As school leaders, we are all handed lemons during our career, for which it is easier to blame others: bureaucracy, bad bosses, politics and more. Yet, the best leaders turn a bittersweet experience to their advantage, sweetening their approach with sugar.
Have you ever noticed effective leaders have solutions, and an energy to resolve issues and/or work around roadblocks? This is not coincidental. Having led schools for 25 years, and writing extensively on effective school leadership, I have observed the hallmarks of a practical and productive approach to weather the biggest storms and come out stronger on the other side. Everyone wins in your school community with this positive approach, especially students.
Finding the Right Leadership Recipe
The ingredients for lemonade are simple: Lemons, then all you have to do is add water and sugar, and suddenly, you have a tasty, refreshing summertime classic. Transforming less tasteful circumstances in leadership works the same way. Successful school leaders develop their schools as effective organizations that support and sustain performance through flexibility and adaptability, portraying the kind of leadership that moves school communities forward.
Bittersweet leadership in educational organizations causes systemic harm and inhibits the organization from helping the school community to thrive. Consider: Toxic leaders display egotism, ethical failures, incompetence, and neuroticism, all of which are the opposite of the flexibility and positivity necessary to turn bitter into sweet, unproductive into productive, and tense into comfortable learning environments.
When presented with a challenge, those with a lemonade-led approach recognize the burden of responsibility and seize on this approach to manifest answers, not questions. Lemonade, not lemons. Solutions, not unfixable problems.
I previously wrote about a unique experience when tasked with what felt like an overwhelming responsibility. What made it worse is that it did not seem like “my problem.” My superior directed that 200 preschoolers were to be integrated into my middle school, farmed out from their natural habitats across eight elementary school communities. Rather than focusing on negatives, I figured a way to turn a “blame others” situation into an opportunity by creating a “Middles to Littles” program. This was a special initiative that engaged preschoolers with adolescents.
The program paired the middle school students, particularly those with behavioral issues, with preschoolers for reading sessions. What made the project so special was how it helped at-risk learners at a vulnerable adolescent stage shine in a situation when they most often failed. They read to three-year-olds from famous and loved literature sources such as Dr. Seuss. Even the poorest readers could make their way through this kind of text. What three-year-old doesn’t become exhilarated when an older child reads a beloved story to them?
This approach led to significant improvements in student behavior and school climate, as exemplified by Chris, a formerly disruptive student who flourished in his new peer-mentoring role. The initiative proved to be a cost-effective and replicable model, demonstrating how existing resources and creativity can provide opportunities where challenges appeared, all while fostering a more supportive school environment.
Selling Leadership Lemonade
Successful school leaders apply ingredients to their leadership practices that focus on setting directions, developing people, and redesigning their school community. This requires an adaptive, forward-looking approach. Effective school leaders maintain an open-minded perspective even in difficult situations. By focusing on possibilities rather than obstacles, leaders can inspire their teams to overcome challenges, and find unique solutions. Like I learned with Middle to Littles, setbacks are opportunities to innovate and improve.
Just like mixing ingredients together to make a sweet and refreshing lemonade, effective leaders bring people together to solve problems. By seeking support and collaboration from colleagues, mentors, and other professionals, leaders can benefit from collective wisdom and resources, something referred to as the multiplier effect. For example, the development of Middles to LIttles was not mine alone. An assistant principal suggested the idea in a brainstorm session to motivate a student who needed positive support, and anything was worth a try.
I don’t have all the ideas, but collecting the best from my team, who feel safe to share new approaches, makes our organization far better at supporting students. We dip our toes into these ideas and the ones that take root, such as Middles to Littles, make an impact. They even help the adults see students who were challenged in more positive ways.
The process of making lemonade requires persistence — squeezing lemons and tweaking the recipe until it’s just right. School leaders can be motivated by knowing and being reminded, as I was, of how cultivating resilience in themselves and their teams buoys their way to navigate ongoing challenges. This turns them into a sweeter solution in our school communities.
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