Strategies offered for 'leading leaders' effectively

If school board leaders and superintendents have any hope of accomplishing anything, they must know how to be good leaders. But they also must build consensus with business and community leaders over whom they have no authority and who have a strong sense of independence.

Robert Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, and Patrice McCarthy, CABE deputy director and general counsel, offered strategies to use when dealing smart, talented, and powerful people during an interactive conference workshop Monday.

The workshop was based on the book, Leading Leaders by Jeswald Salacuse, a law professor at Tuft University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Salacuse said “seven daily tasks of leadership” are required to “lead leaders.”

The tasks are:

• Direction: How do you negotiate a vision for the organization that other leaders will buy into?
• Integration: How do you make your organization’s individual “stars” into a team?
• Mediation: How do you resolve conflicts over turf and power among other leaders so the organization can move forward?
• Education: How do you educate those who think they are already educated?
• Motivation: How do you motivate other leaders who “seem to have everything” to do what’s right for the organization?
• Representation: How do you lead your organization’s outside constituents while still leading leaders inside?
• Trust creation: How do you gain and keep other leaders’ trust?

A key point stressed by Salacuse is that people follow leaders because “they believe it is in their interests to do so.”

“Interests drive actions,” Rader said. “Thus, for the leader, it’s imperative that he or she gets to know the followers so the leader can determine how to best work with each one. This is not about manipulation. It is about building relationships with the persons you lead or want to lead.”

Rader said that can be done with good communication, often on a one-to-one basis. The leader must understand each person’s interests and communicate “commitment, reliability, and respect in satisfying those interests.”

“It is a basic principle of leadership that the less authority you have over the people you lead, the more you will need their trust to lead them,” Salacuse said.

Leadership requires openness and a willingness to involve followers in decisions made on their behalf, Rader said. It can be particularly challenging to “educate” followers who already believe they know a great deal. “Elites” should be educated one-to-one, rather than in groups, and they will resist if they think they are being treated in a way that doesn’t take full account of their prestige and power.