Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

Tip Sheet #41

You must have the right people around you.

 “You must have the right people around you.”  This is perhaps the most important leadership lesson we can learn from Moneyball.  One must never forget that as a principal in a school or a leader in an organization your job is always about people.  It becomes your job to empower people and help them play to their strengths. As a leader you must never forget that this organization does not exist for you.  Your task must be to support the team.

After you find your great talent, those that have passed the eye-candy test, you must ensure that they are a cultural fit for your organization.  Great talent can be wasted if it is thrust into a dysfunctional environment.

It is essential that you are able to design your programs around great people. If you can, develop your job descriptions around the strengths of your great players.  You cannot let great talent leave the team, school or organization.

On the other hand, you must tirelessly work to eliminate all malcontents from your program.  Of course, in education, this can be easier said than done.  My friends in the private sector have a hard time understanding that it is not easy to fire that pain in the backside in your school.  Billy Beane, as General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, released or traded the locker room malcontents.  The team started to improve only after this happened.  This sends a message the reverberates throughout the locker room. Other players will see what can happen to team cultural disruptors. One day players will walk into the locker room and see that the malcontent’s locker is cleaned out. He is gone and the locker is empty. Other coaches have thrived using the same strategy.  He or she will cut someone that the rest of the team may have thought was untouchable.  So, in education, if you can’t cut them, you have to isolate them.  If you are able, socially isolate them.  By eliminating an audience, you can start to eliminate their power.

As the principal of the school, it remains your job to unleash everyone’s potential. Coaches that fail to do this are soon watching the games from their living rooms rather than from the sidelines or dugouts.

As you prepare for the start of another school year, I ask you to do a real thorough assessment of the culture and the climate of your school.  Put all other initiatives on the back burner until you get the culture right. If you don’t, you will be spinning your wheels and going nowhere.

I never fully comprehended the importance of culture.  I always thought that the culture would take care of itself.  It won’t.  If I could do it all over again, I would expend my time and energy in the development and the sustenance of the school’s culture.  CULTURE, CULTURE and more CULTURE!