Diverse, Representative and Inclusive Teaming
A school’s primary leadership team is inclusive and representative of all stakeholders and reflects the school community, but some may not be valued as full, contributing members (e.g., members are invited to only some meetings, members are able to weigh in on only certain items, or members are asked to provide perfunctory feedback at the end of a decision-making process).
As a result, some members are fully engaged in making proposals, offering meaningful feedback, and making decisions, while others view their role as limited to symbolic or superficial participation.
Shared Responsibility
Leadership responsibilities are distributed across various representative teams. In addition, teams understand how their work connects to others and the larger, schoolwide priorities.
However, the teams may not yet have systems, structures and practices that facilitate effective collaboration across teams (e.g., regular communication systems for information sharing, larger cross-functional teaming structures that support integration, clear pathways for providing multidirectional feedback, or norms that support collaborative decision making).
As a result, teams may take some shared responsibility (e.g., when their work clearly overlaps or collaborating is easy), but at other times, they may default to waiting for directions from other teams or competing against each other for control.
Responsive and Empowering Decision Making
Leaders sometimes approach decision making in responsive, empowering ways by using inclusive processes and protocols (e.g., processes for collecting input, shared protocols for providing feedback, or frameworks for making proposals).
However, these inclusive efforts may be limited to only certain kinds of decisions (e.g., individuals may be empowered to make decisions for their own classroom but are not included in decisions being made for the whole school), or they may be experienced inconsistently (e.g., one time, a staff member may be praised for trying something innovative in their classroom, and another time, a staff member may be disciplined for trying something without explicit permission).
Because of the inconsistent experiences, a school may find some stakeholders reporting they feel included in decision making and empowered in their own roles, while others do not (e.g., these inconsistencies may fall along the lines of race, ethnicity or gender, as leaders’ implicit or explicit bias influences who is or is not included).
Equitable Listening and Communication Practices
Leaders communicate in accessible and consistent ways. This is most evident in proactive listening and communication systems, structures and practices (e.g., systems for raising concerns or questions, structures for providing updates, and norms that support challenging discussions). These proactive lines of communication are ongoing and do not depend on specific, time-bound invitations for listening and sharing.
In their communication, leaders focus on empathetic and active listening and offer the same communication opportunities to all staff, regardless of their roles, responsibilities or power within the organization. For example, a leader would engage in open dialogue about ongoing strategy development with any staff member, not just other leaders.