Read.

I have been reading, Leadership: The Care and Growth Model during the past week and a half that I have been with LEAP 4. This is a book about running a successful and healthy business that LEAP is using as a focus for their school.

Overall, the book is a dry read (no offense to the author -- but there are far too many examples that explain the same thing!), but I am finding little nuggets that help me understand my own philosophies about educational practices.

Today, I appreciated Chapter 12, "Holding People Accountable." Here is a relevant quote:

"...[F]ar from being a virtue, a results focus is probably the most pernicious vice one can cultivate in an organization.... [F]ocusing a person's attention on results is focusing the person on something he or she cannot do anything about. By definition, results are something which one gets. However, one only has power over what one gives or contributes. This means that if your attention is on what you are getting you are paying attention to that which you have no power over. To focus a manager's attention on results is to fundamentally disable him."

Education is a very results-oriented sector, and we commonly look to test results, expecting them to indicate how well teachers performed. Yes, test scores may tell us something about a teacher's ability to teach, but they also may be information about the child's home life, what they ate (or didn't eat) for breakfast that morning, or how much money their parents make.

Results do not always tell us what we want them to tell us. Ultimately, this chapter insists that organizations must analyze what each person has contributed, and not just the results. To do anything else would unfairly hold people accountable for that which they cannot control.