Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.
FLEXIBILITY
If you do not have flexibility, do not become an educational leader. Period.
I cannot imagine (cue Han Solo’s voice in my head “well, I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit”) that there is an individual who is in educational leadership who lived through the last 18 months and who would not agree with this statement. If dealing with the pandemic taught us anything, it is that flexibility is a critical component of leadership. Leaders must be able to negotiate shifting sands even as the sand drops out from under their feet.
I have known leaders who were less than flexible, who were locked into their ways of proceeding. They were leaders who often pointed to the highway if it did not go “my way.”
Do these people still exist and, if they do, can they be effective leaders in this new environment? Were they ever effective leaders?
Certainly leaders need to be decisive and need to stand up for what they believe. Certainly they need to put their schools on courses and steer them forward. But not in a monolithic manner and not without being open to the tides of change. Whatever those tides might bring, a leader must be flexible enough to face them. Those who are not – who are too rigid in the face of swirling seas – will be broken and swept overboard.