Building Blocks | March 2023

performance. Effective leaders influence behaviors in positive ways. Ineffective leaders influence behavior but do not achieve desirable results.” What does this quote look like in real life, when the words come off the page and into motion? Effective leadership is: Creating a safe environment for failure: be comfortable sharing your failures in front of your team. Be approachable for them to come to you with their failures to work through them as a team. What does this look like? • Have quick weekly meetings to touch on progress, successes and failures. • Create a discussion board that the team can communicate through and help each other. • Focus on the issues with the processes and not people. Being a role model: be “boots on the ground” with your team. Be in touch with what is happening in the day-to-day. What does this look like? • Collaborate on projects with team members. • Use communication models such as A3s. • Deliver the quality of work you expect from your team. • Maintain a calm, “can-do” attitude, even when you are frustrated. The right person for the right job: know the strengths and weaknesses of your team members to effectively assign tasks. What does this look like? • Reorganize your positions or organizational chart structure.

• Divide the project into pieces that can be supported by teams with different strengths. • Avoid having too many people work on the same task. • Cross train employees to be able to help each other if needed.

Clear Mission & Vision

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When was the last time your department mission and vision was evaluated? Do you even have one? Mission and vision statements remind staff why they come to work everyday and give them a pathway for where the department is headed. I always tell staff that they have autonomy to make decisions and have failures, as long as the mission and vision in mind. When I started at St Vrain Valley School District, the department was very siloed and there was no connection through mission and vision. Our leadership team did a self-driven workshop to develop our vision statement. We then took that vision to the kitchen managers who did a similar activity to develop the mission statement. We created a poster with the mission and vision on it and sent them to each kitchen to post as a reminder. Mission and vision contribute to and communicate the culture and goals of the organization. If there is buy-in to the Keep Reading

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