Illinois School Board Journal
September/October 2007

John J. Cassel is IASB field services director for the DuPage, North Cook and Starved Rock divisions.

Because a primary function of a school board is to gather diverse community perspectives and interest into a common direction and purpose, teamwork becomes an essential element of board work.

Patrick Lencioni, a leadership consultant and author, is an astute observer of teams and has written a pair of books that board members and superintendents should find helpful in their work around the board table.

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a leadership fable, written in 2002, and his 2005 follow-up, Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a field guide for leaders, managers and facilitators, Lencioni outlines behaviors that lead to more cohesive teams. Because these behaviors are more often absent than present in teams, he refers to them as "dysfunctions."

The following are Lencioni's five behaviors with an interpretation of how they apply to school board work:

1. A foundation of trust

An effective school system must be trustworthy at all levels. Students and parents must trust the teachers. The staff must trust the administration. The board and superintendent must trust each other. And the community must trust the entire system.

All of this begins with the board. Trust is fundamental to board work. If trust is present, all board members can focus on the board's work — not on posturing or protecting self-interests, not on offense or defense.

A trustworthy team welcomes and values the perspectives and contributions of each member. If any member feels discounted, any foundation of trust is quickly eroded. Members may not agree, but all should be eager to at least "hear" the others.

What does trust look like?

When trust is present, school board members are able to work together on the challenges facing the district. They will likely still struggle with the tough work of the board, but they are not struggling to negotiate each other. Trust allows the board to focus on its tasks.

Good board work requires risk-taking. When trust is present, board members will admit "I don't know" or "I was wrong," or "We need help." Only in an atmosphere of trust can board members be open and vulnerable enough to really maximize the resources of the entire district — board, staff and community. When trust is present, board meetings become enriching and satisfying, not times to be dreaded because of the possibility of unpredictable and/or uncomfortable exchanges.

So how does a school board go about building trust? It begins with board members who are willing to listen and share. Furthermore, trust builds more trust: a positive board culture will attract good candidates who want to join a successful enterprise.

Bottom line, developing trust often requires more courage than time. Trust can be built in a short time, but only if the board is willing to work diligently on the necessary steps, such as:

• Building good relationships — Board members should take the time to get to know one another and what each member cares about.
• Fostering good communications — Board members need the opportunity to share and be heard around the board table.
• Establishing clear expectations — Board members should know what is expected of them and what a good meeting looks like.
• Making themselves vulnerable to one another — Board members must feel free to speak their own truth.

2. A willingness to engage in healthy conflict

Most school boards are scared to death of conflict. However, a major portion of board work is to engage the diversity of expectations and needs in the community to find a common path forward by answering questions like: "What is our district trying to do?" and "What do we care about?"

Debating the different perspectives around the table is essential to finding common ground. Avoiding such foundational discussions means never finding a way forward. That brings us right back to trust, which is essential to engaging one another at the board table.

"Passionate, unfiltered debate around issues of importance to the team" is part of quality board work, according to Lencioni. But please note the second part of his quote: "issues of importance to the team."

For a school board, the "issue of importance" is the "what" of the district — the mission and purpose, the essential board tasks. Conflict about district ends is healthy. Board table conflict about "means" is unhealthy.

"Means" conversations (the "how" of pursuing ends) are generally staff work. Boards that engage in these types of disagreements are drawn into a black hole of unproductive conflict.

"If team members are not making one another uncomfortable at times, if they're never pushing one another outside their emotional comfort zones during discussions," Lencioni writes, "then it is extremely likely they are not making the best decisions for the organization."

An effective school board is not afraid to take on controversial topics. A community observing a school board grappling with the tough, big issues will gain increased confidence in leaders who are willing to tackle such trust-engendering work.

So how does a board go about engaging in healthy conflict?

An effective board puts itself at a distance from the fray. Board members choose to sit in an objective spot, and they resist taking the work personally. Boards should learn to have a fair fight at the table and then leave their disagreements in the boardroom.

To do that, effective boards build a trustworthy culture that will support healthy conflict. If all members have committed to positive behavioral expectations and support the fundamental direction of the district, the focus can be on the issues, not board member positioning or self-protection.

Healthy conflict is not interpersonal. Healthy conflict is about issues, not personalities.

Part of a trustworthy culture also is a reliable infrastructure: agreement on the board's job; a thoughtful Code of Conduct and clear behavioral expectations; quality leadership; and, most importantly, clarity and agreement about the mission, purpose and direction of the district. Agreement on the biggest picture will allow quality work on the specifics.

Agreement does not mean that the big picture never changes. It is important to re-negotiate (re-establish) the mission and purpose from time to time, especially as new members join an existing board and a new level of trust must be established.

