1. Webinar Four: Enable Others to Act November 20, 2012
Good afternoon school leaders and welcome to the Northern Tier School Leaders Program Webinar #5. This webinar deals with the Leadership Practice Enable Others to Act, and the two commitments, Foster Collaboration and Strengthen Others.
Chapter 9: Foster Collaboration Chapter 10: Strengthen Others wp

2. One key aspect of the SLP is the book study
One key aspect of the SLP is the book study. K&P provides five critical leadership practices which we believe for the foundations for all leaders, including those that work in school. The book provides examples from the business world. While this is interesting we will be providing examples from the education world.
Today, we will be looking at Enable Others to Act wp wp

3. Foster Collaboration Strengthen Others
It is particularly true in a school setting that you can’t do it alone – that you need leadership throughout the staff if your school is going to be a place where extraordinary things happen. Your challenge is to build a spirit of collaboration among all members of staff, with central office staff and with personnel from other schools. The conversations among staff members and between you and staff members should be collaborative and collegial, rather than merely congenial.
This collaborative culture can only flourish when you create a climate of trust and enduring long term relationships. You should foster a feeling of mutual interdependence, rather than encouraging staff members to act independently.
Kouzes and Posner emphasize “Trust is the lifeblood of collaborative teamwork. To create and sustain the conditions for long-lasting connections, you have to be able to trust others and others have to trust you. Without trust, you cannot lead. Without trust, you and your constituents cannot get extraordinary things done.”
Strengthening others is another way of saying that an integral and important part of your job is to build the leadership capacity of others. In a major study related to improved student learning, Louis, Leithwood and others found “Collective leadership has a stronger influence on student achievement than individual leadership.” and that “Principals and district leaders have the most influence on decisions in all schools; however, they do not lose influence as others gain influence.”
You develop this leadership capacity by allowing individual staff members to exercise choice and discretion. As staff leaders assume more responsibility , you are able to focus your attention in other areas, thereby increasing the overall sense of direction and leadership in the school. wp

4. Foster Collaboration
How do you, as a school leader, foster collaboration among staff members and between school and central office staff?
Key Messages
Collaboration is a critical competency for achieving and sustaining high performance.
In order to create a climate of collaboration, you need to determine what the group members needs in order to do their work and to build the team around a common purpose and mutual respect.
At the heart of collaboration is trust. Without trust, you can’t lead, nor can you foster collaboration.
You should work to create situations where each member of the team trusts the others.
When you create a climate of trust, you take away controls and allow people to be free to innovate and contribute.
Be the first to trust. Building trust is a process that begins when one party is willing to risk being the first to open up, be the first to show vulnerability, and being the first to let go of control.
If you want people to trust you, and if you want to build a climate of trust in your school, listen more than you talk.
Be open to the influence of your staff.. By doing this, you contribute to building the trust that enables your staff to be more open to your influence.
For cooperation to succeed, roles must be designed so that every person’s contributions are both additive and cumulative to the final outcome.
To get extraordinary things done, you have to promote a sense of mutual dependence – feeling apart of a group in which everyone knows they need the others to be successful.
Dot,
Interesting that this is the topic for this week. I’ve just finished a review of a collaborative project. Collaboration is such an opportunity for growth, but it really needs to be purposeful.
I think one of the strengths of a leaders is the ability to see the bigger picture. It is often tempting to focus on fostering collaboration within your staff and forget about working with the division office or others in the school division. It is easy to get caught up in the work at your school and not find opportunities to grow your staff’s capacity through collaboration outside the school. This particularly important in rural schools when you may be the only teacher for your grade or even teaching combined grades. So how do you balance the need for your staff to be focus on the academic time with students and still allow for time to grow.
Chose the opportunities very carefully. Ensure they align with your school goals and division goals.
Look for ways you can release people with minimum impact on student academic time or plan subs (like many of you spoke of in regards to this program) well in advance so they are consistent
Use staff meetings and professional development days as opportunities for collaboration – think about a year plan for each staff meeting and link to division opportunities
Invite central office to your school – get involved in pilots or projects they are looking for schools to head up, but be cautious about how many! dn

