Key points:
- Education has always been a relationship-based industry.
- Five Ways School Districts Can Create Successful Community Partnerships
- Navigating through adversity: 4 Olympic lessons in educational leadership
- For more information on district management, visit eSN's Educational Leadership center
In one of his many great YouTube clips, Simon Sinek talks about what key, successful teams look for in their leaders. Performance and capacity, for sure. But even more important is trust, and trust trumps ability.
Trust in your team is key, but so is their trust in yourself as a leader. Don't trust so much that you can do the “work” (the tasks and duties) but rather trust in yourself as a person. Will you support them? Can they trust you?
And how do we build trust? We all know very well how we can lose it. Be inauthentic, untrustworthy. Say one thing and do another. Not being there when people need support. And worry more about yourself or tasks than people.
Building trust is not that complicated. It starts with the mindset that people are the most important part of the equation. It starts with appreciating your team as colleagues and team members. Start by acknowledging (verbalizing and demonstrating) that you value everyone and their opinions. It's about understanding your team's feelings and emotions.
Concern. Feelings.
The Greek word for feelings is pathos. And the word we use to understand people's feelings in English is empathy. em (in) + pathetic (feelings). Empathy is trust in action. Show concern and build trust.
But we have long been asked to demonstrate non-pathy in the workplace. How many times have you heard the phrases “it's nothing personal, it's business”; “leave your personal matters at the door”; or “here we keep our personal and professional lives separate.” We have been instructed and often rewarded for showing non-pathy. Being insensitive, unsympathetic and unemotional.
We have also been told that these things (the two ends of a continuum) are a binary choice. We are demonstrating a lack of empathy or empathy without middle ground.
It seems that both things are incorrect. Concern for others can operate in the same space as concern for what we are trying to achieve. And concern for others can also drive effectiveness and efficiency. (I have deliberately avoided the word productivity, as I feel like it is now a loaded word that plays directly into this concept of lack of empathy.)
Building trust begins and grows with empathy. That's the initial mentality.
Then we can grow by understanding more about our actions with others and how they feel about any interaction. We can focus on our credibility, our trustworthiness, and our intimacy. But we also have to be aware of how we are seen and heard. Do we seem selfish or egotistical? Do others take our C, R, and I with a pinch of salt, since they don't see us as having their backs, but ours? If so, this will undermine everything we are doing to build trust.
In education circles, we are often told to run our schools and our districts with a business mindset. What is intended here is to show more antipathy. However, what many companies have recently discovered is that it is trust, built through empathy, that provides energy for growth and, dare I say, productivity.
Education has always been a relationship-based industry. It is a people-dominated profession where relationships form the synapses for effective teaching and learning. Great teachers know what motivates their students and what will interest them. Likewise, great leaders know what motivates their colleagues and teams and how to motivate and energize them. It's about getting to know people, their feelings and circumstances.
Instead of avoiding these relationships, we should encourage them.
Instead of seeing them as distractors from the job, we should see them as requirements for the job.
Instead of showing a lack of empathy, we should aim for greater empathy.
