Hey New Administrators, Listen Up!

An important skill for new adminstrators to have is the ability to listen more than talk. Legendary basketball coach John Wooden noted the importance of listening in a recent Denver Post article. "If you want to be heard you have to listen.... It reminds me of a little verse I heard when I was in grade school in the 1920s. It said, 'A wise old owl sat in an oak. The more he heard, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Now wasn't he a wise old bird?"'

I've known many administrators who never learned that lesson. Indeed, it's too often quite the opposite. I recall one administrator who spent his first day with teachers lecturing them on his philosophy of education. He didn't last too long.

For rural administrators the importance of listening is critical because the more an administrator listens to the concerns of those in the school and community, the more likely those people will be to listen to her when the time comes for important action. Rural people differ from nonrural people in that the position a person holds is less important than who that person actually is—it doesn't matter that you're the superintendent, but I trust you because I know you're heard my perspective.

The lesson for adminstrators new to a district is that if your goal is school improvement, spend more time listening and less time talking. If you goal is to show people how smart you are, keep talking. They'll figure it out.