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Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Melissa Whipple, a District Resource Teacher for the San Diego Unified School District. In her current role, she coaches school staff to help them understand the value of family and community engagement and how to leverage it to boost student performance. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at USD, teaching a master’s course demystifying Family, School, and Community Partnerships.

I have been teaching in many capacities since 1975, and it seems to me that most educational leaders want to skip to immediate implementation of educational changes or reforms without first building relationships.

They seem to be in such a hurry to prove themselves as change agents or visionary leaders or reformers, they fail to understand that taking time to build consensus and positive relationships with others is just as important (if not more so) as the content of their proposed reforms. John Wooden once said, "It is what we learn after we know it all that matters." I couldn't agree more.

Unfortunately, many educational leaders tend to lead with their mouths (telling others what is going to be done and how) rather than leading with their ears (listening to other points of view and figuring out how best to work in ways that develop a sense of shared responsibility for student success) and proceeding accordingly. It seems the message is, "Just do what we say. Don't worry, we have done all the thinking for you and we have all of the answers. Remember, it is our way or the highway." This doesn't go over well.

In my district, we have had a revolving door of superintendents and their imported administrative teams (we have had four complete turnovers in the last 10 years) who seemed qualified and also personally charming, and yet they each failed to understand that effective leadership is more complex than simply having a great idea and then mandating it. It is not just about being right, it is also about being effective.

Fans of each new leader will always tell others how smart he or she is because their ideas are "so great, so innovative, so cutting edge.” My response to that statement was and remains to be, "If these new leaders are so smart, why can’t they figure out an effective way to deliver their GREAT message in a way that others can actually and embrace it and move it forward? Why is there no institutional feedback loop included to see how the change is going? Or if there is one, why is the feedback so consistently dismissed as unimportant?

In my experience, the latest leader's reform/change/here-is-the-best-new-idea-ever-created is typically delivered poorly and disrespectfully, and many recipients not only resist it, but actively work to sabotage it. Morale plunges. Rumors circulate. Progress stagnates. People are removed and replaced. Politics prevail. The new leaders always seem to be baffled at why their GREAT idea didn't take root and flourish. Many times they end up publicly blaming the teacher's union or the school board members or their own hired staff. The leaders inevitably move on to their next job promising better results. The sad part to me is that this is all so unnecessary.

Mastering both the use of both content (what and why) and process (who and how) is the sign of effective leadership. Having a good idea is easy—implementing it requires a lot of consideration for your audience, empathy for their positions or roles in the change process, and lots of common sense. It takes time to build relationships, but in the long run strong relationships built on shared power are the only way to sustain productive changes. Anything else angers or demotivates people. Coming in and telling employees (educators) that what they are doing and have been doing is all wrong is not a particularly good way to implement change. Does this work in any business or enterprise? [. . .]

We all need to come out of our respective silos and work together in respectful ways. We must figure out how to team up to share responsibility for student success and healthy development. We cannot possibly accomplish our goal of fully supporting student success from the cradle to career without building systematic, productive and reciprocal relationships with all those who have contributions to make—both large and small-to supporting the lives of children.

This post was excerpted from a comment Melissa made on Public School Insights. To see her entire comment, go here.

For more from Melissa Whipple, look out for a forthcoming article she has coauthored—“It's All About the Conversations”—that focuses on ongoing work in Connecticut to help schools  revitalize their Title I compacts. It will appear in the May 2011 issue of Educational Leadership, a journal published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.