Culture of Compliance vs. Investment

This past year while visiting a school district a school principal confided in me his struggles to get his staff to comply to certain things he expected them to do. When asked to share an example of his experiences, he told me a story of how he was frustrated with his staff regarding their failure to stand outside their classrooms and supervise the hallways during passing time on a daily basis. He stated that he had been clear and even asked nicely and that initially, his staff complied. However, over the span of a few weeks, he noticed less and less of his staff outside their classroom doors until eventually there was hardly anyone to be seen. Frustrated, he put out an email to the staff reminding everyone of his expectations and that he would be monitoring them to make sure this was happening. The next day staff could be seen standing outside their doorways again. Not surprising to me, he stated the impact was minimal and within a couple of weeks, he described how his frustration grew more intense and finally reached optimum level when an altercation between two students took place in a busy hallway near several classrooms. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the principal had had enough. The next day at a faculty meeting he voiced his displeasure with his staff and told them that moving forward he would be monitoring even more closely and that any staff member who was not out in the hallway between classes would receive at minimum, a written warning and possibly, a letter of reprimand, for repeat violations for not following directives. Maybe you have been witness to or a part of the scenario described above. Principals getting frustrated with staff. Teachers and bus drivers losing their cool with students. Admittedly, what I've learned over the course of my career after managing similar situations in a similar way, is that there are ways to minimize these encounters so that they don’t evolve and become what I describe as a culture of compliance. Cultures of compliance are rooted in authoritative cultures where staff has learned to either "do what the boss tells them to do or else." Ironically, these same roots begin to dig their way into classrooms and wrap themselves around teachers who then begin to behave in a similar fashion, telling kids what to do and ready to offer up a detention or a written office referral for those who don’t.I encourage you to begin to recalibrate your mind and begin to think in terms of investment, rather than compliance. What I've gleaned from my experience over many years as  a building leader is that cultures of compliance are not sustainable and not healthy for the culture of any organization. We want our culture to be vibrant, stimulating, and rooted in the idea that people behave in the manner in which they behave because it comes from a place deep down in their core, not from an outside host or mandate.  People believe it to be the right thing to do. It is who they are. They don’t need someone to tell them to conduct themselves in a certain manner. They have too much pride and care too much not to.  Consequently, as I grew in my role as principal, I learned that in order for my staff to invest in the very things I believed to be pillars of a strong culture, such as maintaining high expectations for all, that all meant all, including holding myself to the highest standards as well. For example, if I myself and the principal that I was mentoring were going to expect our staff to supervise the hallways to the highest of standards that we expected, two things needed to happen. One, we needed to define what we meant by supervising.  Did we want our staff to have all eyes on students looking for moments of wrongdoings, or did we want them actively engaged and interacting with students in a genuine manner in order to foster positive relationship with all students, not just “their” students? Secondly, were we prepared to invest in our staff the same way we expected our staff to invest in students by standing and engaging our staff in the hallways or when they entered a faculty meeting. Were we prepared to stand at the entrance and greet each one of our teachers and staff, engage them in conversation, share a friendly hello or handshake, offer a word of encouragement, or provide an empathetic ear, just like we expected them to do with students?  By actively seeking out each staff member in such a way, no longer would we have to tell staff what to do. Yes, we may ask, encourage or even expect, but might our expectations have a better chance to take hold if we were also modeling the same behaviors we hoped our staff would duplicate. Would our words not be more impactful and resonate more deeply if they were supported by our actions? In this way, they would be able to not only see, but to understand what it felt like when someone else invested in them not only through our comments, but also through our genuine and active steps we took to build a relationship by giving each staff member our personal time and attention.  When done with sincerity and generated from our core, we are more apt to foster a culture of investment that does what it does because it is who we are, rather than get others to comply because it is what we tell them to do.Which culture would you prefer?