School Leaders Manual in a Nutshell

Have you ever come across with an image from the Greek mythology of the King of Corinth, Sisyphus? He was punished by the Greek God Zeus, who forced him to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. In today’s world if anyone who did experience such kind of ordeal with the closest resemblance, it must be the Principal of a new school trying to establish the organisation from the scratch.

He/she finds the work load unsurmountable, the load of ownership heavier than the boulder Sisyphus was/is carrying, the tasks unending and the journey lonely. To the untrained onlooker eyes the job may look like a bed of roses but the presence of thorns can be extremely painful at times. As an experienced school leader of such ordeals, I have decided to write this article to help fresh leaders find the right directions in the beginning of their journey.

Though leadership cannot be compiled into some formula but I have tried to list down top three priority areas in the order of priority, a new leadership must focus:

1. Culture: Undoubtedly, this is the foundation stone of any good school/organisation. A leader must focus primarily in building the right culture within the organisation, adhering to the organisation vision, mission and goals. The following pointers are important to ensure the creation of the right culture, a) Create a threat-free environment within the organisation. b) Allow the people to make mistakes and make sure they take ownership and learn from those mistakes. c) Create a platform where employees can share whatever they have in their minds freely, without any fear of consequences. Many of your decisions can also be out of a democratic process, where your team takes the ownership of the decisions. d) The leaders' integrity makes a huge difference. I have noticed even a low quality leader is more respected than an efficient one if that person has the right integrity. Integrity comes from consistency, your belief system and how much that is reflected in your actions. e) Once your team is ready, the trust and passion is built, you need to delegate work. Right delegation will help create new leaders in the organisation, which I believe must be one of the primary goals of any leader. The CULTURE is the WHY of your organisation.
2. Competency: One of the most used buzzwords in recent times, specially in the education space. Assure competency by recruiting the right workforce (the workforce not only with the right content, read skillset, but also the right intent), constant training of the workforce, providing unlimited resources and opportunities of growth, creating a healthy observation-feedback mechanism within the organisation and periodic auditing of the system by experts. Competency within organisation can be enhanced by creating a culture of Socratic questioning among all stakeholders. Building these philosophical insights will give reasons to develop the 21st skills like critical thinking, problem solving, collaborations and also help develop the socio emotional skills like empathy, gratitude and grit. The COMPETENCY is the HOW of your organisation.
3. Compliances: Once you realize that your team has now got the growth mindset, they believe in what they are doing and not checking the time after the scheduled duty hours are finished, you know that you have built the right culture. The next realization is when the outcomes are as per the goals decided are met with satisfaction, this is when you know that the competency expected is reached. Now comes the time when you need to build the standardization guidelines or operating procedures, appraisal systems, job descriptions and many more compliances. These standardized documents will give direction to your organisation and help the team stay focused in a highly divergent environment you have created. Please remember, these compliances may FAIL miserably if the first two criteria are not taken care of. Compliances are always important and integral part of your leadership once you are sure about the culture and competency level of your school. The COMPLIANCES are the WHAT of your organisation.

The above criteria mentioned in the article is just a glimpse of the detailed manual we can formulate out of the experiences we have acquired in our long relationship with formal education sector. These criteria if practiced properly will make the even the job of Sisyphus enjoyable.

I hope this will help the new leaders and give them a head start. You may message me anytime for any further consultation regarding education.