when needed. But mostly they teach and engage people throughout their organization to reach ever-higher performance levels.
Strong leaders don't just see people as they are. They coach people into becoming what they can be.
Here are the best practices of leaders who provide the best coaching to the people in their organization:
Clarify roles and goalsThere's an old saying that teaches, "the clearer the target, the surer the aim." It's common sense: We can't achieve top-level performance if we're not clear what it looks like.
However obvious this critical coaching strategy may seem, many managers fail to practise it. Unclear roles and goals is a primary cause of job dissatisfaction.
Effective coaches are masters at helping people set the performance bar very high by aligning organizational, customer and team needs with the individual's personal goals. While jobs may be shifting and roles evolving to meet changing conditions, a strong leader will get everyone involved in a continuing process of redefining and resetting roles and goals. Strong leaders build upon successes and string together small wins to boost confidence about what can be achieved.
Build on strengthsAbraham Lincoln once said, "It has been my experience that people who have no vices have very few virtues." Dwelling on our own or another's weaknesses rarely improves them. And it sure doesn't do much for self-confidence, passion or commitment. Like a good hockey coach who has specialty players or lines for specific situations -- such as power plays or penalty killing -- a strong leader finds people whose strengths most closely match the requirements of the role (and whose weaknesses are less important) in a given situation.
Rather than defining the ideal role and trying to find a perfect person to fit it, effective leaders find someone who meets most of the key criteria. He or she then tailors the responsibilities to align with the individual's strengths. Strong leaders give people a chance to do what they do best every day.
Confront poor performance
When performance problems arise, they need to be confronted. Like porcupines in love, such discussions can be painful for both parties. That's often why managers avoid them.
Leaders, however, know that poor performance is like a highly contagious disease. The longer it goes unchecked, the more everyone suffers.
Confronting performance problems is generally more humane than letting the individual and his or her co-workers suffer. An underperforming team member is often unhappy and likely mismatched to his or her job.
If training, developing or some of the other coaching approaches don't appreciably improve performance, helping the individual find new work inside or outside the organization will put everyone out of their misery.
Servant leadershipSo much of what is done by a mediocre (or worse) manager makes it difficult for people to get their work done. "I am from head office and I am here to help you" sends the snicker meter over the red line in many organizations. Too often managers have made it harder for people on the frontlines to get their job done.
Strong coaches start by building agreement or buy-in to roles and goals. Then they flip things around and serve their teams and organizations.
In his book, The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership, University of Southern California president Stephen Sample writes, "If a would-be leader wants glamour, he should try acting in the movies. However, if he in fact wants to make a consequential impact on a cause or an organization, he needs to roll up his sleeves and be prepared to perform a series of grungy chores which are putatively beneath him, and for which he'll never receive recognition or credit, but by virtue of which his lieutenants will be inspired and enabled to achieve great things."
Give good feedbackEffective leaders are effective communicators. And an essential part of this skill is the ability to deliver useful feedback.
Good feedback nourishes growth and development. Without it, the leader as coach is unable to clarify performance targets, develop skills and abilities, reinforce progress or build on strengths. Strong, relevant and useful feedback shows how much leaders care about the growth of people on their team.
A core element of corrective feedback is to objectively focus on the problem, issue or behaviour and not the person. Through guiding self-reflection or giving behavioural observations, good coaches provide balanced feedback that helps people clearly see what they should keep doing, stop doing and start doing.
Ask and listenAsking and listening are fundamental to strong leadership. They are learnable skills. Whether we choose to develop them or not depends upon our values.
Managers will claim they care about people in their organization. But their failure to seek out and really listen to other views or ideas tells the real tale. What comes across is, "If I want any of your bright ideas, I'll give them to you."
Many managers feel that the people in their team or organization have misguided views or petty issues. "That's just their perception," is a common response to input that they don't agree with. "We need to show them the reality of the situation," they'll often counter. Attitudes are something to be adjusted rather than probed for underlying improvement opportunities. Weak managers often believe that customers' perceptions are to be changed rather than better understood and learned from. Often, internal or external partners (such as distributors, other agencies or departments and suppliers) are classified as whiners who just don't get it.
Asking probing questions and listening attentively to the answers is a key sign of a strong leader. Mediocre managers do all the talking. They would rather be wrong than be quiet.
Leaders, on the other hand, listen. They know that coaching and developing people is impossible without paying attention to others.
The old bromide, "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care" illuminates the base of mutual respect so fundamental to good coaching.
CheerleadIt has been said that there are only two types of people who thrive on being recognized for their achievements: men and woman. We have all experienced the incredible energy of getting recognition or appreciation from people whose opinions we respect. We cherish notes, cards, awards, trophies or the warm afterglow of a compliment.
