Building Capacity - Why It's Your Leadership Superpower

Despite grand visions and a willingness to take on an eclectic and boundaryless array of responsibilities as a school administrator, the truth is that no school leader can go at this alone. 

Not if you want to truly create a thriving community. 

Not if you want to sustain yourself as innovative, caring, and connected.

Not if you want to tend to your own health inside and out. 

Not if you want your school community to evolve, grow and repair the harms of the past. 

Even when you relate to the statements above and know they are true, you can find yourself like Sisyphus, pushing the massive boulder perpetually up the hill through a sheer force of will. Not realizing that the boulder’s greatest threat is not that it’s going to roll and crush your community, but that it’s going to slip and crush you. 

So, what’s the alternative? 

Intentionally making plans to build your capacity and those of others at your site. 

But how do you do that when the narrative (and reality) is that people are burnt out all across the educational landscape? Adding one more new role at best is met with apathy and at worst is met with hostility and rebellion. You yourself are feeling that on the eve of July 1st when new contracts start and lists of staff vacancies haunt the precious time you have away from the rhythms of school this summer. 

But you know that.

The injection of energy is to take a step back, go for a shaded walk alongside a river or in a city park, or out to the beach and think about the people on your team. Where do you see people who are ready for an injection of energy into their days and work lives? 

1. Think like a 3-year-old and get out of the “SHOULDS” in your head. When a three-year-old comes upon a crate of toys, their mind is all wonder and imagination. They pick up each toy and consider it from all angles. Sometimes they use it as intended, but more often, they completely repurpose the toy into a new item. A plastic red cup for the bath becomes their “wallet” and the wooden door that broke off the farm becomes their “phone”. If you think like a 3-year-old about the operations of your school you can likely find a way to open up time for someone to take on new leadership roles. 
1. What can be eliminated from the schedule? Just because it’s “always been done” doesn’t mean it needs to continue
2. What can be re-envisioned entirely? For example, you might have an afterschool homework club staffed by teachers paid hourly and very poorly attended. Is there a way that time can be better envisioned to serve students and some of the adults can be used to build their capacity for developing some school-wide ideas for in-class systems and routines that might keep kids from needing homework club at all?

1. Talk To The People Involved. You likely have something at your school focusing on the following * schoolwide behavior *MTSS or a school-wide intervention system *curriculum adoption or building of expertise,*and using data to drive instruction,  amongst other local initiatives. If each staff member is expected to develop expertise in the schoolwide systems, you will get the barest level of compliance possible. In the short bursts of time that the content is covered with the whole faculty. For each of the main initiatives at your site, after you’ve determined if they are a “must do” or “nice to do” brainstorm a few ways where you think so direct, personal, and job-embedded learning can occur. 
1. Talk to the people who come to mind who you would want to be the leader of their peers in this work. Talk to them about what excites them at the school. Tell them what you see in them and float the idea of repurposing some of the time for them to take on a role in the initiative.
2.  As the leader, consider how to develop their capacity to learn and lead. What can you do for them to boost their ability to design and facilitate a small meeting with peers? What can you do to capture their skills in the classroom and help them to share that with a wider audience at your school? 

Capacity building is intentional. It’s not writing down the actions and sending the list off to be handled. The people you are engaging need to feel supported in taking on the work as well. That comes from creatively re-assessing time and priorities and making an ask that is sustainable for a teacher. It should also not create a 14-hour day for you.

 And that gets to how you make this manageable. When you consider who to talk to and who you will plan to support, start with two people. You have a responsibility to keep proactive, clear, and reflective communication with them as they move into more leadership on your goal. Any more than two people and you will not be building capacity, you will be funneling tasks to someone else.

Once you find your rhythm, you will start to look at everything as an opportunity to build capacity. You will question the use of time and prudently audit out tasks and asks that don’t serve your larger goal. You will naturally reach out to more and more members of your staff until you ultimately have an interconnected campus with people teaching and leading in multiple spaces. That takes time to develop in a sustainable way. Celebrate the foundations of the first year this becomes your focus and build the years that follow. 

In time, you will see that you have higher retention of your staff who have been braided together into a true team who understands the interconnectedness of the parts. You will also see that no one is pushing a boulder up a hill. Everyone is helping one another to scale it as an entire school community.