I don't have a DiSC, and I don't know my letter. But if you're in school leadership, or looking to be, you should. The PoCC pre-
conference Leadership Seminar for People of Color and Women provided participants with advice on reaching the next level in their careers (and how to succeed once there), and self-awareness was at the top of the list.
As an NAIS staffer, I wasn't an official seminar registrant. So when I walked into the seminar room Wednesday afternoon not having done a DiSC assessment, and having missed the explanatory morning session, it took a little while to catch on. Roughly 25 participants were discussing aspects of their leadership and communication styles, referencing their assessment identifier as they contributed to the conversation: "I'm way i." "I'm a CD."
The point of the assessment and walkthrough was to give participants insight into and greater understanding of their personal leadership styles. Knowing yourself, presenters repeated throughout the afternoon, is crucial to being a successful leader. You need to know your limitations, your challenges, your blind spots, your strengths, your values. How does your personal style manifest through the individual steps of creating a vision, building alignment, and championing execution, all of which a leader, and especially a head of school, needs to do? And where does your style fit on various continua of leadership best practice? "If you're perhaps an i," Marcia Chambers explained in a discussion on giving feedback, "it's going to be easier for you to [give] praise. You're gregarious, you're a talker." is around the room nodded in agreement. For those further from the 'offer more praise' best-practice end of the scale, an opportunity for development had been identified.
Of course, self-awareness isn't enough to make you a head of school. Presenters offered additional guidance on becoming and succeeding as a head of school (or in another leadership position), some of which I hope to address in a later post, and which included steps like: attend conferences (and not just PoCC). Work on building your professional social network. But as, or before, you embark on those, get to know yourself.