Essential Leadership Attributes

A Paper Presented

Kevin McGowan

Dr. Susan Bon Instructor

In partial fulfillment for the Requirements of EDUC 802: Leadership Seminar

George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia

May 12, 2008 Introduction

“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Franklin Roosevelt

“A good leader cannot get too far ahead of his followers,” Franklin Roosevelt

“It’s a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead and find no one there.” Franklin Roosevelt

“It’s common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another out, above all, try something.” Franklin Roosevelt

The United States has taken on the monumental task of providing free education for all of its citizens. The test of our educational progress is not whether we add additional resources to public school systems that have an abundance of assets; it is whether we provide exemplary services to all public school systems including socio- economically depressed rural and urban school systems. What are some of the attributes needed by educational leaders to provide effective leadership for urban and rural schools?

Some essential attributes of progressive equity-minded educational leaders include ethics, collaboration, negotiation, flexibility, and knowledge.

Essential Leadership Attributes

Ethics

In order to be effective in promoting effective school systems, educational leaders must be ethical. Ethics is defined as the assessment and evaluation of values. Values are the ideas and beliefs that influence and direct our choices and actions (Ciulla, 2004).

Values are the general concepts of what is right, worthwhile, or desirable. They serve as criteria for selection in action or the criteria for judgment, preference, and choice (Burns,

2003). According to Group One, values are beliefs most important to us, beliefs restricted in one’s demonstrated behavior, firmly established standards that influence almost every aspect of our lives, and deciding factors in our decision making and the decisions made by organizations.

My leadership abilities flow from who I am as a person. These abilities are predicated upon my values (Lee & King, 2001). My personal core values include integrity, friendship, family, and health. Maxwell defines integrity as the state of being complete and unified which means one’s words are in alignment with one’s actions.

Maxwell also states that integrity is the most important ingredient of effective leadership.

Paulo Freire defines the word as being made up of action and reflection. Words without action are empty promises and idle chatter, and words without reflection are mindless, random activism. In the past, I have been guilty of activism. I, as a member of the

Washington Teachers’ Union, actively protested for the ouster of a former D.C. Public

Schools superintendent. No one had a follow-up plan of action as to what would happen after the superintendent left office. The end results were not in the best interests of the students, parents, and teachers of the D.C. Public School System. Activism causes us to act precipitously in making decisions which is why reflection is crucial to any form of action.

Family and friendship are closely related. I am closer to some of my friends than

I am to some of my family members. I call them my chosen family or “framily” (friends and family). These relationships play an important role, both in my personal life and professional life. In my professional life, these framily relationships guide my interactions with my subordinates and superordinates.

It is difficult to provide optimal leadership without maintaining good health.

Health encompasses the physical, psychological, and spiritual realms of our existence.

Stephen Covey defines maintaining health on the various dimensions as sharpening the saw. Covey states that a dull saw has difficulty cutting wood which is analogous to an unhealthy person attempting to make important organizational or personal life altering decisions. If one is unhealthy from a physical, psychological, or spiritual perspective, he has great difficulty in making good leadership decisions. When I do not take care of myself from a holistic viewpoint, I do not always make good short or long term professional and personal decisions. It is of the utmost importance for me to provide the exercise, sleep, nourishment, mental stimulation, and meditation that my body and spirit need in order to make sound decisions.

Collaboration

Effective collaboration is the foundation for building communities. According to group two, communities are built through establishing trust, loyalty, vision, communication, and empowerment. According to Stephen Covey (2004), “there is nothing as fast as the speed of trust.” Covey further states that trust is the glue that holds organizations, cultures, and relationships together. In the Seven Habits of Highly

Effective People, Covey introduces a metaphor for trust called the Emotional Bank

Account. It is like a financial bank account into which you make emotional deposits and withdrawals in your relationships that either build or destroy them. For example, if you make promises that you consistently keep, you have a very high balance in your account. On the other hand, if you make promises that you consistently break, you are operating from a deficit mode in your emotional bank account.

The vision becomes the energy behind every effort and the force that pushes through all the problems (Maxwell, 1993). Organizations that lack vision suffer from low employee morale, low productivity, and out of control personal agendas (Maxwell,

1993). I worked for an executive director who did not have a clear vision and most days were hectic and chaotic. There were different factions with their personal agendas most of which did not benefit the organization as a whole. She openly acknowledged her preference to work with men. Some of the men took advantage of this fact. I did not exploit her weakness for favoring men. The aforementioned experience taught me to have a vision and a purpose and to treat my subordinates as objectively as I can based on human resources guidelines and old-fashioned commonsense theory.

There is an epidemic of poor communication within most organizations

(Wheatley, 2006). In order for systems to remain alive and for the universe to keep growing, information in the form of effective communication must be continually generated (Wheatley, 2006). What am I doing to promote effective communication in my organization? I willingly share vital information with my subordinates and my superordinates. In certain instances, my immediate boss is not as forthright as she should be in sharing important information. Given this unfortunate breech in effective communication, I still seem to always receive the needed information from other sources such as her boss or the chief financial officer or the human resources director.

