Generation X Luncheon/Roundtable Discussion
Thursday, November 8, noon: Great America J
ACSA is sponsoring this luncheon for Generation Xers in school leadership positions. This informal luncheon and conversation will help shape the future of ACSA’s programs and services. Ideas about how ACSA can best serve Generation Xers, how Generation Xers lead schools and districts today, and where Generation Xers find the best values and services for their careers will be shared. The luncheon is limited to those Generation Xers who RSVP to mbernardo@acsa.org.
Communication
Devin Vodicka, director, Curriculum & Instruction, Carlsbad USD
Administrators are often encouraged to “improve communication” in a particular school or district. Effective communication can have a positive impact on the levels of trust within a school that will impact the quality of relationships.
Communication is one of four critical elements in developing relational trust
The following strategies and/or activities are associated with effective communication:
• Soliciting Feedback: Asking for input and feedback from students, staff, and families contributes to a climate of trust. When a principal models these types of activities, it helps to create an atmosphere of open exchange.
• Maintaining Appropriate Confidentiality: Principals are expected to maintain appropriate confidentiality and they are expected to promote a respectful school environment. This means that saying nothing is often more effective than sharing something that is perceived to be sensitive in nature. In this case, effective communication means knowing when not to communicate.
• Apologizing: Nobody is perfect. When the boss takes the initiative to admit mistakes and apologize, it reinforces the reality that we are all vulnerable in a relationship—even when we are in charge! Additionally, apologizing helps to establish a climate of personal responsibility.
• Giving Legitimate Feedback: This is particularly important for supervisors as they implement evaluation procedures. Gallup’s research shows that giving feedback is one of the twelve most critical activities to promote employee retention.
Even negative feedback, when framed appropriately and supported by evidence, helps to build trusting relationships.
• Well-Timed Sharing of Information: In this case, the key here is the timeliness of the sharing. A leader can build at atmosphere of trust by developing systems of communication that promote timely sharing — examples might include a weekly email blast, a daily bulletin, or routine dialogue forums.
When I was a principal, I implemented several communication systems in an effort to ensure that students, families, and staff had access to important information. Those included:
- Routine updates to the school website. I also posted my direct email on the school website so that families could easily get in touch with me.
- Weekly email blast to families.
- Weekly schoolwide assemblies with awards and recognition of contributions of students, families, and staff.
- Monthly newsletters to families (also posted to the website and distributed through the email blast).
- Monthly “Dialogue with Devin” open forums with families.
- Bi-monthly articles in a local newspaper to ensure that the broader community was included in the communication.
- Quarterly “satisfaction surveys” to solicit feedback from students, families, and staff.
Periodic use of an auto-dialer system to deliver a recorded message via the phone to families.
These efforts helped to build trust, improve the effectiveness of my leadership efforts, and improve services to students. Feel free to let me know if you have additional ideas about how to improve communication (dvodicka@carlsbadusd.net). Thanks.
Devin Vodicka
Director—Curriculum & Instruction
Carlsbad Unified School District
References:
Vodicka, D. (November 2006). "The Four Elements of Trust: Consistency, Compassion, Communication, and Competency." Principal Leadership.
Vodicka, D. & Gonzales, L. (Sept/Oct 2007). “Building Trust Through Data.” Leadership.
Managing Challenging Meetings
Lisa Gonzales, principal, Fair Meadow Elementary School, Palo Alto Union SD
Knowing that a tough meeting is scheduled for the next day may lead to sleepless nights and edgy mornings. Although there are generally few explosive meetings, it is those few that make the job of site administrator much more stressful than it needs to be. Fortunately, a few simple strategies can be helpful in making those Maalox moments more manageable.
LISTEN
Communication is a two-way street. Let parents share their perspectives about their children. Listen to what they have to say. Let them talk until they have said it all and are looking for you to respond. And tread lightly – judge whether you can ask clarifying questions.
If you are meeting face-to-face, listen to what their body language is saying: are they closed off to a solution or are they willing to work through the problem? Use body language and nod your head to acknowledge you are hearing what they are saying.
Take notes during the conversation. It will help you maintain focus and be able to capture the key points, as well as respond to the one or many issues they may raise. You might want to let them know in advance that you’ll be taking notes so you can address all their concerns, thus also signaling that what they say is important to you.
APOLOGIZE
You or your staff may have done nothing wrong, but a simple apology goes a long way. You don’t have to apologize about anything specific. Oftentimes the comment, “I can see this has been an upsetting situation for you and I’m sorry that this has brought on stress to you and your child.”
You can even use a comment like that to support a decision to suspend a child. Yes, the suspension may have been a stressor to the family, but you can then go into the discussion as to how the child violated a major school/district rule and why that is the appropriate consequence.
GET TO THE POINT
What does the parent really want? You might need to get some background information if you are meeting with a parent about a student/staff related issue to see if you can wade through the issues to hit on the relevant points.
Sometimes, you need to say it very directly: “What would you like to see happen as a result of this meeting?” Having an answer to this question may prevent you from spinning your wheels.
ASK QUESTIONS
When it’s your turn to talk, ask the clarifying questions: who? what? when? where? You may have generated many of these when you were taking notes. By asking more questions and even trying to involve them in solving the problem you are able to:
- Establish a relationship with the parent
- Uncover hidden agendas
- Obtain information to share with other staff if you need to follow up
- Slow down the conversation if it’s particularly heated
SOME GREAT ONE-LINERS
When all else fails, you may want to go into a meeting with a handful of one-liners that can be used when you need them:
- I’m not sure I understand. Can you help me see why this issue is important to you?
- Might it work this way?
- If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
- Do you think that is a fair solution to all involved?
- What if we tried it this way?
- Would X be a fair solution to you?
- We’re reaching an impasse here. Can you give me any more information that might help me assist you/your child?
WHAT NOT TO DO
Put a dozen administrators in a room, and we could all come up with a thousand ideas of what not to do, having had the time to reflect upon situations that we didn’t handle as well as we could have. It’s a learning experience for us all, and managing challenging meetings helps us build confidence for the next time. There are some basic suggestions of what not to do:
- Don’t interrupt.
- Don’t bring in your own agenda.
- Don’t take the conversation elsewhere: the meeting about a child’s problem on the bus shouldn’t be turned into a meeting about bad grades in a teacher’s class unless the parents brings it up.
- Don’t overexplain or be the know-it-all.
- Don’t try to convince someone that she or he is wrong.
For additional reference:
Brinkman, R. & Kirschner, R. (1994). Dealing with people you can’t stand. New York: McGraw-Hill.
McEwan, Elaine. (1998). How to deal with parents who are angry, troubled, afraid, or just plain crazy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Whitaker, T. & Foire, D. (2001). Dealing with difficult parents and with parents in difficult situations. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
Whitaker, T. (2002). What great principals do differently: 15 things that matter most. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
Lisa is an elementary principal in the Palo Alto Unified School District and has 11 years of experience in school administration. She is the President-elect for ACSA Region 8 and a cadre member of TICAL, the Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership.
eNewsletter
This edition of ACSA- TNG features articles from Devin Vodicka, director of Curriculum & Instruction for Carlsbad Unified School District and Lisa Gonzales, principal, Fair Meadow Elementary School, Palo Alto Union SD. In addition, we have an invitation for Gen Xers to join in a luncheon and discussion at the upcoming Leadership Summit in Santa Clara, Nov. 8-10.
In this issue
Subscribe
ACSA–TNG eNewsletter is a member benefit of ACSA. If you would like to subscribe to or unsubscribe from this eletter, please email a request to crodda@acsa.org.