Leadership

“When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable — if there are no consequences — that poor performance becomes the new standard. Therefore, leaders must enforce standards.” 

– Jocko Willink

I love to read. More specifically, I love to binge read. I'm generally not content or even remotely interested in picking up a book and reading a few pages or reading for a few minutes. If I cannot read for at least half an our, uninterrupted, I don't want to read at all. What I really like to do is read for several hours at a time, consuming an entire book in one sitting whenever possible. However, my life doesn't always allow this, so I decided to try something new over break. I downloaded my first audiobook. I figure that I spend a lot of time driving to ballgames and soon show choir competitions. Once I am there, I generally have a fair amount of time to sit and wait for the game to start or time between performances, so I think I could use this time to slip in some earbuds and listen to a book. 

Normally, I am a big fan of fiction, but a non-fiction title caught my eye, and I decided to give it a shot. It is Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Throughout the book, these two Navy Seal officers recount their experiences on the battlefield, usually failures, and the leadership lessons they learned as a result. Now leadership consultants, they also give examples of how they have coached others through leadership challenges using the same principles. It is really interesting.

One particular element of leadership that struck me as I consider starting back for the second semester is outlined in the quote above. He talks about leaders who repeatedly state the expectations and standards without any follow through and then are frustrated when performance doesn't match the expectation or standard. They point out that culture is not built on what you preach but on what you tolerate. If a leader preaches that punctuality is important but tolerates tardiness, tardiness is actually the standard. 

As teachers, you are all leaders in your classrooms and the hallways. You lead our students, and we have very clear expectations and standards for their behavior. Right now, we are in the process of developing a vision and branding to help give an identity to the culture we are trying to create at Sullivan Middle School, but all of that is for nothing if we are not all on board for fair and consistent adherence to our expectations. If we tell students no running is allowed in hallways and say nothing to them as they run past us in the hallways, then running is, in fact, allowed in the hallways. We dedicated an entire day in August to going over expectations, but the real work is the day to day enforcement to ensure we are not tolerating something we proclaim to prohibit.

We have done a great job of doing this throughout the first part of the year, but we all know the second semester can turn into a grind. Do not let your guard down. Fight complacency. We are a team, and if we all stay firm in our resolve to back one another up by consistently enforcing these expectations in every area of our building from bell to bell every single day, we will win.