5. Strengthen Others
“Strengthening others” doesn’t just happen. It requires planning and encouragement on the part of the formal leaders. How do you build the leadership capacity within your school?
Key Messages:
Leaders enable others to take ownership of and responsibility for their group’s success by enhancing their competence and their confidence in their abilities, by listening to and acting on their ideas, by involving them in important decisions and acknowledging and giving credit for their contributions.
You become more powerful when you give your own power away.
Feeling powerful comes from a deep sense of being in control of your own life.
The most significant actions a leader can take to ensure that people can decide for themselves are to provide more choices and to foster personal accountability. Keep in mind that the power to choose rests on the willingness to beheld accountable. The more freedom of choice people have, the more personal responsibility they must accept. Accountability is essential to both the person and the organization.
Developing competence and building confidence are essential to delivering on the organization’s goals. Developing both competence and confidence is a personal and hands-on affair.
Fostering self-confidence to do well is critical in the process of strengthening others. Just because individuals know how to do something doesn’t necessarily mean that they will do it.
Leaders coach. Listen, ask questions, mentor, build confidence and demonstrate trust in and respect for others abilities.
Bill
Conflict Resolution:
When with GSACRD, there emerged a need to build the capacity of school leaders to deal with conflict. Not long after I arrived at GSACRD, I noticed that principals would “give into” parents rather than have the tough conversations and perhaps make a decision that a parent didn’t support but was in the best interest of the students. For example, in the area of special needs, principals would sometimes provide more teacher aide time even though it was not clear that this would address the learning needs of the student and perhaps the school couldn’t really afford it. When I asked the principals to help me understand their thinking, I often hear that parents were very articulate and strong in their views and the principals didn’t know how to say “no” and still maintain the relationship. Over the next two years we solicited the help of a consultant from the Alberta Society of Mediators (not sure this is the accurate name). We held four or five days of training. We learned of a specific four step process. At each workshop we would role play and practice real cases. It helped all of us learn how to resolve conflict and principals felt more comfortable when dealing with conflict. bh

6. Discussion Questions 30 Seconds - Role Call Question (10 min)
One way that I build trust between myself and staff members is:
Discussion Question: (20 minutes) Background: Leaders develop in others the competence, as well as the confidence, to act and to excel. As school leaders, you also create situations where staff members accept responsibility for their work and are accountable for their results. Question: Think about your own actions or those of other leaders you have observed. In what ways can you, as a school leader, increase the competency and efficacy of staff while ensuring individual and group responsibility for improved student learning?
Warren with speak to this process and Jann will move people to the breakout rooms. I believe we should again have 4 or 5 moderators, as this provides more opportunities for the participants to speak.
The participants will need to be able to see the questions in the break out rooms. We may have too much to have each participant speak 13 is a lot
If you want to Whisper to the moderator, click to moderate after the Send to…..Moderator. wp

7. Second Year Leader – Room 4
Bill’s Group - Room 1
Dot’s Group - Room 2
Warren’s Group - Room 3
Second Year Leader – Room 4
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8. Next steps
Welcome back to the large group. We hope you had the opportunity for some dialogue. Are their any comments from the small groups to the large group?
We will meet again for the final webinar on December Please go to the Facebook page to contribute your reflections, applications and the implications of the practices and competencies discussed today. wp
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9. Closure Reflection: Application: Implication: What have I learned?
What surprized me? Inspired me? Interested me?
Application:
How may I use these concepts/ideas to develop my leadership capacity?
Implication:
To what am I committing? What do I need to do? When and how am I going to do it?
Dot:
Thank you to all those who posted Our Community of Practice at NING If you didn’t have time, try to at least check in to see what others are saying. We know this is a busy time and we appreciate that your are reading the book and participating in the webinar. We know from our own experience, just because you are silent, doesn’t mean you aren’t quietly participating by reflection on your reading. But we love to hear from you!
Reflection: think about how you approach leadership. The questions are designed to challenge your thinking and help you become more conscious about how well you engaged in each of the five practices.
Share with our online Community of Practice on NING! dn

10. Application & Implication
SCHOOL LEADER’S ACTION GUIDE
Continue to refine your goals, questions and strategies.
Make it count twice, three, four times!
Professional Growth Plan, School Plan, AISI Plan, etc
Instructional Leadership
5 Practices of Exemplary Leadership
Bill
Just a reminder….
To answer the Application and Implication questions we would like you to think about what you read in Chapters 3 & 4 and your an individual Leadership Action and what you need to commit to over the next year.
Application: We want you to apply the practices and commitments to specific projects. Encourage you to include some ideas that have surfaced from the readings and the discussion tonight under the application questions.
Start to think about your ILA and what would be most useful to your school and your leadership development.
Implication: You will learn about yourself, your team your organization and your project. Jot down the implications of what you have learned.
Think about… share with our online Community of Practice on NING! bh

11. Readings
Encourage the Heart
Chapter 11
Recognize Contributions
Chapter 12
Celebrate the Values and Victories
Leadership for Everyone
Chapter 13
Leadership is Everyone’s Business
Part B: We would also ask you to read the next two chapters ( 11 and 12) for our webinar on December 14 at 4:00 pm.
Read… prepare to share your thoughts at the December 4 Webinar… wp
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12. Before we ride off into the sunset to beginning herding…..leading….
Warren will do the reminders
Announcements:
Communication
Webinar Evaluation
Mention that we will have an evaluation survey as part of the last webinar.
Closure:
Last call for questions
Point the to the Webinar Evaluation link – if we are ready with that!
Final good byes from all of us.
Reflection Questions on our Online Community of Practices at NING
SCHOOL LEADER’S ACTION GUIDE
December 4 Webinar – Chapters 11,12,13 wp bh

13. Bill Hoppins bhoppins@telus.net
Contact Us
Bill Hoppins
Dot Negropontes
Good bye……
Warren Phillips wp
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