Taking on the headship of a school is hard. Even if you formerly held a teacher, administrator, or assistant leadership role, you still won’t know exactly what the School Head’s daily duties and responsibilities encapsulate—that is, until your day overflows with meetings, responsibilities, tasks, long hours, and decisions for which you will be held solely responsible.
So, what can a new Head do to be successful in the first days and weeks on the job? Read on for what good leadership in schools, specifically for School Heads, may look like and how to position yourself positively in your new role.
What Is Good Leadership in Schools?
Good leadership begins with your fundamental belief system of the qualities that make a great school. While you will grow and learn in your professional practice as time passes, you must enter the work with an intact belief system. For instance, if you are leading a single-gender school, you must “believe” in that educational approach.
Your school community will also look to you for your “vision” of what the best version of the school might be. The vision should be inspirational and achievable. This process takes time and a keen understanding of the school’s core values and potential; yet, your beginning “to see the school’s future” should accompany your assuming the role as Head of School.
Trust & Culture
ISM research reveals the critical importance of earning trust among your constituencies and fostering positive faculty and student cultures. Your school community will respond positively to you as you demonstrate commitment, sincerity, integrity, competence, and consistency. Seek to lead by providing predictability and support.
School Leadership and the Pace of Change
Strong leadership in schools starts with someone who understands that change must be introduced carefully; someone who knows how important it is to recognize the key players in their school community; someone who keeps students at the center of every decision.
Additionally, an effective leader balances hard and soft skills to make change sustainable within the school for continual improvement. Hard skills represent the requirements necessary to properly perform your job, while soft skills help you lead your team, and cope and react to situations.
Understanding Key Players in School Leadership
When your new Headship becomes official, all eyes are on you to ensure this moment of change in your school’s history is rewarded with a better school experience for teachers, staff, and students alike.
There are many expectations from various stakeholders for a new School Head, so you must be prepared from day one. If you’ve been promoted to School Head from within the school, it’s likely you already know most of the key players: parents, teachers, staff, students, and community leaders. You may even already know the members of your Board. In that case, spend your first 90 days rediscovering these people in the context of your being the School Head.
If you’re starting at a new school, your job is getting to know all these key players. Evaluating your staff and Board provides added context and perspective to help you make better, informed decisions from day one.
Essential Leadership Skills
1. Flexibility
Being flexible means allowing teachers to have access to important information and resources in real time, and will ensure you are meeting their needs. In the end, it is a win-win situation that will positively impact student outcomes.
Flexibility is even more important post-pandemic. Over the past two years, more teachers and staff members than anticipated have chosen to retire early. That, paired with a teacher shortage, means your independent school must invest time and resources into keeping good teachers in the classroom.
2. Predictability
Create predictable spaces on your campus. Employ various programs, systems, and processes for key workflows to ensure everyone is working on the right thing at the right time.
Check with the leader of each department to put these processes in place. Start by implementing smart workflows that every school must have:
- teacher and staff evaluation process documents;
- marketing and fundraising activities calendar; and
- streamlined processes and tools for teacher-student and teacher-parent communication.
Productivity is not accomplished simply by assigning responsibility. You must supply the tools needed and oversee the processes to judge the satisfactory fulfillment of each objective.
3. Ethics
A good leader must be ethical. This may seem simple or obvious, but without common ethics and values within a school organization, misunderstandings can cause volatile issues to arise.
Host regular staff meetings that follow a set schedule or format to help your team stay focused on goals instead of being frazzled without direction.
4. Communication
Much of successful leadership in a school’s communication comes from the ability to be consistent with repeated messaging and instructions and being a good listener.
Use the following checklist when communicating in meetings, through email, and in conversation.
- Ask in-depth questions to get to the root of a problem.
- Stay consistent with your response times and formats to help your new team get used to you or an existing team acclimate to your new role.
- Summarize every conversation to ensure all key points are agreed upon by involved stakeholders, and action items or follow-up reporting is assigned with deadlines.
5. Empathy
More than ever, empathy is a crucial skill to help your school work better as a community. Empathetic leaders genuinely care about their team members’ lives and the challenges they face.
Create a space for teachers, students, and community members to live, work, and learn freely and share goals.
6. Data
When you start your first year as School Head, you inherit a budget you most likely hadn’t approved or helped develop. Many new Heads turn to data for support in their decision-making. Good data allows you to measure, establish baselines, find benchmarks, and set performance goals.
But where do you find good data?
Data comes from many sources, including how your school interacts with technology, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and bots. Understanding where data comes from is an important part of improving decisions in business and in life.
Be alert to all new information, ask for data to support staff decisions, and assess patterns in how work is completed. This helps you uncover root issues and gaps to fill.
7. Assistance
A good leader knows to ask for help and trusts the experts in their domains. Asking for help creates the opportunity to see the situation from a different perspective—opening possibilities for determining solutions to challenges you face. Further, asking for help often creates opportunities for open dialogue between you and your team.
8. Well-being
ISM research reveals that successful school leaders have a strong commitment to their own flourishing as professionals and as people. There is a direct correlation between a healthy faculty culture and a Head’s flourishing, so Heads must be intentional about their means of support, from utilizing coaches and mentors to maintaining balance in their lives.
Lead With Confidence this School Year
As a School Head, focus on what’s best for you, your school, and staff—and, most important, your students.
Lead with confidence this school year by investing in an ISM membership. ISM members gain access to weekly webinars, research-based publications, industry-specific learning materials. Calculate next year’s tuition, or plan your marketing campaign with ISM templates and working documents; seamlessly implement our research and theory to ensure your school’s future.
