Tips for New Principals: Getting Off to a Positive Start

By: Etienne R. LeGrand, CEO, Vivify Performance

Principals have a big job to do and they have more of an impact on student achievement than was previously believed according to recent research by the Wallace Foundation and others. As key as this leadership role is to a district’s success, getting talented principals to be high performance leaders is harder than it looks, especially in schools with low performance track records.

Principals are where the learning action is. But, new principals often struggle to find their footing. They report feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of having to know everything—from being the best teacher, to being a top-notch financial manager, or being the best politician. The path to high performance and ultimately learning lies not in being a “know-it-all” or the best at every position in the school, but in being the best at inspiring, inviting and including everyone on your team to be the best at what they do as they work to pursue the school’s goals.

Here are a few tips to fuel your thinking and get you off to a positive start. Be advised that the tips below are less about being a great instructional leader and more about being a leader who can establish a people-centered school.

·         Make sure you have the right people in the right roles. You might need someone with good typing ability and phone skills to handle the responsibilities of being an administrative or office assistant, but don’t overlook or underestimate the behaviors and habits needed to succeed in that position like arriving on time, possessing an open mind, actively listening or being positive emotionally.

·         Get to know the people in your organization, not your building. Your building has heating and cooling systems, walls to be painted or repaired and a roof to be maintained. Your school is made of lots of people from teachers to maintenance staff and students who work and learn in it and who need to be engaged and encouraged to do their best as they strive to learn and perform. Investing in learning of their dreams, hopes and fears, in addition to their names can make them feel that you respect them and care about them personally and individually, in addition to them being an employee or student.

·         Model learning and performance behaviors, habits and mindsets you want to see in others. Many believe principals should establish a culture for their school. I believe they should leverage and reinforce the district’s culture - one that has been defined through a culture shaping process that engaged the entire school district in reaching an agreement on shared values and core behaviors that everyone working and learning in the district agrees to be personal accountable to. If this isn’t the case in your school district, ask your superintendent what the plan is for initiating district wide culture shaping.

While working towards these goals and building your school’s culture, I encourage you to take these learning and performance behaviors and habits with you as you lead:

·         Treat your employees and students with respect and dignity

·         Be empathetic and humble

·         Be open-minded

·         Be curious and inquisitive

·         Be willing to go beyond your comfort zone

·         Practice active listening and seek feedback often to actively collaborate and learn from others

·         Be trustworthy and truthful with others and yourself, knowing when to acknowledge what you know and what you don’t know.

All in all, high performance principals know how to empower others—they don’t seek to command and control them. People can do more than you think they can, if you give them an opportunity to demonstrate their strengths and if you establish the conditions for them to succeed. They may not do things as you might have done it, but the marker isn’t whether it was done your way but done to the best of their ability.

Principals who know how to learn and are willing to learn from those around them are better positioned to create a learning environment where kids and employees learn how to learn over their lifetimes. It’s my hope that more school districts are doing a better job of onboarding new principals into their roles and have plans to coach and develop this essential leadership pool.

If you want to know more, Vivify Performance can help, and if you have other ideas, Vivify Performance is listening.