Discussion-1 - Administrative Leadership: 1. Because our world has been impacted and affected by COVID-19, floods, suicides, tornados, school shootings, and other tragedies, school leaders are faced w

Learning material

Resilience in the Face of Adversity
Five leadership strengths for moving forward personally and
professionally in difficult times by Jerry Patterson

Recently a superintendent told me about the time he proudly led his school district to pass
a bond referendum for new construction. Two years later, overcrowding caused the district
to propose a new bond referendum and, to the district's surprise, it was soundly defeated.
With one vote, pride turned to insecurity. Over the next six months, the superintendent
observed a huge wedge being driven into the community, dividing people into two camps:
winners and losers of the referendum. The winners bragged how they showed the school
district who was boss. The losers played victim, whining that they were the only ones who
cared about the children and their future.
The superintendent worried about his ability to move the district ahead in the face of this
unanticipated adversity. As he quietly confessed, "The leadership skills required now are
not the same ones needed when things were going well."
Indeed, there is a fundamental difference between moving along when things are going
well and moving ahead when things are tough. What can educational leaders do to help
others and themselves move ahead in the face of adverse conditions?
Understanding Resilience
In a sentence, resilience means using your energy productively to move ahead in the face of
adversity.
However, there's much more to resilience than that. Drawing from the research on resilient
leadership, particularly the work of Daryl Conner, author of Managing at the Speed of
Change, I have identified five leadership strengths that are central for leaders to help the
organization, as well as themselves, strengthen their resilience.
As I describe each point, keep in mind that resilience is a long-term, not a short-term,
construct. Resilience doesn't fluctuate daily like the stock market. You're not resilient today
and nonresilient tomorrow. Resilience represents your capacity, your collective energy
points, available to move ahead under adversity. You build or destroy your resilience
capacity one day at a time.
Staying Upbeat
* Strength No. 1: Be positive in spite of the negative.
Most school system leaders don't enter their assignment with a negative mindset. In a
practical sense, though, the cumulative impact of negative circumstances understandablypushes many leaders over the line from optimist to pessimist. In other words, legitimate
reasons exist for school system leaders to be pessimistic about today's conditions in
education.
At the other end of the spectrum are school system leaders who wear the proverbial rose-
colored glasses to work. Such an outlook distorts reality and negatively affects resilience
when reality doesn't measure up to the imaginary world the leader wishes for.
Somewhere between the extremes of perennial pessimism and unbridled optimism is the
well-researched field of positive thinking. Here are a few suggestions for strengthening
your own resilience in being positive.
> Expect the world to be filled with disruptions.
It's not the surprises that negatively affect your resilience account. It's when you're
surprised that you're surprised! You can probably recall a time when you were relieved to
just get through a particular year of adversity with your job and your sanity intact. You
even may remember uttering these familiar words, "The next year should be a normal one.
No disruptions. No surprises."
When the surprises and disruptions reared their ugly heads, how did it affect your personal
resilience? If you view the disruptions to your expectations as the natural result of a
changing world we live in, you have a greater chance of being positive about the overall
condition of things. You don't waste resilience points worrying about the disruption.
Instead you treat disruption as reality and work your way to a positive outcome.
> Find opportunities in the midst of adversity by applying "and" thinking.
Today, many school system leaders feel compelled to have to choose between what the
state department of education demands and what the school district needs. For example,
let's assume that the state department of education values all school districts
demonstrating a certain standard on statewide achievement tests.
Resilience is drained when you and your school staff feel obligated to implement what the
state department demands at the expense of what the local school system cares about.
Being forced to choose between A and B creates a negative hit on resilience.
A more resilient approach is for you to create a win-win situation by reframing the issue to
create "and" thinking. For example, try asking: "How can we be true to our own values at
the school system level and, at the same time, comply with the state's penchant for
publishing each school's standardized test scores?"
This strategy allows you to honor your obligation to implement state standards without
sacrificing the opportunity to advance your own district initiatives.
> Think "how can we" rather than "we can't."The victim role is much more comfortable because it lets us avoid responsibility for our
actions. As long as we say "we can't because of all of the adversity we face," we escape any
accountability for our own actions. Imagine the school system leader who tells the
community, "We can't put computers in all classrooms because the state won't give us any
more money."
Imagine, instead, the school system leader who asks, "How can we work within our existing
resource base plus find community resources to reach the board and community goal of
putting computers in all classrooms?" By asking how can we, we create a much more
positive scenario than lamenting that we can't because of our adversity.
What Matters
* Strength No. 2: Stay focused on what you care about.
When I ask leaders what drains their resilience account, inevitably they point to examples
where there appears to be no connection between what is being demanded of them now
and what was demanded of them previously.
As one superintendent complained, "Today the flavor of the month by the board is block
scheduling. Yesterday it was year-round schooling. Who knows what it will be tomorrow? I
can feel my resilience getting weaker with each new scatterbrained initiative."
