What can we learn about leadership from Judy Garland?
When Judy Garland is singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” it fills us all with childhood memories of the magic of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Something happens to us when she sings. At the beginning of the movie, when it’s still in black and white, and Dorothy is still in Kansas, and she sings that lovely song, don’t we all believe that she knows, in her heart, that there is a better place somewhere over the rainbow? We are absolutely sure she believes it. In other words, she’s sincere.
That is the first leadership lesson of “Lead Like the Legends” – Be Sincere.
In the 1990’s, the City of Gaithersburg, in central Maryland, wanted to tear down the Lee Street apartments. If you got off the commuter train in the center of town and walked two blocks downhill on Summit Avenue, you might think you were in a slum, rather than in a booming, Washington, D.C. suburban bedroom community – not at all the image of revitalization that the city council wanted to present to the world. The home-grown mayor, Ed Bohrer, was an astute political leader and very sensitive to his community. He called a meeting of the three principals whose schools had students living in the apartments. I was the middle school principal. He told us that he wanted us to contact every family. If they wanted their children to continue attending their neighborhood schools, the City would arrange for them to move, at no cost, to another apartment nearby, without increasing their rent. He wanted to minimize the disruption to their lives, and he felt that we could help.
I went back to my office and wrote a letter to every family. It was a pseudo-personalized letter, the kind that we have all received from corporations, credit card companies and charities. It was individually addressed to every family, but other than that, each one received the identical letter. I told them what the mayor said and offered to meet with them if they needed my assistance. I thought I had done a good job of reaching out to the families.
However, Sharon Jones, the principal of Gaithersburg Elementary School, did better. Sharon and her school counselor went to the Lee Street apartments and knocked on every door to ask whether there were any school-aged children living there, and then personally offered to help the family if they wanted their child to stay at her school. After you meet a principal who does something like that, who so sincerely cares about your children, who wouldn’t want them to stay enrolled in that school?
That’s what a sincere educator does – she does it personally, because that’s what schools (or any organizations) are when they are at their best – a personal experience – where everyone is treated as a valued individual.
The way Sharon Jones acted (and the mayor, too) is a combination of two qualities – sincerity merged with effectiveness (carefully planning and carrying out a job). The syndicated columnist and presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan put it like this, “Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.”[i] These two leadership characteristics are essential for every type of work and every goal we hope to accomplish in our lives.
Read More in: Lead Like the Legends: Advice and Inspriration for Teachers and Administrators (Available from Routlege and Amazon)
Check out the Keynote on leadlikethelegends.com or davidisteinberg.com
[i] Qualifications: Webster’s Quotations, Facts and Phrases. (2008). ICON Group International, Inc.: San Diego. P. 1.