Characteristics of an Educational Team Leader

Team Leaders are not just for the business community. Developing Team Leaders for education and especially at the K - 12 levels is a chance for administrators, principals and staff to get "actively" involved within their schools.

I will provide more write-ups and examples as they are developed.

I would like to first start with the Educational Team Leader Characteristics:

The Graphic below depicts the different Roles that a Team Leader may encounter when working with teams and planning for change. Many of the Roles may overlap but that is to be expected.

Following the Graphic each Role is expanded to include the Responsibilities, Percentage of time and some tools and processes to help a Team Leader be successful.

Click on PIC to Enlarge

Role Model – Serve as Role Model for teachers and students by demonstrating the desired behavior of a trusted and responsible representative of your school(s).

Ø  Gains support from and confidence of others

Ø  Listens and collaborates effectively

Ø  Takes accountability and Risk (if they go bad, serve/protect your people)

Ø  Provides constructive feedback to teachers

Ø  Builds servant leadership relationships with teachers

Ø  Inspires and motivates

Ø  Communicates openly, early and often - build commitment face to face

Ø  Provides clear direction  - clarifies roles and responsibilities

Ø  Replicates the model way for your team - shows others by example:  i.e., walk the talk to build credibility and trust

Ø  Creates opportunities for teachers - rewards and recognizes them - plans for fun to help boost morale
AND - Leaders take Responsibility and give Credit to others

Updated 9/14/14
Coach - Educate teachers and help them develop their plans; by enlightening, enabling, empowering, executing and knowing when to encourage the positive and prevent the negative.

Envision + Enlightment + Enablement + Execution (added in 2006) + Empowerment + Evaluate + Encouragement = Employee Excellence. I call it the 7es.

ENVISION – It is my job to relate/communicate to you the corporate, departmental, etc… objectives into a meaningful AIM or purpose for us to follow.

Caution: If the vision cannot be described in a short amount of time (i.e., 15 minutes or less) then you have not thoroughly planned, measured and communicated a vision that will be successful. If you force the change it may happen but it will not be manageable or sustainable.

ENLIGHTEN (Pre-requisite to Enablement) – This is where we as a Team create an awareness, understanding and sense of urgency as to what is expected of us to meet the objectives.

Caution: If your audience is not excited or at least interested in a short amount of time (i.e., 15 minutes or less) then you may be in for a very tough time in implementing valued change. If the top echelon of leaders do not believe and equally importantly communicate and actively live out the proposed changes nothing will take place.

ENABLE (Pre-requisite to Empower) – Provide the tools, training and education to do the job in order to meet the objectives.

Caution: If you do not seek, serve and gather input from your people that are to do the work and manage the change you have done nothing other that was has been done time and time again and that is create fear, mistrust and non-value added change.

EMPOWER (Pre-requisite to Encourage) – Based on previous EEEs, provide by which we are to operate with each function/process of our work.

Caution: If the culture/environment has not been prepared/nurtured for change it will be short-lived and will not take hold. Effective leaders are sensitive to the challenges facing workers in a changing environment. Not empowering them with the authority, skills and tools to make change happen then you are doomed for another failed attempt for an efficient and effective change. Also, if you do not allow obstacles (That means people too) to be removed from preventing the change you failed as a leader.

EXECUTE (Pre-requisite to Empower) - Based on previous EEEEs, provide the methods and procedures (As developed by all stakeholders) by which we are to operate with each function/process of our work.

Caution: If you do not establish process and quality measures that can identify errors/mistakes then learning and growth will not take place. True learning and change must come through testing and correcting mistakes for improvement. If "Fear of Failure" is evident then people will provide you with false readings and numbers that will eventually leave the change effort in a tampered and damaged state.

EVALUATE (Pre-requisite to Encourage) - What Gets Planned and Measured Gets Done!

ENCOURAGE - Recognize and nurture behaviors for on-going improvements and culture change. Each of us has the responsibility to recognize and praise the good work done by others.

Caution: If you do not celebrate short-wins along the implementation route then long-term change will not take place. Praise and encouragement that is delegated is worthless. Go to where the learning is being done. Be an “Active” Participant and Leader.

Updated 10/25/14

Transformer – Understands the big picture and is able to identify and communicate a clear understanding of what is changing to stakeholders.

Provide an environment for team to excel, where we can have some fun, and if we make a mistake, we learn from it, share the knowledge and go forward. Where change, while often out of our control, is discussed, but more importantly where we as a team can control change.

For example - here are some good traits:

Ø Lead, Not Control

Ø  Seek continual improvement

Ø  Embrace (not encourage) error or mistakes for learning when they happen

Ø  Plan, Measure and respond/predict the future

Ø  Make the hard decisions when required

Ø  Welcome Change and be flexible

Updated 1/25/15

Change Agent – Challenges the status quo; acts as advocate for teachers, students and the school. Team Leader should utilize servant-leadership (The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible) type approach to capitalize on the knowledge and wisdom of all stakeholders.

