STANDARD SEVEN: Micro-political Leadership
Principals will build systems and relationships that utilize the staff’s diversity, encourage constructive ideological conflict in order to leverage staff expertise, power and influence in order to realize the school’s vision for success. The principal will also creatively employ an awareness of staff’s professional needs, issues, and interests to build cohesion and to facilitate distributed governance and shared decision-making.
School Executive Micro-Political Leadership
At the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, Webb's administration shared a Google Form to collect staff contact information, emergency numbers, college attendance, personal likes, and two survey questions to gauge staff feelings regarding two key school culture factors. I suggested the inclusion of personal likes as a way to later show appreciation. I followed this survey with my own informal (conversation) and formal survey (digital) to learn more about the staff, their thoughts about Webb, and more on their expertise (e.g. bus driver licenses, certification) and interests (building connections). The process could be just another impersonal data collection, unless school leaders carefully review answers and follow up with conversations or other ways to build connections and relationships.
Getting to know students and staff
One strategy that I used to meet new students and staff and to learn more about Webb's culture was to ask four questions during breakfast and lunch. The survey helped me to introduce myself to students and staff, learn names, and better learn what students/staff think about Webb. I continued asking the same questions throughout the year to gauge Webb culture and found a shift in answers from more individual strengths (e.g. Principal Rice, Health programs) to more holistic strengths (e.g. Webb students, Webb programs). When I initially asked about how I could help Webb, answers were unsure or vague (keep helping students & staff). After being at Webb for several months, the answers were much more specific - "Continue helping me brainstorm ideas on how to engage students"; "I appreciate how you listen to me when I am in crisis and how you check on me through the week". The answers for Webb's greatest challenge made a slight shift from "student behavior" and "student apathy" to most (students and staff) exclusively saying "student apathy". These shift informed me that Webb students and staff felt a positive trend in Webb's direction, and also helped me realize that Webb needs to do more to understand and address student apathy.
- What is Webb's greatest assets?
- What are Webb's greatest accomplishments?
- What is Webb's greatest challenge?
- How can I help as a school leader?
One of my first goals as I began working at JF Webb High School was to get to know that Webb staff. I shared my own Google form to collect additional information (below) including role at Webb, gender, race, subjects taught, bus license and other certifications, and ways that I might assist them as Principal Resident during the 2019-2020 school year. The process helped me better understand the diversity of Webb staff and also alerted me to some information that was missing/inaccurate/outdated information on Webb's website. For example, one teacher was listed as "Dean of Students" on the WEBBsite, but in reality he teaches CTE classes and is the driving instructor.
IMPACT:
- Use a combination of personal conversations and digital surveys helped me and other school administrators develop relationships and learn more about staff and students.
- Knowing staff strengths, areas of certification, perceptions about the school help to guide decisions and leverage staff expertise.
- Using personal likes, administrators can celebrate and uplift staff with small but significant appreciations during birthdays or for random acts of kindness. Knowing a staff member's likes can also be great conversations starters for new administrators in a school.