A school's culture consists of shared beliefs and values that are established by leaders, collectively learned and transmitted by the members of the organization and ultimately shape the perceptions and behaviors of every team member on a school site.
Understanding what your own leadership values are - and what core leadership values you want to adopt into your leadership style - is essential to being an effective and courageous leader.
Having the wisdom to lead with courage and compassion is essential for a school to move positively forward during times of crisis or uncertainty.
Courage is a powerful word.
There are five pillars of courage: physical, moral, social, creative, and collective courage - essential for sustaining a positive culture.
In Skip Prichard's Lead With Courage, we acknowledge it takes physical courage to set healthy boundaries and practices for sustaining your energy rather than succumbing to burnout and overwork. In doing so, though, you risk being seen as weak or uncommitted.
It takes moral courage to speak truth to power.
"Leaders who remain authentic in the face of disapproval, unafraid to speak the truth, and willing to uphold a moral responsibility to participate in challenging conversations. (Mertz, 2019)
By this definition, moral courage is the outward manifestation of an individual’s values—not only as a leader, but also as a human being."
"It takes social courage to show up with your whole self, to risk sharing your best ideas, to risk being wrong, to be vulnerable and honest about acknowledging your limitations, or to risk asking for help."
Welby Altidor, former Executive Director of Creations at Cirque de Soliel, promotes creative courage to help leaders step outside of their comfort zone and break the status quo. It opens your mind to new approaches, new ideas, and new schools of thought that can foster a collaborative culture and view challenges as opportunities for growth.
"Collective courage is what we need most—people working together with integrity, commitment, and a capacity to cross lines of difference. Without such courage, we risk complex, volatile issues getting even worse. We risk missing a chance to make things better." - (S.Prichard, 2018)
The Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth isn't your typical leadership development text.
However, it was the first time an author defined the subtle nuances when one is attempting to be courageous, fearless or brave.
According to Roth, Dauntless were not a faction defined by their lack of fear but rather for their full acknowledgement of the existence of fear, and the intentional choice to stand up in the face of it, meet challenges head on and move forward despite the acute possibility of failure.
A courageous leader is not without their own personal and professional fears.
However, they are unwilling to let those fears prevent them from standing up to the challenge and employ the type of courage that is called for in that particular occasion.
They accept the responsibility to be there for themselves and on behalf of others regardless if it is convenient or safe.
Especially during times of crisis or uncertainty.
Since 2020 we've had a unique opportunity to see leaders responding to "crisis" in explicit ways that will be measured against a historical backdrop of a global pandemic and long-standing efforts for racial justice.
This year we walk back into classrooms where this generation of students we serve will inherit a society where we have provided them less human rights than the generations who have come before them.
They will have to do the heavy lifting - once again - to help fight for women's rights for bodily autonomy, support LGBTQPIA+ efforts for authentic identity and safety and find ways to keep our most vulnerable communities thriving who have been historically marginalized based on their race, religion, class system and/or cultural identity.
Reflecting on how we've performed as leaders over these past four years - for ourselves and on behalf of others- can help us determine where we need to focus our energy for our own personal and professional improvement.
And if we find ourselves wishing we could've, would've, should've been the type of leader we hoped we already were - we can be heartened by the idea that courageous change - whether physical, moral, social or collective is always possible.
As Robert Biswas-Diener, author of The Courage Quotient, and other researchers have found: bravery is a skill, and like all skills it can be learned, strengthened and mastered with repeated practice. (Warhall, 2015)
Building bravery is a little bit like building muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets (likewise, the less you use it, the more it atrophies).
In fact the more often you ‘train the brave’ with little opportunities and challenges each day, the better equipped you’ll be to respond courageously when the really big challenges arrive."
Margie Warhall provides five ways to grow your 'courage muscles' include:
1. Know Your Why
2. Rethink Risk
3. Befriend Your Inner Critic
4. Reframe Failure
5. Don't Trade Personal Power For People Pleasing
In my own quest for leadership improvement this year I'd like to add on to her list two other qualities I believe have been noteworthy in the past six months:
6. Be Transparent with Your Decisions
7. Harness the Power of Vulnerability (Not Shame)
Being a leader in tumultuous times is a steep learning curve that comes without a single game book provided. In some ways, this leaves our sites open to receive new leadership interpretations to lead us courageously into the future.
I'm hopeful a new generation of educators will be inspired to rise up to accept their new positions of leadership courageously.
And change the landscape of public education.
Students deserve a chance to see us be brave in the face of adversity.
In today’s uncertain world, they will need all the courage, compassion and confidence they can get to not only survive - but thrive.
Let's be the heroes of our own stories.
#WriteTheFuture.
Credits:
Created with images by Dil - "If you use my work, I would appreciate if you could please credit me -www.instagram.com/thevisualiza" • 24Novembers - "Concept of climate change." • Leonid - "Environmental problem of pollution of environment and air in cities. Smoking industrial zone factory chimneys" • Pixel-Shot - "Cute little children with agitation posters in classroom. Concept of school shooting" • The Cheroke - "Freedom Above the Clouds" • Wokandapix - "hope word letters" • stokpic - "children kids school" • TeroVesalainen - "thought idea innovation"