The language of leadership
I've said it here before, and you may agree or not, but I'm saying it again. The words we use are extremely powerful at shaping our reality. Wake up on a Monday morning and say to yourself, "I hate Mondays!" and there is a good chance your day is not going to be enjoyable. Call departments or parts of your workplace "Divisions" and there is a good chance you will find it difficult to build a collaborative culture across them. Call different areas of a large school "School" (rather than "section", or "sub-school" or something else), and there is a large chance those "schools" will operate independently, without collaboration. Add to that the leader of that section of the school referring to it as, "My School" and things really begin to get funky. That's what I've been thinking about... ever since I’ve been in a position to be able to say, "my school"!
I have constantly asked myself, "Is it right to refer to the school I am leading as "My" school?" My answer... No. It is not. The words we use shape our thoughts and how we act, both consciously and unconsciously. Referring to the section of the school I am tasked to lead as "my school", becomes dangerous. It leads me to think that because it is mine, I can do as I please. It ignores the important reality that the section of the school I lead is a part of the whole school, which demands consistent policies and procedures, collaborative development of initiatives, ongoing discussion of goals and direction, a unified voice, etc, etc. For those who hear the leader say, "my school", it reinforces that the section of the school "belongs to" or "is owned by" the leader, when in reality, it does not belong to anyone.
A school should never be a place that is "owned" or "belongs to" any single person. A school, or a section of a school "belongs" to everyone - the students, the teachers, the staff, the leadership, the parents, the cleaners, and anyone else who operates within it. From this perspective, a much more accurate phrase to use would be, "OUR school". At the same time, describing the teachers within the section of a school one leads as "my teachers" has always concerned me! If there is anything in a school that is NOT mine, then the teachers are it!
A number of years ago I had a fantastic conversation with a colleague, a school leader who described the school we worked at as "his school". He was firmly in the "I call it MY school" camp. His rationale was that it described the level to which he cared about what he did. It wasn't just "the" school. It was HIS school. He cared about it. He sacrificed his time for it. He went above and beyond for it (which he did - he was an excellent school leader!) He shared that he deliberately chose to use the phrase "my school" because it reflected the level of commitment he had for his job. I understood his rationale and enjoyed the conversation, but in the end, we agreed to disagree. We continued on in our leadership roles, him in "his" school and me in "our" school.
As I have continued to ponder this matter of semantics that, from my perspective, is so much more than a matter of semantics, I have often wondered if I am making a whole lot of noise about something that doesn't really matter. Would anything in a school really change if teachers stopped hearing their boss say "my school" or if school principals stopped hearing fellow principals say "my school".
My school? Your school? Our school? Would it really make a difference? I think it just might!