3 Commitment to team decisions

For the district to go forward toward a common purpose, the commitment of all board members is required. When the perceptions and ideas of each have been honored in the decision-making process, the foundation is built for all members to "own" the decision. When a culture of trust is able to support healthy debate by all board members, there is reason to think team decisions, even tough ones, will hold.

A trustworthy team, making careful decisions, will have the respect of each member — not because the board's solutions are always perfect, but because all perspectives and values have been considered and tough choices made.

An effective team will "speak with one voice" to the superintendent. If the superintendent is expected to move the district forward toward its goals, that superintendent must have clear direction and the support of all board members. Unless all board members are committed to board decisions once a vote has been taken, the superintendent will hear "many voices" and likely not act in an empowered or effective manner.

Commitment to board decisions requires clarity about the decision, its details and implications. Clarity of actions can be ensured by written motions, captured carefully in good minutes. Additionally, decisions should be communicated to those involved — it will keep the board accountable.

At this level of work, board processes become as important to the equation as the decisions themselves. School boards should be careful and respectful when making all decisions, even the "small" ones, because those "small" decisions set the pattern for the big, tough decisions.

4. Welcoming accountability

Structurally, school boards are accountable to the community that elects them, with an election every four years as an accountability mechanism. The community can fix a board that has gone terribly wrong, but the problem must be gross and a "next election fix" is indelicate.

A better way is for the school board itself to accept and value its own accountability. At least two primary areas of accountability exist. First, the school board should understand that it must be accountable for the outcomes of the entire school system. Many boards shirk accountability, and the bureaucratic nature of public schools exacerbates the general trend. Research from the Iowa Lighthouse Study showed that a consistent mark of high achieving school districts is a board willing to step up and accept responsibility for the academic achievement of all its students.

A second key area of accountability is the responsibility each board member accepts for the working culture of the board. Members of an effective board have a clear understanding of their shared expectations, and they help each other live up to their best intentions. An effective board attempts to stay self-aware of its own dynamics and the way it is perceived by the community. Effective boards work to assure both quality board processes and quality board outcomes.

Keys to accountability are: clearly articulated and well constructed district ends — mission, vision, beliefs, values, goals, standards; thoughtful and clearly stated board procedures and processes for meetings and board communications; regular board self-evaluation; and a helpful orientation/mentoring process for bringing new members into the board team.

5. Focusing on results

If a board has established what is expected from the system, then it can answer the simple, yet profound question: "How are we doing?"

If the board knows how the district is doing, it can focus efforts to do better, initiating an upward spiral: success begets success, quality begets quality. The relationship between welcoming accountability and a focus on results becomes apparent.

Boards that do not welcome accountability are content with goals and standards that do not provide rigor (Our plan is to "do better" or "do more"). Similarly, without trust and commitment, the board will be unable to "confront the brutal facts," a key concept in Jim Collins' research on performance, Good to Great. Public statements about goals and a regular reporting of progress toward those goals will make the district transparent to the community and thus more worthy of community support.

"How are we doing?' is a simple question that is often hard to answer in a powerful way. Monitoring district progress and compliance with district policies is a growth area for even the best boards. Effective boards usually have established a "board dashboard" or "district scorecard" which gives them meaningful access to district performance information and powerful levers to district improvement. Keen attention to results gives the board and the district the focus needed to excel.

To reiterate Lencioni's wisdom: (1) Trust is foundational, in part because it allows the board to (2) engage healthy conflict. Healthy conflict sets the groundwork for (3) commitment to board decisions. Trust and commitment allow the board to (4) welcome accountability for its own behavior and (5) focus on district results.

Together, all five behaviors allow the board to function as an effective team, providing quality leadership for a successful district.

Personal experience reveals the vast majority of all board members want to serve their students and communities. However, board service requires disciplined teamwork: together, the board plots a way forward for the district.

It's a tough task. The future is not always easy to see and the path frequently involves formidable hurdles. But, time and again, school boards that are able to establish themselves as quality, effective teams are able to stay focused on the task. And these focused boards find themselves surrounded by an empowered staff who discern the target and overcome the obstacles.

If board members want to provide the public service they committed to when elected, they must "team up" to ensure their board benchmarks are "effective."

References

Jim Collins, Good to Great, Harper Business, 2001

Laura Kohler, "Overcoming Dysfunctions of a Board," The Oklahoma School Board Journal, Oklahoma State School Boards Association, September 2006

Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a leadership fable, Josie Bass, 2002

Patrick Lencioni, Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a field guide for leaders, managers and facilitators, Josie Bass 2005

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