Education

Anyone working in education today faces mounting challenges as scrutiny and mandated requirements increase with consistency and speed.

The internet has an abundance of sites that rate public schools, independent and private schools, individual teachers, specific curriculum along with every other component of the education field. Some are based on facts collected from governmental regulatory agencies; others are a collection of individual personal, anecdotal accountings from students and parents. Many are only snap shots of specific moments in time. All have the ability, however, to greatly influence the public’s perceptions and beliefs about any specific school or program.

The government has many ways to track performance and most recently has introduced legislation to offer merit increases for educators as the standard with more incentives for magnet and charter schools. While none of this is necessarily bad, this changing landscape offers particular challenges for those in education.

Something to consider:

  • How can those in the education field maintain compassion, caring, the technical edge, flexibility and savvy — and also be competent, competitive and profitable?

The answer lies in going beyond standard measurements of success. While these types of initiatives are important, you can be no better than the energy, creativity and commitment of the people implementing the programs. While quality measurements are important, education is not manufacturing or retail. The only true way that the educational field has to improve its outcome measures is by creating loyalty by improving the experience of the teachers, students, parents and other stakeholders. This can only be done one contact at a time, by your loyal and engaged employees.

While we intend the best, our focus on standards can cause us to loose our focus on the youth for whom we are responsible. Businesses tell us that we are not developing enough intelligent competent leaders through our current educational system. They say we need to make dramatic, disruptive differences.

We know that the desire to help others learn and grow is what drives employees, your internal customers in the education field to be loyal. You cannot regulate that desire for your employees, however, we can stop throwing barriers to the good people who went in search of a career to help others learn and grow, and often got side tracked, or knocked down along the way.

Key observations:

  • You can also look to eliminate the barriers in the way of our youth who want to lead themselves and others. Ultimately, is it any wonder that we struggle to create loyal staff, parents, families and community organizers?

The answer is not difficult; however, it does require all to pay attention to a plan to support the implementation with youth’s strengths, and to allow the creativity and abundance of our youth. It is the educational leadership, principals and supervisor’s responsibilities to get the buy in. Refocusing on the youth we serve as opposed to regulatory requirements key. We know that educators want to be able to do this. The job of leadership is to find ways to support the abundance of creativity that is available in employees to achieve these goals.

Staff/student/family loyalty is a distinct strategic advantage for the educational field. It begins with identifying and adopting customer loyalty (internal and external) as a strategy. This strategy requires simultaneously managing and developing internal and external customer loyalty.  Those that do are more likely to succeed and have measureable success.

The Aspire Advantage:

  • Aspire works with leaders, future leaders, and youth leaders in the educational arena in developing and aligning strategy (goals), leadership systems (people) and operating systems (processes) for sustained success.