Why Great Teachers Make Great Leaders

I know that my background designing, delivering, and evaluating participant-centered professional development programs for New York City educators prepared me deliciously for the focus of my current work- partnering with a broader range of emerging and evolving leaders to realize sustainable success in their respective businesses and careers. In Amanda Ripley's January/February 2010 The Atlantic article, "What Makes a Great Teacher?" Ripley summarizes the commonalities among great teachers. Her findings validate what I’ve always known intuitively yet have never put down in print. Being a successful teacher is one of the most important characteristics of being a successful leader. And perhaps not too surprisingly, teachers like leaders are evaluated based on the kind of measurable results they are able to actualize.

First, Ripley says that great teachers make big requests of their learners. They believe in their ability to achieve and that the most effective way to awaken underachievers’ often dormant abilities is for them to visualize success in a big, bold way.

Second, Ripley says that great teachers are constantly reinventing the way they do their work and ask learners to do theirs. She says that it’s vital to be engaged in a constant process of trying, reflecting, and trying again. Successful teachers are constant learners who make sure that they are on the lookout for what is working as much as for what is not working. When the latter emerges, they go to the root cause (e.g. their own delivery of instructions, students’ lack of foundational understanding, lack of engagement, etc.) and make the necessary changes to ameliorate it.

Third, successful teachers understand that it takes a team to achieve success. In the case of student achievement, it takes an active family. Teachers who spend a little time and energy to solicit parental participation at the beginning of a school year (by initiating phone, email, or face-to-face communication with parents/guardians at times when they are available) spend less time contacting these adults later in the year as fewer student behavioral and achievement problems emerge.

Fourth, great teachers don’t necessarily work “hard,” but they do work “smart.” They understand that while there is always some kind of work they can undertake, they organize their time around pursuing actions that are going to get the results they are seeking.

Fifth, teachers deemed successful work backwards. They understand that once you identify where you want a group of learners to be and how you will assess whether they have gotten there, you can design curriculum backwards through to your first lesson. This ensures that each element of your instructional design and delivery both build on themselves and lead to the destination at which you are seeking to arrive.

Sixth, great teachers reinforce what is in their control. This is more than employing the proverbial “the glass is half full” mentality. Thoughts fuel feelings, and feeling motivate actions. The teachers who empower their students to achieve model for them how to be resilient; they identify where their actions can facilitate change and they make their impact there. And for that which feels in anyway beyond their control, they adjust their thinking and response to those events so that their energy is positive and catalyzing success for themselves and others.

On the flipside, Ripley says that an enigmatic personality or extraordinary knowledge of curriculum have little to no bearing on teacher success. (What might that say about “great” leadership?) What’s more important is whether a teacher can shift his/her persona and style to meet the needs of his/her students. Sometimes s/he must be a cheerleader. Other times a partner. And on occasion, a disciplinarian. Similarly, a great teacher does not need to be an expert in his/her curriculum. S/he must understand how to break it down in a way that students are able to absorb it, retain it, and reapply it in future academic and professional work.

As New York City continues to recruit more and more business leaders to be principals of schools, I’m curious why so few corporations, small businesses, and government and community organizations are turning to successful educators for their next generation of leadership. Fingers crossed that this newest research not only gets into the hands of the Obama administration (which it has) but also crosses over into boardrooms, think tanks, state governments, and the SBA.