School system leaders can help reduce the scatter and increase the focus in the following
ways:
> Maintain a strong sense of purpose and organizational values.
As a school system leader, you need to consistently and persistently operate from a clearly
articulated set of core personal and organizational values. This statement acknowledges
your good intentions about being value-driven. Unfortunately, good intentions are not
enough. Resilient leaders consistently and persistently apply concrete strategies to make
sure these values are clearly articulated and understood by others.
For example, your own resilience is strengthened when you can convey the following to
others in the organization, "On this subject, this is what I care about and this is what you
can expect from me to help assure that my conduct is consistent with what I value." As an
illustration, what do you value specifically beyond just the platitude of site-based
management? Based on what you value, what will you personally do (and can be held
accountable for) to make the value come alive in your organization?
> Avoid unnecessary distractions.
Maintaining focus, by definition, means avoiding temptations to be unfocused. You are the
lightning rod for every conceivable interest group wanting a piece of your energy. Resilient
leaders are able to sift through the assorted demands by outside forces, keeping thepotential distractions from siphoning resilience away from the core values that matter
most.
After a recent workshop I conducted, one superintendent participant called me aside and
said, "I'm finally coming to terms with the reality that I can't be all things to all people. I
realize I must be absolutely clear in my own mind about what matters most to me and
resist the temptation to chase other things just because they are the hot topics of the
moment."
> Maintain perspective for the long haul.
Unfortunately, most school system leaders feel pressure to focus on the urgent at the
expense of the most important. To strengthen your resilience as a leader, relentlessly
remind yourself, "where do I want this organization to be three years from now? What are
the strategies, behaviors and attitudes necessary to help us get there?"
Another way to help you maintain perspective for the long haul is to find ways to celebrate
the small wins along the way. In this instance, I'm referring to you personally celebrating
the small wins you have achieved.
In your leadership role, you spend so much time focusing on helping others that you can
easily lose sight of the need to take stock of what you have done in the short run to move
the organization ahead in the long run. Give yourself permission to say, even if it is said
privately to yourself, "I am really proud about these things I have done to move us ahead in
the face of adversity."
Tolerating Ambiguity
* Strength No. 3: Remain flexible in how you get there.
A common resilience-draining tendency among school system leaders is to feel compelled
to adhere to every single strategy printed in the infamous strategic plan already approved.
Rigidity in focus needs the strong company of flexibility in strategy.
To help you increase your flexibility in how you get there, practice the following:
> Develop a high tolerance for ambiguity.
If you are like most school system leaders, your professional environment is full of
ambiguity. And leaders differ widely in how ambiguity affects their resilience. If you are
one who needs clarity, certainty and predictable outcomes to function effectively, the
inevitably ambiguous world of school system leaders will become a drain on your
resilience.
If, on the other hand, you are tolerant of new, unfamiliar situations and you are willing to
act on incomplete, apparently contradictory information, then your high tolerance for
ambiguity will actually strengthen your resilience.> Recover quickly from setbacks.
As a school system leader, you will have setbacks. As mentioned in Strength No. 1, the
harsh reality is that things won't always develop as you would like. A significant difference
between resilient and nonresilient leaders is how they choose to handle the defeat.
If the school board unanimously defeats your latest administrative reorganization
proposal, first give yourself permission to be disappointed. It's even OK to wallow in a little
self-pity, temporarily. A major key to resilience is how quickly you pull yourself out of the
mire and find flexible strategies for moving ahead despite the setback.
> Be willing to see diverse perspectives.
Usually, school system leaders invest considerable time and anguish in searching for the
most effective path to achieve systemwide goals. About the time the charted path meets
approval, however, outside forces wreak havoc with the carefully constructed steps for
achieving the goal. Nonresilient leaders fall in the victim trap of blaming and stubbornly
attempting to push their agenda forward without serious consideration of alternative
paths. Resilient leaders pay attention to the messages sent by these imposing forces and
search for ways to incorporate diverse perspectives without giving up on the ultimate goals
established.
Pro-active Behavior
* Strength No. 4: Act rather than react.
Adversity can bring out the competitive spirit in all of us. In particular, school system
leaders rise to the top of the organization partially because they have a track record for
prevailing under adverse conditions.
Sometimes the virtue of prevailing backfires when it depletes your resilience and weakens
your effectiveness for facing adversity in the future. There are, though, pro-active strategies
you can implement that increase the likelihood your resilience account will become
stronger, not weaker.
> Recognize when change is inevitable.
The song lyrics popularized by Kenny Rogers directly apply to school system leaders. You
do indeed need to know when to hold them, when to fold them, when to walk away and
when to run. In the face of adversity, sometimes you have to let go of the old way of doing
things. Rigid and blind adherence to the old way of doing things can prove detrimental to
your resilience account.
