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1	Building a Positive Culture for Messaging

The less people know, the more they yell.

—Seth Godin

When I was a boy, I loved lying on the front porch at night. With no streetlights or neighbors, our West Tennessee farmhouse was enveloped in darkness, surrounded by swampy creeks and woods, accompanied by the sound of crickets and the serenade of spring frogs. The blanket of stars above me was a thick, mesmerizing maze of constellations. My dad went through a phase of interest in telescopes, so sometimes we took turns looking for planets or peering at the moon.

Did you know that only one side of the moon is visible from the Earth? Because of the Earth’s orbit and the moon’s speed of rotation while orbiting, we never see the other side of the moon. Just like we only see one side of the moon, all of us operate in contexts that no one else is able to see. This is especially true of leaders.

So, as leaders, how do we communicate as effectively and thoroughly as we can while accepting that sometimes misunderstandings still exist? How do we set a foundation for effective communication in our schools?

Cultivate the Characteristics of Great Leaders

In the classic business bestseller Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t, Jim Collins (2001) examines the highest-performing companies at the turn of the 20th century to see what traits they have in common. You might be thinking, “Schools are not businesses”; however, educators can learn a lot from Collins’s findings. As you focus on being the chief messenger in your school or district, consider the following lessons from Collins (2001).

Understand Your Passion and Mission, Which Drives Your Service Goals

According to Collins’s (2001) research on the top companies in America, when an organization narrows its focus to one or two main areas, performance inevitably increases. Schools and companies have similar challenges. School leaders have a lot to accomplish, and in the mix of opportunities, leaders can sometimes lose focus on the main reason the school exists. This is why successful companies have leaders whose passion and mission are intertwined. When you focus your energy, talents, and creativity toward the most important outcomes in your school (student learning, for instance), then you have a mission that keeps you focused on what needs to be consistently communicated to others about your school. Your passion must be connected to your mission, or you are simply managing, not leading. Think about the main mission of your school. How do you keep the mission in focus in every decision and action you make for your school community? Do you express your mission in every communication you send to your staff, students, and community? If leaders can keep the main thing the main thing within their schools, then everyone has a better chance of reaching desired outcomes. One way I have included mission in my messaging with parents is with a section in my newsletter called Learning & Growing that features photos and updates on lessons teachers and students are completing throughout the school. Because student learning is the main thing, what you are passionate about communicating must include moments of such learning.

Focus on Results Rather Than Obsessing About Personal Image

Leaders often make the mistake of choosing image over substance. In his research, Collins (2001) discovered that the most effective leaders are humble, teachable, and tenaciously focused on fulfilling the main purpose of their organization’s existence. He points out the fallacy of believing that dazzling celebrity-like leaders produce lasting change. The opposite is actually true. As he puts it, the most effective leaders are “plow horses, not show horses” (Collins, 2001, p. 20). Collins (2001) describes the most effective leaders as level 5 leaders: people who are quietly and consistently committed to making the right choices again and again over a long period of time. It is important to keep this distinction of results versus charisma in mind for school leaders and messaging. The goal of messaging is not to portray an unrealistic perception of what is happening with students or teachers. The mission of your school must be based on results for students—the essential learning, growing, and developing happening in their minds and lives. Your messaging reinforces these outcomes by helping others see what is not always visible to those inside or outside of your school building.

Build Long-Term Momentum With Consistent Growth and Progress

Momentum is a powerful force, and when organizations consistently push toward common results, they begin to see their strengths grow exponentially. In other words, once long-term, consistent growth begins, it is hard to stop or slow it down. On the other hand, Collins (2001) warns against the doom loop—a pattern of constantly introducing new, radical changes that actually stall productivity and halt momentum. School leaders need to create an environment of consistent expectations, and these expectations need to be the focus of what you are communicating with others about your school. For instance, if the bulk of your email or face-to-face interaction is about announcements, calendar changes, or meeting times, then you are missing out on other ways to communicate about the long-term goals and progress of student learning in your school. But if the focus of your communication promotes the long-term objectives you share with teachers and students, then it is hard to stop those messages once the momentum begins.

Strong leaders understand their purpose, do the hard work, lead selflessly, and build momentum through consistency. If you’re like me, that seems like a tall order. But be encouraged; no one leads perfectly. Studying good models, however, can help us avoid many of the pitfalls of distraction, self-promotion, and unnecessary changes. As you build a system of strong messaging for your school, you must keep in mind the essential elements that move organizations (including schools) from good ones to great ones.

