Page 69 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

54 Just Promoted!

the problems on his desk, without the organization to take them on and man-
age them effectively.
Empowerment must be genuine. To tell people they have power and respon-
sibility and then not empower them with responsibility lowers morale, lowers
your leadership credibility, and creates hostility and opposition.
A common form of false empowerment is found in many public schools.
Principals and teachers endlessly exhort students to take care of the school by
saying “It’s your school.” But that is not the truth in a place where students sit
silently in rows, listening and doing only what they’re told to do. They follow
the principal’s rules, teachers’ rules, custodians’ rules, coaches’ rules, lunch-
room rules, attendance rules, and hallway aides’ rules. Go up the up staircases,
down the down staircases, and one way in the one-way hallways. Take notes,
finish the assignments, read these books, exit when you’re told, do what you’re
told, and succeed and fail by someone else’s standards. At no time in our lives
will we be so strongly a part of an institution in which we are so powerless—
unless we go to prison.
Nor do schools belong to parents, as can be verified by any parent who has
ever complained about a rule or a teacher, or made a suggestion to improve
the school. Parents who are active are often snowed by public relations–
minded administrators who relegate parent participation to deciding what to
buy with the parent-teacher organization (PTO) treasury. Parents who want
to get actively involved are asked to be teachers’ aides or classroom parents.
Meanwhile administrators retain any meaningful decision making and, when
necessary, share it with the teachers’ union. Then they complain that neither
parents nor students care about the school. Why should they? They know the
school is not truly theirs, that they are visitors in someone else’s institution.
We are now seeing the development of a number of charter schools where
these dynamics are being overcome and reversed. The learning and engage-
ment of the students are palpable.
The advantage that empowerment has was never as apparent as it was in
the bailout of the Big Three Automakers in 2009. The battles between the
United Automobile Workers (UAW) and the auto industry have been legendary.
Historically, management gave the orders and labor followed the orders. Labor
felt that if management wanted the responsibility and power, it could have all
the problems too. With labor uninvolved in management and productivity,
quality fell. As management’s control tightened, unions carved out work rules