Like you, I want to lead groups more effectively. Something that has helped me improve my effectiveness is reflecting with others on questions about leading groups.

Try this—ask yourself the following 5 questions:

1. What helps a group function effectively?
2. What’s your role in a given group? (Are you a facilitator/coach, consultant, or presenter?)
3. How can you promote thoughtful group conversation?
4. What's the purpose of the conversation? (Do you want the group to explore a topic? Do you need the group to make a decision?)
5. How can you get everyone involved? (How can you help reticent people contribute? How can you help talkative people make room in the conversation for others?)

Action step: What 2-3 things can you do to more effectively lead groups?

Related resources you might want to explore:

1. How can you empower others more effectively?
2. Lead by asking questions
3. What make a good meeting good?

What gets focused on gets done. So, if you want to improve your organization, make sure your staff is focused on organizational improvement.
 
Question: How focused is your staff on organizational improvement?
 
To get an idea of how focused your staff is on organizational improvement, take the following assessment. Rate each item, using the following scale:

4: Consistently • 3: Usually • 2: Sometimes • 1: Rarely

___ Staff talk about organizational improvement.
___ Staff make proposals regarding organizational improvement.
___ Staff work on organizational improvement.
___ Staff hold each other accountable for organizational improvement.
___ Staff are disappointed when improvement goals are not reached.

___ Staff focus on organizational improvement.


3 questions:

1. How focused do you want your staff to be on organizational improvement?
2. How can you increase staff focus on organizational improvement?
3. What are you going to do?

Bottom line: Pursue excellence. Focus staff on organizational improvement. Today.

As an administrator at an international Christian school, you know that staff play a vital role in carrying out the mission. Because your care about your staff, want to be good a steward of the staff God has provided, and want your school to carry out its God-given mission, you ask yourself, “How can we energize, focus, and unleash staff both personally and professionally?”

To find out, take the following self-assessment. Rate each item in terms of how well it describes how you energize, focus, and unleash staff. Use the following scale:

4: Definitely • 3: Usually • 2: Sort of • 1: Rarely

Personal life:
___ 1. We have daily staff devotions.
___ 2. We have fun together throughout the year (for example, wedding and baby showers, meals, outings).
___ 3. We provide specials (for example, pottery classes and access to fitness equipment).
___ 4. We provide mentoring/life coaching to help staff balance work/home and maintain good health.
___ 5. New staff are assigned a buddy to help them get settled.
___ 6. We provide language instruction.
___ 7. We provide assistance with medical/dental visits.
___ 8. We support staff in their personal lives.
___ 9. Staff feel supported in their personal lives.

Professional life:
___ 1. An all-day help desk is available for the first week of school.
___ 2. New staff are assigned a mentor to help them with their work.
___ 3. We provide coaching to help staff grow professionally.
___ 4. Staff are assigned to a professional learning community/team.
___ 5. Staff participate in professional development each week.
___ 6. We reflect together about our work.
___ 7. Supervisors provide accountability/feedback to staff.
___ 8. Supervisors provide feedback to new staff within the first 2 months of classes.
___ 9. Principals demonstrate interest in what's happening in classrooms (for example, by doing walkthroughs).
___ 10. Principals invite teachers to share student work samples.
___ 11. Principals give teachers feedback on student work.
___ 12. We support staff in their professional lives.
___ 13. Staff feel supported in their professional lives.


Now, ask yourself 5 questions about the data:

• How many 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s do I have?
• What’s encouraging/discouraging about the data?
• What helps us energize, focus, and unleash staff?
• What hinders us from energizing, focusing, and unleashing staff?
• What will I do? (If you’d like to learn more about developing a staff stewardship plan, click here.)

Pursue excellence. Energize, focus, and unleash your staff. Today.

As a leader, you want pursue excellence in order to achieve your organization’s mission. Good.

These 3 steps can help:

1. Identify 5-15 measurable key organizational indicators. How? By reflecting on what it takes to achieve your mission. For example, if your mission is to equip students to impact the world for Christ, a key indicator is student learning.
   
2. Measure your organizational indicators. In the school setting, you can use common assessments to measure student learning.
   
3. Use your measurement data to design action steps. Use data from common assessments to design action plans. For example, to increase student application of a Biblical perspective, have teachers design a Biblical perspective unit.

Reflect on 3 questions:

1. What are your 5-15 measurable indicators?
   
2. How can you measure each indicator?
   
3. How can you use your measurement data to design action steps?

Get your staff involved: In addition to identifying organizational indicators, ask each staff member to identify 2 or more key personal indicators, measure each indicator, and use the data to design action plans.

Bottom line: When leadership and staff focus on measurable indicators, they increase the likelihood they will pursue excellence and, consequently, achieve the mission.

Pursue excellence. Identify and measure your key indicators. Today.

Tom Postema, curriculum coordinator at Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ), explains how describing his vision for curriculum helped him:

Writing down my vision for curriculum helped me. How?

