STRATEGY I Teams Working on Real-World Goals “The best way to train change-agent leaders is on the job, tackling live problems, seeking to achieve specific goals.” Alton Crews Jim Wilhelm, division director for high schools in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina, describes the Academy as “four-dimensional training. The goal-setting, vision statements, the importance of reflective thinking, the quality of the presenters and their standing offer of feedback—the whole program fits together.” The Leadership Academy has been designed in keeping with SREB’s long practice of setting regional educational goals and benchmarking progress toward them, a strategy for encouraging educational improvement highlighted in the 1988 publication of Goals for Education: Challenge 2000.      Each system selected to participate in the SREB Leadership Academy must set one to three significant goals that are lofty, results-based, measurable, and aimed at improving student productivity. These goals ensure that the participants’ development of an effective leadership style will have a direct impact on their schools and students. The goals themselves should be geared to results, to improving K-12 educational achievement in the district, but not to upgrading operations like food or bus services.      “Clearly defined goals tend to unify an organization’s efforts,” Crews says. “Goals help minimize the tendency of loosely coupled organizations, such as public schools, to fragment their efforts and squander resources.      Participating teams have selected a variety of goals focused on school improvement: • All children will be ready for the first grade; • All students will earn a high school diploma or complete an individualized education plan; • We will demonstrate a 10 percent increase in the performance of all students on 30 output performance measures set by the state education agency; • Four of five high school graduates will be ready for college and will not require remedial courses.      Goal-setting also gives teams a real-world context in which to think about leadership. Even if teams do not reach their goals, they learn about the kind of leadership necessary to tackle challenges.      The process of applying to participate in the Leadership Academy was helpful to one district. “In that process, we were asked to set a vision for ourselves and for our school district—what we wanted to accomplish—and to quantify it,” says B. L. Davis, former superintendent of the Carrollton/ Farmer’s Branch school district in Texas. “We did, and the fact that we went through the process of setting a vision for the district, setting goals, and quantifying how we were going to accomplish them—that in itself, whether we were selected or not, was important and of value to us.”      Davis says that the process helped bring unity to the district. “The fact that our principals, our teachers, our community knew that we had gone into this endeavor, they knew what that vision was, and they knew that we were focused on it—that helped us with the budget. It helped us with planning. When we sat down with our principals or the PTA, we would say this is a commitment we’ve made; it’s important. They wanted our district to be successful and they bought into it.”      The goals that school systems choose during their participation in the Leadership Academy are a key factor in determining the impact the Academy training has on students in the classroom. “The way we went about setting our goals contributed to what’s taking place in terms of student learning,” says Dianne Lane, superintendent of the Columbia County, Florida, school system. “We set three district-wide goals that affected three different levels of our schools. We set our goals to impact all students from pre-kindergarten to high school.”      While participating in the Academy, each school system’s progress toward meeting the goals must be documented annually, based on benchmark data from the date the goals were set by school board resolution.      “Goal-setting requires you to focus on aspects of your system that really need to be addressed,” says Bill Lawson, high school principal in Temple, Texas.      “The process of goal-setting tells you where you’re going,” says Carol T. Lee, former school board member in Richland County, South Carolina. “It helps focus everyone’s attention and to be more accountable for how we spend our time.”      Participants also say that setting goals helps the teams stay focused on specific issues. “The Leadership Academy provided the format and the structure we needed to constantly keep the goal in front of us each time we met, and to plan around that goal,” says Larry Coble, former superintendent in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina. “Determining what those next steps are going to be, and following up is essential.”      Setting goals ties the seminar training directly to the real issues at home. “One very significant thing that has come out of the Leadership Academy has been our Strategic Direction Initiative Program,” says Brenda Gentry, instructional generalist from Winston Salem/Forsyth County. “It is about knowing who your customers are and meeting the needs of those customers, having your guiding principles, your goals. We have a focus now as a school system. We know what we’re about, and that came directly from the Leadership Academy”      As a result of participation in the Leadership Academy, each school in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County must submit a strategic plan, and a district assistant has been hired to oversee that process. Each school states its goals regarding such issues as safety, operating environment, quality, diversity, and unity and develops its own improvement plan. Profiles Working as a Team “Leaders must be strong not only at the top, but at all levels.”