Another characteristic of effective leaders is the ability to positively engage members of the community or organization, and messaging plays a strong role in your ability to engage others.

Show Leadership and Positive Engagement

Gallup’s (2013) State of the American Workplace report analyzes one hundred million American workers and what makes them effective or ineffective in their work. The report shows how engagement practices play a significant role in job performance (Gallup, 2013). The following sections explore findings from Gallup’s report that also apply to leaders of school communities.

Win Hearts and Minds

Gallup (2013) finds that to win customers—and a bigger share of the marketplace—companies must first win the hearts and minds of their employees. For education leaders, this means students, teachers, parents, and the community. This can only happen through engaging in relationships. No amount of communication will be effective unless leaders first understand their audience. Only when we are truly connected to the ideas, activities, and lives of our students, teachers, and families will they respect and be receptive to the messages we send on behalf of the school.

Use Management to Reduce Deficiencies

The Gallup (2013) report notes that the best-managed workplaces have nearly 50 percent fewer accidents and 41 percent fewer quality defects. You might ask how this statistic relates to education. It shows that deficiencies reflect directly on management; it is not a reach to think that schools would have a similar correlation. Consider how your school management directly affects the message you send about your school.

■ Is your messaging positive and focused on the mission? Does it reflect the school culture you seek to build?

■ Are you explaining (in writing, spoken words, gestures, and deeds) what you expect of students, teachers, and parents?

■ Do you follow up regularly with reminders of goals, strategies, and outcomes?

■ Do you reinforce in word and deed the values you want others to repeat?

■ Do you hold accountable those who violate the shared mission and values of your school?

An experienced superintendent once told me that leading a school or a district is like managing a classroom (M. Bias, personal communication, June 15, 2004). When you approach it with the same preparation, planning, monitoring, and attention that a strong teacher shows, you will see good results. That commonsense advice goes a long way in any setting.

Accelerate Engagement

Gallup’s (2013) study finds that organizations see improved results when they enact certain practices to accelerate engagement, such as selecting the right people for the team, developing employees’ strengths, enhancing employees’ well-being, and avoiding using only feel-good incentives.

Select the Right Team Members

The most important way we communicate to our students, staff, and parents the priorities we have for student learning is with the people we choose—teachers and other staff members—to lead and teach. Often when I interview a prospective teacher or staff member, I ask myself the question, “Is this someone I would want teaching my own child?” Keeping that perspective on staffing decisions helps you tie the mission of your school directly to the people serving students. And this serves as a great example when communicating with parents. For example, if you choose teachers with that question in mind, you can tell parents with confidence, “You can trust that this teacher is focused on your child’s best interest.” Messaging about great learning is so much easier when you have team members producing great learning. It is the school leader’s responsibility to seek out and support the right team members.

Develop Strengths

Developing strengths in your team members, students, and parents means you are committed to recognizing and supporting the best characteristics in every member of the school community. Communicating these strengths happens in many ways—with specific feedback during daily interactions, with reflections from observations and evaluations, by celebrating successes, and by providing ongoing professional development.

For example, I once observed a mathematics teacher during an Algebra II class as he showed a video clip on a fascinating study involving chaos theory. The video itself was not directly tied to learning standards for Algebra II, but it provided an excellent hook for connecting students’ learning to other applications beyond algebra. The teacher was helping students see how plotting numbers on a random sequence was actually not as random as expected. This use of hooking students with an interesting mathematics application was a strong instructional choice. I affirmed the choice by sharing a link of the video clip via email with all teachers along with an explanation of the teacher’s lesson. By highlighting the strengths you see in someone else, you affirm what he or she is doing well, and you can inspire others to think about how to keep developing their own strengths.

Interestingly, nowhere in the study do Gallup (2013) researchers find a positive correlation between focusing on weaknesses and increased productivity. In fact, the opposite seems true: when you focus on the strengths of others, not the weaknesses, you inspire them to improve.

Enhance Well-Being

Promoting the well-being of those in your school involves a comprehensive approach to relationship building. Your messaging in this regard should be personal as well as organizational. With students or teachers, provide eye-to-eye contact and consistent feedback on successes and struggles to build relationships and stay connected. In addition, the kind of structures you create for schedules, calendars, and job descriptions should influence the kind of culture and environment that encourages, not discourages, positive well-being.

