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Illinois School Board Journal
July August 1999

Reflections on leadership: Leading from inside

by Georgiann McKenna

As I think of great leaders who have had long lasting, powerful effects on my life, I realize it was the indescribable energy of their spirit that inspired me to believe in my own gifts. Perhaps these leaders had a managerial or instructional bent, or even a more transformational orientation. Memories of their precise styles fade as years go by. I believe their influence related to their spirit and energy and what author Robert Greenleaf stated in his book Servant Leadership: "The spirit (not knowledge) is power."

As I look at recent leaders like Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Princess Diana, I ask, what is it that breathed such spirit into their followers? Why is it that peoples' spirits were elevated as they watched them at work? What has inspired people to follow in their path? Could it be that what inspired so many was the servant nature of their leadership?

Too rarely do we, as school leaders, make time to reflect deeply on the skills, techniques and nature of leadership, and how we might better breathe life into our daily leadership opportunities. Yet think of your experiences with leaders you've known. Was Antoine de St. Exupery's Little Prince so far off when he said, "It is only with the heart that one can rightly see; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

That is why I was so impressed with authors who explore these facets of leadership. In particular, I relished the ideas of Robert Greenleaf, whose 1977 book, Servant Leadership, set out the foundations of the topic, and whose ideas greatly influenced Joseph Jaworski's 1996 bestseller Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. Both authors encourage us to tilt the balance of our thinking from the external tasks that consume our lives to the inward meanings that renew us and others.

This is especially critical for school board members and administrators, who must make so many unpopular decisions. Being grounded in the inner meaning of our work provides the strength to live with the criticism and unpopularity that are inevitable byproducts of school leadership.

After reading these books and several others, I've distilled what their ideas mean for strong leaders. Ultimately, I concur with Jaworski's observation that "leadership has more to do with 'being' than with 'doing'." Effective leaders share five essential, invisible personal qualities of "being": (1) they study themselves and their personal motives; (2) they develop empathy; (3) they envision possibilities past their own personal baggage; (4) they believe in people; and (5) they adopt a listening attitude.

Greenleaf offers some details on the litmus test for servant leaders: The best test to decide if one is a servant leader is the care taken by the servant leader "to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served," Greenleaf said. "Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"

If people being served by a servant leader become healthier, wiser, freer and so forth, might it not behoove us school leaders to rethink the deeper meanings of why we are board members and administrators at all? Is it possible the role has more to do with being than with doing?

Searching for self-knowledge is no easy task. Nor is the job of "finding ourselves" a job we should have finished as adolescents. The payoff is great, however. Self-knowledge provides us a lifelong grounding that supports our well-being and the well-being of the children, colleagues and communities we serve.

Herman Hesse, author of Damien, recognized that self-knowledge was a task of all-encompassing importance. He put it this way: "Each man has only one genuine vocation -- to find the way to himself. . . . His task is to discover his destiny -- not an arbitrary one -- and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself."

Could Mother Teresa have been who she was without this essential road traveled? Nelson Mandela? Princess Diana?

Yet when do we as school leaders take time to reflect and meditate? If this self-reflection is essential to a quality journey how can we claim, "no time"?

Furthermore, do those who share our lives perceive that the journey inward is important for us -- and for them? The tragedy here is that if we fail to reflect and "go inward," we risk missing out on the opportunities handed to us. A budget meeting, a staff development council meeting, a board meeting are "outward" opportunities affording us the arena for asking meaningful questions worth the time and energy of the human spirit.

Exterior noise, distraction and must-do jobs will always take the place of looking inward. The exterior is much easier to attend to! But what renews us from the inside-out? A solitary walk? Working in our garden? Painting? Finding ourselves requires we look to the energy within ourselves.

Seldom are leaders able to pick the people with whom they must work. Our colleagues may be lazy, immature, or lacking in intelligence or skill. If we are lucky, they have retained a sense of humor and a sense of responsibility. But these traits are not givens.

What is a wise leader to do when faced with human frailties and shortcomings?

Accept people for who they are, advises Greenleaf. "Anybody could lead perfect people . . . the enigma of human nature is that the typical person . . . immature, stumbling, inept, lazy . . . is capable of great dedication and heroism if wisely led." He ob-serves that able people are some-times "disqualified to lead because they cannot work with and through the half-people, who are all there are . . ."

How does that translate for school leaders?

• To the intolerant, we must show tolerance.

• To the impatient, we must show patience.

