How Administrators Can Effectively Harness Their Influence

When Rob served as superintendent of schools, a very perceptive school board president shared an insight that he found shocking. “School administrators,” he concluded, “have very few carrots and even fewer sticks to get people to move people from one point to another.” The board president, a senior executive in finance, could not understand how schools could function if the directives of management were not carried out with all due speed.

School administrators must learn to thrive in an environment where formal titles like “principal” or even “superintendent” carry less institutional weight than their counterparts in other complex organizations. Government mandates, civil service regulations, union contracts, and competing demands from multiple stakeholders all constrain administrative prerogatives. Additionally, schools are “loosely coupled systems” where large spans of control and organizational culture combine to give teachers great leeway in controlling what happens in classrooms. Rather than rely on directives and sanctions, school leaders must consequently utilize the power of influence to drive improvement initiatives.

Balancing the Concept of Push and Pull

Briefly defined, “influence” in this context means the capacity to modify someone’s (or a group’s) behavior by increasing the forces that move them toward change and/or reducing the forces that are holding them back. This push-pull concept aligns with Kurt Lewin’s seminal work on field theory. How can leaders accomplish this complex task and overcome the powerful urge exhibited in schools to maintain equilibrium and avoid the disruption caused by the introduction of new programs?

A powerful strategy for influence utilizes the process of framing. Think of framing as the equivalent of placing a border around a specific section of a panoramic picture. Framing separates the figure from the ground. The school leader’s frame provides teachers and other staff with a focus on the most important parts of a new policy, program, or practice. It identifies what deserves attention, what merits special emphasis, and/or what should be ignored.

To increase forces powering adoption of a new initiative, school leaders can connect the desired change to existing understandings and norms. It is important to begin by showing how the goal complements the school’s or district’s vision and mission and addresses a meaningful problem of practice for the school community. Additionally, administrators can identify how new programs or practices connect to aspects of existing ones, thereby reducing defensiveness and easing concerns about the feasibility of anticipated change.

In this way, school leaders help others build an accessible mental model that makes abstract ideas concrete and addresses the “what,” “why,” and “how” of change. Once a shared understanding of direction is established, participants in the change process are much more likely to develop a sense of efficacy, which is an essential ingredient for sustaining motivation and persistence in the face of the inevitable challenges associated with policy or program change.

How to Influence Meaningful Change

Consider, for example, a principal introducing a new curriculum based on the science of reading. A technical, directive-based approach here would involve a major announcement of impending program revision, accompanied by some professional development that demonstrates the use of new materials, revised scope-and-sequences pacing calendars, and the implementation of new assessments. In a loosely coupled system, this approach might create superficial compliance, but it might be equally or more likely to produce resistance that ironically reinforces the commitment to the former program once teachers close their classroom doors.

A leader seeking to influence teachers to support change would instead begin by connecting the new program to beliefs deeply shared among the faculty. The principal might launch the initiative by reminding the faculty of the school’s emphasis on “Every child a reader.” From there, the principal could remind teachers that many have voiced concern about levels of student fluency and comprehension throughout the grades, thereby connecting the purpose of proposed change with teachers’ own dissatisfaction with levels of student performance. This approach contrasts with promulgating directives and “We’ll show you how” top-down professional development, indicative of authoritative leadership that often generates resistance.

Next, the principal can frame the science of reading as an approach linked to existing teaching strategies and techniques already in place. In both formal and informal meetings, the principal might say, “You already teach phonics, and you already teach comprehension. Evidence shows that the science of reading puts these elements together in a well-structured way to build fluency and master decoding and comprehension strategies. The program will make us better able to spot problems as they arise, and then we can catch students before they fall behind.” Positioning the new reading program as an enhancement of past practice recognizes existing faculty strengths and does not require teachers to criticize the current curriculum or question their previous efforts to support it.

As a final step, the principal could address the implementation process in specific terms, thereby reducing anxiety levels by making what might appear an overwhelming task more realistic and manageable. The principal might stress that the program would be introduced in phases, accompanied by job-embedded professional development that enables teachers to explore new techniques, engage in reflection, and make modifications and adjustments that increase classroom impact. The principal can emphasize that implementation will be a shared activity—with peers helping peers—in a low-risk environment.

As we’ve learned through experience and research, school administrators exercise leadership less through formal authority than through engaging and energizing the members of their respective school communities. This process of influence achieves critical mass when leaders intentionally frame change in terms that align with shared commitments, respect existing practices, and help make the pathways to ambitious goals seem within reach. Influence, rather than mandates, possesses the power to reduce resistance and build capacity for sustained school improvement.