Taking Action. Austin Buffum
Credibility: Anyone with expertise in an organization knows that some individuals influence and sway decision making more than others. Some of these individuals use this credibility to advocate for keeping the status quo, while others can use their influence to build support for a new change initiative. It is critical that a guiding coalition has sufficient levels of credibility with those it is trying to convince. An important question to ask is, Does our leadership team have enough people with credibility that its recommendations and decisions will be taken seriously, especially by those staff members who we most need to convince?
It is critical that a guiding coalition has sufficient levels of credibility with those it is trying to convince.
4. Leadership ability: Leaders have the ability to convincingly articulate a position, unite others toward a common goal, build trust with others, and respectfully confront actions that are not aligned to the school’s mission. If a guiding coalition lacks members with leadership ability, it is unlikely that the best-laid plans will be implemented successfully. Even if the school’s principal possesses leadership ability, it would be unwise to always make the principal the spokesperson for the leadership team. When administrators always introduce new ideas, staff members often view them as top-down directives. Identifying other members—especially teacher leaders—with leadership ability is a powerful asset for an effective guiding coalition. The right question to ask is, “Does the group include enough proven leaders to be able to drive the change process?”
So, an effective leadership team must be comprised of people who possess strong positional power, broad expertise, and high credibility with their peers. Moreover, it is important that the guiding coalition is comprised of people who have strong leadership skills and not just the ability to organize and manage programs. In other words, the guiding coalition, along with the school administration, acts as a change agent relative to the mission and vision of the school.
While the previous examples focus on creating a school leadership team, we should apply these same principles to forming a leadership team to guide districtwide RTI implementation. Building a broad base of expertise, including representation from each school, special and regular education, classified support staff, the teachers’ union, district and site administration, parents, and community resources, is important to the team’s success.
As important as getting the “right people on the bus” is to establishing an effective leadership team, it is equally important to establish a culture of collective responsibility within the team itself. In other words, each individual on the leadership team must see him- or herself as a leader whose role it is to participate in, model, and inspire a similar culture in the school as a whole. The team’s work, therefore, must consistently have a dual focus—internal attention to how members are working together and external attention to coaching and inspiring others.
To begin, the team must discuss and agree on its purpose—to unite and coordinate the school’s collective efforts to help every student succeed and to allocate the school’s resources to best achieve this goal. It is also important to identify any nonpurposes—topics that will be off limits during team meetings, such as complaining about students, parents, or staff members. Once the team clearly understands and agrees to its purpose, it is then essential to reach consensus on team tasks, desired outcomes for each meeting, team norms, and each team member’s roles and responsibilities. The following tools and tips can help in this process.
Helpful Tools
The following tools will help you accomplish the work for this essential action.
► “Building a School Leadership Team” (page 41): This activity is designed to help a principal or administrative team create an effective school leadership team.
► “Team Charter” (page 42): Use this form to organize and set norms for your leadership team.
► “Meeting Agenda Template” (page 44): Use this template to record the meeting agenda for your leadership team.
Coaching Tips
As stated previously, once the right people are on the schoolwide leadership team, it is essential for the team to embrace the importance of doing the work, not just leading the work. In other words, team members must establish and live a culture of collective responsibility among themselves in order to model, inform, and establish a similar culture in the school as a whole.
An effective way to get started is to create a team charter, a document that outlines the foundations on which to base all team interactions and work. All team members must participate in the dialogue and discussions that result in consensus on the document itself. Once they reach agreement, all members sign and date the charter. As work progresses, the team might need to revisit, revise, or supplement the charter to meet its needs.
The success of the leadership team goes hand in hand with the success of its meetings. Every time the leadership team meets, there must be a clear path to action (goals and tasks), attention to culture building (collaborative work, norms, and all members’ equal participation), exchange of information (structured conversations to ensure shared understanding), and tangible action steps.
A carefully planned and skillfully facilitated meeting agenda is the key to success. High-performance teams consistently use an agenda template, such as the “Meeting Agenda Template” (page 44). Using a consistent agenda template ensures that each meeting begins with an overview of purpose, desired outcomes, and tasks to be accomplished, along with team member roles and approximate time needed for each task. Remember, less is more. The most productive meetings often have fewer topics, which, in turn, allow for all members to have greater participation.
The most productive meetings often have fewer topics, which, in turn, allow for all members to have greater participation.
Each meeting must also conclude with consistency—reviewing tasks the team completed and decisions it made, clarifying team members’ responsibilities to accomplish before the next meeting, evaluating the meeting’s effectiveness, and brainstorming a list of topics to include on the next meeting agenda. Team members should compile and share notes after each meeting. This responsibility can be assigned to a specific team member or shared among team members. Assigning additional team member roles, such as facilitator, timer, or public recorder may also help team meetings run more smoothly.
Once the leadership team establishes the foundational steps outlined in this section, its work broadens to include ongoing attention to its own team culture and productivity as well as developing a similar culture in the school as a whole. Team members must model the purpose and beliefs of the leadership team both formally and informally. Daily conversations and interactions with colleagues, in addition to team and faculty meetings, are the most influential building blocks for changing culture. Gandhi (2017) said it best, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Teachers, staff, and leaders can also be the change they want to see in their schools.
Action 2
Build a Culture of Collective Responsibility
Our experience verifies that the possibilities are unlimited once a dedicated school staff goes in search of research and best practices to advance their shared vision of learning for all. However, until they embrace the possibility that all children can learn, the obstacles and barriers they will find are virtually endless and will seem insurmountable.
—Larry Lezotte
The schoolwide leadership team’s first and most important task is to establish what we refer to as a culture of collective responsibility.