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As children, we were taught the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would want others to do unto you.” While this is a valuable strategy in playground supervision, it is also a very sound business and leadership strategy.
The Golden Rule of Leadership works to build others up, rather than using them up. If implemented properly, this approach “adds lasting value in that it is other-directed not self-centered;”…“allows people to envision new possibilities rather than seeing themselves and the world as unchangeable; it invites decision making based on one’s values; and it allows everyone within the organization to reveal their inner values without forcing others to change their beliefs” (Senske, p 9).
School districts that have a huge turnover in support staff personnel do not have a “shortage-of-workers problem, they have a good-place-to-work problem.” Starbucks Corporation Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Howard Schultz states, “It’s an ironic fact that while retail and restaurant businesses live or die on customer service, their employees have among the lowest salaries and worst benefits of any industry. These people are not only the heart and soul but also the public face of the company. Every dollar earned passes through their hands. Can we afford to treat them as expendable” (Senske, p 41)?
Is a school any different? In most schools a bus driver is the first person to greet the “customers” each morning and the last to see them each afternoon. The cook provides the customer with breakfast and noon meal. The custodian is charged with the impossible task of maintaining a clean, safe structural environment for the customers. The person who answers the phone or greets the public is on the front line every minute of every day. The paraprofessional who is working one-on-one or in small groups of students is handling the most precious commodity that community has—their children.
Schools that will survive the new millennium are those that view themselves as “a community for learning, a place where staff and students, along with parents, have a shared vision of what the institution is seeking to accomplish. There is no way to achieve educational excellence in a school where purposes are blurred…community is, without question, the glue that holds an effective school together” (Boyer, p 15).
But ‘community’ doesn’t just happen,…To become a true community, the institution must be organized around people, ‘around relationships and idea,’…communities create social structures that bond people together in a oneness, and that bind them to a set of shared values and ideas” (Boyer, p 17).
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