As a concrete example, the yoke of state-imposed standards is here and has no intention of
going away. In your role as school system leader, you have a choice. You can try ignoring
the state standards, hoping they will go away. Or you can recognize that state standards
likely won't go away in the foreseeable future and proceed to develop strategies that moveyour district from the victim status to the position of taking charge of making standards
work for, not against you.
Clearly, taking the offensive is more resilience-building than remaining defensive.
> Take risks in spite of potentially adverse consequences.
A nonresilient strategy can be seen in school system leaders who don't want to risk the
possible fallout from unpopular actions, especially under adverse conditions. At times, the
reasoning goes like this: "The adversity we're facing is bad enough without my taking
action that will possibly make matters worse."
In contrast, a resilient strategy used by school leaders is to realize that taking action, even
at the risk of negative consequences, can turn out to be resilience building in the long run. If
your actions are consistent with what you value, the long-term payoff for you and the
organization is a greater sense of confidence that resilience points are being spent in a
manner that matters most, aligning actions and values, irrespective of the consequences.
> Invent new approaches to move ahead in adverse conditions.
Sometimes everything you learned about leading change gets thrown out of the window
when unexpected adversity hits. For instance, what if the stable board leadership you
enjoyed and counted on for 10 years is wiped out overnight during a board election. The
new board ran on a platform of fresh ideas, not old, stale strategic plans.
As a school system leader, you are faced with being victim or architect. You can choose to
argue for the so-called old strategic plan adopted three years ago by the old board. Or you
can find new approaches to capitalize on the energy of the new board and the sentiment of
the community that elected them. Who knows, inventing new approaches may invigorate
your own resilience as you grow from the experience?
Conservation Efforts
* Strength No. 5: Apply resilience-conserving strategies during tough times.
Some leaders become lost when faced with confusing information and multiple demands
that can't be met to everyone's satisfaction. Resilient school system leaders find ways to
conserve their resilience in the following ways.
> Identify what's important in the face of confusing conditions.
You can waste precious resilience points by trying to respond incrementally to the
multiple, competing demands of various stakeholder groups. Or you can consolidate what
appears to be several unrelated demands on your resilience by finding common themes
that allow you to more efficiently direct your energy and the energy of the organization.Suppose, for example, technology advocates want more computers in the schools, back-to-
basics advocates want more drill and practice, and gifted education advocates want more
vertical and horizontal enrichment. Rather than chasing each set of demands
independently, how can you find patterns that incorporate these multiple demands into a
common initiative designed to improve student learning?
> Don't waste energy on resilience-draining issues.
Sometimes school system leaders create their own adversity by embracing every good idea
proposed. Hidden inside every good idea lurks a mountain of surprises.
Imagine a well-intentioned group presents you with its good idea to create an open-
enrollment plan so parents have a choice of teachers and schools. What seems like a good
idea at the time turns into adversity as the teachers' union, principals' association and the
parent-teacher organization each argues against the good idea for widely disparate, yet
very sound reasons.
The ultimate impact of this good idea turns out to be bad news as you are forced into your
firefighting role.
You have an obligation to your own resilience and the resilience of the organization to
anticipate hidden adversity and simply not waste time on issues that will waste resilience.
> Know where to go for your own resilience support.
There exists the implicit expectation and accompanying pressure for school system leaders
to hang tough during tough times. Unfortunately, hanging tough too often translates into
hanging tough alone. And repeatedly facing adversity alone can prove debilitating to your
personal resilience.
You need to recognize when to ask others for help. More importantly, you need to know the
sources available for help. As I discuss in the recent book published by AASA, The Anguish
of Leadership, if school system leaders are doing their jobs right they are going to put rocks
in their pocket. The cumulative weight of these rocks can take its toll on resilience.
Therefore, you need to do whatever it takes to conserve your resilience during adversity,
even if it means taking the risk to reach out for help. For example, one regional group of
superintendents told me they met monthly in a session facilitated by a trained psychologist.
The sole purpose of the monthly session was to help the leaders sharpen their strategies
for moving ahead in the face of adversity.
Thoughts Count
Clearly, there is no single, magic checklist for strengthening resilience. There are, however,
two central points to guide you in this direction.

First, keep in mind that it's not so much what you do, it's how you think about what you do
that makes all the difference. The five resilience strengths offered here are designed to help
you think about what you do.
Second, keep in mind that people don't choose to be nonresilient. They simply choose not
to do what it takes to become resilient. Your challenge is to accept the responsibility for
doing whatever it takes to move ahead in the face of adversity. By accepting this
responsibility you create a more resilient world for you and your organization.
Jerry Patterson is an associate professor of educational leadership at University of Alabama
at Birmingham, 901 13th St. S., Birmingham, Ala. 35294. E-mail: [email protected]