Eight Key Qualities of Outstanding School Leaders

The role of management is undervalued in public education, but it is a skill set vital to all principals. While most other sectors and high-performance organizations invest in building a sound management structure, the education sector continues to rely on teacher autonomy or raw talent. In fact, great teachers are made, not born, and developing teacher talent, as well as managing the overall instructional process, requires highly skilled professional leaders. Strong management is the key to great schooling, and while the context is particular, all the managerial skills associated with high-performance organizations are critical to education as well.

At Success Academy, we have spent the last decade refining what it means to be a great school leader and how we can train our people to achieve that aim. Because we have rapidly scaled—going from one to 34 schools in nine years—and are planning for even faster growth in next 10, we have made leadership training a priority.

Here are some of the qualities that I believe make for successful school leaders.

1) Organization. This seems very basic, but to be effective, a leader needs to be highly organized. Lack of organization can make the work nearly impossible; losing track of projects and personnel spells disaster. Is everyone on the same page? Are people working at cross-purposes? A manager has to know what balls are in the air and have a plan to catch them when they start to fall. Keeping sight of the big picture, and resisting the temptation to get mired in detail, helps everyone stay on task. To be effective, principals must be able to manage their time and be disciplined about dividing it according to priorities, rather than wasting it on distractions.

2) Relationship building. An effective principal needs to be good at bonding—with teachers, with families  and students, and with junior leaders. But beyond that, principals have to teach others how to bond, to create relationships where there are none or to build stronger relationships where they are weak. To motivate parents to actively engage in their children’s education (critically important to student success!), to inspire teachers to do the intense preparation needed for each lesson, to encourage scholars to give their best effort every day, there must be relationships of trust and respect through the community. That starts at the top.

3) High moral character. Principals have to make ethical decisions every day. Ethical pitfalls are all around, even in what may seem to be simple interactions. There’s the ethics of consulting with colleagues when determining policy; the ethics of confessing a mistake; the ethics of being honest with those down the management chain and with fellow managers. Developing high moral character is essential — without it, a leader cannot succeed, no matter how skillful he or she is.

4) Grit, fortitude, persistence. A quitter cannot be an effective leader. Persistence often makes the difference between those who are extraordinarily successful and those who are less so. Everyone makes mistakes; the question is, do they shut down and give up, or get back in the saddle and try again until they get it right? In schooling especially, the willingness to fail and correct course is of the utmost importance. This takes emotional fortitude, grit, and persistence — exactly what many of our scholars must have to succeed.

5) Self-awareness and psychological maturity. Effective leaders need to be able to rise above base instincts and act, or react, in a reasoned and mature manner. This does not mean ignoring one’s own emotions, but recognizing emotions and bad feelings for what they are and not letting them dominate the lens through which one sees the world. A good principal models professional behavior and, leading by example, encourages others to do the same.

6) Emotional Intelligence. All great leaders are good at reading people. Having a team that is invested in a desired outcome allows a manager to drive results toward that goal, but getting there means considering each individual member of the team. It is essential to be able to sense when people have their back up, or are uncomfortable, or are not saying what they think. If a team member is resistant, why is that? Are someone’s buttons being pushed? A good leader adjusts his or her management style to the individual and the context they are operating in, ensuring everyone is on board. Then, together, they can focus on outcomes and work backward to achieve those goals.

7) Vision of educational excellence. This is key. Successful principals have an instinct about excellence. They know what great teaching and learning looks like. Mediocrity makes their skin crawl! This is not perfectionism. Rather, it is a vision of a school that sets a high bar and takes the steps needed to attain that goal. That vision has to be clear, strong, and explicit; it must be cultivated and constantly restated, because it is what allows leaders and their staff to correct course if things start to slip. Models of excellence are all around — it can be an entire organization, a single department or division, even a conversation between a leader and member of his or her team.

8) Ability to hold adults accountable. This is a biggie, and strong leaders need to be comfortable with this. Great teachers have no problem holding their kids accountable, but school leaders often feel it is a whole other ball game when it comes to adults. Holding adults — teachers, parents, junior administrators — accountable is difficult, especially for those who are, by nature, people pleasers. But it is impossible to lead without accountability. Holding responsible adults accountable engenders trust and respect for people who are mission-driven. Having the right culture and investing everyone in it is the best way to make sure everyone in the community meets expectations. Working backward from the kids and teaching and learning, and holding the adults accountable, is important because the kids and teaching and learning are so important.

Developing strong leadership skills can be difficult. It takes time, lots of thought, and a willingness to change. This is true whether you are a school principal, the head of a nonprofit organization, or the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Most of us are not born with these qualities; we have to learn them, develop them, and force ourselves to get better at them.

This is one reason Success Academy has created a new initiative, the Aspiring School Leaders Program. We believe we have developed one of the best principal training programs in the country, and we are recruiting educators with at least three years of instructional experience who want to become assistant principals — principals-in-training, really—and receive the practice and professional development that will allow them to hone their craft and, eventually, lead a Success Academy school of their own.

Building the skills and competencies needed to lead effectively takes commitment, practice, and time—which is why, for example, we give our teachers more than 400 hours of professional development every year. Through a combination of practical, hands-on experience, mentorship with constant coaching and feedback, formal professional development, and community and collaboration, our educators acquire the knowledge and instincts needed to set and keep the bar high while maintaining a joyful learning environment.

One of our founding principles is that children cannot be expected to learn unless the adults doing the teaching are themselves always learning. By fostering personal as well as professional growth, we instill in our leaders the strong managerial skills that enable a school to function at a high level and engage all members of the community—teachers, scholars, and families—in the service of one common goal: educating children.