Title: A Good Start Author(s): Matthew King and Irwin Blumer Source: ​
Phi Delta Kappan.​
81.5 (Jan. 2000): p356. Document Type: Article Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 Phi Delta Kappa, Inc. Full Text: New leaders enjoy a "honeymoon" phase during which good will abounds, say the authors. What leaders do during this critical period sets the stage for how their relationships will evolve and how effectively they will be able to lead in years to come. FEW PROFESSIONAL experiences can be as exhilarating as beginning a new leadership position. New people, new circumstances, and new challenges present opportunities to form new relationships, influence the lives of students and adults, and experience personal growth. But appointment to a new job does not ensure success in it. Extending the good will and benefits of the "honeymoon" period into long­term gains requires a smooth entry that lays a foundation for continued success. There are no simple strategies for accomplishing successful transitions, but we do know a great deal about how to get off to a good start. What You See Is What You Get Too often candidates make the mistake of "selling" themselves into positions that are a poor fit. Once the application has been completed, the initial interview has been arranged, and the competitive juices begin to flow, there is a natural tendency to focus on winning the job rather than on studying the position and considering whether pursuing it further makes sense. Thus it is important, when thinking about applying for a new position, to clarify and sharpen one's message, one's values, and one's stance as an educator and leader. The art of interviewing involves figuring out (through research on the position and on the leadership qualities being sought) how to tell people what they want to hear. But it is not a good idea to practice this art if it requires concealing who one is and how one will behave once on the job. Of course, this is easier said than done, because the publicity attending most candidate searches makes rave reviews for job interviews as highly valued as those for new Broadway plays. Nonetheless, candidates should judge their job interviews by how successfully they convey who they are and what they value, not by how well they might have been received. A "bad review" could mean nothing more than that the fit between candidate and job is not good. In this period of unprecedented change and heightened expectations for education, communities rarely seek a candidate with a specific agenda. More commonly, they look for a leader who can bring people together, build coalitions, celebrate successes, help people work on problems, and make principled decisions based on careful thought and research. In short, communities are seeking educational leaders who see their work as building strong school cultures. Such leaders lay the groundwork for culture building in their job applications and interviews, when they share their vision of the elements of school culture and use anecdotes from their professional life to demonstrate the means they will use to breathe life into this vision.1 Interviews also give candidates opportunities to gauge whether school board members understand the importance of school culture and shared values or whether they have their own agendas. If the latter proves to be the case, effective leadership will be impossible. If a new superintendent is evaluated on the accomplishment of the individual ­ and often conflicting ­ agendas of school board members, there will be no time to develop a systemwide vision or the culture to support that vision. To determine whether school board members have individual agendas that will block effective leadership, a candidate should ask the board what values it wants to see reflected in the school system. If board members respond with individual goals that differ instead of with a collective vision, this is at best a sign that the board has not spent time discussing and developing a collective vision. At worst, it is a sign that board members are too conflicted to agree on a collective vision. To ascertain which sign is accurate, the candidate should ask further questions of board members (and carefully read past issues of the local newspapers). We cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of using the interview process to identify the school board's agenda and to make clear ­ to the board and to the community at large ­ the candidate's own values as an educational leader. Bear in mind, too, that candidates who articulate their own core values and their understanding of the components of a strong school culture are not precluding a willingness to address the issues that are of concern to school board members. One candidate for a superintendency used the public interviews conducted by the school board to find out what board members believed to be the board's collective goals for the school system. When he was certain that those goals were congruent with his own beliefs, he gave the board a detailed description of his own core values and the ways in which they would affect the school system. He emphasized that he was comfortable with the goals of the board and that he desired to seek input from the staff and the community concerning future directions. But he made it equally clear that the board should not hire him unless its members agreed with his core values and would be willing to help him put those values into place over time. Interviews are also opportunities to distinguish between two separate but complementary views of school culture. On the one hand, there is a "descriptive culture" ­ the multilayered reality that social scientists study through systematic observations over time and that they describe in their ethnographies and portraits by focusing on behavioral patterns, traditions, values, core beliefs, and norms that shape and sustain the school and the people within it. On the other hand, there is a "prescriptive culture" ­ a vision that a school or school system seeks to make real. Often, this vision is first voiced by a leader and only later embraced and internalized by a critical mass of faculty, staff, and community members. A central task for a new school leader is to find out as much as possible about the "descriptive culture" of the system ­ its values, behavioral norms, and cast of characters.2 At the same time, however, a new school leader must begin to lay the groundwork for shaping the "prescriptive culture." In other words, school leaders must try to see things as they are and begin to help people visualize ways in which they can be better. Entry Interviews The