Leadership

On Saturday, I attended my first day of classes at UM-Flint in preparation for a Master of Public Administration degree. One class I’m taking is called “The Principalship.” Our instructor is a retired educator with over thirty years of experience as a principal and superintendent of schools. He made a big point of stressing that school leadership is a “messy business” in many ways. Sometimes being a leader means having to confront and remove a poor teacher, or to stand firm in support of a teacher being unfairly criticized by the community. Our textbook also begins by stressing that the best quality of a principal is moral leadership, namely, having the heart, head, and hands for the job. The leader needs to have the heart—caring concern and will; the head—the knowledge and intellect; the hands—the practical skill to do what is necessary, even if it is distasteful.

The other course is called “Introduction to Policy and Public Administration.” The head of the program also discussed the nature of effective leadership by using the Hurricane Katrina disaster as an example. He had heard that the New Mexico contingent of the National Guard was ready to be deployed, was on site, but nobody gave them the order to go in and help. His point is that sometimes a leader has to have the courage to do what is necessary in a crisis, even if it means violating some protocol or chain of command.

As I write this, the country is honoring the memory of those who perished in the attacks now known simply as 9-11. Four years ago, the reeling country looked with admiration on the courage and leadership showed by President Bush and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. But with the past two weeks, it seems as though anyone in a leadership capacity—New Orleans’ mayor, Louisiana’s governor, and President Bush are all under fire for a lack of courageous leadership. What seems to be a big difference is the performance of the local government officials. The city had a plan to evacuate all of the poor who owned no means of transportation by using city transit busses and school busses—but the mayor seemed to freeze, and the pictures of hundreds of busses under four feet of water are the evidence of a paralysis of leadership. Only the governor can call the National Guard to be deployed, but she did not do so. However, when the Red Cross and Salvation Army wanted to rush to provide food and water to the survivors stranded in the Superdome, the state homeland security department refused--all because they didn’t want people to get the idea that they could stay in the Superdome. One can only guess at this point how many casualties there will be as a result of such paralysis of leadership.

Leaders are, for better or worse, held accountable for the performance of their subordinates. Think of how many head coaches have been fired due to the performance of their teams. Did the coach go out there and throw the interception or miss the free throw? Or how many battles have been lost, not due to the poor planning or deployment by the commander, but because some lieutenant on a hill somewhere froze or lost heart and failed to execute his orders? At the battle of Gettysburg, the pivotal battle in this country’s pivotal war, the colonel who led the 20th Maine,Joshua Chamberlain, held the flank on Little Round Top even after exhausting the supply of ammunition. Had a less courageous leader been in place, the battle and the war might have gone completely differently.

Let’s say that a tornado warning was sounded in our school. We have an emergency plan. We drill it. But let’s say that, when the tornado struck, a teacher didn’t hear the warning because the students were acting noisily, or perhaps the teacher thought it was just a drill and decided to ignore it because there was too much material left to cover in that day’s lesson. If all those children died when the tornado struck, who would be held accountable? Of course, the teacher—but so would the principal. It may seem unfair, but part of leadership means to make sure that your staff takes these issues seriously and can act properly and with courage in a real crisis.

The Bible tells us “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account.(Hebrews 13:17)” We are also commanded to offer "requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving for kings and all those in authority, that we might live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness (I Timothy 2:1-2)” How has your verbal treatment of your leaders been? Some find it their favorite pastime—to criticize the President, to complain about their principal and his enforcement of the rules, to blame all the problems in a church on the pastor. Some students take the same approach in their criticism of their student council and class officers. But leadership is a lonely position. Let’s try to hold each other accountable and whenever we hear a complaint about a leader, be ready to offer a prayer and a word of encouragement.