A common complaint of people in low-performing organizations is that they don't get recognition and appreciation from their boss. They feel like a piece of furniture. It's a huge contributor to declining levels of morale and self-motivation. It's one of the reasons people leave an organization to work elsewhere.
Effective coaches understand the power of sincere recognition, genuine appreciation and celebration. These are what provide the atmosphere of encouragement that develops confidence and builds on strengths.
This encouragement needn't come from the leader. It can be just as meaningful coming from peers, customers, team members and other partners.
But it's the leader who sets the emotional tone and atmosphere for recognition, appreciation and celebration in his or her organization.
Originally appeared in The Globe & Mail, adapted from Jim's bestseller, The Leader's Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. View the book's unique format and content, Introduction and Chapter One, and feedback at www.theleadersdigest.com.
Mastering the Miserable MiddlesBy Rosabeth Moss Kanter© Copyright 2005 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter,
rkanter@hbs.edu.Here's a lesson of leadership so common that I've seen it repeated in hundreds of innovations and change projects in every industry and field.
It's "Kanter's Law": Everything looks like a failure in the middle. Plans don't unfold exactly as designed by the chief executive, the central administration, or the local manager.
Every new idea - the addition of a math enrichment program, a new teacher-led college counseling initiative, a move to block scheduling - can easily run into the unexpected before it becomes routine. Problems that crop up in the middle, before the effort is fully implemented, tempt leaders to give up, forget it, and chase the next enticing rainbow.
But stop the effort too soon, and by definition it's a failure. Stay with it through its hurdles, make appropriate adjustments, and you are on the way to success. Here's why the middle is miserable, and what to do about it.
Forecasts fall short.Plans are based on experience and assumptions. When attempting to innovate, delays are almost a law of the universe - and the more so, the more complex and different the project is. It's difficult to predict how long it will take or how much it will cost to do something that has never been done before.
And when resources and time are tight, as they are in schools, project heads are under pressure to under-state requirements, knowing that they'd never get approval if they asked for everything at ground zero. Slipped schedules shouldn't be fatal flaws.
Make sure the project group is sufficiently dedicated that they're not easily discouraged. Don't start an effort without champions and sponsors at a higher level who can help secure additional resources, beg for additional time, or figure out creative ways to stretch what there is.
Unexpected obstacles pop up.Everyone knows that a new path is unlikely to run straight and true, but when we actually encounter those twists and turns we often panic.
It's a mistake to simply stop in your tracks. Every change brings unanticipated consequences.
Teams must be prepared to respond, to troubleshoot, to make adjustments, and to make their case. Events disrupt even the best-laid plans - e.g., the turnover of school superintendents threatening to derail school site-management team projects. Rigidity is the enemy of change. If an organization gets cold feet at the first sign of difficulties, then it is unlikely to succeed at new ventures. If success or failure of a project rests on one factor only, without room to explore other approaches, then the effort is doomed from the start.
Success requires flexibility - to redirect the project around obstacles or to deal with a new challenge. Principals singled out by their districts as innovators told my research staff that they had the benefit of supportive administrators above them who offered help at difficult moments. "They did not freak out. They got closer to us," one leader enthused. "They gave both the attention and support that were needed for us to execute."
Momentum slows.After the initial thrill of getting a project off the ground, harsh reality sinks in. You do not have solutions to the problems you face; the multiple demands of your job are piling up; the people you have asked for information or assistance are not returning your calls. After longer-than-normal work days, the team is tired. Conflicts surface. Team members discover their differences in work styles or points of view. When teams get stuck, you can break the logjam by shuffling assignments, breaking into subgroups, and trying a different tack. Spirits soar again when success is in sight. or the local manager.
Organizations often hold exciting launch meetings at the start and blowout celebrations at the end but forget morale-boosters in the middle. It can be as simple as pizza delivered to a project meeting, local celebrities visiting for pep talks, or the leader's reminder that the group is doing important work. Critics get louder.
The final truth behind Kanter's Law is often the most frustrating. You talked to key stakeholders in the beginning - teachers, administrators, parents, even students. They nodded, and you thought you had support. But now - just when it looks like the effort might succeed - objections pile up. Now, just when you're so close to implementation! Why now?
When a project begins, the vision is just rhetoric, the resource requirements modest, the intrusions non-existent. Then the unfolding project makes the consequences concrete. If this works, it will requires more money or force other people to change. "You think you've got an agreement, and later you find the whole thing is stuck in arguments," a leader told me. "Maybe it's just one little detail you assumed that everybody understood but they didn't."