Ø  Have a clear understanding of what is changing - Vision

Ø  Know who will be impacted. Do they have the training and expertise to be successful - Skills

Ø  Know what teachers and stakeholders have to gain and lose – What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)

Ø  Anticipate what teachers need to be successful (i.e., Technology, Dollars, Tools, etc.) - Resources

Ø  Communicate changes and resulting benefits to teachers and other key stakeholders – Action Plan

“What Gets Planned and Measured, Gets Done.”

Facilitator -

Brings together the necessary tools, information and resources for teachers to develop the total student. Being able to ask the right questions will bring quality results.

Facilitating learning opportunities among team members is a valued role for a Team Leader. When teachers learn with and from one another, they can focus on what most directly improves student development and learning.

The following guidelines can assist Team Leader to “GROW” for “Facilitating” a Planning session with their team or a one-on-one face to face meeting with a team member

“GROW”

G = Goals – determine the purpose/aim of the session

1) What would we like to accomplish in the time we have available

2) What would make this time well spent and value-added?

3) What would ultimate success look like to you/team?

R = Current Reality - describes as accurately as possible the current situation.

1) How do you/team know your perception of “X” is accurate?

    What indicators tell you/team that is the case?

2) Whom else might we check with to get more data/information about the larger perspective?

3) What have you/team tried so far?

4) What are your beliefs about this situation?

O = Options - options for potential actions without judging the ideas merit or practicality, initial focus is on “quantity” not quality of options. Quality comes later as you reduce options down.

1) If money, time or resources were no obstacle, what option might you/team choose?

2) What might some “Sky the Limits” options look like?

3 Who else could help?

4) May I (we) offer some options that were thought of while you were describing your options?

W = What’s Next

1) What are you/team going to do and by when?

2) What’s next? What steps are involved?

3) How might you/team minimize/remove the barriers/obstacles?

4) What are the contingencies if you/team can’t remove the barriers?

5) How will you/team monitor performance and collect data for feedback over time for predictability?

6) On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you/team that we will do this?

Data Analyzer – Help teachers improve efficiency and effectiveness. Allows team members to prevent & predict outcomes using data analysis, student “approved” information and measures.

By following the guidelines below you will not only improve your data collection activities, you will also reduce cycle time in analyzing and displaying your data with the appropriate graphs and charts.

1. Clarify Data Collection Goals

• Decide why you are collecting data
• Decide what data you need to collect and how much (sample size) data you need to collect (i.e., are you looking for point in time or for an on-going trend)
• Decide what you will do with the data once you have it 

2. Develop an Operational Definition

• Define what you are trying to evaluate
• Decide how you will attach a value to what you are trying to measure (develop data collection form and corresponding data base if necessary)
• Decide how you will display/record the data (i.e.; graph/chart, spreadsheet, report, etc.)
• Determine the period of time you will conduct the data collection activities

3. Test for Data Consistency

• Determine factors that may cause your data to vary from one item to another (i.e., people, your own subjectivity, location, time, size, different process, etc.)
• Reduce impact of those factors 

4. Data Collection

• Train all involved in study to ensure consistency (use associated data collection forms and input data base if required)
• Make data collection procedures error-proof
• Have frequent process checks (do a sample test on small group) to determine if data collection forms and tools are accurate and appropriate (i.e.; does the data look reasonable and actionable)

Where did all the Quality go?

Is it just me or is no one understanding the importance of Quality and most importantly Customer Service? The past months have seen more recalls on cars than I can ever remember. General Motors (GM) needs to pull out their old Dr. Deming four day seminars and review what it means to be a Quality company.

http://autos.aol.com/info/recall/

It's just not GM. Chrysler, Ford (8/14/14 - I just got a Recall on my new Edge)  and the once Quality driven Japanese (Deming Award) car companies are also riddled with poor Quality and recalls.

The United States Government is riddled in Cost of Poor Quality - According to a new report, the U.S. government paid $106 billion in payments in error last year. These included Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid Benefits, unemployment and tax refunds. The Department of Agriculture’s school breakfast program which provides meals to needy children had the highest error rate last year of 25 percent. This is unexeptable. These departments think they have absolute power (Especially IRS) and spend what they want, when they want with no one caring about checks and balances.

