The leader accepts responsibility for personal and
organizational results. Consider leaders
you have worked with and the scripts provided at the informed, intentional and
inspired levels. Share some examples (no
names) of your experiences with various leaders. Consider where your accountability skills
fall; informed, intentional or inspired and discuss.
Reply to at least one other person.
Reply to at least one other person.
My wife's grandfather was a German airplane mechanic in WWI. He wanted to be a pilot, but was too short. German airplane mechanics had to be accountable for their work by test flying the airplane after their work was complete. If their work was shoddy, they might crash and die, the ultimate in accountability. My wife's grandfather must have done his work well; he flew some of the earliest biplanes and lived to tell about it.
ReplyDeleteThe best leaders with whom I've worked have had a shared vision of team. The success of the team or organization was of prime importance. Feedback, positive or negative, was seen as a way of getting better.
In athletics, you often learn more from a loss than a win. If you win, nothing may need to change. If you lose, you are forced to look at what went wrong. Mistakes may be magnified. The best teams will come closer together and redouble efforts to improve. The best coaches will look at their own contribution to the loss and admit when they were wrong. None of this is used to cast blame, but rather to improve for the next game.
The best teams may not win every game, but typically improve steadily throughout the season. They find the strengths of their players and put their players in positions to maximize their opportunity for success. If needed skills are lacking, good coaches don't give up on their players; they try to teach those skills. This also requires a good faith effort on the part of the player in question to try to learn these skills to the best of their ability.
I tend to think and speak in terms of "we." Our successes and failures occur together as a team. Hopefully, the collective wisdom of IEP teams helps us make the right decisions for kids. Sometimes, we make mistakes and need to rectify them, but with each mistake comes opportunity for growth and for learning, so that the next time a similar situation arises, we can make a more fully informed decision.
To be a better IEP team, each team member needs to have ownership. If members are disengaged, we may not make the best decisions for kids. This is why it is important that the parents of our students and the students with whom we work feel that they are empowered to think and speak their minds. When team members are passionate about the work we perform, data should be available to indicate our level of success. In a past entry, I included John Donne's "No Man Is an Island." Success needs to equally shared and we can be equally proud when our teams successfully help students, but when the bell tolls, it tolls for each of us.
The search for Truth is an essential part of Accountability. I like Science because, at it's essence, it is a search for Truth. Science continually tries to prove or disprove our latest thinking. Recently, gravity waves were detected and, for the first time, fully documented. Gravity waves were one of the predictions to come from Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. This was a success for the individuals who created the detectors and a posthumous success for Albert Einstein, but really it was a success for all of us. As humanity continues to climb toward its future, we are pushed to be open-minded, to look at data, and to strive for better. Our losses occur when we engage in warfare and when, in spite of our intelligence and ability to reason, we fail to anticipate problems that arise from our decisions. Hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of the past in not continually reinventing the wheel. History will judge us not only as individuals, but as a society as well. Hopefully our ancestors 1000 years from now will view us in a kindly light.
Whoa!!! What a way to hold someone accountable! Making your wife's grandparent fly the planes he repaired to ensure that they were say is a huge way to ensure that his work was quality. How scary is that?!?!? What if everyone still had that approach of you try it and see how it works before you tell me it is fixed or ready to go?
DeleteJamie if that was the case I feel that many people would make different decisions or think them out a lot longer, before they put an idea into place. For example I have a principle who changes schedules all the time. If he had to follow those schedules would he still make all the changes to them that he does???
DeleteNow that's accountability :) Could that be akin to writing an IEP you would be happy to have implemented for your child?
DeleteAccountability is a big part of my job. "The buck stops here!" I am accountable for the decisions I make both at work and in life. Get rid of the baggage, it does absolutely no good to blame others. If you say it, do it. Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping just to make a current situation easier. Treat all people with grace and dignity and realize they may be going through tough times we know nothing about.
ReplyDeleteMarcy-
DeleteI liked that you mentioned taking accountability for your actions at work AND in life. I'm so tired of reading articles and seeing things on the news about people who think the world owes them everything. And I get sooooo irritated at people I have to work with who have that same attitude (Mostly parents and a couple students). I bite my tongue and take deep breaths, but all I want to do is shake them and yell. Ok... I'm going to go ahead and stop this negative rant before I raise my blood pressure to an unhealthy level (Says the person who typed in a previous post that 1 of their talents was finding the positives in situations, haha! :-) )
Brittney, I agree that part of the problem with lack of accountability includes those people who feel that "the world owes them everything." I've often thought about the concept of entitlement. Entitlement may be the opposite of accountability. It seems that sometimes the poor in our society feel entitled to support while the wealthy feel entitled to have their way as well. Meanwhile, the middle class attempt to hold it all together.
DeleteEthically, the wealthy have an obligation to the poor to provide support and the poor have an obligation to the wealthy to do their best with the resources given in an attempt to reach a point at which support is no longer necessary. I think that some of the backlash in our society stems from those who are wealthy coming to the conclusion that the progress of the poor has been minimal in spite of the resources that have been expended.
I see education as being part of the solution. The adage that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish comes into play. Education can lift a person and improve their way of life. However, it is imperative that those to whom education is offered take advantage of the opportunity.