His solution: assume nothing, communicate everything, and repeat it often. Leaders can steer projects through the middle by reminding people of the vision and confronting the critics. That means sticking with it. One mistake leaders make in introducing change is to "launch 'em and leave 'em" - making decisions and announcements but neglecting the hard work of middles. But even the most miserable of middles can produce happy endings if you remember these simple lessons.
Be flexible.Make sure the idea is still viable.
Keep selling.
Involve your supporters.
Nurture your team.
Communicate and over-communicate. Expect obstacles on the road to success, and celebrate each milestone. True leadership involves persistence and follow-through. Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds a chaired professorship at Harvard Business School. She is the author of 16 books, including her recent bestseller, Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End, published by Crown.
Find her frameworks for leadership in public education, developed with Dr. Barry Stein of Goodmeasure Inc., at
www.reinventingeducation.org.The Reinventing Education Change Tookit is based on the work of Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School as developed and extended by Dr. Barry Stein of Goodmeasure Inc.
Tyco's Edward Breen: When Leadership Means Firing Top Management and the Entire Board
Edward D. Breen understood that he was taking on one of the toughest jobs in corporate America when he agreed to become chairman and chief executive officer of Tyco International in July 2002. The former CEO had resigned and was under investigation for stealing hundreds of millions from the company.
Then, hours before Breen was to announce his new position, CNBC reported that Tyco might file for bankruptcy. The company's stock fell 18% that day.
"I knew I was going to be in the fire," Breen recalled during a recent talk on campus as part of the Wharton Leadership Lecture Series. "But you never know the intensity until you are really there."
Intensity may be an understatement. Tyco was on the list of notorious companies gripped by greed and accounting fraud along with Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing. Its former CEO, L. Dennis Kozlowski, has since been sentenced to up to 25 years in New York state prison for plundering the company. In addition to a top layer of managers with questionable ethical bearings, Tyco was saddled with debt and struggling to integrate 400 acquisitions made during the previous five years.
Breen dug in. He fired 290 of the company's top 300 executives. Then he turned around and fired the board that had just hired him. He closed Tyco's posh Manhattan offices and moved to West Windsor, N.J. He ordered consolidations throughout the company, paid down debt and, lately, has begun to focus on growth rather than simple survival.
Breen told his audience that the courage to make decisions -- right or wrong -- along with the talent to both cut expenses and increase revenues are the hallmarks of a great chief executive. And most important, he said, managers need to show passion and compassion to lead successfully. "I keep in mind that any problem can be resolved. It might be ugly, but that's the mindset I went into this with. I'm not afraid to make decisions and I'm not afraid to make a few mistakes along the way."
Today he manages a company with $40 billion in revenues and 250,000 employees worldwide. Tyco operates five main businesses: Fire and Security, including the ADT brand, electronics, healthcare, engineered products and services, and plastics and adhesives.
Making the Tough Decisions
At 48, Breen was already a seasoned executive when he came to Tyco. As president and chief operating officer of Motorola, Breen had made painful cuts following a drop-off in technology spending after 2000. Prior to that, he had engineered the buyout of General Instrument Corp., which he had joined fresh out of Pennsylvania's Grove City College and where he rose to become chief executive in 1996 at age 40.
His experience at those companies gave him the confidence to take on deeply troubled Tyco. He thought: "Okay. So it's just a bigger problem.... It's not as if I'm a gambler," Breen said. "I went in thinking, '98% I can pull this off, 2% I can't.' Whether it was logical or not, that's the way I thought."
The situation at Tyco required swift and bold decision-making, he noted. "As a leader you need to be willing to make the tough decisions. It's not always pleasant. It's not always easy, but at the end of the day we're paid to fix problems. The higher in the company you are, the more problems you hear about."
According to Breen, too many corporate executives are so fearful of making a bad decision that they study and analyze a problem until they become completely stymied. That can be just as bad for a company as a wrong decision. Typically eight out of ten decisions turn out to be right, he estimated, and one of the two others can probably be fixed.
Breen said his decision to sack his entire top management and board made life difficult, but was necessary to restore credibility to the tainted Tyco name. "People were concerned that we weren't going to make it. It was decisions like this that started to tell people it was a new day -- that we were serious. It set the tone that gave us the breathing room to fix the company."
Breen's most immediate problem was $28 billion in debt -- including 11 billion due in the next 12 months. The stock's downward spiral following the bankruptcy rumors pushed the company out of compliance on loan agreements. "A lot of things happen you don't think about," he said. "Our accounts payable skyrocketed. Our suppliers asked us to pay cash or C.O.D. You owe $11 billion and there is no cash in the bank. The system was seizing up on us. We had some big customers and it is amazing they stuck with us."
The CNBC bankruptcy report, he added, was plausible. "It wasn't happening, but there was some semblance of truth that it might." The company pared down operations, closing 980 facilities amounting to 25 million square feet of real estate. "What we realized was there's a lot of waste here. We said, 'We can make it profitable just by focusing on the waste while we try to grow the company,'" Breen recalled.