Just this week I had three conversations about poor customer service at various schools and colleges in three different states. One school was a college in Ohio, another a private school K-12 in Michigan and another a public high school in South Carolina. When will organizations learn that the hiring process is the most important and customer facing employees (i.e., Secretaries, Administrator Clerks, Admissions Reps, Customer Reps, etc...) the first ones to create a lasting partnership or send people to the exists.

http://qualityg.blogspot.com/2007/09/hiring-process-is-most-important.html

Recently had dinner at Bob Evans - Took 15 minutes for waitress to take order, Cook Dropped Waffle had to re-cook, Gave me a free cookie!

Shit Can the High School Graduation Party

Re-Post 6/12/14 - It's that time of year again...

I had a lot of time to think this past weekend since I drove to Indianapolis on Friday and returned on Saturday night. Ten hours driving alone in my car listening to talk shows in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana as I drove through these states. While most of the talk pertained to local affairs one thread that was in each state was the shape of our education system from K-16.

I also thought about all the high school graduation parties I have went to over the years, and how this year there are more than a few to attend. However, one of the party's I will be attending is not for the best student in high school but she is one of the brightest. She did enough to just get by in high school and was more caught up in the drama of school and sports and never realized it was a stepping stone to college and a career.

I believe her problem was she just needed to realize the working world requires much more than a high school diploma. Almost every student with caring parents will get their child through high school, but in order to make it through college, one needs fortitude, perseverance, a purpose and money. If it’s the student's own money, you really get a jolt of reality as to what it means to graduate with a degree from a college or certification in a vocational field.

I know this person will find a profession she likes and one she will make a difference in the lives of others as well as herself. While college at times will be a struggle she will enjoy most of her classes and teachers.

High School graduation parties are about money; college graduation parties are about accomplishments.

I have said it before and I will continue to say we need Pre-K-16 (Grade 14 for trade or vocational school) education. The paradigm must change; unfortunately the barriers continue to be some politicians and some state school education administrators. Think of the children and do something right for a change – qualityg says…

“THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION IN THE

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY =

LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO MINIMUM WAGE FOR THE

MAJORITY OF STUDENTS”

When will parents and decision makers wake up to the fact that education is a life-long journey and it is the foundation and pre-requisite to becoming a competent citizen for a moral conscience society. We can no longer just allow kids to out of high school with society and corporations now fitting the bill for those who did not master the basic skills in high school. In the long run the state will save money with a better educated work force, less unemployment, more small businesses will open, more corporations will do business here, and less dollar drain on the overall population.

No more diplomas after high school, just a seal of competence and a congratulatory note praising you for reaching an important milestone in your life. Yes, I know there will always be students who drop out, yes there will always be minimum paid jobs and yes this is not a cure all. But I do know this, we are in a “Global” competitive marketplace and those that sit back and whine (would you like some cheeze with that whine) and not control their own destiny will be left behind, you have a choice, get off the can.

My own unexpected journey - "There and Back Again"

There and Back Again - " Not like the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins but it looks like I may be headed for another unexpected journey back in to our school (I was Dean of Students) and it's daily inter-workings. My hope is to be an effective "Change" leader and not just another bureaucratic administrator.

Click on Pic to Enlarge- see "quote" over my shoulder

In most school settings officials are known as administrators (Business world = managers and supervisors). What often is lacking is a good leader.

I have often written on the subject of leadership - http://qualityg.blogspot.com/2006/12/leadership-knowledge-management-people.html.

My inner being DNA has always been to be the best leader but I must say there is a difference. You can be a good manager, administrator or supervisor and not be a great leader.

You can be a great leader but not necessary a good manager, administrator or supervisor. How does one become good at all? As always I think the best way is to define the purpose of these titles and then aspire to become all without confusing one for the other. It's like Dr. Deming said "Information and "Knowledge" - are not the same so lets not confuse the two.

I can use my own experiences to determine the differences. Most times as an administrator (Education), manager or supervisor (Business) I would be expected to carry out the plans, work or directives that were established by someone other than me and in most cases even from those above me in the hierarchy.

Often times we followed orders because someone established them and it was expected. The assignments did not enlighten or motivate us to do the work. We did the work because it was our job and those above us (Administrators, Manager, Supervisors) "guided" us because we all needed a paycheck and were in fear of losing our jobs if we did not produce results. We followed because we had to or face the consequences.

Often times we had no idea as to "Why" the work was required especially if we were the customer facing employees (Teachers, Workers) that knew how the work should be done.

A good leader will direct others by being a good communicator - I used to call it a "Transformer."

Transformer – This is where I need to provide an environment for us to excel, where we can have some fun, and if we make a mistake, we learn from it, share the knowledge and go forward. Where change, while often out of our control, is discussed, but more importantly where we as a team can control change and that we also try to control our own destiny.

