Superintendents Must Step Up & Show "The Best"

By: Etienne R. LeGrand, CEO Vivify Performance

Our students can’t afford to have any dead weight in our school districts when what they need is more horsepower from the adults that work there.  Getting employees to be their best begins with superintendents who model what being the best looks like and who understand their responsibility to coach their team.  

Research finds that organizational culture is foundational to the success of any high-performance organization.  It begins at the top with superintendents, not in the middle with principals. Why should one school’s culture be different from another down the street or across town when the schools that comprise a district are a part of the same organization?  

In school districts across America, students move from elementary school to middle school to high school and teachers, principals and other employees move from school to school or from a school to the district office. Should there be varying expectations for kids’ and adults’ behavior and decision making depending on the school they attend or department they work?

As I’ve stated before, a shared district culture—the individual and collective habits and behaviors of the people in a school district based on core values and high-performance behaviors—can fuel greater individual and team performance as much as water, fertilizer and sun fuels the healthy growth of plants.

Superintendents with the skills to optimize human performance have the best chance to transform our school districts into the well-oiled machines we need them to become so that every kid in every neighborhood has access to a best in class education.  Great leaders make great school districts.

Do you have a great leader running your school district?  Let me know.