Growth would need to come from within, at least for a time. "A lot of management people around the world love doing acquisitions. I said, 'No acquisitions for three years.' That wasn't a pleasant conversation for people. I wanted the company to be operationally fixed. Then when we add acquisitions on top of it, we have the right systems in place."
After severing the company's entire top management, Breen hired outsiders to perform specific jobs in his early days at Tyco. "It's very difficult at our size and complexity, but what we did was rent a department." He hired accountants, lawyers, and a public relations firm to manage the company. He also commissioned an executive recruiting company to serve as Tyco's human resources department. "I had a cadre around me of very senior, respected talent that had been through many wars in their lives. What I liked about it was nobody got rattled."
When it came to remaking the Tyco board, Breen pointed to the arrival of Jack Krol, former chairman of DuPont Co., and Jerome York, who had worked with Kirk Kerkorian at Chrysler Corp., as critical ingredients. "Once I had those two, things started to fall into place and we got to build the team." Given the company's scandalous recent past, Breen focused intently on building new governance structures. "A leader needs to be transparent. If you're not, it will catch you over time," he noted, adding that sometimes doing the right thing is not even good enough. "The leader must not only always do the right thing, but the leader must be perceived to be doing the right thing."
Underlings, too, have responsibilities. "A point we stressed more than other companies -- because of where we came from with the problems a few people had created -- is that there's a leader imperative and a follower imperative," said Breen. "If you see something you don't like, 'Speak up.' That's important for you. That's your integrity in life and that's vitally important for the company going forward."
By his second year at Tyco, revenue was up from $34.8 billion to $40.2 billion, and net income was up from a $9.2 billion loss in 2002 to a profit of $2.9 billion in 2004.
Passion Is Number One
Once Tyco was stabilized, Breen could begin to think about growth. "A lot of CEOs are great at coming into companies and cutting costs," he pointed out. "I love that part, and for a lot of CEOs that's what they know is within their control and it improves the numbers." Other CEOs have the opposite bent. "Some think, 'Grow. Grow. Grow.' And they have an inefficient company. But to me, the great CEOs get the operating intensity piece and they also get the growth piece. They are not mutually exclusive." At Tyco, the company has a clearly defined growth plan, he said, and managers are asked to invest for growth and are measured by their success.
Tyco executives are often asked whether the company's divisions would be stronger on their own. "That's the age-old conglomerate question," said Breen. "You have to be really honest with yourself and constantly ask that question. What is the corporate shell adding in value? Otherwise [the divisions] should be on their own."
Breen noted that in most of the recent business debacles, companies wound up working their problems out in bankruptcy court. Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing all filed for bankruptcy court protection. Not Tyco. "What normally happens in a case like Tyco, the company has to file for a prepackaged
bankruptcy. That's how you get out of these problems. I'm really proud we never did that," said Breen, although "we got close."
After paying down Tyco's debt, Breen said some investors are now concerned the company is not leveraged highly enough. He recalled that, following a call from analysts, his staff had asked him why he didn't lay out more details about how the company will deploy its cash to defuse analysts' concerns. "It felt so good to hear that question," Breen told them. "I wanted to hear it a few more times."
Breen stressed that CEOs and managers at all levels must feel passion and compassion. "These are the two words I always keep in my mind [even though] they might seem like soft words coming from a hard-hitting CEO." Whenever he interviews a job seeker, Breen can tell within five minutes if the candidate possesses a passion for work. "If they have passion, you see it in their eyes. It's just something that bubbles up. Passion to me is the number-one thing."
Compassion is also important, he said, especially in today's business environment where ethics are more appreciated than in the pre-Breen days at Tyco. "As you move up, you need to be a team player. You need to care about other people. If you don't, you won't move up.... Believe me, people see. They know who the team players are and who the individual players are." Breen recalled an early meeting with employees where a woman stood up and said she was embarrassed to wear her Tyco t-shirt to her child's soccer games. He had to tell her, "I don't blame you."
Breen estimated Tyco is now in the third inning of a turnaround that will take nine innings. But he is starting to see employees wearing Tyco shirts when he visits corporate locations. "Our employees went through the depths of despair through no fault of their own," he said, "and they are happy to be back."
Understanding the Source of Angerby Os Hillman, March 12, 2006A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. - Proverbs 29:11
The workplace can be a pressure-packed world. The demands that are often put on us can bring out things that we never knew were there. Sometimes we begin to think that the source of that pressure is to blame for our response to the pressure. It could be an event, a spouse, a boss, a client, a child, or even a driver who cuts us off in traffic.