For example - here are some good traits:

- Lead, Not Control

- Seek Profound Knowledge (System, Variation, Knowledge, Psychology)

- Seek constancy of purpose

- Seek constant improvement

- Take Risks ( if they go bad, serve/protect your people)

- Be willing to experiment

- Embrace (not encourage) error or defects for learning when they happen

- Plan, Measure and respond/predict the future

- Make the hard decisions when required

- Welcome Change and be flexible

Then provide the following method (Six Es) that I developed years ago so people will "VOLUNTARILY" and want to follow and not because they too.

ENVISION – It is my job to relate/communicate to you the corporate, departmental, etc… objectives into a meaningful AIM or purpose for us to follow.

Caution: If the vision cannot be described in a short amount of time (i.e., 15 minutes or less) then you have not thoroughly planned, measured  and communicated a vision that will be successful. If you force the change it may happen but it will not be manageable or sustainable.

ENLIGHTEN (Pre-requisite to Enablement) – This is where we as a Team create an awareness, understanding and sense of urgency as to what is expected of us to meet the objectives.

Caution: If your audience is not excited or at least interested in a short amount of time (i.e., 15 minutes or less) then you may be in for a very tough time in implementing valued change. If the top echelon of leaders do not believe and equally importantly communicate and actively live out the proposed changes nothing will take place.

ENABLE (Pre-requisite to Empower) – Provide the tools, training and education to do the job in order to meet the objectives.

Caution: If you do not seek, serve and gather input from your people that are to do the work and manage the change you have done nothing other that was has been done time and time again and that is create fear, mistrust and non-value added change.

EMPOWER (Pre-requisite to Encourage) – Based on previous EEEs, provide by which we are to operate with each function/process of our work.

Caution: If the culture/environment has not been prepared/nurtured for change it will be short-lived and will not take hold. Effective leaders are sensitive to the challenges facing workers in a changing environment. Not empowering them with the authority, skills and tools to make change happen then you are doomed for another failed attempt for an efficient and effective change. Also, if you do not allow obstacles (That means people too) to be removed from preventing the change you failed as a leader.

EXECUTE (Pre-requisite to Empower) - Based on previous EEEEs, provide the methods and procedures (As developed by all stakeholders) by which we are to operate with each function/process of our work.

Caution: If you do not establish process and quality measures that can identify errors/mistakes then learning and growth will not take place. True learning and change must come through testing and correcting mistakes for improvement. If "Fear of Failure" is evident then people will provide you with false readings and numbers that will eventually leave the change effort in a tampered and damaged state.

ENCOURAGE - Recognize and nurture behaviors for on-going improvements and culture change. Each of us has the responsibility to recognize and praise the good work done by others.

Caution: If you do not celebrate short-wins along the implementation route then long-term change will not take place. Praise and encouragement that is delegated is worthless. Get your butt to where the work is being done.

Here is a PIC (Copyright Protected) that also describes the 7 Es:

Updated 9/14
Envision + Enlightment + Enablement + Execution (added in 2006) + Empowerment + Evaluate + Encouragement = Employee Excellence. I call it the 7es.

Click on Pic to Enlarge

Thus you have a good leader who is also a good administrator, manager or supervisor.


Additional Posts on Educational Change:


http://qualityg.blogspot.com/2012/04/i-would-like-to-see-our-educational.html


Here is an old post but still relevant to the topic:


http://qualityg.blogspot.com/2006/04/qualityg-educationtool-educational.html

The Winter that won't quit! We did it - A new snowfall record in Detroit

Updated - April 15, 2014

A new record (98.4 inches) was set for snowfall in Detroit Michigan. Two days ago we were enjoying a Spring 70 degree day. What a difference a few days (Many times it can be Hours) makes in Michigan. The dogs are confused but love the snow!

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140415/METRO08/304150043/Metro-Detroit-breaks-seasonal-snowfall-record

Updated - March 12, 2014

One week until Spring and we are in the midst of another Snow Storm and Winter Freeze (3 degrees tonight). The all time record is 93.6 inches in 180 and 1881 and with today's snow we will pass 90 inches.

Even our Great Lakes are setting ice records with all of them 90 percent + frozen. Lake Michigan below:

A snowy start to 2014:

2013 is gone and I would like to thank the 80,000 plus visitors to my Blog this past year (up 4,000+ from last year). I hope the information I have provided has been useful and beneficial.

As I look over the stats the following are the most searched on topics within my site for 2013:

Posts - Example for one month

Entry	Pageviews
Cursive Writing should be taught in Art Class May 8, 2011, 10 comments	390
2013 Army vs Navy Football Game - Lost again - Bak... Dec 15, 2013, 10 comments	199
2010 Corporate Quality Business Plan Goals & Objec... Dec 15, 2009, 9 comments	128
Common Sense Steps to Creating a Quality Controlle... Sep 3, 2008, 1 comment	59
SIPOC Analysis Questions Mar 22, 2007, 2 comments	45