Leading with Soft Skills

A superintendent’s early-life struggles form his impactful leadership built on relationships and a fearless sense of empathy and transparency

The young boy sat on the floor next to a classmate, their hands jostling back and forth in typical childhood banter. Their actions drew their teacher’s ire, with the boy receiving an unexpected harsh rebuke.

“You are dumb, ugly and will never amount to anything.”

The words were more than stinging. They added just one more line to a story of adversity fueled by an unhealthy family life, leading the 2nd grader to do something few do at that age: drop out of school.

The boy never knew his father. His mother’s drug addiction and stepfather’s physical abuse only added to the burdens. He and five siblings became wards of the state, split up among relatives. Two are now dead. His mother succumbed to a drug overdose, the tragic end of a troubled life cut far too short.

The boy navigated his difficult road silently for years, sleeping on sofas and in cars while trying to find himself and a better life. He resumed school and eventually moved back in with his supposedly clean mother.

They butted heads again when she demanded his first paycheck from a part-time job go toward paying rent. He refused, knowing she would use the money for drugs, and instead went to a nearby store to get bologna and bread to make sandwiches for himself and his siblings. He returned, only to see his belongings being thrown out of a second-floor window.

The struggles impacted his academics into high school, eventually forcing the young basketball player with NBA dreams to miss six games due to ineligibility. The spiral led him to confide in a teacher, who told him he was athletically and academically talented but was wasting it by being mad at the world.

The subsequent conversations, filled with compassion and advice from the teacher and a growing cadre of caring adults, changed everything. A record-breaking college basketball career followed, and though none of the five invitations to an NBA tryout camp resulted in a playing contract, the foundation for a teaching career gave the now-22-year-old a positive path in life.

That boy was me.

Sharing Fearlessly

Those struggles have shaped not just my career, but my life. I surely didn’t realize it then, but the hard road traveled showcased the indispensable value of soft skills. Today, I am superintendent of one of the 40 largest school systems in the nation, with 85,000 students in 130 schools.

Leadership is about academic knowledge. In a world of continual controversy and animosity, however, the most effective, successful and impactful leaders are those who build relationships, show value and fearlessly exhibit empathy, honesty, transparency, vulnerability and resiliency.

That’s what I try to demonstrate to students, employees and leaders of community organizations daily. It’s why I am fearless about sharing my story.

It’s why my first budgetary move after arriving at Anne Arundel County Public Schools in 2022 was to engage our communities in a crusade to raise embarrassingly low starting teacher salaries. We prevailed because we offered genuine inclusion and connection, building the beginnings of a support base that has buoyed us since.

It’s why we’ve told our data story as often as possible, providing “the good, the bad and the ugly,” as I say. If people don’t know where we are and where we want to go, they can’t help us get there.

It’s also why I have unwaveringly proclaimed — and firmly believe — that every single voice has value. If we are to be “a school community where everyone can belong, grow and succeed” — the clearly articulated vision of our district’s strategic plan — we must respectfully listen to every voice, even when we disagree.

Raising Eyebrows

As I sought to meet with a multitude of groups early in my tenure, I raised more than a few eyebrows — both inside and outside of our county — by intentionally reaching out to our local Moms for Liberty chapter and asking for a meeting. Its members have students in our school system after all, so why shouldn’t their opinions matter? They had felt dismissed. I was determined to change that.

By coincidence, I met on that same morning with the Coalition for LGBTQ+ Students. I told both groups the same thing: Everybody will be heard and can get a win of some kind, but nobody is going to get everything they want.

The result? Two productive discussions that left both groups feeling they would always have a seat at the table. The subsequent Facebook post from a Moms for Liberty member said it all: “He was genuine and open and I was shocked by how well things went. Our conversation was really uplifting. As down as things have felt at times over the past few years with AACPS, this meeting really made me hopeful! He wants our group to be an ally with AACPS, and in fact he reached out to us! He is meeting with all stakeholder groups so he will also meet with groups that oppose most of (our) priorities, but just the fact that he recognizes our perspective is a major step up from where we were last year.”

The collateral built from conversations such as those has paid tremendous dividends over the last three years and has helped us avoid the type of rancor and disruption seen elsewhere in the country. We even brought both groups together to meet and hear directly from the other. Members of both of those groups also were part of the large steering committee that helped to create our strategic plan.

Healthy Discourse

The stance that all voices have value and should be treated respectfully is one that must be reinforced. The first such opportunity came at my initial board of education meeting when a parent angrily voiced her frustrations about several issues, at times screaming over the board president’s admonitions. Moments later, I offered words I wanted to clearly reinforce: “Tone matters.”

“Healthy discourse is OK,” I continued. “It’s what makes this a great country. And when you can’t have that because you’re being belittled, because you’re being spoken to like you’re a peon or a nobody, that’s unacceptable.”

More recently, a school board member characterized my decision to limit recess on our 12 early dismissal days to concentrate on our new elementary literacy curriculum as “abusive.” As someone whose childhood was infected with abuse and neglect, I felt compelled to speak for myself and countless students living in similar circumstances.

“We can disagree about decisions, but there’s a line,” I said at the next board meeting. “I would never describe any decision from a member of this board as abusive, and I won’t sit silently and have my decisions characterized that way.”

Building trust and speaking truth has enabled our principals to be unafraid of school visits, even the unannounced ones I make frequently. I routinely pull aside not just teachers and administrators to ask about the stories behind the data, but custodians, food service workers and secretaries as well. Each is an opportunity to relate, learn and grow. When conversations turn to results, trust that pays enormous dividends is bankrolled exponentially.

Two of the major complaints I heard in early school visits revolved around our difficult-to-use Learning Management System and the way we addressed needs of special education students. I listened, then acted. We’re replacing the LMS and have reorganized our administrative structure to create an assistant superintendent for specialized instruction and early intervention services. Each is a promise fulfilled, and a recognition that input can lead to change.

We’ve also been able to enact more restrictive cellphone guidelines and introduce new accountability into grading regulations this year, not just without much opposition, but with the support of families, students and the unions representing our teachers and principals.

Soft skills are vital on the front end and equally so on the back end. Because the initial involvement is widespread, the credit for the results must be equally so. Three straight years of increases on AP exam scores and attaining the highest increases in our region on state assessments this past year aren’t the work of Mark Bedell alone. They are a collective effort, and the credit must be shared.

Most Meaningful

That strategic plan? It’s a community’s plan of what they want to see in our school district. If we limit the pool for genuine involvement, we artificially limit the potential for progress.

Decades from now, few will remember who presided over our school district. What they will remember is the future the school district — their work included — created for our students. And if we do this right, those students in our care today will be just as involved in caring for the next generation. n

Mark Bedell is superintendent of Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Annapolis, Md.