Currently reading Entry Planning for Equity-Focused Leaders. Here are a few reflections after the first chapter:
Leaders must know themselves. They must be able to speak to their values. My core values are currently Personal Growth, Community, and Making a Difference. I’ll need to think deeply about how those would show up in a leadership position and what other values/ beliefs I have specifically about schools and kids.
As a leader, I want to make sure I know the people that I am leading. Their values, where they tend to show up on the Courageous Conversations Compass, their goals, their struggles, important details about their personal lives. To know people is to understand the tapestry of a school or organization; to better understand the collective identify of a building and how to move it forward.
One the things I’ve been thinking about recently is that leadership is less making sure people are doing good at their job and more making sure we are all aligned in our vision, collective values, and beliefs about students. If an organization can be united and all working toward a common purpose with common language the impact can deepen exponentially. But to do that takes time and trust. It takes showing up for people, clearly communicating, and consistently following through on promises. Before buy-in a leader must demonstrate their commitment to staff on a personal level and demonstrate competency and commitment to their goals.
As a leader, I want to make space for people to process emotions and have difficult conversations. If we hope to truly support our students of color and indigenous students we will need to have really hard conversations. We’ll need to build trust and we’ll need to process emotions. I will need to create spaces that allow people to disagree, to wrestle with new ideas, and to take the perspective of someone else.