Bring Back the Renaissance Leader

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Type: Article

Topics: Leadership Development, School Administrator Magazine

September 01, 2022

Appears in September 2022: School Administrator.

With complex problems rarely solved with simple solutions, organizational leaders today require problem-solving capacity mixed with creativity and humility

Nick Baughman is associate superintendent for teaching and learning for Community Unit School District 115 in Yorkville, Ill. PHOTO BY KRISTINE ROGOWSKI

The 2020s are a personalized, expertise-driven society. In this world, the art of the Renaissance leader has been lost, replaced by a need to fine-tune knowledge bases and engineer job descriptions into silos. Today’s organizations tend to hire specialists who master specific tasks. But that may be to their detriment because complex problems are not easily compartmentalized.

Enter the lessons of the global pandemic. A major public health crisis reinvigorated the polymath in us all, or at least the institutions and industries that flourished despite the challenges. In these professions, successful leaders began to weigh ideas versus experience, bravely letting go of tradition.

Public school districts, long centered on the power of community in a school building, were forced to plan for instruction that required physical separation, reduced class sizes and interrupted student attendance. The only way to offer in-person, hybrid and remote instruction was to let go of the traditional school model and look for new ideas in new places. This complex problem required leaders to lean on their employee teams in a broader sense, putting roles aside and placing ideas on the forefront.

This begs the question: Has the desire for organizations to develop leaders with specialized skills inhibited their ability to adapt? Renaissance leaders do not fit their staff members into silos. They appreciate multidimensionally skilled individuals and support bold action. To flourish, Renaissance leaders need problem solving, creativity and humility.

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Authors

Nick Baughman & Jennifer Waldvogel

About the Authors

Nick Baughman is the associate superintendent of Yorkville (Ill.) District 115.

Jennifer Waldvogel is a K-12 teacher on special assignment in Yorkville District 115.

Leadership Acts That Build Authenticity

The school district’s 25 curriculum and instruction leaders had gathered for their monthly meeting one late afternoon in mid-February to provide checks and balances on new programs and share information across the six elementary schools. Yet the meeting room sat depressingly silent with the educators sitting quietly with their laptops, staring into their screens, barely looking up.

The school district recently had required the use of a new districtwide assessment tool. Staff were feeling stressed about substitute teacher shortages, with our statewide bench-mark testing just around the corner. Everyone was generally exhausted from the tough nature of the 2021-22 school year.

Reading the mood of the room, it was hard to imagine this meeting was going to go well.

Professional meetings often are met with dread by those required to attend them. Whether we call them school district workshops, seminars, collaborations or retreats, they tend to run as a series of tasks, which can feel less like an opportunity to connect than a checklist to complete.

What can Renaissance leaders do to invigorate the meeting experience and use them as a launching pad for authentic connections?

Creating Connections

Renaissance leaders create authentic connections with a mix of humor, personal storytelling and candid admissions of professional struggle. In some groups, humor will reign. In others, sharing an endearing family story will win. And in the toughest of times, admitting fault, an effort that fell short of success or resulted in loss will open hearts and minds.

A Renaissance leader senses the level of trust and connectedness in the room before the meeting starts. If individuals are talking, laughing and sharing stories before the business begins, the group has developed trust and connectedness. If participants are silent and staring at their devices, they are either not connected or are dispirited. These signals can indicate how much time should be spent connecting in the beginning, middle and end of a meeting.

When leaders see the need for connection, how can they build it on the spot? Making time for small, directed conversation offers participants low-stakes avenues to network with one another. A leader might bring along a stack of index cards with personal questions. Divide the group into pairs and ask them to interview one another. The more specific and innocuous the questions, the better. During meetings, create frequent opportunities for staff members to rotate among those they work with and who takes the lead in sharing out to the full group.

Overcoming Blind Spots

Renaissance leaders demonstrate authenticity in meetings by identifying and admitting their blind spots. For passionate, global thinkers, detailed orientation may be a blind spot. For logical, linear thinkers, innovation orientation may be a blind spot. Wherever Renaissance leaders’ missing strengths lie, they can be articulated to the group in a way that invites authentic feedback. This feedback builds trust among leaders and colleagues.

In our school district’s teaching and learning department team meetings, we talk to each other about struggles in connecting, achieving goals and meeting deadlines. We ask for help and admit when we do not have the answers. This empowers the team to surround each member. As individuals, we have flaws, but as a team, we nearly always reach our goals.

Breaking Silence

Silence is an important signal that something is missing: trust, positive group dynamics or a sense of purpose. Rather than fearing silence, Renaissance leaders use silence as a guide for understanding the climate of the group. When a group is reluctant to share aloud, Renaissance leaders improve trust in the room by offering authentic thoughts and concerns of their own. Knowing that a leader also feels nervous about the future or stressed about the present goes a long way to break the tension.

Silence also can be transformed into a reflective, meditative space by looping a series of images or quotes on a projected screen alongside music. Invite group members to lean into a communicative silence and then reflect to a partner.