usefulness of entry interviews has been well­documented.3 Upon arrival in a school or school system, the new leader schedules a series of structured, confidential interviews with faculty members, parents, and students. These interviews are best begun during the summer months and completed as early as possible in the fall. The information garnered from these interviews enables the new leader to develop a picture of the school or school system upon which to establish an action plan. The plan can then be shared with the school community and used as a platform for action. This approach recognizes the complex interaction between schools and their leaders, an interaction in which skillful leaders simultaneously read the school culture and decide how to shape it. A new superintendent must include the school board in this data­gathering process. One superintendent began his career in a new district by meeting individually with each member of the board. The meetings were open­ended, the sole agenda being to enable each board member to tell the new superintendent about the district so that he could be more successful in the job. Using information from these conversations, the superintendent developed agendas for the first year's school board meetings and held meetings with central office staff members and administrators to clarify the system's goals. When board members saw the rough draft of board agendas for the year, they felt that the superintendent had listened to them and had taken their concerns seriously. The process worked so well that the superintendent continued to use it in subsequent years. The entry plan of another new superintendent involved leading his administrative council through a time­line activity. On chart paper that stretched the length of a room, the superintendent drew a time line listing key dates in the school system's history, along with the enrollment, budget, and superintendent on those dates. He then invited administrators to elaborate on the chart information, which enriched everyone's understanding. By leading the administrators through this activity, the new superintendent was able both to learn about the school system's culture and to begin to shape it. By using his first meeting with administrators for an enjoyable group storytelling experience that celebrated the school system's history, the new superintendent communicated his respect for the school system, its traditions, and the contributions of veteran teachers and administrators. He also provided a tangible example of the cultural perspective he had promised during his interviews for the position. Because a school system's culture has been formed over time and is already in place when a new superintendent arrives, he or she must understand that culture well before moving in new directions. When new leaders listen carefully to what others tell them about the culture, they can avoid committing two cardinal sins: trying to fix things that are not broken and breaking things that seem to be working well. Whether the new leader's predecessor left after a brief, conflict­ridden period or retired after a long, successful tenure, the new leader who listens carefully will inevitably discover problems that beg for solutions. Indeed, the new superintendent's immediate predecessor is sometimes a wonderful source of information about the problems that need to be dealt with. Several superintendents have reported conversations with their predecessors that included confessions ­ "You know, I was never successful at such and such" ­ or solid advice: "If you want to get off to a good start, tackle this problem. They'll love it!" So a new superintendent would be well advised to include the departing superintendent in his or her entry interviews, if possible. Clearly, t hough, when interpreting the conversation, the circumstances of the predecessor's departure should be taken into account. The power of an entry plan was clearly evident in Elizabeth's smooth transition to her new role as superintendent of a regional high school district. Having promised during her interviews to engage in summer conversations with key constituents, Elizabeth identified 30 such individuals by asking each member of her administrative team to recommend 10 people for this purpose. She invited anyone whose name appeared on more than one list to engage in a confidential conversation with her during the summer. In these conversations, which lasted from 30 to 60 minutes, Elizabeth asked about the high school's strengths and weaknesses; she also asked each constituent to describe a recent crisis and its resolution. Their responses told Elizabeth how these constituents understood the values of the school, gave her insights into areas in which the school might be falling short, helped her to identify the school's heroes and heroines, enabled her to understand the constituents' expectations of her, and helped her determine where she should focus her energies when school began. Late in August, as she reviewed her notes, Elizabeth realized that she had uncovered a rich source of information that she could analyze over time and develop into a report. However, with the first day of school looming, she also wanted to use what she had learned to get off to a good start. She decided to tackle the one problem that had been mentioned most frequently during the summer conversations. Virtually every constituent had expressed dismay about one feature of the school's culture that stood out as a stark contradiction to its image as an integrated community that respected differences. For many years, a self­perpetuating clique of girls had used a certain school lavatory as a private lounge. They gathered there when they were not in classes, and they kept their books there. The perception within the school and the community was that other students were not welcome in that lavatory. Pressed to explain why this situation had been allowed to continue for so long, each constituent responded that none of the recent superintendents or principals had been willing to confront the problem and resolve it. Elizabeth opened the school year with a talk on what she had learned about the school from the interviews, and she invited the rest of the faculty to join her for a series of breakfast meetings so that no one would feel excluded. She also spoke candidly about the problem that had been most frequently cited in the interviews, stating that the situation was unacceptable to her because it violated her own values and those of the school. She informed the faculty that, on the very first day of school, she would be meeting with the girls involved to explain