You’re Scarce. This Makes You Valuable.
How to Leverage Your Leadership Talent to Gain Support for Your Breakthrough Coach Practices
The leaders of some of America’s most successful corporations understand that their companies’ ability to innovate depends on attracting and retaining the very best talent in their industries. Having little in common with the traditional hierarchies of the past, these organizations focus on empowering their people and allowing them the space to do what they do best. Instead of micromanaging and issuing orders, managers work to support their team members and give them what they need to succeed.
While school principals may not be able to readily retool all of the chain-of-command structures in which they work, modern organizations offer an important underlying takeaway: Success depends upon attracting and retaining top talent, and principals can—and should—use this to their advantage.
The Scarcity of Top Talent in Schools
Every person wants to have some power in shaping his or her work environment. For principals, this starts with changing your assumptions about what it is to be a school leader today, (including your definition of “leadership”). It also means having the ability to be your own champion – to be able to clearly convey your value to higher-ups, and ask for what you need to do the daily work of transformative leadership.
This perspective may take you out of your comfort zone, but you have much more power in the employee-employer relationship than you may realize, thanks to the current scarcity of school administrators, particularly high-performing, effective principals. According to NASSP’s position statement on the principal shortage, “School leaders who are retiring, transferring schools, or pursuing new opportunities within the education sector are not being replaced by enough qualified candidates. As a result, many school districts across the country report principal vacancies and a serious lack of qualified applicants to replace them.”
Take Control of the Conversation
To gain increased support from your supervisor for your Breakthrough Coach Fundamental Practices™, communicate with them regularly and make sure to reiterate the following points:
- Why your supervisor hired you for this job, at this time;
- The outcomes they’ve hired you to produce for your school community;
- How you intend to accomplish your agreed upon goals, including how you must schedule your time to produce the desired outcomes;
- The big and small “wins” you’re witnessing at your school every day.
Today, no matter the field or industry, employees must also be satisfied with the way things are working between themselves and their employers in order for them to remain loyal to their organizations. If not, they can and will take their talent elsewhere, leaving employers to deal with the cascade of problems that loss creates.
By understanding the current scarcity of school leadership talent, and that districts need principals more than principals need districts, you will be in a strong position to have tough but productive conversations with your higher-ups, and the confidence to ask for the time and space you need to do your best work. To learn more about how to have these conversations, visit https://www.the-breakthrough-coach.com/offerings/personal-coaching/.