The camaraderie of these meetings carried over to the creation of an
annual holiday party at the principal’s condo and to an annual end-of-
school-year barbeque at one of the chairperson’s homes. Now retired, they
still all keep in touch and remember the good times they had. Someone
will always remark how they had been “quite a team.”
The longer you serve as a principal, the better you will be at building
consensus. You will soon learn that decisions are made before the formal
meeting even begins. When you plan a change in school policy or have a
major decision to make, you should stop in to visit each chair or assistant
principal and informally discuss the policy or decision. If you see there
will be no consensus, put off the discussion until you can better build such
consensus, one-on-one. As time goes on, you will know which people
might object to something and be able to save time by concentrating your
one-on-one efforts with them instead of everyone.
If you remain a school leader in the same school for most of your
career, you will be able to emulate Ms. Niles-Perry. By the end of her
tenure as principal, she was able to write the summary of any supervisory
staff development or cabinet meeting before the meeting took place. The
importance of the stability of the leadership staff in a school should not be
underestimated, especially when most get along and put the needs of the
school ahead of the individual needs of each department.
Competent school leaders have an even more informal way of listening to
their administrative-supervisory staff by allowing them to vent. They have
an unwritten policy that any assistant principal or chair can come to their
office, shut the door (one of the few times it is shut), and basically let them
have it. Sometimes, these leaders find that the complaint is right on target—
they messed up and need to correct something and apologize. Sometimes,
they find that the needs of the school are infringing on the needs of the as-
sistant principal’s department and he needs to vent. Sometimes, it may even
be a disagreement with the principal’s own leadership style.
Mr. Maroon, Ms. Hildebrand’s head of guidance at the Chicago
middle school, often came to speak with Ms. Hildebrand about her lead-
ership style. He liked handling matters in a direct and more authoritarian
manner than Ms. Hildebrand. He was impatient with her oblique, some-
times meandering, and usually patient methods. And he let his principal
know it. Mr. Maroon didn’t know this, but deep down they were in
Speak Little; Listen a Lot 35