(Questions to Ask Your Board)
The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. – Robert Greenleaf1
According to Greenleaf, those aspiring to leadership must choose first to serve, then to lead. This servant-leader mentality is why the military profession demands that its officers and noncommissioned officers learn first how to obey authority as follower, then how to exercise authority as leader. A board must learn to serve the interests of the state that created it, the local authority (usually voters in the community) that selected its members, and the staff and students who look to it for leadership. For these two complementary roles (servant and leader) to work together in one body, they need to be kept in balance. Consider a story (from Hermann Hesse) about a servant named Leo, who:
…accompanies the party as the servant who does their menial chores, but who also sustains them with his spirit and his song. He is a person of extraordinary presence. All goes well until Leo disappears. Then the group falls into disarray and the journey is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant Leo. The narrator, one of the party, after some years of wandering, finds Leo and is taken into the Order that had sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had known first as servant, was in fact the titular head of the Order, its guiding spirit, a great and noble leader. – Robert Greenleaf
Greenleaf’s ideal of a servant-leader is one who emulates Leo. Committing to the servant-leader role is not a matter of adopting mutually exclusive personalities that pull in opposite directions. Such commitment requires balance in playing two roles simultaneously: servant and leader. Greenleaf specifically addresses the role of boards as servant-leaders:
Trustees are accountable to all parties at interest for the best possible performance of the institution in the service of the needs of all constituencies – including society at large. They are the holders of the charter of public trust for the institution. – Robert Greenleaf
Like Leo, the effective board chooses first to serve all who are or may be affected by its leadership. For the school board they are: the state and local community to which it officially answers; organizational members of the system it leads; and the students served by that system.
Before directing others on their duties, a board that aspires to lead must first acknowledge its responsibility to answer for all aspects of district performance – everything the district does or fails to do – and for its own performance as a board. As trustee of the public school system, it commits to serve the state (whose legislative action created the board and is therefore the source of its legal authority) as well as the local community on whose behalf it serves. It also dedicates itself to serve customers for whose benefit it is given that authority. But first, it accepts a moral obligation as leader of the organization to serve the district staff over whom it exercises authority.
Scenario: The Upper Peninsula community elected two new board members in the November election. At the first meeting in December the new members were given the oath of office by the superintendent. Then they were seated, and the board proceeded to elect its slate of officers for the coming year. At the conclusion of the board meeting, when it was time for announcements and board comments, Julio reflected on the importance of their own oath of office, commenting that it would be an even more meaningful ceremony if incumbent board members renewed the oath, alongside their newest colleagues. At the next regular board meeting he brought a motion to include a joint oath-taking in the ceremony whenever new members are seated. After discussion the board voted in favor of the motion.
This board took very seriously its collective commitment as a board to serve and decided to make that commitment a very public whole-board statement.
Some school boards hold a misguided ‘legislative’ view of their role:
Many school board members bring a constituency representation mindset to the board room, feeling more committed to dealing with the needs and interests of particular constituencies than to the concept of the board as a ‘corporate’ governing entity. This…obviously militates against the idea of the board’s collective accountability for building a solid working relationship with its superintendent, or even governing for that matter. My guess is that this essentially legislative view of school boards is basically the result of their being elected; it is certainly true of city councils and other elected governing bodies, which tend not to work together naturally as cohesive teams, and far less true of appointed or self-appointed boards. – Doug Eadie2
The effective board accepts complete responsibility for organizational success or failure. It understands that it must work as one and knows the community of citizens to whom it must answer, and whose interests, needs, and values the board must represent. The board commits as a body to the oath each of its members takes upon assuming office, and its role as servant of both the state and the local community. It also accepts a moral obligation to serve the staff over whom it exercises authority.
Commitment to serve sets up the board for success because it will be motivated to listen before speaking, to serve before being served.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in these blog entries are informed by references cited herein, and the experiences of the author. Your comments are welcome additions to the conversation.
Excerpt from:
- A Framework for School Governance (2018), Rick Maloney
Additional References:
- 1Servant Leadership (1977), Robert Greenleaf
- 2Five Habits of High Impact School Boards (2004), Doug Eadie
NEXT: #4 – (In Order to Serve) Is Your Board Willing to Lead?
Sadly most governance adhere to a toxic culture of self over service and loyalty over competence! It would be nice if governance would hold their superintendent accountable for student academic achievement! Nah! That ain’t gonna happen as it is all about them!