Leadership Gets Real When We Stop Performing

Ya’ll … we gotta stop fakin’ the funk. Stop the cap. Stop puttin’ on for the people. Stop contributing to the erosion of our own spirits to keep others comfortable. 

Can we say the quiet part out loud?

Conversations about leading schools during this time sound much cleaner and pleasant than it actually feels. Many of us, while we love the work are not okay 

Somewhere along the way, we became really good at saying the “right” things – and increasingly uncomfortable about saying what’s real. 

We communicate initiatives … making them sound exciting and fun … knowing parts (or all) do not work. 

We speak about coaching our teachers and staff to improve academic outcomes while never publicly speaking of the ones that are harming students academically but systems make it hard to confront head on. 

We banter over what is equitable but we rarely admit that there are many things that never change. 

We show up polished, energetic, and with a smile only to protect an appearance based on society’s expectations and our own fears of being seen as ineffective, unhinged, or worse – weak. 

We make decisions in the faces of scrutiny and we keep the loneliness in those decisions, our discontent, and disagreement to ourselves … rotting our core. 

So, what will we do about it? No one is coming to save us. 

Truth I: Leadership is often a Performance

Fear keeps us trapped in appearing competent rather than curious, courageous, and honest.

What happens when “school culture” becomes more about what makes adults comfortable than what is good for kids? When “data driven” conveys that the numbers mean more than the actual experiences of the students and teachers? When equity becomes merely a vocabulary word instead of a true set of moves to redistribute opportunity?

Sometimes the greatest threat to transformation isn’t resistance – it’s a leader’s commitment to looking like we have it all figured out.

Truth II: People should come before programs. Or nah?

Be for real. Programs don’t transform schools. Curriculum doesn’t build belonging on its own. Strategic plans do not create trust. And, please be on notice, initiatives don’t and won’t liberate any of us!

We spend hella time wading through a pool of programs – core subject curriculum, interventions, data gathering, and more. While we ignore the fact that most of our time is dominated by outside forces, taking away from the time we spend on the most important things: getting to know people, listening deeply, building conditions for safety (psychological, emotional, physical), confronting harm, setting and communicating high expectations. 

Don’t come for me but this would include taking time (and being willing to) to examine how our own decisions, often made in haste and influenced by those above, contribute to many of the problems we want to solve. 

Shut … out … the … noise. 

Yeah, I said it. 

Much of what hinders us from doing what we know needs to be done is noise. Often coming from folks far removed from schools and classrooms with no idea what we face daily. 

While we push initiatives from places where only mouthpieces exist, our schools suffer because we fail to uncover and to see the humanity in ourselves and the people we lead and serve. 

We can incite liberation. 

We must demand and do something different. We must ask more REAL questions. 

Who benefits from the way we have “always done it?”

Who has learned that the way they behave in school is just as or more important than academic success?

Whose brilliance are we centering and overlooking and who determines what brilliance is and what it looks like?

How are those outside our schools helping us to create conditions of belonging so the environment is ripe for success? Or are they just demanding it be done?

What do we tolerate in schools where Black, brown, and poor children are expected to learn that would not be tolerated elsewhere and otherwise?

Say more about all of that!

Truth III: What we sayin’ matters.  

Say More is a space for real conversations without the polished, conference-style talk. We aren’t looking for respectability points. This is a place where we get real about how leaders are dying slowly holding onto untruths that are not ours, conditions that haven’t changed in decades for the betterment of those most marginalized, and how these systems and institutions don’t love us. 

It’s about leadership running along the concepts of racial constructs, socio-economic conditions, power structures, joy, courage, failure, success – and, most of all, how we are fighting to transform institutions while simultaneously leading inside of them. 

Let’s be clear … I do not have all the answers. 

This is a space for healing through release. A place where questions and topics we often avoid are unapologetically asked and discussed. A place where stories create realities. 

I invite us all to notice something we continue to normalize as leaders that erode our souls. Let’s interrogate!

Transformation begins when somebody (US) becomes willing to say what has been and still is avoided and kept quite. 

So … let’s say it. 

And then … Say More.