I recall responding to a close friend one time, "If you had not done that, I would never have responded that way." Later I learned that this response had little truth to it. We all choose to get angry. No one else is to blame for our anger.
"The circumstances of life, the events of life, and the people around me in life, do not make me the way I am, but reveal the way I am" [Dr. Sam Peeples].
This simple quote has had a profound impact on how I view my anger now. Anger only reveals what is inside of me. I can't blame anyone but me for my response to a situation. I have learned that anger is only the symptom of something else that is going on inside of me.
This quote now resides on my refrigerator door as a daily reminder of the truth about my response to life's situations.
It has been said that anger is like the warning panel on the dash of your car. It is the light that tells us something is going on under the hood and we need to find out what is the source of the problem. I discovered that the source of anger is often unmet expectations or personal rights.
We believe we are entitled to a particular outcome to a situation. When this doesn't happen, it triggers something in us. At the core of this is fear, often a fear of failure or rejection, fear of what others think, fear of the unknown.If you struggle with anger, ask God to reveal the source of that anger. Ask Him to heal you of any fears that may be the root of your anger.
Ask God to help you take responsibility for your response to difficult situations.
Star Principals Selection Interview
Martin HabermanDistinguished ProfessorUniversity of Wisconsin MilwaukeeResearch and Development
The development of this questionnaire involved merging the knowledge and research base with the most effective practices of star urban principals.
The research and theory base was summarized in the 24 domains of the Knowledge and Skill Base and laid out in Principals for Our Changing Schools published by The National Policy Board for Educational Administration.
Star urban principals in three great city school districts were identified: 27 in Houston, 18 in Milwaukee and 84 in Chicago.
"Star" principals were invited to participate using the following criteria: achievement scores had risen in their schools for a three year period; they were rated by their faculties as effective instructional leaders; central office personnel identified them as accountable fiscal managers; and parents described them as effective in developing community support for their schools. These stars then engaged in a process of explaining their effective leadership behaviors.
They participated in consensus building activities which involved grouping and ranking the performance functions which they believed constituted best practice and which they believed explained their success.
The domains of the written knowledge base and the functions performed by the urban principals were then synthesized into eleven functions.
This synthesis represents the functions that star urban teachers identified as their effective behaviors which can also supported in the research literature.
Questions designed to assess the eleven functions of star urban principals were then developed to assess this synthesis of research and practice. In order to validate that the content of the questions dealt with the content they purported to be assessing, all the principals of the Milwaukee Public Schools in 2001 (167) were personally interviewed by Prof. Haberman over a period of 53 days.
This process established content validity. Respondents, regardless of their level of administrative effectiveness, agreed that the questions dealt with the stated functions. The results of this study indicated that the effective functions cited by star principals which were also supported in the literature were indeed communicating common meanings to respondents.
In addition, all question wordings that were ambiguous were clarified or discarded. In an ancillary study, 51 assistant principals were also interviewed. In spite of the fact that assistant principals were typically relegated to disciplinary duties, they identified ten of the eleven functions on the questionnaire as explanations of star principals' effectiveness. In addition to establishing content validity, this lengthy, in-depth process also provided a pool of responses to the same questions from principals deemed to be less than satisfactory as well as responses from star principals. (Unsatisfactory or "failure" principals were those with attributes opposite to stars: their schools had declining achievement; they were not regarded as instructional leaders by their faculties; they were identified by central office administrators as "in trouble"; and they were not supported by their parents and communities. These were individuals in the process of retiring, being assigned principal coaches or being moved out of schools and reassigned.)
As a result of these procedures, eleven functions representing sound theory and practice were developed into valid interview questions. Since our studies had included both stars and failure principals' responses it was also possible to score responses. The scores reflect the degree to which respondents' answers are closer to those made by star urban principals or to those made by failure principals to the same questions.These procedures required one year to accomplish. At the conclusion of the year the questionnaire was taken back to the original three groups of star principals in Houston, Chicago and Milwaukee. The numbers of these groups had declined slightly(2 less in Houston, 1 less in Milwaukee and 8 less in Chicago).
The star principals were asked to repeat the very same process they had engaged in initially; that is, they engaged in a process of consensus building in which they identified and ranked the behaviors they believed explained their effectiveness. The results of these activities indicated that the behaviors star urban principals had identified the previous year were the same ones they identified a year later. The second finding was that the answers of all the initial respondents' identified as stars were, in every case, closer to the star respondents identified in the Milwaukee sample than to the responses of the failing principals. The third finding was that the questionnaire could be administered with inter-rater reliability; different interviewers scored respondents answers in the same ways.
