The leadership journey: leadership is an ongoing process of self-discovery and personal growth. Here are 12 job survival principles that all school leaders should know

Leadership, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Stephen H. Davis

There were five minutes remaining in the next to the last session of my course on educational leadership and I had just started to preview the activities planned for the final class when one of my students raised her hand and said, "Professor Davis, you've done a really good job this quarter teaching us about theories and research in educational leadership, but I wish you'd take some time next week to tell us what you think we need to know in order to survive in a school leadership position."

I reflected on that comment for a couple of days and decided, why not? After all, as a former superintendent and high school principal I had some real world experiences and perspectives of value to offer. Moreover, I thought, a little practical wisdom honed against empirically supported principles about school leadership might be a good use of class time. Following is a synopsis of what I told my students on the last day of class.

I set the stage by explaining that educational administration, and particularly the principalship, is undeniably one of the most demanding--yet rewarding--careers in education. It is also one of the most vulnerable to dismissal or demotion. I went on to explain that approximately one out of every three California principals who leaves the position in any given school year does so involuntarily.

Since principals in most states, including California, have no tenure in their administrative positions, they serve at the pleasure of their school boards and can be demoted without much ill the way of an explanation. In fact, most involuntary departures are the result of political controversies or poor interpersonal relationships, rather than administrative skill deficiencies Davis & Hensley, 1999; Davis, 1998; Davis, 1987).

Of course, the arrival of No Child Left Behind raises another and perhaps more ominous scenario--the principal who is demoted due to the persistent underperformance of students on standardized tests.

Next, I explained that there are few safety nets, and second chances can be few and far between. However, I noted that there are a number of important job survival principles that anyone who is, or aspires to become, a school leader ought to know. Although I made no claim of originality in the development of these principles, nor guarantee of their effectiveness, I explained that their origins could be found in the vast array of empirical and anecdotal literature on school leadership and, of course, my own experiences and reflections as a former superintendent and high school principal.

1. Pay attention! Watch how good leaders behave.

As good as we might think we are, there are important lessons to be learned from the behaviors, qualities and management strategies used by other leaders. Most importantly, effective leaders understand that worthy examples of leadership can be found among teachers, parents, classified staff and even students. We are never too old or accomplished to benefit from the examples set by others.

2. Be yourself.

As a new principal, I spent the first six months on the job trying to figure out how a principal ought to act. I tried being paternal. That didn't work. I tried being a buddy. That didn't work either. I tried being a sage on the stage. No luck there. I must have traversed a half dozen principal "personas" before I came to the realization that the district hired me to be me, imperfections and all. That didn't mean that I didn't have room for improvement. But it did mean that I didn't have to construct a leadership persona around an image that conflicted with my personal strengths, core values and personality characteristics.

The important lesson here is that there is no universal model of good leadership. To be sure, there are principles and skills that most effective leaders possess and use, but the ability to lead is widely distributed among professional educators and personality types. Moreover, the qualities needed to lead successfully are, to a large degree, contextualized.

For example, the qualities needed to lead effectively in impoverished inner-city schools are different in many ways from the qualities needed to lead in high wealth suburban schools. As a result, it is much more important to know before you take a job whether your personality characteristics and professional skills are a good fit for the school, as opposed to finding out after the fact that you need to reinvent yourself in order to be successful in your new job.

3. Slow down! Count to ten.

School administrators tend to be action junkies. In fact, they often act in order to think. That's OK. In fact, it can be a necessity in a job where conflicts and problems can gang up on principals with a regularity and intensity that can defeat efforts to think with calm, rational deliberation. Of course, the "ready, fire, aim" syndrome may compromise an administrator's ability to properly or thoroughly frame problem situations or to construct reasonable solutions to seemingly intractable problems. So, whenever possible, administrators should take time to fully understand problem situations, consider other points of view, reflect on the range of solutions potentially available and think prospectively about the effectiveness of possible solution alternatives (March, 1994). In some cases, to not decide is to decide!