• It helped me visualize where I need to go.
  
• It helped me clarify my thinking, making it easier to invite others to join in getting the curriculum done.
  
• It helped me prioritize.

Here’s my vision for curriculum:

New teachers know exactly what they need to teach. Teachers are using their unit maps to increase student learning. Students are clear about what the expectations are for each unit in each class. Teachers are collaborating on unit maps and helping each other improve their instruction. Students are fluent in the language of Biblical perspective analysis. Principals are using maps to help teachers improve instruction.

Students are responding to unit questions like: What makes a good story? Do we have control over our destiny? How can I develop mathematical habits of mind?

Write down your vision. Today.

It’s June 13, 2007. Teachers are talking with each other about their assessment data and using it to modify instruction. Plans for SY 08/09 have been developed regarding teachers using assessment data to set student learning targets.

This is exciting! We are pursuing excellence—and it all started with a description written 4 years earlier.

Want to pursue excellence? Write a description of what you want to see. Then, make the description a reality.

---

Here’s the description I wrote by hand in June 2003 during a class I was taking in Miami on creating and administering an effective school:

The room hums with professional dialogue. Sitting around tables, teachers discuss student performance data and examples of student work: essays, DBQs, PE fitness tests, oral presentations, science lab reports, and concert videos.

The teachers are excited. They are excited because their specific efforts to increase student learning have paid off:

• Five students are exiting ESL.
  
• The average essay score has moved from 3.2 to 3.7.
  
• The average oral presentation score is 3.8.
  
• Reading comprehension has increased from first semester by .4 and is higher than last year.

Yes, the teachers are excited. Attending staff development, designing rubrics, giving assessments, using data to modify instruction—these have paid off. And yet, these teachers are not satisfied, and these teachers work together to review the data and to choose new learning targets for next year:

• Improve organization in student writing.
  
• Help students use visuals more effectively in oral presentations.
  
• Decrease time needed to complete multiplication tables.

Data is shared with students and parents, so all can celebrate.

Proposals are forwarded to the School Improvement Team, which reviews the proposals. The school administration develops a schedule and secures resources necessary to achieve the goals.

Michele sits in her office with Tom. Both are smiling. Michele says, “They understand! Our staff understand how the big picture fits together.”

“Yeah, at this morning’s meeting,” Tom responds, “the maintenance crew prioritized projects based on how much impact they would have on achieving the mission. And during the lunch meeting, the office staff discussed how the improvement process is moving us toward achieving our mission.”

“That type of conversation wasn’t happening before,” says Michele. “As a staff, we’re definitely more focused. I’m glad we used the IDEAL process to move forward on this.”

What have Michele and Tom be working on? Meeting the following organizational standards:

• The leadership empowers staff through developing staff understanding.
  
• Staff understand the connections between the mission, the definition of mission achievement, job descriptions, and the improvement process.

What process did they use? The IDEAL process.

• Identify the problem and ask God for help.
  
• Define the problem.
  
• Explore ways to address the problem. Pick one and make a plan to address it.
  
• Act.
  
• Look at the results.

How did Michele and Tom use the IDEAL process?

Identify the problem and ask God for help: Michele and Tom noticed that staff didn’t sufficiently understand how their jobs contributed to mission achievement or how improvement plans contributed to mission achievement. Because of this, some staff felt disconnected from the improvement plans and from colleagues who seemed to play a more prominent role in improvement plans. Michele and Tom added this issue to their regular list of prayer requests and asked God for help.

Define the problem: Tom reviewed the organizational standards. He shared his findings with Michele, and both agreed that the 2 organizational standards to target were:

1. The leadership empowers staff through developing staff understanding.
   
2. Staff understand the connections between the mission, the definition of mission achievement, job descriptions, and the improvement process.

Using the following rubric, they rated current performance as below standard on inputs and outputs:

Inputs: The leadership ___ staff through developing staff understanding.

• consistently and systemically empowers
  
• consistently empowers
  
• empowers (meets the standard)
  
• somewhat empowers
  
• rarely empowers

Outputs: Staff ___ the connections between the mission, the definition of mission achievement, job descriptions, and the improvement process.

• consistently and systemically understand
  
• consistently understand
  
• understand (meets the standard)
  
• somewhat understand
  
• rarely understand

Explore ways to address the problem: Michele and Tom decided that they would first focus on inputs, on what they could do as leaders. Then they brainstormed options:

• Ask questions: What is our mission? What does our mission mean and not mean? What’s our definition of mission achievement? What’s our current level of mission achievement? What can we do to close the gap? How effectively will this ___ (meeting, project, task, proposed change) help us accomplish our mission?
  
• Provide training, during which staff would study and memorize the mission and the definition of mission achievement.
  
• Provide time for staff to discuss the following question: If no one did my job, how would that impact the achievement of our mission?
  
• Provide training, during which staff would connect each section of a given job description to a part of the definition of mission achievement.
  