In sum, the developmental approach followed here has yielded a questionnaire which synthesizes what the knowledge base indicates makes principals effective and what star urban principals themselves identify as explanations for their success. When this synthesis was replicated one year later it yielded the same explanations of success. The interview questions developed from this synthesis have content validity for both star principals and failure principals.
The scoring of respondents is reliable when used by various questioners who have been trained to use the interview..Individuals have been trained to use the interview in Washington, D.C.; Rochester, N.Y.; Buffalo, N.Y.; San Francisco and numerous smaller cities in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan and Texas. Dallas is in the process of receiving training. All cities report that the quality of the principals that they have hired using the interview has markedly improved. Each city collects its own achievement data and may be contacted for further information.
http://www.altcert.org/research/research.asp?article=Principals&page=Research
Can Star Teachers Create Learning Communities? To transform a school into a learning community a savvy educational leader needs to support the very best teachers.Martin Haberman Distinguished Professor University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Successful schools share a number of attributes :good leadership, a common vision that makes a climate of learning the highest priority, teachers who use best practices, an effective accountability system, and parent involvement. An attribute less frequently discussed is the manner in which the teachers and staff pursue their professional development. Would making the school a learning community-one that encourages teachers and staff to grow personally and professionally-- benefit the students? Would a school with great teachers be more likely to become a learning community? The well-known quip attributed to Will Rogers, usually quoted incompletely as, "You can't teach what you don't know," is often applied to teachers who teach content in which they are less than expert. The entire aphorism, however, conveys a significantly different meaning: "You can't teach what you don't know about places you ain't never been." The full message refers to experiential knowledge rather than content knowledge. The pursuit of learning is not a piece of content that can be taught. It is a value that teachers model. Only teachers who are themselves avid, internally motivated learners can truly teach their students the joys of learning. The frequently espoused goal of lifelong learning for our students is hollow rhetoric unless the school is also a learning community in which teachers demonstrate engagement in meaningful learning activities. Teachers who are not "turned on" to learning themselves are trying to teach about "places they ain't never been." A group is a learning community when members share a common vision that learning is the primary purpose for their association and the ultimate value to be preserved in their workplace and that learning outcomes are the primary criteria for evaluating the success of their work. In a school learning community, teachers pursue two realms of knowledge: professional development and learning for the sake of learning. The importance of the former is self evident. As for the latter, inculcating love of learning is the surest way of teaching students to become "turned-on" learners. Students will model behavior of teachers they respect-teachers who have strong interests, who love to learn and who are always reading something of interest.
Attributes of a Learning Community
For the first four years of my career as a university faculty member I had the special privilege of participating in a community of learners.
The following attributes of that learning community have applications in both primary and secondary school environments. ·
Modeling.
In guiding student learning and development, teachers applied the same principles that guided their own learning and development.
Continual sharing of ideas.
Teachers shared ideas daily regarding vital issues of equity, instruction, curriculum, testing, school organization and the value of specific kinds of knowledge. ·
Collaboration.
Teachers became involved in team teaching and other collaborative efforts in program development, writing and research.
Egalitarianism.
Teachers dispensed with formalities. Anyone who took an interest could vote in a department meeting, including students. The quality of ideas was more important than their source. ·
High productivity.
Teachers continually increased their workloads. No matter how high the output, they continually pressured themselves to create new programs, develop new courses, publish books and articles, and produce more research. ·
Community.
Faculty members valued community more than promotion. Finding a more stimulating learning environment became the criterion that guided the movement of faculty to other institutions. · Practical applications. Teachers asked themselves, "How does what we are doing help students, teachers and schools? What did we do this week to help? Assuming these seven attributes adequately describe a learning community, how can we develop such a community? And what role would star teachers play in transforming schools into learning communities?
Attributes of Star Teachers
The term star teachers designates teachers who are so effective that the adverse effects of working in failing schools or school districts do not prevent them from being successful teachers. They make up approximately 8 percent of the teachers who work with seven million diverse low-income urban students in the 120 largest school districts.
Several characteristics set them apart (Haberman, 1995/2004):
their persistence,
their physical and emotional stamina,
their caring relationships with students,
their commitment to acknowledging and appreciating student effort,
their willingness to admit mistakes,
their focus on in-depth learning, their commitment to inclusion and their organizational skills.
They also:
protect student learning,
translate theory and research into practice,
cope with the bureaucracy,
create student ownership,
engage parents and caregivers as partners in student learning, and
support accountability for at-risk students' learning.
These attributes predict the effectiveness and staying power of teachers serving diverse students in low-income urban schools. More than 170 school districts in the United States use the Star Teacher Interview which evaluates these attributes as part of their teacher hiring process(Haberman,2004).
Star Teacher Ideology
Undergirding these attributes is the common ideology of star teachers.
Stars tend to be nonjudgmental.
