HERS Leadership Training: Leading and Managing

The first session of the Aspiring Administrators Bootcamp training took place last week. It was a two-hour online training that went by fairly quickly. One key takeaway from this session included how words are important. For example, you lead people and you manage projects. This is important because even the small shift in words from “manage” to “lead” shows a human side to how I am thinking of the leadership role. This small shift allows me to lead by empowering people and not dictating what to do.
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One of the first activities we did asked us to use Simon Sinek’s leadership ‘what, how, and why” to craft our leadership identity. My response to this activity was, “I have risen to leadership in education because I believe all students should have equitable learning experiences. I want to lead to make this possible, and I want to do so with integrity. This may require confidently standing up for this and establishing boundaries.” Leading with integrity collaborating with others around a shared, keeping students’ well-being at the center of all decisions, and being open and transparent about decisions

I also learned that there are correct times to communicate decisions and potential pathways forward and that communicating too early can cause more harm than good. A leader does not share if they do not have enough details about a problem to concretely define it so that a solution can be put on the table. Sharing too early, before all the details are concrete, can cause more hysteria than productivity in a team—raising anxiety because of the ambiguous unknown.

When a leader comes up with a potential solution and then seeks other possible solutions from their team, they empower and teach their team to work to fix a problem. This produces shared leadership that celebrates everyone’s talents and communicates the message that we all have something to contribute to help the organization and our unit in the organization improve on the mission--producing a student-centered culture. It also helps that people will support what they help to create—and this is why everyone’s involvement should be a part of every big decision! As a leader, you lead people towards a collective goal, like creating a student-centered culture, and manage the projects that align with this goal.