Improving School Leadership Through 'Confident Vulnerability'

Learning requires students to acknowledge that they don't know everything while believing that they are capable of learning anything. Principals can be exemplars by positioning themselves as leading learners.

As superintendent, I see the hiring of principals—and then the growth of those principals—as the most important element of my job. They affect the climate and the culture in their buildings, first by choosing what teachers to hire and then by supporting the growth of those teachers. Directly and indirectly, they set the tone for the students who enter those schools every day. While I am the supervisor and evaluator of the principals in our district, as often as possible, I attempt to assume a stance as a coach and partner to the principals, because their growth is too important to leave solely to a supervision and evaluation process. In our district, the commitment to coaching is reflected in the idea of "confident vulnerability," which is supported by a focus on self-reflection and leading by example.

Defining 'Confident Vulnerability'

An attitude of confident vulnerability is necessary for effective learning. We want students to be confident so they can learn, but they can't be effective learners if they believe that they know everything all the time. We expect teachers to give sophisticated feedback to students, and we know that students are in a vulnerable position as we ask them to accept and act upon that feedback, but we sometimes fail to translate those expectations to teachers and principals.

A disposition of confident vulnerability is essential in our school leaders, partly because modeling the behavior they  want to see from students helps to create it, but also because we demand both confidence and vulnerability from leaders today. Our leaders are not permitted to assume a weak position, but, like our students, they must be vulnerable enough to acknowledge that they have room to improve as educators and leaders.

One tool we've recently adopted to help ease that translation is video. Originally, instructional coaches captured video of their coaching sessions with teachers. Principals would occasionally capture snippets of their practice with whatever technology was available, and we at times projected it on a screen during a leadership meeting to offer feedback. We saw a benefit from it while our coaches also demonstrated to their teachers that they were looking for opportunities to grow themselves. But it was also inefficient, since it wasn't tied to our teaching framework and was inconsistent in implementation, stitched together with whatever we had on hand.  

Recently we switched to video platform (ours happens to be Insight Advance's classroom observation, feedback, and coaching tool), which allows our principals and coaches to record from their phone and annotate the video, among other things. Now I ask each of our principals to capture and share a minimum of three videos with me each year, but only after they've viewed and reflected upon them on their own or after they have shared them and received feedback from a colleague.

If a principal is confident enough to capture themselves on video, watch that video, share that video with a peer, and ultimately share that video with me so that I can look at it and we can then talk about the performance, that almost guarantees the kind of confident vulnerability and growth mindset that we're looking to support in every learner in the district, from the students in the classroom to every member of the leadership team.

Paul Freeman can be reached at freemanp@guilfordschools.org.

To read the entire article, visit Education Week.