why they could no longer use the bathroom as a private lounge. She expected that they would not accept her decision well and that they would test her immediately, and she knew that she needed the faculty's support to help her by monitoring all the girls' lavatories. By defining the problem in the context of the school's values, she provided the faculty with an attractive opportunity to resolve it. At the same time, the fact that she was willing to tackle this problem signaled to the faculty and the school community that hers would be a new, activist administration that set its agenda by listening to people and embracing the school's core values. The faculty rallied around her, the problem was solved, and the school year began on a high note. The Power of Symbolic Change In addition to fostering a smooth transition, a carefully implemented entry plan enables a new leader to introduce symbolic change ­ any new effort, direction, or modification of school policy or practice that implicitly communicates a profound departure from the past. Sometimes such changes have an immediate impact, as in Elizabeth's situation; at other times, the impact is gradual. Some charismatic leaders are able to forgo entry plans and still bring about major changes, but such "Gunsmoke"­style interventions rarely modify the school culture in lasting ways. More often, the hired guns spend a few years generating conflict and controversy (perhaps making a name for themselves in the process), only to have their school systems revert, when they leave, to where they had been before. That scenario leaves people disillusioned about taking risks and trying to improve. Sometimes, premature initiatives aimed at bringing about symbolic change encounter powerful cultural and political obstacles that undermine the effort and seriously weaken the leader's continued authority. Before examining this dynamic in a school context, let's consider how President Clinton's effort to end the ban on homosexuals in the military was derailed by his failure to follow the guidelines for an entry plan. Instead of trying to bring quick resolution to the widely perceived problem of the economy ­ which Clinton had said he would do during the campaign (his public interview) ­ the President allowed his attention to be fragmented almost immediately after taking office. He should have focused "like a laser beam" on the economy, but instead he imposed a profound change on the military, an institution with a powerful, cohesive, and conservative culture. That would have been a formidable task in and of itself, but Clinton had another strike against him: the fact that the military viewed him with deep suspicion because he had avoided military service and was committed to cuts in the military's budget. Instead of spending time developing a more positive relationship with the military and a better understanding of its culture, Clinton started off by communicating his intent to end the military's ban on homosexuals. Politically, the issue proved devastating for Clinton. It touched a nerve in the military, the Congress, and the country, and the resultant uproar emboldened the Republican opposition (and conservative Democratic sympathizers) to question openly the new President's judgment and his qualifications for serving as commander­in­chief. This controversy squandered the precious political capital that all new leaders enjoy, sidetracking the Clinton Administration and making it far easier for the opposition to nit­pick at the President's proposals and to question his judgment on other pressing matters, especially the national economy. If Clinton had ridden the momentum that carried him into office and had made some perceptible progress on "fixing" the economy, while simultaneously reaching out to the military, he might have created a more receptive climate for introducing the very important symbolic change of getting rid of the ban on homosexuals in the military. Clinton's first moves in office would be akin to a new superintendent's trying to eliminate all ability grouping with the stroke of a pen before laying any groundwork or forming any relationships with the key personnel who would have to implement the change or who would be affected by it. You can rest assured that this superintendent would be hard pressed to re­create the good will and support that was initially awaiting him or her during the "honeymoon" phase! Properly handled, the transition into a new position provides a window of opportunity for introducing symbolic change. In the process of studying a new school or school system culture, a skillful leader will be able to tap into its dreams and hopes and into its community's belief system ­ and then to conceptualize changes that will move the school or school system closer to its espoused values and vision. The bad news is that there are no magic tricks or recipes for strengthening school culture. The good news is that the culture can be shaped through everyday school life. We have already noted how one new superintendent used the first faculty/staff meeting in the fall to share what she had learned during her entry interviews, to enlist the faculty to help her solve a pressing problem, and to change an important aspect of her school's culture. Both new and veteran leaders can use such rituals as opening­day ceremonies to articulate values, celebrate history, acknowledge problems, and share goals. For new leaders, opening­day ceremonies also provide wonderful opportunities to establish a purposeful, thoughtful tone. In too many school systems, superintendents waste the moment by jumping into nuts­and­bolts issues and failing to tap into the energy and idealism that most teachers, administrators, and members of the support staff bring back to school with them after the summer's lull. The opening­day ceremony is the one time when most superintendents have their entire faculty assembled before them. This is the time to speak to the ideals of the profession, to the values that drive the school system. This is the time to speak words that will inspire a faculty and serve as its compass as it seeks to keep the system on course during the stressful days and months ahead. The opening meeting is also an ideal time to recognize people for important contributions and milestones. One superintendent distributes engraved pen­and­pencil sets to teachers who have completed their 25th year and director's chairs to those who have completed their 35th year in the system ­ a tradition he introduced after learning from entry interviews that people wanted ways to show appreciation to faculty members who had devoted much of their