Personal Traits that Make a Great Leader

An excellent administrator is a visionary leader who can focus all decisions on the school’s goals, someone who can communicate effectively, build and maintain a positive culture by modeling through their own behavior, make quick and effective decisions, stay organized and work efficiently, show resourcefulness in solving problems, speak eloquently in public and be visible within the community, and show respect amongst the school community.

An excellent administrator needs to keep themselves focused on the students and the school’s vision when making all decisions, including managing their time. It is easy to immerse oneself into the paperwork and daily grind of responsibilities, but an excellent administrator needs to be able to balance their time and frame of mind to keep education, and the needs of students as their top priority. They also need to be highly efficient and effective as a manager so that the logistics of keeping the school operational takes an appropriate amount of time, and runs well. During my tenure at Hartt, I learned how to work very efficiently, managing multiple projects simultaneously, while handling frequent interruptions. I learned that I could best support my efforts to be efficient, accurate and effective by notating every action item in the same place, and by utilizing project management software to manage larger items. To best support efficiency, I need to make quick and effective decisions, and be able to delegate tasks and responsibilities to others.

Establishing shared leadership amongst teachers and administrators also supports efficiency, but most importantly, shared leadership fosters well-informed decision making, and fully engaged employees. I learned the value of staff retention, organizational history, and the most effective ways to help employees become committed to the school. An excellent administrator needs to be a highly effective communicator, which also includes great listening skills, so that they can build and maintain a positive school culture with high expectations for student achievement. This can be done by thoroughly thinking through all of the people that need each piece of information, and finding a balance between limited communication, and overwhelming people with information that they don’t need.

Lastly, an excellent administrator needs to respect people’s time. For example, an effective administrator will think critically about information that needs to be shared at meetings, and what details can be shared via email. Teachers need time to plan, hone their skills, and collaborate in order to be effective teachers. Staff meetings need to represent that philosophy by limiting talking points, and spending quality time discussing what makes a good teacher, and sharing their successes so that teachers can learn from one another. We have several experts in each school staff meeting, and we need to capitalize on that expertise.