It’s all about relationships.

Colleagues,
 
MVP: Doing things for people is not the same as removing barriers.
 
I’m going to use assistant principals as an example, but you can easily insert yourself and your role here and it should work.
 
Yesterday I talked about being a servant leader and suggested that the key to organizational improvement was to focus on supporting and growing people.
 
One of the places we miss the boat is on understanding what constitutes support.
 
Support means two things:

• We make it easier for people to do their work.
• We attend to their needs.

 
New APs can enact this by:

• Eliminating tasks that don’t help teacher focus on teaching or on growing.
• Addressing structural (physical, legible, or expectations) barriers that make it harder for teacher to teach and grow.
• Knowing their teachers and what’s happening in their teachers’ lives and treating them accordingly.

 
We sometimes miss the boat by:

• Taking on other people’s tasks instead of just eliminating them.
• Assuming we know what the barriers are.

 
We wind up working hard on things that matter less.
 
When we say “work harder, not smarter” it requires us to understand what the real barriers and needs are.
 
How do we do that?
 
Relationships.
 
Today’s intention: Think about how you are supporting people. Are you doing things for them, or are you clearing things away so they can focus on priorities? How do you know the difference?

Cheers!

Frederick