Walking the Walk Leading With Our Best Selves: Four Keys to Success

By Dr. Kirt Hartzler, Superintendent,

Those were the words I heard twenty-nine years ago when I first moved out of the classroom and relinquished my coaching responsibilities to become an assistant principal. With a master’s degree in hand and a decade of teaching experience, I was certain I was ready to be an instructional leader. I was not. Truth be told, I was ready to return to teaching and coaching by the end of the first week, even by the first day of school.

Possessing the requisite organizational and behavioral theory associated with school management had not prepared me for the real world of school administration. I quickly realized that if I was going to be the instructional leader I was expected to be, I needed to connect with colleagues who had already made this transition. Through their collective experiences, insight, and wisdom, they offered me the hope and inspiration that I desperately needed in order to stay with something I now revere—the job of being a school leader. This ended up being one of the best decisions I ever made—it provided me with a support base and mentors who I could lean on when grappling with those sometimes difficult school and leadership issues and decisions Don’t underestimate the power of professional relationships.

Keep your cup full. As leaders you cannot pour from an empty cup. And in most circumstances, our level of success will never surpass our level of personal development. You must also see value in yourself in order to add value to others.

Leadership can be defined in one simple word: influence. As a leader, you aspire to have a positive influence on your school and those you are fortunate enough to lead. Once I had made the decision to stick with school administration, I realized I needed to become a full-time student of leadership. I am hard pressed to believe that anyone is really an authority on leadership, but all school leaders can be lifelong students of the construct. After all, leadership skills are not innate; they are acquired and honed. Therefore, the more we invest in learning and understanding leadership, the more effective we can become for our students, staff, school, and community.

Leadership is not linear; it is parabolic and full of tension. In “Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn from Experience to Become a Great Leader” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2008), Robert J.

Thomas found that great leaders possess a critical skill in what he calls “adaptive capacity.” The construct has an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before—by learning.

As a school leader, I have often struggled with the tensions associated with leadership. But we must remember that tension is a part of the leadership process and should not be perceived as a flaw. If you are an effective leader, then you will inevitably experience tension on many fronts and in many forms.

Leading through the pandemic provided us all with ample tension—probably more than we care to admit. But we did it! And all of us are to be commended for leading our schools through such challenging times.

These same tensions are present if you strive to create conditions of equity, trust, and optimal (safety included) teaching and learning conditions within schools. You might even say these tensions are a byproduct of leadership. Embrace them as a means to learn—be open to dissenting views, ideas, and opinions. This dialogue may indeed add value to your decision-making process. Do not be afraid to admit your failures. I could offer up plenty of personal examples of things

I presented as a school leader that did not work. The first step, however, in restoring and building trust among your colleagues is to admit the failure and, above all, to learn from it. I think you will also find the tensions associated with the failure to be attenuated dramatically.

As I humbly learned at the beginning of my school administrative career, possessing the requisite skills, knowledge, and disposition did not guarantee me success, although these skills— along with a solid theoretical base—proved vital to withstanding the many challenges, lessons, and opportunities of leadership.

Your degree of character (i.e., integrity, generosity, and humility) and ability to build and maintain trust among your direct reports also matters. But the greatest virtue that any school leader must possess is that of courage.

Being a courageous school leader means you are not afraid to tackle tough situations. This we know— all schools have conditions that impact learning. Those conditions either serve to enhance or impede learning for all.

If leadership really is about influence, then we must ask ourselves: How courageous are we, and how willing are we to ensure that our schools thrive and each student is given the opportunity to be engaged and academically succeed?

One thing is clear to me. As school leaders, our students’ hopes and expectations reside within our own ability to lead—with our BEST SELVES. ■