lives to the system. Leaders who listen to people often unearth powerful data that can be used in the service of symbolic change. For example, we all know how damaging it is to the culture of a school when an administrator or teacher is widely perceived to be doing less­than­competent work. Feelings of resentment pollute the professional atmosphere, undermine improvement efforts, and make the workplace unpleasant. An ineffective leader ­ whether a department head, a principal, or a superintendent ­ wastes people's energies and prevents the system from moving forward. When a new leader enters a school or school system, he or she might have immediate access to well­documented evaluation data on personnel. But sometimes new leaders find themselves lacking such data. In such cases, entry interviews can provide important information. From indirect allusions or direct references, the new leader will find out that certain staff members have not been held accountable for high ­ or even minimum ­ standards or that they have not been pulling their weight. When the leader detects a pattern in these perceptions, he or she can address the issue with the underperformer and offer to work with the individual to change the perceptions. In a system in which standards have not been taken seriously in the past, this initial conversation with the underperformer and follow­up supervision will communicate a profound change. The rest of the staff will know ­ without any formal statement ­ that expectations related to performance have increased and that excellent teaching is valued. It is important to understand the seemingly paradoxical relationship between the use of positional authority or power and the strengthening of a school culture. Jeffrey Ffeffer, author of Managing with Power, argues that what happens early in leaders' tenures is critical because that is when they begin to develop their reputations. Successful leaders maintain power and influence over long periods of time because they are conscious of how power is developed. They understand the sources of power, and they acquire and maintain those sources through planned effort: People with reputations for being influential and effective will, all things being equal, find it easier to obtain allies and supporters. They are also more likely to have opportunities to exercise their influence, thereby getting things accomplished and enhancing their reputation.4 A major question for the new superintendent is, How does one establish that reputation? The answer is complex and involves many different skills ­ but the central attribute of an effective leader is knowing what he or she stands for. What the superintendent says must be consistent with what the superintendent does and must reinforce the core values of the school system. Behavior that is consistent with core values establishes trust among staff members and influences the culture of the school system. People know what to expect and what is expected ­ and that knowledge, in turn, influences how they behave. Of course, the converse is also true: leaders who fumble at the beginning create poor reputations that are very difficult to change. Indeed, changing one's behavior is relatively easy compared to changing one's reputation, a lesson that many people learn in therapy when they are feeling frustrated because others do not notice the changes they have struggled to make ­ changes that seem very apparent to them. It is often exceedingly difficult for leaders to work themselves out of holes they dug during the entry phase. Meanwhile, every school leader ­ whether the head of the smallest department or the head of the largest school or district ­ must struggle to balance the need for change with the need to retain the positive attributes associated with the existing organizational culture. This explains why managing through a shared vision and with a strong organizational culture has been such a popular prescription for organizations ­ especially schools, because of their egalitarian values. When people share a common set of goals, a common perspective on what to do and how to accomplish it, and a common vocabulary that allows them to coordinate their behavior, then hierarchical authority is much less important, and conflict is less likely. Change introduced through this proc ess will be pervasive and lasting because people will be committed through a shared understanding. This is a very powerful and attractive form of leadership for organizational change, but it also has its limitations. First, this approach to change requires considerable time and effort. More important, there is the persistent problem of how to penetrate a strong culture with new ideas that are inconsistent with the status quo. In other words, it is easy for a strong culture to produce "groupthink," a pressure to conform to the dominant view, even when it is not in the best interests of students or the school.5 This explains why it is especially difficult for a new leader to follow a very successful predecessor and to enter a school or department with a strong culture. In the final analysis, the leadership challenge is this: simultaneously to strengthen school or school system culture by reinforcing and celebrating certain norms and to establish new ones that better serve the school or school system's mission. Leaders bring to new jobs their values and vision, the authority of their position, their reputation, and their accomplishments. What they do and how they conduct themselves during the critical entry or "honeymoon" phase sets the stage for how their relationships will evolve and how effectively they will be able to lead in the years to come. 1. For a listing of elements of school culture, see Jon Saphier and Matthew King, "Good Seeds Grow in Strong Cultures," Educational Leadership, March 1985, pp. 67­70. 2. Terrence E. Deal and Allan A. Kennedy, Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life (Reading, Mass.: Addison­Wesley, 1981). 3. Barry Jentz et al., Entry: The Hiring, Start­Up, and Supervision of Administrators (New York: McGraw­Hill, 1982). 4. Jeffrey P. Ffeffer, Managing with Power (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992), p. 137. 5. Ibid., pp. 25­26. MATTHEW KING is superintendent of schools in Wellesley, Mass. IRWIN BLUMER is Research Professor at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass., and former superintendent of schools in Newton, Mass. th​
Source Citation​
(MLA 7​
Edition) King, Matthew, and Irwin Blumer. "A Good Start." ​
Phi Delta Kappan​
81.5 (2000): 356. Educators Reference Complete​
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