Leaders today must be willing to give up control. As Charlene Li points out in “Open Leadership” business leaders are terrified about the power of social technologies, but they are also intrigued and excited about the opportunities. Leaders today must get proactive in giving up control because by doing so, you can actually regain some semblance of control. It may seem counterintuitive, but the act of engaging with people, of accepting they have power, can actually put you in a position to counter negative behavior. In fact, it’s really the only chance you have of being able to influence the outcome. As James Kouzes and Barry Posner, the authors of The Leadership Challenge, write, “Leadership is the relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who chose to follow.” Personal relationship and business relationships are similar in regards of letter go. In our personal relationships we don’t dictate the terms and expect the other person to follow us blindly. These relationships take time and hard work to endure many trials to grow and develop. So do relationships between a leader and the people she is leading.
Charlene Li provides five New Rules of Open Leadership:
Respect that your customers and employees have power. Without this mindset, leaders continue to think of them as replaceable resources and treat them as such. Don’t think they have control, then check out the power of customer and employees on such sites as Radian6.
Share constantly to build trust. The cost of sharing is cheap. This blog you’re reading right now, can create a repeated interchange of people sharing their thoughts, activities, and concerns, resulting in stronger relationships. After all, the core of any relationship is trust.
Nurture curiosity and humility. Sharing isn’t about messaging; it’s about give and take. By showing you care about something someone is doing keeps sharing grounded and focused. This curiosity grows to humility, which gives you the intellectual integrity to acknowledge that you still have a lot to learn, and also admit when you are wrong.
Hold openness accountable. Relationships are about expectations and the consequences if they are not met. Leaders can no longer avoid problems with products or services. They must apologize and figure out how to fix the problem.
Forgive failure. A big part of accountability is forgiveness. Relationships have problems and the strong ones move on from them. Accept failure. Acknowledge it and understand it.
Find out how other people answered these questions, by going to Open Leadership.
Quality leaders are those that are transparent, secure in their own abilities, and wiling to share responsibilities. As a retired Superintendent of Schools and currently Director for an education consortia of twelve school districts, I can not only attest to the importance of these characteristics, but I can also state that such transparency is not the norm.
ReplyDeleteLeaders in education today find themselves in competitive rather than cooperative situations. The current budget crisis here in North Carolina as well as throughout the nation is causing leaders to run schools with severely reduced resources which force them to compete for the meager education dollars. Such competition does not foster transparency and trust.
School districts also must contend with unrealistic federal achievement assessments which could cause a school district to receive sanctions and loss of federal funds if as few as one sub-category in a school does not achieve a certain standard. The fear of sanctions based on a flawed concept (No Child Left Behind) does not foster transparency and trust.
Added to the budget concerns and the federal requirements schools face is the current trend by many legislators to dismantle public education. There is a strong movement throughout the nation to use federal and state dollars to enhance home schools, private schools, and charter schools at the expense of public schools. This movement to dismantle public education does not foster transparency and trust.
Leaders who find it difficult to trust are not open, do not share, and do what they can to protect themselves.
Social media can be both a hindrance and an aid to building trust. From a negative perspective, any disgruntled parent or myopic legislator is able to post any disparaging comment on any of dozens of forms of social media. And once posted, the comments are seen by many as factual. On the other hand, quality leaders are using blogs and other forms of social media to connect the schools to the communities seeking input and helping all stakeholders to understand better educational issues.
I am fortunate to work with twelve Superintendents who understand that being transparent and using social media is an effective way to mobilize their respective communities in support of efforts to fight against legislation that is detrimental to the success of all children, but especially our most needy students. The use of social media is worrisome to those of us in our sixties, but we all realize that working together through any form that will help us build stronger connections between administrators and teachers, between teachers and students, and between districts and communities will benefit our children.
Our administrators are committed to help the students – or have them help us – succeed in the 21st Century despite efforts by many in this country to keep education firmly rooted in a 19th Century mindset. Those leaders with the courage to be transparent, to reach out to the communities, and to share their knowledge and expertise will be the leaders who will overcome the current negative trends toward public education.