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CHAPTER 4

Leading Toward a Common Vision and Guiding Others in Leading Themselves

As a leader, you are responsible for establishing a vision for your team. At the same time, the people you lead come to you with widely diverse backgrounds and experiences, and they have valuable wisdom to offer you. This chapter’s lens is about leveraging the priorities in table 4.1 to ensure that you find the right mix of setting direction (leadership) and gathering the wisdom of those you lead (listening).

Table 4.1: The Leadership and Listening Lens Domain

Lens 1	Leadership and Listening
Priorities	Influencing Shepherding	Empowering Connecting
Common initiatives, issues, or leadership responsibilities that involve this lens	Setting school directionInfluencing beliefsSharing leadershipBuilding relationshipsLeading for collective teacher efficacy
EQ component	Demonstrating empathyBeing aware of others’ emotionsEmploying interpersonal skills: active listening

In this chapter, we explore the interdependency of leading and listening by learning from a school principal who understands how to best leverage the priorities inherent in this lens. We follow this by explaining how you strike a balance between the leadership and listening poles, establishing an emotional intelligence connection for this lens, and explaining how you can best leverage the priorities inherent in this lens.

An Example of Leading While Listening

When Timothy Brown first became an elementary school principal, he announced that he was devoting his first months at the school to listening, observing, and working to understand all of its staff (what was working well, the challenges they faced), and helping them get to know him. The broad reaction was roughly, “Yeah, right. When are you going to start changing things?”

The staff reaction isn’t surprising, is it? Most new leaders bring tools that have worked elsewhere, mandates from the district office, and other elements of overall direction for the year. Often, the district hires them on the basis of changes they promise to bring about.

Tim acknowledges that being born into a more introverted culture (he is an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe), and being introverted himself, perhaps make it easier to prioritize the listening pole of this lens. However, his experiences fostered his belief that the listening pole is an imperative for school leaders:

I think leaders know this, but think they don’t have time in their day…. Kids and adults don’t just walk into a building and become students and teachers. They have Venn diagrams of things going on, complex and competing and conflicting diagrams. The more you try to steamroll, simplify, flatten that landscape, the more you potentially disenfranchise and alienate people. I don’t know how to slow down and unpack that more other than to listen to people to understand them as individuals. If they feel listened to and respected, they can bring their better selves to work that day. (T. Brown, personal communication, August 8, 2017)

Listening for those first months on the job let Tim confirm that he’d been given the right advice by a mentor regarding his new position: “Don’t mess it up.” The staff already worked collaboratively and held each other to high standards. Listening helped Tim understand the culture he was joining, what motivated his staff, their shared values and purpose, and how he could become part of an existing safe and trusting environment.

Listening also allowed him to unearth some unproductive norms, such as the staff believing “if I’m in the principal’s office, I’m in trouble.” They were trying too hard to solve their own problems, whereas running interference for staff, seeking additional resources, facilitating difficult conversations, and so on, are part of a principal’s job.

Tim took concrete steps to counteract this norm. First, he communicated the value of time for one-to-one conversations by talking about how ineffective walking meetings were for true listening, what with inevitable interruptions from happenings in the hallway or questions from others along the way. Instead he told his teachers, “Make an appointment. Let’s really dedicate time without texting or watching students or anything else.”

Then, when the meetings happened, he explicitly talked about his desire to both support and protect teachers. Teaching is stressful! He conveyed that whether it’s a particularly difficult parent situation or a personal crisis or other frustration, he wanted staff members to involve school leaders before they were fighting back tears or otherwise being overwhelmed by stress. It was common for him to say things like, “You don’t get points for beating yourself up. It’s a long school year. If something is exhausting you, or you sense verbal, physical, or mental abuse, it is not okay. Come and talk to me sooner, not later.”

Then, he took time to thank them for coming and urged them to come sooner. The word spread, and the one-to-ones slowly became a new norm. Why slowly? Because while Tim ranks listening as a top leadership responsibility, it took time for teachers to grasp that the one-to-ones were as valuable to him as his other responsibilities.

Tim wanted one more new norm—percolating. For him, silence is natural as he digests new information or thinks through a decision, but he knows that most people are uncomfortable with silence. Normalizing it and helping others embrace it were important to his style. His staff got used to his longer-than-expected silences and learned to ponder their own ideas. They frequently bantered about “He’s percolating on that” or “Let’s give this time to percolate” and other like phrases in a good way, because they knew they were placing more value on establishing time to think. Tim also prioritized the leadership pole, knowing that the ultimate responsibility for student learning rested with himself as the school’s top leader. In his first months, he used the listening pole to find the pockets of excellence regarding the school’s existing initiatives and then shifted to the leadership pole to spread best practices. For example, some teams were more adept at using data to inform instruction. Tim invited them to capture their strategies in formats they could pass on to other teams—presentations, videos, protocols, and so on. He then worked with the other teams to ensure they had the time, support, and other resources to master the skills they needed.

Leadership and listening can work together on the most practical of issues. For example, as a newcomer, Tim noticed that how the school used its physical space was less than optimal. He provided a clear purpose by asking the staff to rethink the building as a blank map and consider what would work best for students. He asked questions like, “Can we get rid of hallway bottlenecks?” “If we move where our specialists are located, might we do less dashing about for interventions?” “Does our space create any problems among older and younger students?” and “What else might we change?”

As a result, several teachers volunteered to draw maps—and the ways in which their maps overlapped became the new building space plan. Their collective plan fostered buy-in for the immense task of packing up and moving classrooms during the last days of the school year. The staff figured out not just the what of the new map, but the how and when of the move.