—Alton Crews      Each participating school system chooses its own management team of administrators and teachers from all levels to attend the Leadership Academy. Led by the superintendent, the team takes responsibility for achievement of the system’s goals and then designs, guides and implements the strategies to achieve them. This approach strengthens the link between the training and the workplace.      “I’m hoping any skills I learn on the team will reach other faculty members,” says Harvey Dailey, a high school principal in Spartanburg, South Carolina. “If you can affect the faculty, you will have a direct effect on the student body. If you’ve got good leadership at the top, it will multiply itself out, especially when you’re involving a school team that includes teachers. The team will be able to make an overall difference in the school.”      Through the Leadership Academy, Mattie Broadnax, an assistant high school principal from Newport News, Virginia, had the opportunity to participate for the first time on a “vertical” management team. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to work side by side with the superintendent,” says Broadnax.      Working as a team and setting goals can make changes possible that may not have occurred otherwise. For example, one district whose goal is to increase the number of pre-kindergarten children served by the district, has developed a plan to meet that goal sooner than expected.      “I really don’t feel [this program] would be at this stage of discussion without the type of opportunities the team had in working together,” says Bill Anderson, former superintendent in Des Moines, Iowa, who participates as a team coach. “By sitting down together and having this representative team, which has teachers and the superintendent and intermediate leaders all working toward this stated and avowed goal—it’s amazing what things can be done when people have a clear direction of what they want to do.”      Team members support and rely upon each other as they develop trust and confidence in their own abilities to bring change to the district. “The people on our team grew individually and were able to work together and be risk takers, and not always settle for the status quo,” says Marijo Pitts-Sheffield, early childhood director in Glynn County, Georgia. “It has given us a lot of confidence that I’m not sure we would have if we hadn’t been through the Academy.”      Pulling a team together from many parts of the community also helps build credibility and support for the goals among diverse school and community groups, says Lee of Richland County South Carolina. “It has helped build relationships among people from different parts of the district,” she says. “The team became pretty close, and that helped build support within the community for the project. Our relationships helped us to find ways to funnel to the district some of the information we gained at the Leadership Academy.”      Lawson of Temple, Texas, says his team formed a strong bond that has been “extremely valuable. Having to work together not only at Academy meetings but on a monthly basis has certainly improved communication, and this has been transferred into our schools.”      Julia Symmonds, chair of the school board in Temple, Texas, says that team solidarity may have been the most important factor in causing change. “The unity of the team is probably the thing that has gotten the most things done because we can present a unified front when we get back to the district. We can say this is something we really want to do and we think it’s going to help the kids.”      Milly Cowles, dean emeritus of the College of Education at the University of Alabama and a peer coach for the Lake City, Florida, team, says teams provide participants with “something they all can discuss and grow with rather than one person going to an institute in California and one going to an institute in New York, and trying to mesh those.”      Cowles, who participates in the Academy as a coach, says working in teams “makes it possible for people to have a common core for growth back home, but it takes a long time. My own observation is that it takes 10 years, but I’ve been involved in groups through the years where I’ve not seen the kind of growth that I’ve seen in this project.”      In addition to support within each team, the networking among participants also reinforces the goal-setting process as teams share their experiences at each seminar. “The fact that you get a chance to interact with all kinds of people from other school systems who have so many things in common with you is so important,” Broadnax says. “We have grown as a group, and I think that’s pretty unique.”      Dailey appreciates the support and information he gets from interaction with other class members. “I look forward to just getting back together with the other people in the class and hearing some of the things that they’ve got going, and some of the problems we share, no matter whether we’re in Texas or South Carolina or Virginia.”      Lane of Columbia County, Florida, values the contacts she has made. “The interaction we’ve had with the representatives from other districts&@8212;they’ve absolutely given us a wealth of ideas, contact people and resources.”      