Skip to main content

Human Resources: The Role of the Superintendent: Talking Points for Doane Cadre


Talking Points for Doane Cadre Panel: June, 2015

 What is the role of superintendent in the overall design, policies, culture and practices of HR?
  • Policies need to delineate roles and responsibilities clearly.
  • Practices need to be professional: have a process that gathers multiple inputs & allows district to weight most important candidate characteristics.
  • Practice the practice. Train up on it. Review it, recite it, so you abide by it or you will end up with slippage and quality control problems.
  • Practices need to be both consistent and have an inherent degree of flexibility to capitalize on unique circumstances.
  • Culture of HR should equate to culture of organization- hard to credibly say you are collaborative culture if selection decisions are made unilaterally.

 What is your role in working with the Board and staff (such as principals) in implementing HR?  
  • With board members, the most important thing is understanding protocol and for all of us to know and abide by our roles.
  • Staff (principals etc.): Honor the conversation. Pick up the phone or sit down together and talk through it. There is no substitute for acknowledging the complexity of HR situations as they present themselves.
  • Principals must know that it is not considered an act of heroism for them to keep something from central office by attempting to solve a personnel problem individually without consultation or communication to district level.
What is your role as superintendent in developing principals and other administrators as leaders?

  • Leadership development is the most important role. Those closest to most closely reflect what you project.
  • Leadership is a shared responsibility; success in schools is accomplished through empowering others, not via individual goal attainment.
  • We have a duty to profession and obligation to our colleagues to develop not merely acceptable but outstanding leaders.
  • Most impact as a superintendent is not via "doing" as self but by working through others to accomplish important positive outcomes for the team.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Marathon Training Nutrition Commitment

I had a two-bag-a-week habit...Bazooka Joe himself had to stage an intervention for me. I have been training for the Lincoln marathon, which goes off  a week from now. A month ago, I decided I would get aggressive with my nutrition because I figure an old runner like me (43) needs every possible advantage if I want to crawl across the finish line in under four hours much less 3 1/2. So I set out to eliminate empty cards and refined sugars from my diet about five weeks ago.  I thought that this would be a good means of enhancing my nutrition while also improving my chances of turning in a good performance on race day.  I said goodbye to the chips and candy, and mourned the loss of my fries and popcorn... There definitely is a connection between intake and output.  How you eat, how you sleep, and whether you're drinking enough water- all those things contribute to outcomes on race day, not just miles and pace. I have thought a lot about what fellow runner and Norris emeritus
2 comments
Read more

The Roy Baker School of Leadership Lessons

Wednesday morning I have a wonderful opportunity. I get the chance to kick off a day of interviewing as one of three final superintendent candidates for Norris. I have no idea whether I’ll emerge from the battle as the candidate of choice, but I know that I am excited beyond belief and I am proud to be the internal candidate who represents the legacy and tradition of Norris leadership. It may sound audacious, but I believe I’ ve been reared by the best. I say that because I worked just down the hall from our retiring superintendent Roy Baker for four years as the high school principal and for the last year and half+ now, I have had the chance to work right next door to him as an assistant superintendent. Heck, by process of osmosis alone I have learned quite a bit about leadership. Some of my learning has been just through that exposure to the Sup day in and day out, as things come up. And some of that learning has been very intentional – wherein Roy has deliberately conveyed an
4 comments
Read more

Why be a connected admin?

I'm at #NETA15, on Twitter at @yourNETA. Or as the morning keynote said, "We are with our fellow nerds." I am excited today to have the opportunity later this morning  to speak with @Mandery, @dougkittle, @bmowinkel, @mrbadura, @catlett11 and @chlor13 on being a connected administrator. (For the uninitiated, these are their Twitter handles.) Why connect, anyway? 1. It is where are our kids live. 2. It is where our parents have gone. 3. It is important for administrators to model tech use, not merely give lip service to it. We must project what we expect. 4. When we model tech use, we demonstrate the fundamentally important learner behavior of risk taking and we ensure our teachers know they are in a supportive tech environment that encourages pedagogical risk-taking to enhance learner engagement. 5. The less you use digital communication tools and the more you continue an over reliance on traditional communication platforms like hard copy mailings to parents, the
Post a Comment
Read more