Leadership Priorities, Listening Priorities

Not every school has a culture like the one Tim entered. If, unlike Tim, you take the lead in a building or on a team where the common vision has dimmed, the leadership pole may take priority; focusing on the listening pole for months might be disastrous if people need immediate inspiration. But imagine the disruption of change, change, and more change in a school like Tim’s, where collective teacher efficacy already exists. Will it continue if a new leader comes in on day one with a bold vision but fails to listen and understand how the existing culture already works?

Figure 4.1 illustrates the competing priorities inherent in the leadership and listening poles.

Figure 4.1: The leadership and listening loop.

It’s the principal’s job above all, and a key priority for every school leader, to ensure that all students are learning—a clear responsibility for the leadership side of this lens. The leadership pole—setting direction, advocating, influencing beliefs—thrives on extraversion. Leadership means setting direction and ensuring that expectations are clear.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

These points refer to the Jungian definitions of extraversion and introversion as a source of energy. See the appendix (page 217).

Listening can feel a bit countercultural in many countries because of cultural bias toward being extraverted (Kirby & Kendall, 2008). Traditionally, schools reward adults and students for speaking up quickly and participating in discussions. We expect leaders to be visible and involved, not tucked away in their offices. We worry about shy children. More and more, we expect teachers to collaborate. The fast pace of the school day, with multiple changes in activities and groups, also favors those who get their energy through action and interaction, but balance is possible.

Tim sums up his aha moment as realizing, “Leadership is listening!”

Consider two key interdependencies between the equally valuable leadership roles of leadership and listening: (1) leading the why and listening for the what and how and (2) leading for new norms and listening for obsolete norms. How might these affect your goals and initiatives?

Leading the Why and Listening for the What and How

Answering the question, “Why are we doing this?” is an ongoing leadership responsibility. It applies to the big picture (overall) vision of the school and to each task that members of the learning community are asked to engage in. How much of the vision comes from the top and how much a full staff can co-create may depend on the current level of collective efficacy. The right mix of top-down and shared leadership may change quickly, depending on the issue, how quickly trust is built, and a myriad of other factors.

Remember, though, that a common thread in literature on change in organizations is that it takes three to five years for a significant change to take hold and become part of the culture (Hall & Hord, 2010). As a leader, with all of the outside pressures on schools, it is tempting to jettison initiatives sooner than that, especially if they began under another leader. This is where both–and thinking is of great value. Yes, you (or those above you) may decide to shift strategic focus for very good reasons. However, using the listening pole will help you determine when to switch focus and when to work with what already exists. Consider listening to uncover the following.

♦ Consistencies and inconsistencies: Look for examples of effective practices not being maintained across all stakeholders. For example, a new leader might notice that although students receive consistent messages on behavior from adults in the hallways and cafeteria, classroom teachers are inconsistent on positive behavior interventions.

♦ Pockets of excellence: Look for specific areas of your school where there is excellence in practice. In the example about Tim Brown that started this chapter, he unearthed not just who was having the most success with using data to inform instruction but how and why they were having success. This allowed him to expand that pocket of excellence.

Listening provides these insights. Leadership turns the insights into action.

ASK YOURSELF

What are the patterns or ideas that everyone might benefit from, and who needs support? Are you more hands-on or hands-off? When are you comfortable setting the vision and letting others decide the what and the how?

Leading for New Norms and Listening for Obsolete Norms

Leaders who expect everyone to accept, adjust to, or work around their styles are usually abrasive, arrogant, or uncaring. However, each of us has strengths and tools or habits that support our own effectiveness, and it’s important to maintain those to be effective. As Tim did with percolating, helping those you lead understand and become comfortable with some of your tools can, if done right, increase both trust and effectiveness. To accomplish this requires naming, modeling, and encouraging the practice in others.

The flip side, though, is adapting to the productive norms in your new environment, and carefully working to change any unproductive ones, whether that involves something as simple as ensuring everyone takes a true lunch break or as complex as normalizing one-to-one time with the principal.

ASK YOURSELF

What is your natural approach to a new role? More leadership? More listening? How does this tendency fit with your current environment?

The EQ Connection

The key EQ areas for this lens are demonstrating empathy, being aware of others’ emotions, and employing the interpersonal skill of active listening. The following are a few key points about being aware of others’ emotions that pertain to this chapter.

♦ This kind of awareness takes time. It may mean pausing in meetings. Tim would remind staff “there is no awkward silence—just silence.” It may mean taking time before a meeting to consider how others may act and why, and then reflecting afterward on the accuracy of your predictions.

♦ Remember that emotions are data that may clarify patterns in resistance—the levels of support necessary in change, overall stress, the presence of initiative fatigue, and more. These data can be more crucial to reaching goals than any objective data.

The following are a few key points on demonstrating empathy that pertain to this chapter.

♦ Remember that empathy involves not just understanding others’ emotions but grasping the root causes and using the information in a beneficial way.

♦ Overusing empathy can cause a leader to try to please everyone or to solve all their problems in ways that sabotage resilience and empowerment.

♦ Using empathy may nudge a leader to change a course of action or adjust how he or she communicates information. It doesn’t have to be wishy-washy.

The following are a few key points on active listening that pertain to this chapter.

♦ Through brain-imaging studies, Dario Nardi (2011) finds that only 7–10 percent of people naturally listen well. The rest of us think ahead to what we are going to say or get caught up in silently critiquing what we are hearing. Don’t assume you’re in the 10 percent who are good listeners!