In Richland County, South Carolina, the class interaction inspired the development of a parent handbook that includes information about the schools and the district. “The handbook was a direct result of seeing a similar kind of publication that one of the other teams had,” Lee says. “It impacts the students because it impacts the parents.” Profiles Interactive Seminar Training “To be agents of change, school leaders must know how to set meaningful goals, measure success, alter procedures based on results, and invest money where it matters. These leaders are not born. Leadership skills can be taught and learned.” —Alton Crews      Drawing upon corporate training models, the SREB Leadership Academy provides highly skilled, nationally known professionals who deliver training to the teams in a long-term, comprehensive package that helps teams develop leadership skills over time. Participants read books and articles prior to each seminar to help them prepare for the content.      “Being exposed to the same style of leadership training that IBM senior managers are exposed to is excellent,” Coble says.       “We met with several renowned speakers that gave me insights that I wouldn’t have typically gotten as a superintendent,” says Davis.       Participants also say that businesses in their districts appreciate the type of training that the school leaders receive through the Leadership Academy. “The training we’re going through and the way we’re going through it is what business looks for and how business goes about training people, as opposed to how educators are trained,” says Lane. “Our Chamber of Commerce director is on the team and he has helped us see that we’re doing what business expects of our students.”       Instructors, acting as facilitators, guide participants through sessions that have a collegial tone and encourage continuous interaction. They are encouraged to express ideas and share real life experiences. They disagree. They debate. They take from the session what is most appropriate to their school systems and apply it to their systems’ challenges.       “The Leadership Academy has given us a more personal training experience,” Lane says. “This is experiential. It’s not just lecture, and it is internalized within us as a result.” She sites the “Leaders of Humanity” seminar as having a profound effect upon attitudes that drive leadership behavior. “Zyg Nagorski was absolutely phenomenal in not only making you think hard about what you believe in, but also in examining what motivates you, and at what point you might be willing to give up the principles you thought you held so tightly,” Lane says. “He helps you see how firmly you do hold to the principles you have and what actually drives your leadership decisions. He was really good at finding those little buttons to push.”       Four general content areas are covered during the seminars or modules. “The modules are the curriculum content of our program,” Crews says. “We will make them available to the states, and they can pick those that best fit their needs.”      Participants say the content of the training sessions applies directly to their systems’ challenges. For example, a session on developing a marketing plan for schools “truly opened our eyes about how closely we parallel a business,” says Broadnax.      The Columbia County, Florida, team has applied the 4MAT training in the schools, Lane says. “We felt it was really beneficial to staff not only in thinking about the way kids learn, but thinking about each other’s personalities and how they might be more effective in working together.”       The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County team was able to apply information from a training session on strategic planning to its district plan. That district is also using the personal leadership course for district training and has applied the 4MAT curriculum development model.      The Temple, Texas, team has found ways to apply almost every training session it attended. “There has been very, very direct spin-off,” says Lawson. “It’s not like a vague kind of thing where we’re using some ideas. We’re actually taking the content and putting it to work directly in the schools.”      For example, Temple also has implemented the 4MAT curriculum development model throughout the district. “That was a very valuable, productive session,” he says. Lawson adds that “We’re now using Phil Schlechty’s work with our curriculum coordinator. The personal leadership workshop was done for all administrators in the district, and those administrators took it back and implemented it at the school level.”      Symmonds, also from Temple, sites the 4MAT training as being especially beneficial. “We really bought into the 4MAT training, and we think that is going to be one of the biggest helps. The old method of standing up there and lecturing for 50 minutes isn’t going to work anymore. We had the whole high school staff trained in 4MAT. More than 40 people took the training. We really feel like that is going to be crucial to our district.”      She says the team found the workshop on personal leadership to be inspiring. “We feel that is a different leadership style than most people have. Everybody had seen books on leadership style and prioritizing, but to be able to teach it and get it down through the system has been really beneficial. It’s a different way of looking at how you treat everybody—not each other but the students also—and how to create win-win situations.”      In general, Symmonds believes that the training content, combined with the teamwork, is an excellent tool for tackling the real issues in the district. She says, “The things that we have picked up directly influence the students and the way they feel about themselves, and therefore they are able to learn.” Content areas and modules of the Leadership Academy training Next—Strategy II: A Personal Plan for Professional Improvement