Avoid Using Only Feel-Good Incentives

During Teacher Appreciation Week, educators often receive many wonderful gifts from the school, parents, and members of the community. But if doughnuts, flowers, and other gifts are the only feel-good incentives the school provides, it has missed the mark for encouraging strong team engagement. The Gallup (2013) study finds that engaged employees are more motivated than those who simply work for perks or incentives. In other words, just because you commit to treating others like you want to be treated doesn’t guarantee good performance. Schools are not for-profit institutions. And proponents of strategies like merit pay, for instance, often fail to understand the point of what makes a true incentive. The Gallup (2013) research asserts that engagement means giving people well-defined roles, helping them “make strong contributions,” staying “connected to their larger team and organization,” and “continuously progressing” (p. 28). In other words, people who understand the purpose of their work and find significant meaning in it derive motivation from it. Messaging cannot simply be built around feel-good moments. As important as those moments can be, you must also keep your communication centered on meaningful contributions and achievements—whether that is in individual conversations, group talks, or digital communication.

The Gallup (2013) report concludes with an amazing statistic:

When organizations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes compared with an organization with neither engaged employees nor engaged customers. (p. 55)

The next time you gaze at a full moon, remember you are seeing only the side that is visible. As school leaders, we cannot always show others the full perspective we have of our school, but it is still our responsibility to attempt to try to show others as much of that perspective as possible. Can you imagine what kind of experience students, teachers, staff, and parents could have if they were fully engaged with the vision, mission, and goals of your school? This kind of engagement is only possible when leaders commit to a comprehensive approach to leadership and communication. Messaging must involve words, images, and digital tools, but it can’t only include these things. Messaging must also enhance, celebrate, and support the strong practices of a school dedicated to achieving positive outcomes. Entire school communities can’t reach these outcomes together if members do not engage with the message.

Now It’s Your Turn

• When was the last time you reflected on the mission and vision of your school?

• What goals are you moving toward where you see positive momentum building? How can you encourage messaging around those achievements and goals?

• What steps are you taking to communicate high expectations?

• What steps can you take to increase your own engagement and that of your teachers and school community?

• Think about a classroom activity, student, or teacher who is modeling the main goals of your school. How can you share that story with your teachers, parents, and community?

Build a Foundation for Effective Communication

After spending eleven years in the classroom, nine years as an assistant principal, and four years as a high school principal, I have many varied experiences to reflect on when considering my career in education. When I think about my years teaching, I don’t have a lot of regret about my curriculum decisions, although I always had room for improvement. And I don’t feel regret for the duties or responsibilities I have managed in school administration, although I always have room for improvement there too. During reflection, any regret I feel almost always centers on times when differing perspectives caused conflict, misunderstanding, disagreement, or letdowns.

For example, when I was a classroom teacher, I once had a parent conference with a mother who told me that her son came home upset when I refused to give him credit for a test question he said he had marked correctly. When he brought the test to me, it appeared he had erased and rewritten the answer after I had passed back the test. I told him I couldn’t give him credit at that point because it was too late for me to know whether he had corrected it after I passed it back or I had marked it incorrectly. His mother expressed that my assumption that the student had practiced academic dishonesty was crushing for him; he had great respect for me, and it hurt him that I did not trust him.

Now when I reflect on the situation, I can see both sides. This mother was not aware of my experiences in the classroom of observing students attempting to hide notes under their desks during assessments, or others who tried to share copies of tests with classmates via their mobile phones. I had gone over the answers with students after passing back the test because it is good instructional practice. I was a young teacher, however, and didn’t think about asking students to put away their writing utensils while we reviewed their answers.

At the time, I’m sure I didn’t think about how to address the situation with the student without seeming dismissive. It was likely a twenty-second interaction with a student that frankly I never thought about afterward until the mother brought it up. She explained it to me very politely—not because she wanted her son’s points corrected but because she wanted me to know how much my opinion had mattered to him. When I think back to that situation now, twenty years later, I don’t regret that I made a judgment call with the best information I had at the time. But I do regret that I was unaware of how powerful a twenty-second interaction could be with a student. The good news is that I took the mother’s story to heart so that I became more mindful in my interactions with students. The bad news is that I may have made the same mistake a thousand times and not even noticed it.

What if we flip this scenario on its head? What if the power of positive interactions multiplied over and over again can create a momentum of strong culture in our schools? If you are making a commitment to better messaging with your students, teachers, and community, you must begin by understanding the characteristics necessary to positively engage school communities in order to see a more positive school culture taking shape. An integral component of such a culture is developing a foundation for effective communication in the following ways.

