Beliefs
What skills are the most important for great leadership? To start with, a great leader should be able to communicate and model a vision for his school. He should be able to promote and manage an effective climate for teaching and learning. He should be confident in developing and guiding his staff professionally, and in delegating authority to them. These abilities all can be learned in any aspect of leadership, not just through education. Business Leadership has done a great job in incorporating data decisions into jobs. This is just being implemented into schools on an everyday basis. I understand that this is happening more and more due to leadership training coming from the successful business world. Having a Mathematics background, I agree with this concept. To me, it is like a statistical test for all decisions. The more quality data pertaining to each decision the better.
Successful leaders share their vision with their staff, and they have the ability to motivate their staff in executing that vision. Creating a comfortable climate for teaching and learning allows the leader to continuously move his staff toward realizing his vision. Most important, however, is confidence in sharing the workload with staff. This is common practice in Corporate America as well. “Effective principals know they cannot go at it alone.” (Mendels, P. 2012) Leaders who improve their own methods of instruction insure that not only that their vision is realized but also that it can be adjusted as time goes on. Understanding how to manage staff's individual skills and the different personalities among staff are common in great leaders and attest to them and their groups getting and staying, on top.
I believe that it is necessary for leaders to use data-driven decision-making skills regularly. There is so much going on in jobs today that there must be reasoning behind all decisions made. We don’t have room for trial and error for every idea that comes up. Using data to support an idea to help to learn will save time and validate the decision. We all know that person who speaks up at the meeting with a comment like “I do it this way” while the administrator or department head or manager is explaining something that came from a data-driven decision. If that person had reasoning for what they do, data to support it, and results from what they used, the meeting would either be about their method or they would already know their process doesn’t work. I think we need to add professional development for the employees on what goes on with decisions made that affect their jobs. I think if this occurred we could get the teachers to buy into the data-driven decision-making.
On the Administration side, every decision made has the potential to be scrutinized by the teachers, students, parents, and community. We need to ask ourselves questions like “Does this data appear to be accurate? How would we know? Is this data in a format that gives us enough information? What kinds of assumptions can we make with just the data presented here? Does every person in this school or department understand the data as presented?" (O’Neal, 2012) Being responsible with the data is critical, could you imagine the uproar if data was pulled off a specific subgroup that had to do with learning disabilities and was shared publically the student’s private information. This could lead to a possible lawsuit. “The traditional methods of finding principals and superintendents -- recruiting them from other districts, or from among certified people within a district -- simply are not yielding enough candidates with the necessary skills.” (Delisio, 2006) In my opinion, we need more good practice leadership going on in this world. We should be educating more people in leadership skills regardless of their profession. If a person has the qualities mentioned above to lead, then they can and should be put into jobs for this. Of course, the job description is different from educational leadership and a CEO of a business, but the skills used in the job are the same.
References:
Mendels, P. (2012). The Effective Principal: 5 Pivotal Practices That Shape Instructional Leadership. Vol. 33 No.1, 54-58.
O'Neal, C. (2012). Data-Driven Decision Making: A Handbook for School Leaders. Washington, D.C.: International Society for Technology in Education. (Ch. 3 pg. 46)
Delisio, E. (2006). Looking Beyond Schools for School Leaders. Education World, Administrator’s Desk. http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin380.shtml