As they interact with children and adults in school settings star teachers try to understand the motivation behind a given behavior rather than judge the behavior. ·
They are not moralistic.
Star teacher know that preaching and lecturing do not equate to teaching and that those approaches neither influence behavior nor increase students' desire to learn. ·
They respond as professionals and are not easily shocked.
Horrific events occur in urban schools with some regularity. Star teachers ask themselves, "What can I do about this?" If they can help they take action. If not, they get on with their work and their lives. They respond to emotionally charged situations as thoughtful professionals.
Stars hear what students and adults say to them.
Star teachers listen and understand. They have exceedingly sensitive communication skills. They regard everyone in the school community as a potential source of useful information.
They recognize and compensate for their weaknesses.
Star teachers are aware of their weaknesses in terms of a lack of knowledge or skills or in terms of their own biases and prejudices. They strive to overcome them. ·
Stars do not see themselves as saviors.
Star teachers have not come to rescue the system. Actually, they do not expect much from the system - except for the likelihood it may worsen. They focus on making their students successful in spite of the system. ·
Stars do not work in isolation.
Star teachers know that burnout can affect everyone. They network and create their own support groups. ·
Stars view themselves as successful professionals rescuing students.
Star teachers see themselves as "winning" even though they know that their total influence on their students is likely to be less than the total society, the neighborhood or even gang. They take pride in turning students on to learning and making them educationally successful in the midst of failed urban school systems. ·
Stars derive energy and well being from their interactions with students.
Star teachers so enjoy being with students that they are even willing to put up with the irrational demands of the system. Rather than always feeling exhausted, they feel vitalized and energized from a day at work. ·
Stars see themselves as teachers of children as well as of content.
Star teachers want students to become better people not just higher achievers. · Stars are learners. Star teachers are models of learning for students because they are vitally interested in some subject matter or avocation that keeps them constantly learning. ·
Stars have no need for power.
Stars derive their satisfactions from effectively teaching diverse low income students. They stay in the classroom. · Stars recognize the imperative for student success. Star teachers see the need for diverse low-income students to succeed in school as a matter of life and death for the students and for the survival of the society.
Teacher Voice
Star teachers are avid learners. The challenge is getting them to actively participate in a school-wide learning community. Their motivation for becoming teachers generally has little to do with serving as change agents or transforming schools.
Stars will not necessarily assume leadership roles in this regard because they focus on students. Although they seek to get along with colleagues, work positively as team members and share their expertise when asked, they prefer to put their time to use working with individual students, gathering interesting learning materials, making home visits, and pursuing the particular learning interests and avocations they value.
They will need to be convinced that engaging in school-wide activities will directly benefit their students. What will not convince them to participate are learning communities that they perceive have been created with an agenda, such as one that tries to convince teachers they need the "Bumstead" reading program, or the "Surefire Method" of classroom management. If administrators have teachers meet primarily to learn about the mandates they need to follow, then the creation of a learning community will be stillborn.
A learning community is based on the assumption that developing the faculty is a necessary condition of school improvement. If the district or building administration operates on the assumption that teacher-proof programs can improve schools, then star teachers will detach themselves from the process. Star teachers will need to be convinced that the faculty will have the major voice in determining its own professional development. This is a step-by-step process involving teachers and their school administrators. The school administration must also show genuine willingness to live with and support the results of the freedom that teachers must exercise to create a school-based learning community.
When Stars Steal the Show
Stars care about and respect students-even students whom other teachers cannot handle. For example, stars do not suspend students unless the law requires them to do so ( e.g. when a student brings a gun to school).
At schools that suspend more than half of their students during the course of the school year , the positive relationships between stars and their students becomes obvious.
Stars do not follow mandates if they believe the mandates will hurt student learning.
Stars do not follow curricula page by page because their expertise in the subjects they teach gives them the confidence to know what to skip.
Stars do not "cover" material but rather focus their teaching on generating interest and relevance. These teacher behaviors do not go unnoticed by other teachers and administrators.
Individual teachers or teacher committees often come to principals demanding to know, "If we have to do this, why doesn't she or he (the star teacher) have to.?" In middle and high schools, where each student has many teachers, a star's success with students whom other teachers are failing can become a source of faculty dissension.
Other teachers often have a difficult time accepting that stars are successful and happy about their work when they themselves may be experiencing great stress and discouragement.
Indeed, teachers often feel pressured by the presence of stars. The star's success makes other teachers' failures all the more obvious. The failure may be one of inadequate professional know-how, a lack of teacher effort, or the teachers' inability to establish positive working relationships with students. Using star teachers in ways that help the school can be a challenge for principals.
In many schools, the principal may be reluctant to provide stars with "space" because their success could only reveal the principal's inadequacy at providing professional development activities that will bring the rest of the staff up to the star's level.
