MIDDLETOWN EDUCATION CENTER, LLC

Leadership Matters

5/12/2023

Being the change we want to see in our organizations.

I’m often approached by administrators who want help changing faculty culture. It's similar to when teachers want to change student culture:

I wish they’d take more ownership over their work.
I wish they trusted us more.
I wish they’d take more advantage of the resources available to them.
I wish they were more collaborative and engaged.
I wish they saw the value of what we’re trying to achieve.
I wish we were more of a community; it’s too us vs. them.
I wish they’d adhere more to policies and guidelines.

Culture is core beliefs and values, and the patterns in attitudes, behaviors, and practices that reflect those core beliefs and values. When I hear wish lists like the one above, I hear values. “We believe our relationships should be built on…”

Autonomy. Trust. Vulnerability. Community. Shared goals. Accountability.

These values rest on the underlying assumption that people are good and will rise to your expectations. They are liberating and promote intrinsic motivation. The problem is that our attitudes, behaviors, and practices in education often fail to reflect this set of values. Instead, they tend to reflect a set of values inherited from the broader, dominant culture.

Control. Fear. Pride. Individualism. Hierarchy. Status. Competition. Punishment.

This set of values relies on extrinsic motivation and an underlying assumption that people will not meet expectations without the use of coercion. While few of us would say that these are our values, many of us have encountered them in action in our schools and universities.

Good leadership means working toward the alignment of values and practice in order to create the kind of organization we wish to see. We can’t ask for our teachers to take ownership over their teaching if we control their every move in the classroom. We can’t ask faculty to collaborate within and across disciplines if we’re promoting competition for funding, status, and power within and between departments. We can’t ask people to comply with policies and protocols when we haven’t taken the time to communicate the why, and to develop those policies and protocols together. We can’t ask people to trust us if we’re not earning their trust.

Instead of saying, “We wish,” Provosts, Deans, and Principals must say, “We will…”

We will empower our teachers with time, training, and autonomy to develop their craft.
We will conduct business transparently and genuinely engage the appropriate stakeholders in decision-making.
We will be strategic about what kinds of support and resources we provide as an organization, to help our faculty develop their knowledge, skills, and careers.
We will foster an abundance mindset where everyone has the opportunity to succeed.
We will set goals collaboratively, and consistently communicate the “why” of everything that we do, in line with our school’s mission and vision.

Faculty culture is not just a faculty problem. Our organizations reflect the choices of their leaders who are driven by a set of underlying values and assumptions, whether they know it or not. Leading with dominant-culture values will produce an organization that reflects the dominant-culture. If we want to truly transform our schools, school leaders must begin the work of aligning values and practice, not just in faculty professional development, but in our own day-to-day work.

Middletown blog.

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