Leadership Letter: Governance Starts with Heart
By Kimberly A. Small, J.D.
IASB’s six Foundational Principles of Effective Governance are the cornerstone of IASB’s beliefs and training about the governance process. These principles are intended to support boards with their local conversations and decision-making, known as detecting ends.
As we navigate governing around student learning in the 21st century, the complexities of detecting ends around your board tables have increased. Whether navigating financial constraints and mandates, addressing curriculum changes, or ensuring equity, your local conversations and decisions serve as the backbone of quality public education in Illinois. With the rise of social media and the growing scrutiny of public institutions, your local conversations around the board table also include being mindful of your district’s public image and how your district communicates its decisions to your community.
Bottom line, board members are feeling more pressure to have the right conversations for their communities around student learning, and more. Board governance conversations have never been more critical.
So, when the complexity of governing and detecting ends for the district gets heavy, how does the board proceed? Of the most importance, is to step back and focus on the basics of the conversations for effective ends development.
To align with the IASB’s Foundational Principles, the best practice to detect ends is by listening and observing. One of the more pressing challenges is ensuring that your local conversations and decisions around ends reflect the communities you are elected to serve. Focusing on ensuring that you are listening to and observing diverse perspectives to enrich the decision-making at the board table ensures that the needs of all students for their learning success are addressed.
When I think of boards or other entities working together to listen and observe, a concept from the book Crucial Conversations comes to my mind, that “skilled people start with heart.” That is, consider the discussion with the right motives. Let’s again use student learning, for example. Consider beginning with the concept and motive that all students in our district matter and need to be resourced for a quality, equitable public education, and then stay focused on your students no matter what happens.
To “start with heart,” it’s important to get to know your fellow board members and learn how your individual life experiences shape your thoughts and positions on the issues you are called to govern. If you know the people you are working with and have built trust, it’s likely easier to move through some of the concepts in Crucial Conversations and move more quickly into discussing the issues. If you feel that your board could use some support building safety and getting to know each other more deeply to enhance your governance conversations, consider enrolling in the Trust Edge Experience, a workshop presented in-district by IASB, based on the work of David Horsager and the Trust Edge Institute. Detecting ends will always come back to how to have a productive conversation around the board table where everyone feels heard and the board has confidence that it has listened and observed with all students in mind.
Once the board has developed the safety and trust that it needs among its members to have deeper conversations, consider moving toward the concepts in High Conflict by Amanda Ripley, which coaches readers to establish a shared ground with the person with whom you may have a different point of view. This perspective-shifting enables you to try to empathize with the other person’s point of view. Your board agreements may set the expectation of members to discuss the issue, not the personality. This is a valuable lens when working deeply into navigating a 21st-century school board governance discussion.
IASB’s Outreach & Training staff provide professional development, services, and tools that align with the IASB Foundational Principles of Effective Governance (you can read more from the Outreach & Training team starting on page 18). These in-district professional development opportunities are central to the focus on student learning and organizational effectiveness and are designed for the board/superintendent governance team. Reach out to IASB, because we are here to help you move forward with the complexities of governance.
Last, once the board has acted and moved through the difficult conversations, the focus should be to ensure that the district has articulated those ends in its written board policy, so that your board can effectively and efficiently monitor district performance and assess its success. If your board has accomplished articulating its ends in written board policy, the next step is to monitor them.
At its core, excellence in local school board governance is about ensuring that every student has access to a quality public education. It is about making strategic decisions that have a lasting impact on students, teachers, and the entire community. As you continue your work, remember that your governance is the key to shaping the future of education in your district.
I want to extend my deepest appreciation for your service and dedication. The work of school boards is challenging, but it is also incredibly rewarding. Together, let’s continue to build strong, effective governance structures that empower our schools to thrive.
Thank you for your commitment to excellence in local school board governance and quality public education.