The principal must also deal with parents who want their children in the star's classrooms and with grievances from teachers who are concerned that stars may not be following school regulations, such as requiring silence in the lunchroom or suspending students for first-time infractions. Unfortunately, it is easier to pander to the majority than to protect the best practices of the stars.
Principals sometimes even feel pressured to drive stars out, typically by assigning them to teach subjects or grade levels for which they are unprepared. The challenge to the principal, or to those seeking to create a learning community, is to use star teachers in unobtrusive, supportive ways that do not threaten the rest of the faculty and continuously remind them of their inadequacies.
School administrators could use star teachers as committee members but without singling them out or designating them as chairpersons or faculty leaders. Administrators should let star teachers remain in their classrooms rather than removing them to become mentors or coaches.
Star teachers should also work on the same agreed-on activities that the other teachers work on. And administrators should never request teachers to observe star teachers' classrooms unless the teachers themselves request it. Stars can have a positive impact if other teachers see that the stars are not seeking promotions out of their classrooms and are not trying to control the behavior of their peers. School leaders must also recognize that the battle is for the hearts and minds of the teachers in the middle.
This is the group that leaders must reach for the school to truly become a learning community. These are the satisfactory teachers who represent approximately 40% of the faculty. This middle group is as susceptible to becoming discouraged and accepting failure as they are to emulating the more positive approach of the stars.
A Portrait of Success
What if all teachers in a school were star teachers? What impact would it have on student achievement? Two failing elementary schools whose faculties were to be reconstituted provided us with the answer. One school serves low-income students of Mexican descent in Texas; the other serves predominantly low-income African American students in a depressed urban area in New York State. Using the Star Teacher Selection Interview to identify star ideology and attributes, we hired only those teachers who passed the interview. We scored candidate responses in terms of how closely they mirrored the star teacher approach. Only a small percentage passed at the star level.
The principals for these reconstituted schools also needed to pass the Star Administrator Selection Interview. These schools, which had been designated as failing, were moved out of that category within a year. The school in Texas actually became one of the highest-achieving schools in the district within this short period. Highly effective teachers, led by an effective principal, can clearly close the achievement gap. In an in-depth study of the two schools, I identified more than 30 factors that contributed directly or indirectly to creating a learning community.
For example, all the teachers focused on effort rather than ability as their explanation for school success. The teachers saw effective instruction as a matter of life and death for students. Moreover, the teacher expected to have problems as part of their daily work. They viewed working with English language-limited students and inclusion students as an integral, not an extra, part of their jobs. And they accepted accountability for student achievement.
The learning communities developed in these two schools were not based on teachers necessarily liking one another, or even agreeing with one another's philosophies and methods. Teachers did mutually respect one another, however, because they firmly believed that they all put the learning of the student above the convenience of the adults. Teachers did not blame the students for not learning, nor did they define their jobs in terms of the legally required minimums. Rather, teachers defined their roles in terms of "whatever it takes" to solve the problems.
Selecting both veteran teachers and beginners with star ideology created a climate that provided continual opportunities for teachers to pursue their own learning and model their commitment to learning for their students (Haberman, 1999). At the start of the school year, the teachers trusted my contention that if they pursued these practices rather than teach for the tests, test scores would take care of themselves. And the test scores did just that. The faculty came to regard the achievement tests as minimum, not maximum, levels of what their students could achieve.
Looking to the Future
On the basis of what I have observed in app. 200 failing school districts over the last half century I can make a number of predictions.
First, working conditions will most likely worsen rather than improve.
Second, the next generation of principals will spring from the same internal pools as the current generation and will most likely not experience greater success.
Last, transformers seeking to change the culture of schools using teacher-proof methods and programs will not create learning communities. There are effective schools in every failing district that have, against all odds, created a learning community that functions to some degree.
Moreover, a great opportunity exists to create viable learning communities in schools that must be reconstituted by law or reconstituted as charter schools within the same public school district. It makes little sense to work harder and longer at replicating strategies for changing school culture which have consistently failed in the past. What is worthy of replication is building the culture of a school that will foster and maintain a learning community, with teachers whose ideology is moving them down the road toward becoming stars.
References Haberman,M. (1995,2004). Star teachers of children in poverty. Houston: Haberman Educational Foundation .
Haberman, M. (1999). "Victory at Buffalo Creek: What makes a school serving hispanic children in poverty successful?" Instructional Leader, Part I. March, 1999; Part II. April, 1999;Part III. May, 1999; V.XVII, No. 2.
Haberman, M.(2004). Creating effective schools in failed urban districts. Myriad. University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
http://www.educationnews.org/can-star-teachers-create-learnin.htm
