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Center for Enlightened Leadership
 
THE LENS E-NEWSLETTER/JOURNAL

Believing in Others Fosters Positive Outcomes
By THOMAS VONA

  Tom Vona
  Tom Vona
Senior Associate and Mentor

Throughout my career I have found that those with whom we work—whether as their teachers, their administrators, or their mentors—will work much harder to warrant our faith in them when they realize we do have faith in them. I have found this to be true while serving as a public school teacher and administrator as well as in what I call my post-career: working with graduate students and new administrators. Moreover, I believe that positive expectations facilitate the development of positive outcomes. I believe this because I have experienced this phenomenon often during my entire career.

This power of expectation must begin with oneself. If you don’t have high expectations for yourself and do not demonstrate that through your work ethic, accomplishments, and dedication to your career, how can you have high expectations for those around you? Your high expectations must begin with you!

A classroom teacher can demonstrate her belief in her students by exhibiting a positive, supportive attitude when working with them, by fostering the certainty that with hard work and concentration each student will be able to learn that new concept or complete that experiment or solve that difficult problem. This is not always easy to communicate, but if a teacher is to succeed in the classroom, she must exhibit a confident attitude that promotes positive outcomes. It’s been many years since I was a public school teacher, but I have continued to work with teachers throughout my career. I know the importance of communicating clearly to students your expectation that they can succeed. This is not to say that there won’t be students who experience difficulty, but students will work much harder and try their best when they know their teacher has faith in them.

Similarly, the power of expectation was an important principle for me when I led a modern high school with a large staff that included individuals with many different personalities and a student body of close to a thousand. My challenge: to come into a school from the outside after that school has had a number of principals in a relatively short period of time, win the trust and respect of the faculty and student body (among many other stakeholders), and strive to have positive expectations for these groups with the hope of fostering positive outcomes for them and the school. Many factors had to fall into alignment for this to occur. First among them: high expectations of myself as a leader and a person. In taking this position, I had finally attained an important and long-held career goal; I knew that I was going to do everything possible to succeed. Second, from the very beginning I had strong support from my immediate supervisor, and his validation became more evident as time went on. This strong support made it easier for me to operate in a positive fashion. Equally important, I had a very competent staff, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that. Consequently, it wasn’t difficult for me to believe in the people with whom I was working, and the longer we worked together, the more they seemed to put into their work. Any new initiatives or proposals were carried out with group input and consensus, and, for the most part, positive expectations among the people involved. Those factors help to explain why so many of the things we set out to do were accomplished and had positive outcomes. If people know you believe in them and their capabilities, they are going to do everything they can to succeed at the task before them. It was for all these reasons that my time as a building principal was so rewarding.

When I left the principalship and went on to other ventures, I saw again and again how holding positive expectations of others can produce positive results. During these years I worked with student teachers, those pursuing degrees in administration, and those studying to become alternate-route teachers; most recently I’ve mentored new principals during their first two years on the job. Over many years, and in a multitude of settings, I’ve witnessed the power of expectation. By expressing positive expectations about how someone will handle a problem, more often than not the problem will be resolved in a positive way. One example: I recently mentored a principal who was having problems keeping up with his myriad responsibilities. We discussed ways in which he could address this difficulty. After we considered a variety of approaches, he decided upon the best solutions for him. I had confidence in him and his ability to handle this issue, and he knew it. It took some time for him to improve his situation, but little by little he made the changes necessary to enable him to handle his many duties more successfully. What had been a difficult problem for him was resolved for the present (this is the type of issue a principal has to revisit periodically), and he was confident that he could handle his schedule in a more efficient and effective manner.

From my point of view as a career educator, the power of expectation is an extremely important principle for a prudent leader. Those in education are in the people business, and in this business a belief in people is of paramount importance. When people know you believe in them and have faith in their ability, it doesn’t matter if they are 10 or 40 or 70 years old. They will try to do whatever they can to merit your faith in them.


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