Sharing ideas on Education, Leadership and Life



Monday, October 11, 2010

Helping Others to Reach Their Goals





I just read this post http://ht.ly/2RLX3- by Leadership Freak AKA Dan Rockwell about finding ones Sweet Spot.
Here are some quotes from the post:
“Finding the sweet spot may take patience and persistence.
Finding the sweet spot is about helping others reach their own goals and achieve their own dreams.
In my opinion, the greatest obstruction to finding another’s sweet spot is imposing our own agenda on others.”

I asked myself how can educators or more specifically Principals help teachers reach their own goals and achieve their own dreams?

Then as fate would have it I was listening to Deborah Kenny being interviewed by Bill Cosby and one of the points she made was about how she empowers her teachers to make certain decisions on their own about the curriculum etc.

Based on that interview and some of my own thoughts I came up with a list of what I can do as an administrator to help my teachers reach their goals without as Rockwell said imposing my own agenda on them.

1. Empower them. Let them have control over what goes on in their classroom
2. Find something they are passionate about and let them take the lead in that area. For example of one of the issues we have in my school is getting students more involved in our Prayer program ( we are a religious school) If a teacher had a certain passion about Prayer I would ask him/her to head up that committee
3. Offer choices for areas of Professional growth.
4. Be supportive
5 Value the contribution they make to the school and to the team. We are all individuals with different talents and everyone plays an important role. I often use a sports analogy in speaking with my students. Tom Brady may be a great quarterback but you can’t have a whole team of quarterbacks and if you do you probably wouldn’t win too many games. Every person is unique and important.

Akevy

2 comments:

  1. Akevy,

    This is a great post! These strategies are perfect for anyone in education, no matter where they are in the educational hierarchy. Building and developing relationships by utilizing these strategies can be extremely powerful.

    Keep up helping others to grow and develop!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Justin
    Thanks for the comment
    I have enjoyed your Tweets and blog posts as well
    Akevy

    ReplyDelete