A State Leadership Academy

A State Leadership Academy The Need Why establish a new state Leadership Academy for training education leaders? If we are honest, and that is the only way to identify real problems so that they can be solved, we recognize that improved leadership skills are vital to improved performance of our education system. In Educating School Leaders, Arthur Levine summarized the problem well when he said, “Our nation faces the challenge of retooling current principals and superintendents while preparing a new generation of school leaders to take their places.” Of course, in his report based on a study of every degree granting education school leadership program in the country he concluded that there weren’t any in the whole nation that could be considered exceptional in a positive sense. He stated they were in a “race to the bottom” reducing admission and graduation standards while at the same time shortening the time required to get a masters or doctorate to compete for students looking for the “paper” and not the education that might help them do a better job. He said the programs “conferred masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only.” So, the current system is the main reason that education leaders are unprepared to lead change and can only maintain the status quo at best. While there are always exceptions they did not learn how to do it better in the education school leadership programs. A renowned expert in management, Henry Mintzberg in his HBR article, The Manager’s Job: folklore and fact, says “Our management schools have done an admirable job of training the organization’s specialists . . . accountant . . . marketing researcher . . . But for the most part they have not trained managers. Management schools will begin the serious training of managers when skill training takes a serious place next to cognitive learning . . . cognitive learning no more makes a manager than it does a swimmer. The latter will drown the first time he jumps into the water if his coach never takes him out of the lecture hall, gets him wet, and gives him feedback on his performance.” He since has written a book about the problem, Managers Not MBAs. How Should the Academy be Structured? From what Levine and Mintzberg said and also my own long successful experience as a change leader it seems obvious that two things must be included in the structure if the Leadership Academy is to succeed in its retooling mission. First, the training element must include the skill set Copyright © Paul Richardson 2008

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A State Leadership Academy needed to be an effective change leader. I have thought about my own experience in detail and have written a list of skills and a training manual to go with it that I know were required in my experience leading “they said it couldn’t be done” changes. It will be appended to this proposal. However, that will not be enough by itself. As Mintzberg reminds us, cognitive learning unperfected through practice is not enough. This is especially true in the current education environment where role models do not exist with the new skills we need if the leaders are to be more effective. If you have a leadership structure populated by people who have been taught the proper skill set to be able to lead change AND have people who are using those skills in their day to day work you have a great “incubator” for preparing those interested in pursuing the management path. That should be the result we strive for in implementing a leadership academy. Therefore, a second and more important issue in the successful implementation of any new leadership training must include the ability to coach the trainees while using the new skills so that they will become a habit. This recognizes that the old saying that “Knowledge is Power” is incorrect. “Applied Knowledge is Power.” Providing seat time in classes to teach the most powerful techniques imaginable will be a waste of time if the trainees don’t have a coach at their side when they return to work to help them use the new techniques in a way where they know that the coach will keep them from making too many “rookie mistakes.” Reforming the management techniques in the current education system will require intestinal fortitude in those leading the charge. Until the newly trained get some experience they would be prone to back away from the new skills the first time they get bashed for deviating from the “way we’ve always done it.” A good coach can get them past those first problem events successfully. Considering the above dual requirements, the academy would best be set up to take the training to the districts. The training would be done on site. It would require using weekends to minimize the leadership team’s absence during normal work days. A way to “jumpstart” the process would be to have a “boot camp” session over a long weekend (3 full days) for the top management team; superintendent, asst supe for instruction if principals report there and best principals for a max of ten folks. This would be an intimate setting which would result in instilling intellectual honesty, assessing skill needs, training in key areas addressing those needs and using group activities as a team building process. Then the trainer(s) would stay on site during the following week(s) doing the coaching by floating among the first group(s) trained. They would also continue offering blocks of Copyright © Paul Richardson 2008

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A State Leadership Academy cognitive skills to complete the initial list of skills required. This will be very hard work for the trainers and will require people who have change leadership experience and the training/coaching experience to make it happen correctly. The first trainers will have to come from outside education as the insiders do not have the experience or skills in change leadership to be effective. It would be helpful to have the person with outside experience get some initiation into the behavioral norms, standard operating procedures of our education system before starting the process with new trainees. A sensible approach would be to take promising candidates with education experience and pair them up with lead, outside trainers who have appropriate experience and skill levels. In that way you could begin to leverage the numbers of trainers available to address more and more districts over time. Also, the best students/graduates of the program would be a resource for coaching as follow-on groups are trained over time within each district. Some after appropriate experience would be able to share the training and coaching load. That is why in picking the group to be trained first, it is important to select those deemed to have the best chance for success to provide the resources needed to support the training in the follow-on training groups. While this would require significant travel costs and some compensation in salaries for the much longer than normal work hours of the training teams it also recognizes that there would be no need for a fancy training facility where people would travel to receive the training. In fact, the overall system expenses would be far lower with the “take the training to them” model since there would be far fewer trainers traveling compared to bringing in the greater numbers of trainees to a central location. In Conclusion I realize that the above structure comments are probably not what you have been thinking about for a state Leadership Academy. I can assure you, though, that if you want to really make a difference in education leadership effectiveness it is the only way you can do it. While that statement may seem overly strong to you, I have long and successful experience leading change. Leading productive change is perhaps the most difficult task any leader can face. If the academy is to have positive impact it must be approached with great rigor. As Peter Drucker, the famed management consultant said, “Whenever anything important happens it is because of a monomaniac with a mission.” That is the sort of commitment you will need from the leader of the academy to make it successful. Copyright © Paul Richardson 2008

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A State Leadership Academy Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen. Robert Jarvik I have written training material and lesson plans for the skills in the attached list of skills below. I have taught this material many times and have developed many successful managers. It gives a real sense of satisfaction to see organizations that were foundering right themselves and attain new competence and importantly, higher morale and self-esteem based on truly improved performance.

Contact Paul Richardson 719-598-2100 [email protected]

Copyright © Paul Richardson 2008

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