Personal & Authentic. Thomas C Murray
of working for some fantastic leaders over the years. Those leaders had courage. They had articulate, kid-centered visions. They valued people first and helped foster cultures of risk-taking and innovation. Those leaders modeled the way, led by example, and saw kids as far more than data points and test scores. They were willing to challenge the status quo and do whatever it took for the students they served. They understood that to be effective, they had to lead by being personal and authentic.
Working with educators in the United States and throughout the world gives me great hope. Spending time with educators every week affords me the insight as to the vast array of work that’s being done to support our students. Many incredible things happen in classrooms every day.
I’ve worked with amazing leaders in states like Mississippi where 100 percent of the students where I served lived below the poverty line. In places like this, I’ve met dynamic, passionate, and talented educators who serve brilliant, determined, hard-working, and courageous kids.
I’ve also spent time on the other end of the financial spectrum, in some of our country’s wealthiest suburbs, where outfitting the newest virtual reality and STEM lab with the latest technology and spending tens of thousands of dollars on such products each year is more than feasible. In places like this, I’ve also met dynamic, passionate, and talented educators who serve brilliant, determined, hard-working, and courageous kids.
If I’m fully transparent in these thoughts, the converse is also true. I’ve worked with leaders in some of the most impoverished areas and leaders in some of the wealthiest areas whose leadership I’d struggle to place my own children under. These interactions have been limited, as the vast amount of school and district leaders I work with are people-loving, kid-centered, dynamic, and talented individuals who pour their hearts into other people’s children each day.
With the vast experiences mentioned above, from urban to rural, from large to small, and from poor to wealthy, incredible educators can be found in every demographic.
What I’ve come to know is . . .
. . . a school’s budget doesn’t make a great leader.
. . . a school’s location doesn’t make a great leader.
. . . a school’s size doesn’t make a great leader.
. . . a person’s title doesn’t make a great leader.
In Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow’s Schools, Today, Eric Sheninger and I address this issue as we contrast “Leaders by Title” (LBTs) with “Leaders by Action” (LBAs):
In our opinion, the best leaders have one thing in common: they do, as opposed to just talk. Leadership is about action, not position or chatter. Some of the best leaders we have seen during our years in education have never held any sort of administrative title. They had the tenacity to act on a bold vision for change to improve learning for kids and the overall school culture. These people are often overlooked and may not be considered “school leaders” because they don’t possess the necessary title or degree that is used to describe a leader in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, the effect these leaders can have on an organization is much greater than an LBT. We need more leaders by action (LBA). Make no mistake about the fact that you are surrounded by these people each day. They are teachers, students, parents, support staff members, and administrators who have taken action to initiate meaningful change in their classrooms or schools. These leaders don’t just talk the talk; they also walk the walk. They lead by example in what might be the most effective way possible: by modeling. They don’t expect others to do what they aren’t willing to do. It doesn’t take a title or a new position for these leaders to be agents of change. LBAs drive sustainable change and make the transformation of learning possible.
Never underestimate your own unique talents and abilities; they have the power to shape the future of our schools and create a better learning culture that our students need and deserve. Everyone has the ability to lead in some capacity, and our schools—and the kids who are being shaped inside them—need more educators to embrace this challenge.1
Leadership is defined by action, not by one’s title on a business card. In life, your success is intimately tied to your actions.
Stop & Reflect
When you think of the words “school leader,” who comes to mind? What characteristics does that individual consistently display?
From my experience, quite often, especially in toxic environments, educators will talk about “a lack of leadership,” which is often paired with comments about “low morale.” Toxic school cultures are real. Toxic, egocentric, self-serving “leadership” is real. Innovation will not thrive in these school and classroom cultures, and risk-taking will be minimal. In these spaces, it is ultimately the students who have the most to lose.
In life, your success is intimately tied to your actions.
This cycle of toxicity will continue until hearts change or other leaders rise.
Some of the most dynamic school leaders I’ve ever worked with are perhaps not whom you’d expect. It has been the third-year teacher that runs through walls for kids every single day. It has been the support staff member who earns far less than she deserves yet is a backbone to the building and knows every child within it. It has been the thirty-five-year veteran, teaching her last year but making every day count. She’d been teaching second grade for twenty years, but she still recognized that her students only had one year in second grade, so she did whatever it took for them to have their best year yet.
The best leaders, whether in the classroom or the office, don’t believe it is someone else’s responsibility to make great things happen. The best leaders don’t believe it is someone else’s responsibility to make their schools a great place to work. The best leaders don’t point the finger outward before they point the finger at themselves and examine inward.
Leadership starts with you.
Regardless of your role, regardless of your position, if you work in a school, you are a leader for kids. If you work in a toxic environment, you have two choices: maximize blame and minimize impact or maximize impact and minimize blame. If you work in a toxic environment and the perceived consensus is that the toxicity is due to one person, what would happen if you and every other adult in the building did everything in their power to make yours the greatest school on the planet in which to work? Some may call it a utopian thought. But why?
Toxic environments are real, but to move out of that environment, we must own our parts in the learning culture, regardless of our titles.
So much of the role of leadership comes down to one word—mindset. It’s easier to point the finger than it is to take responsibility. It’s easier to make an excuse than to fight an uphill battle. It’s easier to hide than it is to rise in the midst of uncertainty.
If you want your school to have great leadership, it begins with you. If I want my organization to have great leadership, it begins with me. Our mindsets, our actions, and our circles of influence can move us forward. We can’t do it for others. We can only do it for ourselves.
Every one of us is responsible for our workplace cultures. Each of us contributes to it. Each of us either builds it up or tears it down, even just a little bit, each day. Right now, your school’s culture perfectly aligns with the mindset and actions of the adults in your building. If we want things to change, we must look inward before we look around us. We must move forward if we want the whole group to move forward; otherwise, we’re simply solidifying the foundation of the status quo.
Right now, your school’s culture perfectly aligns with the mindset and actions of the adults in your building.
While toxic school cultures and poor leadership are very real, so are the countless schools and districts that people flock to each day. These are places of joy, places where both students and staff want to be. These are places where leaders take responsibility and model the way, where the adults do whatever it takes for students to thrive. These places aren’t created by one person. Cultures of innovation are the culmination of action-oriented leadership by many inside an