Starting with Heart

Article

Adam ParrottSheffer

Rodney Thomas

Starting with Heart: How Equity Leaders Cultivate Culture from the First Day on the Job

New leaders are entering their role at a time when their ability to transform culture and advance equity is missioncritical to improving learning outcomes for all students. However, these leaders face the reality that the first few months on the job are when they have the least trust “banked” to enact change (Jentz, 2008). We have coached leaders over the past decade as they start new roles to be able to hit the ground learning during their entry period to advance equity for all students. These leaders have taught us several ways in which, by starting with care, the foundation for change can begin on the first day of the job.

Effective equity leaders who work within new roles do many of the same things. They build successful structures for listening, communicating values and decisions, and the delivery of quick wins to shift culture. These actions lead to what Tony Bryk and Barbara Schneider (2002) define as a relational trust or “an interrelated set of mutual dependencies embedded within the social exchanges in any school community.” It is through these actions that leaders can start to make deposits in their “trust bank” by demonstrating respect and personal regard for those they lead, with competence and integrity in how they lead.

Trust is what provides a leader legitimacy. New leaders, and especially new leaders whose identity differs from the community they serve, must attend to the three levels of culture, developed by Zaretta Hammond in her book

Culturally Responsive Teaching and

the Brain, to acquire that legitimacy with specific attention to shallow culture (2014). Trust across difference is built by how the leader learns the unspoken rules of shallow culture and respects the culture by mirroring members’

Understand Self: Share your core values connected to equity

Equity-focused leaders take the opportunity to reflect on and share aspects of their identity in relation to the community and organizations they serve. This requires that leaders do

New leaders begin to shift culture by understanding themselves as leaders, by being transparent about their learning, and by creating the conditions for trust through authentic engagement.

concepts of time, ways of handling emotion, nature of relationships, and tempo of work. Leaders can develop a bi-cultural lens when building trust by honoring the differing ways of showing trustworthiness across differences. This happens by learning and demonstrating the small non-verbal actions that either build trust or erode it.

Through our conversations with leaders and our own experiences, we have learned several strategies that new leaders can use to build trust and engage at multiple levels of culture from day one. New leaders begin to shift culture by understanding themselves as leaders, by being transparent about their learning, and by creating the conditions for trust through authentic engagement.

the deep work of examining individual beliefs that influence how they see and understand their context. Equity leaders do this by identifying and communicating their core values.

• Develop your core values. Reflect on your core values in relation to equity and identify two to five that demonstrate what the organization and/or community can expect of you. What set of beliefs influence who you are as a leader for equity? Which aspects of these beliefs are a source of strength in your work toward equity?

How you respond as a learner to what you do not know can allow others to also be transparent learners.

• Communicate your core values to your new team, organization, or community.

Include your explicit focus on equity and what that word means for you.

Prepare to talk about race, racism, and racial equity from the start. If the organization already has value statements that align with your own, feel free to demonstrate that alignment. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to articulate your own.

As a new leader, it is important for the people you work with and serve to know the principles that drive you. Core values, in our experience, are not just words on paper, but touchstones that help guide our decision-making, especially when faced with the toughest decisions where the answers are unclear. By expressing your commitment to equity from the start, people will know where you stand and can hold you accountable to your word. This builds integrity and shifts culture.

Be Transparent: Engage in the work and model being a learner

Equity-focused leaders demonstrate their commitment to equity by rolling up their sleeves and working alongside those they lead. This helps them communicate their expectations by doing the work and it provides permission for everyone to be a learner. Doing the work will expose what you know and what you do not know. How you respond as a learner to what you do not know can allow others to also be transparent learners. Doing the core work of your organization is the best for in-depth understanding, and there are few things as powerful, as building a culture of transparency as a shared experience. We suggest a few actions leaders can use in leveraging respect, personal regard, competence, and integrity, modeling a learner during entry.

• Actively meet with direct reports, colleagues, and community members through empathy interviews. Share in advance the questions you will have for them and work to understand the perspectives of those closest to the challenges within the organization.

Communicate a call to action that is driven by the voices of those you interviewed and invite them into the process of problem-solving.

• Seek out opportunities to demonstrate your competence within your area of expertise. Teach a course. Co-plan a meeting with a

cabinet member. Ask for feedback on your practice.

• During your entry into the role, make your action plan public and create intentional feedback loops for accountability. Communicate key entry milestones and publicly highlight successes, challenges, and next steps.

Build Trust: Authentically connect with others

Zaretta Hammond’s trust builders for culturally responsive teachers can also be a helpful guide for new leaders seeking to build trust and change culture (2014). These include proximity, familiarity, selective vulnerability, the similarity of interest, concern, and competence. Leaders can adapt these strategies to their entry period by doing some of the following things.

• Walk the neighborhood or take public transportation when possible. Enlist a realtor to give a tour of the community.

• Tell stories about yourself as a learner, defining times you struggled, demonstrating selective vulnerability.

This can push on perfectionist cultures, modeling what it may look like to be a learning organization.

• Enter birthdays into your calendar and send emails or handwritten notes to show care and concern. Ensure you have a plan for retirements or transitions that happen early in your role as you likely will not know the people well but will be responsible for honoring their work.

Whatever actions you take, make sure they are authentic and will land well within your community context. If your heart is not in it, it will not have the impact you intend. What matters is privileging the needs and experiences of others. Our schools need leaders committed to the work of systemic change and to dismantling a culture that currently replicates inequity. Entry is a time when leaders can take steps to engage with these elements of culture that have an intense emotional impact on trust. Developing deep connections early on through the strategies above will determine the degree and the speed of change that a leader can mobilize.

School leaders are confronting faculty shortages, low morale, constantly evolving expectations, and the return to schools as the site of culture wars. Before the pandemic began, 50% of school leaders nationally were not retained beyond their third year (School Leader Network, 2014) and this trend has only worsened over the past few years. A difficult job has become even more challenging. Our schools need even more leaders who enter with empathy

and a commitment to ensuring school works for everyone. The entry tools in this article can help leaders as they create spaces for healing without sacrificing learning—especially for those at the margins of the system.

As you begin your role and are learning as much as you can, remember that those you lead are trying to learn as well. They are asking themselves:

• Will you listen to me?

• Will you see me?

• Will you do your job well so that I can do mine?

• Will you keep your word?

One of your most important goals as a new leader is to act in a way that has everyone answer those questions with a resounding yes!

References

Bryk, A. & Schneider, B. (2002),Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. Russell Sage Foundation.

Hammond, Z. (2014)Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin Press.

Jentz, B. & Wofford, J. (2012) Entry: How to Begin a Leadership Position Successfully.

Leadership and Learning Inc.

School Leader Network (2014) Churn: The High Cost of Principal Turnover.

Parrott-Sheffer and Thomas have experiences as award-winning school, district, and nonprofit leaders in Illinois. They have each spent the past decade supporting leaders with job entry, coaching, strategy implementation, and advancing racial equity. Along with Dr. Jennifer Cheatham, they are co-authors of a forthcoming book on leadership entry to be published in 2022 by Harvard Education Press. They can be reached via Twitter @ adameduc8 and @rodneythomas311.