How I Created My Own Leadership Philosophy

In my last blog, Your Leadership Philosophy – Charting the Course, I explained how to create your own leadership philosophy. A clearly articulated philosophy of leadership becomes a foundation for planning, a filter for making decisions, and a compass for determining priorities and guiding your leadership journey.

In this blog, I’ve provided an example of the document that guided my own leadership journey. The context for me was serving as an administrator in a large public school board.

As you read my leadership philosophy guidelines ask yourself:

• What about this resonates? What doesn’t work?
• Is the format helpful? What might be a better serve the documents intended purpose?
• Is it too wordy, too full of jargon? Does it seem sincere and authentic, or does it look “googled”?
• Does it create a picture that tells you something about who this person is as a leader and what you could expect as a person impacted by their leadership?
• Does it make you want to know more about what this person would bring to the table, or does it have you already leery and questioning their leadership?

The intention in sharing the document is not to hold it up as a shining example of a leadership philosophy. All I can say is that it worked for me, but that is not to say that it would work for anyone else.

An outstanding educational leader is committed to a life of continual learning and is an enthusiastic recipient and selfless giver in the educational process.

How You Can Become an Outstanding Leader

An outstanding educational leader is committed to a life of continual learning and is an enthusiastic recipient and selfless giver in the educational process. The effective leader will understand the desired end of education and will seek to understand people, the educational process, and what is essential operationally to enhance and support learning opportunities.

Remove Barriers

Strong leaders will be relentless in their efforts to remove barriers to learning and create conditions that optimize learning. They will have an active mind when it comes to how students learn, the environments in which they learn best, and best-in-class practices that support learning. Strong educational leaders will never lose sight of our system’s most vulnerable learners.

Have Courage and Consideration

Leaders must understand their role in the process of making decisions and determining direction as they work closely and effectively with their senior leadership team and trustees. This requires a balance of courage and consideration as they both learn and lead in fostering sound educational supports, prudent fiscal and management practices, and accountability measures. Effective leaders demonstrate an ability to bring sense, perspective, and clarity to confusion and ambiguity. They ought to be a calming influence, a non-anxious presence when the heat is on.

Effective leaders demonstrate an ability to bring sense, perspective, and clarity to confusion and ambiguity.

Ensure Fundamental Principles

What leaders do is important. How they do it is just as important. They will ensure that fundamental principles such as mutual respect, fair treatment, inclusivity, honesty, integrity, and accountability are consistently modelled, valued, rewarded, and expected. They unify stakeholders, build bridges, motivate and mobilize staffs, and adjust to new direction with sensitivity, common sense, enthusiasm, and a sense of humour. Leaders must be prepared for the emotional and physical rigours inherent in a position fraught with relentless challenges. They ought to model personal balance, attention to what matters most, and enjoy a satisfying personal life filled with meaningful relationships, lifelong learning, and good health.

Be Trustworthy

A strong leader knows that respect, cooperation, and credibility are not conferred by virtue of a title. The best leaders understand that everything hinges on trust. Over the long term, nothing will be more important than the trust that is gained through relationships, proper motivation, a willingness to learn, appropriate humility, a strong work ethic, a track record of good decisions, demonstrated cultural proficiency, consistency, accessibility, and integrity.

Increased trust diminishes fear, manipulation, defensiveness, apprehension, reluctance, and secret agendas. Trust opens the door to innovation, enthusiasm, accelerated improvement, flexibility, and the willingness to take risks. Ultimately, it leads to synergy where the whole is remarkably greater than the sum of its parts. Trust also contributes, most importantly, to successful outcomes for students. This, in the end, is the measure of an outstanding leader.

Emotionally intelligent, high performing leaders get that this is all about people. A leader understands the value and place of policies, ministry directives, resource limitations, establishing priorities, time management, and technical expertise, while never forgetting that everything we accomplish is through and for people.

A strong leader knows that respect, cooperation, and credibility are not conferred by virtue of a title. The best leaders understand that everything hinges on trust.

Check out our free printable handout, 4 Areas to Help You Grow as a Leader.. For more RESOURCES on this topic and others, visit our free resources page.

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