• To the half-people we contact everyday, we must show them the other half. We must invite them to completeness.

• To the uniformed we cannot just dispense facts, we must show them wisdom.

• To convey in words and in action, "I am here to serve you."

One way to show empathy is by being invitational. We show empathy when pursuing organizational goals by inviting the input of the people we need to involve to accomplish those goals.

All of us carry "baggage'' and preconceptions that distort our perceptions of reality. As a result, Jaworski notes, we fail to see people as they really are "because we are too busy reacting to our own internal experiences of what they evoke in us."

Wise leaders, however, put the brakes on themselves mentally when they find a person is getting under their skin. These leaders make it a practice to take a quick look inside and examine how their personal baggage might be getting in the way of a solution. Sensible leaders ask themselves, "Why doesn't that person see things my way?" and "Am I too welded to my way of doing things or to certain assumptions so that I have lost sight of what we're trying to create?"

Strong leaders, Jaworski argues, focus on the result and do not get overly attached to any particular process for achieving the result.

For school leaders, sticking points might involve the vision for a school/district. Is it solely the school board/administration vision? Or can the leaders shed their personal baggage to ask broad, insightful questions that help school personnel and community define the destination for the school or district? Such questions would consider the thoughts, desires and dreams of others. Indeed, when setting the school or district's destination in line with others' thoughts, desires and dreams, this is one time when the administrator's baggage must get lost.

Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities," said Jaworski. And good leaders, he argues, believe in people. They communicate to people that "they matter" and that each of us has something important to give others.

I was fortunate to see that principle in action in my work place. I had given a report, full of data about test scores and other matters, to my school board. When I had finished, a school board member asked me a question that was so unexpected I couldn't immediately come up with an answer.

"How can we serve you?" he asked. "How can we help you?"

Administrators and school board members alike can find many ways to communicate that people matter. Why not take time to jot a note to a staff member who is hurting or agitated or simply deserving of a word of praise? Why not phone the home of a sick staff member? Or walk into a teacher's classroom to offer help or ask about his or her concerns? Once personal goals are seen as important, energies may be unleashed to think more seriously about the organization's goals.

School leaders can inspire without having all the answers. In fact, leaders must adopt a listening attitude, rather than dictating all the answers or doing all the problem solving because, ". . . true listening builds strength in other people," said Greenleaf.

The value of active listening should come as no surprise to school leaders. After all, we know the best teachers do not tell students the answers, they elicit a response from them by probing what students already know. Good leaders do the same. The fact remains that for those of us who spend most of our time in a problem-solving mode, adopting a listening attitude takes serious discipline.

The lives of Mother Teresa, Princess Diana and Nelson Mandela showed us the significance and the power of listening. Through their work we saw the foundation for change they desired brought about more by listening and reflecting, than by charging ahead with the single-mindedness of a taskmaster's problem-solving orientation.

But how often do we take time to listen to the critical journey of a staff member or of the custodial help? Too often our focus is on getting through one more meeting, getting one more report done, one more speech written or schedule finished. Would it not be ultimately more valuable to reach out to the hurting parent or staff member and actively listen? Will colleagues remember you as a person who pushed to complete one more project, or as a person who made them feel, by your listening, like they were important?

I am hopeful your journey inward will reveal to you why:

• Mother Teresa possessed the power of no power.

• Princess Diana experienced the power of the palace -- but preferred the power of the downtrodden.

• Nelson Mandela could return victoriously to serve his persecutors.

In closing, what does the servant leader look like?

• A person whose hardest curriculum to master is looking inward.

• A person whose mission statement is to envision a situation stripped of his or her own personal baggage.

• A person whose performance assessments are based on empathy and a listening attitude.

• A person who believes the rubric for success is that fragmented people can be made whole.

Perhaps the journey inward will bring us back to our roots -- why we became school board members and administrators in the first place -- to serve, to inspire, to touch the human spirit so that after others see who we are, they will be inspired to serve each other.

Hesse, Hermann. Demian. New York: Bantam Books, 1965.
De Saint-Exupery, Antoine. The Little Prince. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1943.
Greenleaf, Robert K. Servant Leadership. New York: Paulist Press, 1977.
Jaworski, Joseph. Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1996.

Georgiann McKenna was a superintendent and principal in Walworth, Wisconsin. She is currently principal of Whitman Post Elementary School in Rockton School District 140. She can be reached at the school, 1060 E. Union St., Rockton, Illinois 61072-1628.