• Provide training, during which staff would connect improvement plans to job descriptions and to the definition of mission achievement.

Michele decided that she would ask questions (Option #1), while Tom decided to lead a training on the mission and the definition of mission achievement (Option #2).

Act: Michele asked 1 or more questions in each meeting she attended. Tom provided training for 100% of the staff.

Look at the results: Michele and Tom noticed that staff increasingly used the mission and the definition of mission achievement in conversations. They wanted to move the organization toward exceeding the standard. As a next step, Tom decided to ask staff, “If no one did your job, how would that impact the achievement of our mission” (Option #3). Michele decided to provide training to help staff connect each section of a given job description to 1 of the 3 parts of the definition of mission achievement (Option #4).

How does this apply to you? Ask yourself 3 questions:

• To what extent do I empower our staff to understand the big picture?
  
• To what extent do our staff understand the big picture?
  
• How can I use the IDEAL process to meet or exceed 1 or both of these organizational standards?

Steward what God has given you. Use the IDEAL process to meet or exceed a key organizational standard. Pursue excellence today.

Your goal? To meet or exceed the following organizational standard: The leader focuses organizational energy on achieving the mission.

To reach your goal, start by imagining. Imagine you and your organization focused. Imagine you and your organization consistently and systemically focused on achieving your God-given mission. If this happened, how would this impact the achievement of your mission?

To start making this vision a reality, answer 4 questions:

1. What does it take to meet or exceed this standard?
   
2. What’s the current performance level?
   
3. What can you do to increase your focus of organizational energy on achieving the mission?
   
4. What does your organization need to do to increase its focus on achieving the mission?

What does it take to meet or exceed the standard?
To meet the standard:

• Input: You need to focus organizational energy on achieving the mission.
  
• Output: Your organization needs to focus its energy on achieving the mission.

To exceed the standard:

• Input: You need to consistently focus organizational energy on achieving the mission.
  
• Output: Your organization needs to consistently focus its energy on achieving the mission.

(2) What’s the current performance level? Find out by answering a question on inputs and a question on outputs:

Inputs: I ___ organizational energy on achieving the mission.

1. consistently and systemically focus
   
2. consistently focus
   
3. focus (meets the standard)
   
4. somewhat focus
   
5. rarely focus

Outputs: My organization ___ its energy on achieving the mission.

1. consistently and systemically focuses
   
2. consistently focuses
   
3. focuses (meets the standard)
   
4. somewhat focuses
   
5. rarely focuses

(3) Input: What can you do to increase your focus of organizational energy on achieving the mission? Here are 10 options:

1. Pray daily.
   
2. Memorize your mission statement.
   
3. Tell stories about achieving the mission.
   
4. Ask questions: What is our mission? What does our mission mean and not mean? What’s our definition of mission achievement? What’s our current level of mission achievement? What can we do to close the gap? How effectively will this ___ (meeting, project, task, proposed change) help us accomplish our mission?
   
5. Listen to the responses to your questions.
   
6. Use SMART goals and scoreboards.
   
7. Coach leaders.
   
8. Provide support, encouragement, and accountability.
   
9. Design job descriptions so that they are a function of mission achievement.
   
10. Empower 100% of staff to recite the mission, explain the definition of mission achievement, explain the current level of mission achievement, and identify how their job and schoolwide improvement plans contribute to mission achievement.

Pick 1 option. Do it. Today. And ask someone to hold you accountable. Until you get it done. Then, if necessary, pick another option.

(4) Output: What does your organization need to do to increase its focus on achieving the mission? Here are 10 things staff can do:

1. Pray daily.
   
2. Memorize the mission.
   
3. Learn to explain the definition of mission achievement.
   
4. Learn to explain the current level of mission achievement.
   
5. Learn to explain how their job contributes to mission achievement.
   
6. In each meeting, ask “How will this meeting help us achieve our mission?”
   
7. When developing proposals, ask “How will this proposed change help us achieve our mission?”
   
8. When considering whether or not to take on a task, ask “How effectively will this ___ (meeting, project, task, proposed change) help us accomplish our mission?”
   
9. When pursuing professional development, ask “What type of professional development will most effectively help me contribute to mission achievement?”
   
10. Track progress towards job completion and/or assigned improvement tasks. Share progress with a supervisor on a routine basis.

Ask each staff member to pick 1 option. Today. And hold staff members accountable. Until they get it done. Then, if necessary, ask them to pick another option.

Imagine you and your organization consistently and systemically focused on achieving your mission. Make this a reality by increasing your organization’s focus on achieving the mission. Target inputs (what you do) and outputs (what your organization does).

Steward what God has given you. Pursue excellence today.

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Martie Tarter, Christian Academy in Japan (Music/School Advancement), SEND International:
Focusing organizational energy on achieving the mission is central to achieving the mission. Ways I do this include praying daily and talking about how what we are doing is connected to the mission. To take it to the next level, I’m going to provide encouragement and ask organizational members to set personal goals related to achieving the mission.