As an aspiring leader, getting ready for leadership positions, know what success looks like. The work you are doing is not necessarily whole school, big impact initiatives but that does not mean they are not successful. The projects and initiative you are leading as a teacher are similar of those of a Deputy Principal but are smaller scale or a single piece of the big picture.
Here are a few things that will help you know if you're being successful as an aspiring leader.
Success is student outcomes focused
If none of your initiative lead to students improving in some way, then you may be doing the wrong work. At the core of our work as school leaders, is that every student succeeds, what success looks like for that student.
Aspiring leaders often look for or are given projects that are behind the scenes improvements. If your project is about improving things for teachers, take some time to think about the flow on impact of that. If this project builds capacity of teachers, then there should be some kind of flow on outcome for students. What could it be and how could you capture it? These kinds of projects are vital to doing the right work for students, as long as you keep an eye on how it has affected students.
Success is focusing on the priorities
As employees of a bigger system, what we do is governed by national, state and school priorities. If the work you are doing is aligned with one of these three, then you are doing the right work.
Aspiring leaders look for projects to lead in their team or faculty. To be successful, ensure the initiative you take on is linked to a priority. Every school priority will be linked to a state or national priority so saying that the school’s improvement plan for the year has a priority to improve [thing] isn't good enough. Go looking for where it is stated that this [thing] is important in state or national documents.
If you need a project to get started, a sure-fire way to be successful is to focus on either literacy or numeracy improvements. These will always be important and timeless in an application and are so diverse that small, targeted initiatives can yield big impact.
Success is measurable.
As an aspiring leader, you will one day be applying for a leadership job. This means you'll have to respond to selection criteria. To show that you have capacity to do a leadership role, you'll need to show that you can impact student outcomes by leading others.
If this is the end goal, then start with the end in mind.
What is it your project is improving?
Which piece of data says this is a current problem?
How are you working towards improving it?
This is where surveys, formative and diagnostics assessments are useful.
Doing a survey at the beginning, middle and end of a project to track improvements will provide you with results for your future application.
Not measuring success is one of the biggest mistakes I see aspiring leaders do. They get so busy doing the work that they do not look at the measure of success.
My DP used to always say to me, "How do you know?". How do I know teachers are doing what I asked them to do? How do I know students are doing well? How do I know everything is on track to success?
In conclusion, success as an aspiring leader is:
- student outcomes focused
- focused on priorities
- Measurable
If you'd like to get the most out of your time and energy as an aspiring leader, book a free 30-minute call to discuss your needs and how I can help.