Be Trustworthy

This should go without saying, but in order for your messages to be trusted sources of communication, you must be trustworthy. No amount of planning, preparing, communicating, or accountability will be effective if you have not earned the trust of those who are listening to your messages. Building trust starts with building strong relationships, and it continues with reliable, consistent follow-through. When you’ve taken time to invest in relationships and given others the best information available, people are more forgiving. This is especially true when you can’t show them both sides of the moon; many situations in school require privacy or confidentiality.

Begin by Listening

You can learn a lot by just listening. Taking time to listen and reflect with staff, students, and parents will strengthen your understanding of their perspectives. You will discover areas in which people need direction, guidance, or clarity and can answer their questions and better understand their interests. Schedule time to meet and listen, or collect feedback using surveys (such as the online platform SurveyMonkey, www.surveymonkey.com).

Listen for the Story Behind the Story

It would be difficult to find a school leader who has not heard teachers, students, and parents share their frustrations from time to time. When people share, they often make statements that include words like always and never. Even though people might seem to be simply venting with these statements, they often contain some important elements of truth. For example, it is easy to become offended when a teacher says, “We are asked to do too much with absolutely no support.” Or a student might say, “My teacher always grades us unfairly.” When you accept that such universal statements are common when people are frustrated, you can begin to listen for the story behind the story. What the student speaking about grades may really be saying, for example, is, “What I really want is for my teacher to recognize the value of my hard work, dedication, and commitment.” By listening for the deeper meanings, leaders go to the other side of that person’s moon to understand the messages he or she is communicating and what response or follow-up those messages require.

Don’t Allow Misunderstanding to Keep You From Communicating

This may be one of the toughest lessons in leadership and in life. We all want others to understand and respect us. Others may never have access to the information you understand or the context in which you operate as they discuss issues with you.

For instance, a teacher who has asked to meet with you about a concern may have no idea that you just dealt with an intense situation involving bullying and harassment. You may have spent the previous thirty minutes calming an upset parent or finishing the forty-eighth page of your accreditation report. But you do not always have the luxury of explaining context when someone needs a moment to interact with you. Because others deserve our respect and attention, we cannot hold them hostage to whatever challenges or frustrations we are facing. So it is okay to accept that others can’t see the side of the moon you are facing. And it’s helpful to remember that they have areas you can’t see either.

Try to See the Other Side

When was the last time you reflected on the influence your communication may be having on others? How is your messaging helping or hurting others in their attempt to have a better perspective?

You may be managing personnel decisions or implementing policies for student discipline, or you may be guiding choices on curriculum or instruction. Whatever the tasks ahead, don’t forget that at the end of the day, the moments that matter most will often be the small moments. It may even be a twenty-second conversation—a word of encouragement you offer a teacher or student. Or maybe it’s a reminder you give someone that he or she is talented and has something to offer the world. It may be a program you’ve helped develop.

No matter what pressures you face throughout your school, keep in mind that there are others whose lives are simply or sometimes radically influenced when they know you believe in them, want the best for them, and provide opportunities for them to learn.

We all want others to understand our point of view; however, you cannot allow your motivation to always achieve perfect understanding drive your messaging. Sometimes you can build stronger trust when you accept that you are limited in your perspective, when you must listen openly to learn from others, and when you give others the benefit of the doubt even when you can’t always see the other side of every issue. When you acknowledge this perspective and begin communicating from it, it helps you see how you can still direct, coach, announce, guide, and celebrate common goals without being caught off guard by limited understanding.

Now It’s Your Turn

• Do you make time to listen?

• What positive steps can you take to be a better listener?

• How comfortable are you with the knowledge that no matter how great your intentions or comprehensive your communication tools, others may sometimes misunderstand you?

• What steps are you willing to take to see the other side of the moon with your students, teachers, parents, and community?

Wrap Up

Successful leadership is not simply about focusing on evaluations, test scores, or wins and losses. Data are important, but leaders must see data as contributing factors to the overall positive culture and learning experiences. The implications of the Gallup (2013) research for school success are clear: engagement begins when we first create an environment in which students and staff members feel valued and heard, are engaged, understand what their roles are, and know what they can do to develop their strengths. They must also feel that their leader understands the foundation of effective communication. Once they are engaged, watch out! Your messaging within an engaged culture is much more than a set of words; it is a call to action.