This year, we had a student to whom a Kepley math teacher attempted explanation on how to reach solution to a problem. The student responded by telling the teacher that since she knew how to do the problem why didn't she do it for him. This student, who is fairly intelligent and capable, comes from generational poverty. He is an example of the adage that "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." He is not taking advantage of the opportunity for the free appropriate public education offered by society, does not have ownership, and is not being accountable. As a result, he may be doomed as an adult to be dependent on what society has to offer. If society decides that it can no longer afford its ever increasing debt and decides to limit its support to only those incapable of working, he may come to regret that he did not take advantage of FAPE.
As school psychologist’s we work with various types of leaders. There are those leaders that are delegators. They would rather pass the buck rather than take responsibility for the outcome of an action. I find these leaders are more standoffish and are hard to collaborate with. They don’t want to take ownership if something goes wrong. There are those leaders that take ownership regarding the outcome of their work and the team members’ work. In my experience these leaders have confidence in their team and have the confidence that the team will make the right decision.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I feel that I fall between the intentional and inspired in terms of accountability. I have confidence in the teams that I work with. I take ownership if something goes wrong within an IEP meeting. I try to always be the peacemaker between parents and teachers. I also feel in order to be an effective team everyone must take some responsibility in their work.
I have worked with a principal who was excellent at delegating to avoid responsibility. She would get an idea and then assign everyone else to do all the work. After the work was done, she would take credit for everything done. It was very frustrating and annoying to listen to her gloat. On the other hand, I have worked with leaders who were really focused on working as a team and accepting responsibility when things go wrong. I feel that I am in between the intentional and inspired level as far as accountability goes. At Syracuse, I have been responsible for developing the SIT team. I take great pride in this team. At the end of the year, we asked teachers for feedback on how we could better support them or ideas for making things better. I welcome constructive criticism. I do not care for criticism in the negative way; however, I appreciate and accept constructive criticism. I am also not afraid to say whoops it was a bad idea and lets try something different.
ReplyDeleteEach member of the IEP team is an important member. It is up to the team to make the best decision for the student. I have enjoyed working with most of the IEP team members.
Professionally, I don’t know that there’s much of anything more frustrating than working for/with an irresponsible, unaccountable leader. Within HPEC, I feel like we have good leadership (Especially when compared to the stories I hear from employees in various coops outside of HPEC). However, in my buildings, I can think of a principal where, more times than not, the first thing I would always think after they talked with me was, “Ok, what’s your angle on this??? What are you getting out of this???” Awful, I know. But it seemed like in most, if not all, of the situations where we worked together, it was just this principal making decisions based on nothing more than covering their own butt. I remember one time, a parent got SUPER upset about how this principal acted in a staffing, so the parent called the superintendent and told them what had happened. A couple days later the principal comes to me and basically tries to butter me up so I would defend them to the superintendent. During the process, the principal was lying to me about things, trying to blame their own teachers and other HPEC employees, and even throwing it back on the parent. Needless to say, I was BEYOND frustrated.
ReplyDeleteI feel like my accountability skills are probably a mixture of the intentional and inspired levels. I like working as part of a team and will take responsibility for things, but also feel that others need to be willing to do the same. I also feel better if the decisions being made are based in something solid, which was mentioned in the intentional level.
I agree that HPEC has good leadership and overall is a great organization to work for. I think sometimes we all get so overwhelmed and tend to focus on the negatives of HPEC, when in reality we have it pretty darn good.
DeleteAccountability. We have been talking some about how HPEC needs to move back to a more forward thinking, creative organization. I have to accept some responsibility for the fact that we have changed since the days of Gary and Zoe. I think they were risk takers and sometimes I am a big wienie. Gotta take some risks...
ReplyDeleteI agree with Brittney, my accountability skills are a mix of intentional and inspired level. Being a part of a team means that everyone will have to take responsibility for the decisions being made and carried out.
ReplyDeleteI have worked with some great leaders and with some awful ones. I remember I was brand new and DCF needed to be called. The principle asked me in front of everyone to call and stood with the secretary, teacher and one other person I don't remember who watching me make the call. Not a good leader at all.
I feel that my accountability is somewhere between the intentional and inspired levels. Most of the teams I work with have collective, shared responsibility in the work we complete. I do take ownership and responsibility in my work and in leading IEP meetings.
ReplyDeleteOne of the indicators listed in the inspired level, is also one of my pet-peeves - using the pronoun "we". I cringe when people take personal credit or claim for something that was in fact a group effort, or idea.
A quality that is a pet peeve of mine, is when someone does not take responsibility for anything. If you ask them a question or for their opinion, they always reflect it back to you ("Whatever you think would be best.") Also, when they do make a mistake, they constantly blame someone else. These people tend to lie or change the facts to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. Drives me CRAZY!!
ReplyDeleteSince this is an area that is a pet peeve of mine, I sometimes tend to take responsibility even when I don't feel I contributed to the problem. If someone feels I might even have contributed in a minute way to the problem, I want to be accountable for it. I believe a good leader publicly uses "I" when things go wrong and "we" when things go right. I say publicly, as even though the leader needs and should shoulder much of the blame, team members who did not do their jobs or contribute need to be held accountable.
I wonder if there is trust missing somewhere if someone feels they need to "cover their hiney".
DeleteI've worked with a variety of leaders as well. Most that stand out in my mind have been intentional in their understanding of accountability. I tend to remember the traits I'd like to emulate, so I'm calling to mind few that took credit where none was due or absolved themselves with dishonesty, although I do remember a few that would "pad" the results to reflect favorably upon themselves. In most any situation involving more than one person, there is a joint responsibility.
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