Leadership has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I have recently read a stack of books about leadership and communication. I have also attended several sessions on leadership as part of a training course being offered at work.
What has stood out for me in this exploration has been the many ways that leadership and teaching resonate with each other. Both leadership and teaching take place through relationships.
Effective leaders lead through their relationships with those around them. They establish trust and safe communication with the people with whom they work. They communicate effectively and facilitate conversations so that all involved feel valued and have the opportunity to contribute. They make judgments about when they must make decisions unilaterally, when they can solicit input but be the person who decides, and when decisions can be made by group consensus.
Much the same can be said for effective teachers. Teachers must establish trust and safe communication, particularly in their classrooms. They must communicate effectively with students, administrators, community members, and parents. They must facilitate discussions in their classroom (when appropriate). They determine how decisions get made in their classrooms.
There are some critical differences in the ways that relationships play out in leadership and in teaching situations. Leadership and teaching may not both involve the learning and growth of others. While we hope that students wish to learn and grow and are motivated to do so, and we know that a teacher’s job is to help students to learn and grow, not all adults who are led wish to learn and grow. Some are threatened by change, either for themselves or for the organization.
Leadership and teaching both take place within a context. And while teachers can have a tremendous influence on the culture that is created in their classrooms, leaders operate within a larger institutional culture that (often) they have a smaller role in creating. And, of course, teachers are only one part of a larger school culture, as well.
Of course, while relationships are a key, there are other elements to leadership and teaching, such as skill sets that leaders require (working with forecasting, strategic planning, budgeting, etc.) and teachers must possess (subject matter expertise, pedagogical content knowledge, etc.).
But from my perspective, the power of an effective leader lies in his or her ability to create, nurture, and sustain effective relationships with superiors, colleagues, and those who report to the leader. And the true power of an effective teacher lies in the relationships that he or she creates, nurtures, and sustains with students (first and foremost), parents, colleagues, and administrators.