One does not have to promote bogus empowerment because he is subjected to bogus empowerment. There are some management decisions that I have to make and ensure that staff follow and adhere to them without their input. In these instances, I do not solicit input from staff because the decision has already been determined. On the other hand, I have participated in strategic planning meetings where it appeared that my feedback would have an impact on the final outcome and in reality my feedback did not have any impact on the final decision because it was obvious that the course of action had been previously determined by a small percentage of people on the strategic planning committee. At a recent meeting, my boss asked me if I had anything I wanted to add to the strategic plan and I replied that the outline for the plan had been predetermined and all she needed from me was an implementation plan. One has to always be mindful not to do to others what someone has done to you.

Negotiation

According to group three, negotiation is predicated on the fact that conflict is neutral, inevitable, endemic, and legitimate. Whether conflict is destructive or constructive depends to a large extent on how it is managed (Owens & Valesky, 2007).

Healthy organizations which are characterized by well developed problem-solving mechanisms, are able to identify conflict and manage it in a way that leaves the organization stronger rather than weakened and wracked with hostility (Owens &

Valesky, 2007). According to the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, teams should strive for win-win solutions to conflict or no deal.

I strive in my daily interactions with parents, staff, subordinates, and superordinates, to come up with solutions that are equitable and benefit a majority of the involved people. People may not like the solutions; however, they can live with them because they perceive them as being fair and equitable. Flexibility

The only thing that is constant is change. With that being stated, change requires people and organizations to be flexible. Change has four basic characteristics: planned and directed, involves the whole organization, increases the capacity of the organization, and sustainable over time (Owens & Valesky, 2007). According to Group Four, if you work for an organization that addresses long-term social issues, then you have got wicked problems. Wicked problems are ill-defined, ambiguous, and associated with strong moral, political, and professional issues (Ritchey, n.d.). An example of a wicked problem is crime and violence in schools (Ritchey, n.d.). As an emerging leader, I have worked through the Washington Teachers’ Union to address school violence. One of the solutions included forming a partnership with the metropolitan police department. The police department would manage school system security instead of a private security company. The rationale was that the police officers were trained at more intensive levels than the security officers. The salary for the police is also significantly higher than the salaries for the security officers. As stated in the “Wicked Problems” article supplied by

Group Four, the solution to one aspect of the wicked problem creates another problem.

Most of the metropolitan police officers were not trained to work inside urban schools.

There were some community concerns that the police officers were overly aggressive in their treatment of students.

The “Wicked Problems” article states that one has to use general morphological analysis (GMA) when addressing wicked problems. The GMA model was designed as a non-quantified problem structuring model which results in an inference model which strives to represent the total problem space, and as many of the potential solutions to the given problem as possible ( (Ritchey, n.d.). Thus, if we had used the GMA model, the problem with police officer training would have possibly been noted and addressed.

Knowledge

Knowledge in the form of social justice issues is vital in addressing issues of equity in urban and rural school systems. Social justice in public education issues would fall under the previously discussed wicked problems category. It will require a multifaceted approach to address the huge problem of inequity in public and rural education.

I am a member of Teaching for Change’s Equity in Early Childhood Education

Core Leaders’ Group. This group is interested in promoting issues of equity and diversity through Washington metropolitan area regional training of early childhood professionals. We are in the very early planning stages of developing comprehensive training modules to address some of the identified equity in early childhood educational issues. At some point, we would like for this to be a national training program.

Conclusion

Leaders and potential leaders should have a general idea of their personal mission statement and how this mission statement is in alignment with their professional and personal organizations’ mission statements. Personal mission statements set the tone and pace for a leader and potential leader’s strategies for leading followers in a direction that benefits the majority of people.

My personal mission statement is to contribute to the overall empowerment of self, family, friends, and community via my employment and organizational affiliation.

My personal mission statement supports my place of employment’s mission statement which is: the Campagna Center draws together the resources of the Alexandria community to strengthen families and provide programs that help children become caring, productive adults. I am a member of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and their mission statement is: to ensure the political, educational, social, and economical equality of rights of all people and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination. My employment and organizational affiliation support my personal mission statement.

As I examine the five leadership attributes (ethics, collaboration, negotiation, flexibility, and knowledge) outlined in this paper, I have come to the realization that effective leadership is a fluid, dynamic process which is not fixed in time and space. I may be at the top of my game in terms of negotiation techniques for one situation but need the advice of a negotiations mentor for a different situation. I will always be open to taking classes and listening to the advice of colleagues and “followers” in terms of perfecting a leadership style that works for getting the job done and at the same time providing the optimal benefit for the people that I serve. References

Burns, J. M. (2003). Transforming Leadership. New York: Atlantic Monthly

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Cuilla, J. (2004). Ethics, the heart of leadership (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger.

Covey, S. R. (2004). The eighth habit: From effectiveness to greatness. New

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Covey, S. R. (1989). The seven habits of highly effective people. New York: Fire

Lee, R. J. & King, S. N. (2001). Discovering the leader in you: A guide to realizing your personal leadership potential. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Maxwell, J. C. (1993). Developing the leader within you. Nashville, TN: Injoy,

Owens, R. G. & Valesky, T. C. (2007). Organizational behavior in education:

Adaptive leadership and school reform (9th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Ritchey, T. (n.d.). Wicked problems: Structuring social messes with morphological analysis. Retrieved May 10, 2008, from www.swemorph.com

Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.