There's a Big Difference Between Servant Leaders and Those Who Want to Be Served
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder distinguishes between central office leaders who genuinely serve schools and those who create work for schools to serve their own needs.
Key Takeaways
- Servant leadership is real but rare - True servant leaders make schools' jobs easier; the opposite type makes schools' jobs harder
- The test is simple - Does this central office leader create more work for schools, or less?
- Schools should serve students, not the district office - Central office exists to support schools, not the other way around
Transcript
There's a big difference between central office administrators who are servant leaders, who support the people that they supervise in doing their work as effectively as possible, and central office leaders who simply make up work for other people to do.
And I think this is especially a problem when there are too many central office administrators, when people have to justify their positions, justify their salaries by making up work for other people to do, work that those people would probably describe as busy work.
I think this becomes a real problem when the central office becomes too top-heavy And as part of the industry that like sells things to central office administrators, like this weighs on me quite a bit that there's a very real potential for us to not actually be helping teachers and principals do their jobs more effectively, but potential for what we're doing to make their jobs harder and provide busy work that is not actually helpful to teaching and learning and leadership in any way.
So I think as central office leaders, as consultants, as authors and experts, we have to be very, very careful not to just make up junk for people to do that's going to waste their time.
And I guess my advice for central office leaders would be to go and see what people are spending their time on.
Go and see what people are doing, what problems they're struggling with, and support them in that.
Because if you just stay in your office all the time, and I don't want to accuse anybody, but if you just stay in headquarters, in your cubicle at headquarters, your office at headquarters, and make up stuff for people to do and buy things for them, I think the shopping aspect of this is where it starts to go wrong, where it's like...
Instead of going into a school, going into classrooms, talking to principals, talking to teachers and seeing, okay, what do you need?
How can I help you?
How can I be a servant leader who is supporting you?
If I sit in my office and buy stuff and issue mandates, I'm going to end up giving you lots of stuff that you don't have time for.
So I don't know if you're seeing this dynamic, but it's definitely something that keeps me awake.
Let me know what you think.