Prepare Next Year’s Leaders for Success, Now!
This article has been adapted from Michael Iannini’s book, Hidden in Plain Sight: Realizing the Full Potential of Middle Leaders, Chapter 1: Who Should Lead?: 3 Dimensions for Successful Middle Leadership.
Unfortunately, the selection process for middle leaders is often limited to only senior leaders and not allotted sufficient time to seek feedback from other relevant stakeholders. This happens because one school year hasn’t finished, but preparations for the next school year have begun. In the myriad pressing tasks, most senior leaders will not take time to critically assess who should be the middle leader, let alone account for the time it takes to prepare middle leaders for their role in the coming year. Even if there is no change in grade-level leader or department head roles, we should not assume the next school year will be business as usual. In fact, NEXT YEAR won’t be anything remotely similar to this year.
In my interactions with middle leaders, I am struck by how many don’t have job descriptions or amended working agreements to account for their additional duties. Furthermore, where job descriptions exist, they are often vague. Some senior leaders may even become defensive if questioned about their expectations regarding the role. Left with this lack of clarity, middle leaders new to a team or school often have to learn about the job through the age-old orientation method known as, “That’s just how we do things around here.” The number of schools that treat teacher-led role descriptions like a legend that gets handed down from generation to generation is unnerving. It is for this reason, whether or not the middle leader has a full-time teaching role, that they should still have their job description evaluated and amended to clearly define the leadership responsibilities they are assuming, as well as create buy-in to their expected outcomes. Also, even if they are returning to a leadership position, we must consider these three dimensions and adjust the job description accordingly:
Team
How familiar are the team members with one another?
What are each team member's primary professional interest and need for the team?
Are they invested in the results of each other’s students?
Outcome
What outcome does the school need this team to achieve?
What past outcomes has this team achieved?
Do the team’s needs align with the school’s?
Capability
What behaviors and skills do this team needs to demonstrate to foster greater interdependence?
What beliefs, attitudes, or opinions do this team need to develop or adapt to pursue the school’s objectives?
What experience, skills, and dispositions does this team need to develop to achieve the school’s objectives?
Let’s now consider how to use an interdisciplinary approach to recruit middle leaders, regardless of if they are new to a team or returning to a leadership role. Here are three essential questions that require input from multiple stakeholders:
Does this candidate have the experience and interpersonal skills to foster a culture of interdependency within the team?
Does this candidate have the resources and relationships necessary to achieve the desired outcome?
Does this candidate have the same skills and attributes as other middle leaders who have successfully achieved similar outcomes?
These will also help identify what support middle leaders need so they can begin preparation for next year.
In order for middle leaders to experience success in their roles next year, we need to take time to ask these questions with an interdisciplinary team and assess how the next school year may differ from this one (team composition, accreditation, new goals, etc.). Once we have answered these questions we can start creating a Success Profile for middle leaders; a position description that not only explicitly outlines what the middle leader is expected to achieve, but the key attributes and skills they will need to be successful. I have a free tutorial on how to create a Success Profile, which includes an example of the actual Success Profiling template.
The Success Profile should be viewed as a living document, which becomes an opportunity to raise the bar, as well as confirm the middle leader’s acceptance of the expectations being placed on them. This is the most important part of achieving buy-in, and once buy-in is achieved, you will find your middle leaders more accommodating and resilient to the unforeseen challenges that will inevitably occur in the new school year.
Click below for a free tutorial on how to draft a Success Profile. This tutorial includes instructions for drafting an empowering position description that identifies the key attributes and skills required for success.
