LEAD Awards 2018: Interview with Shannon A. Hanson, Florida International University

Developing Facilitative Leadership Skills

 
  Category: Custom Content Programming with Emphasis on
  Leadership and Organizational Development
  LEAD AWARD RANK: 1
 
  Organization: Florida International University Center for Leadership
  Program: Educational Leadership Development Program
  Program Director: Dr. Mayra Beers
  Contact: Shannon A. Hanson
  Email: hansons@fiu.edu
  Visit: lead.fiu.edu   
 

 
Our editorial team interviewed Shannon A. Hanson, Assistant Director from the Florida International University Center for Leadership at the LEAD2018 Awards this past February. Here are some excerpts from the exclusive interview.
 
What is the overall objective of your program?
To provide every school leader in Florida with effective leadership development opportunities that will assist them in equipping students for success. Many educational leadership programs focus on teaching key technical skills needed by school administrators. At The Center, our educational leadership programs focus on the leadership skills needed for school administrators to become more effective leaders and change agents in their schools. This program helps educators equip students for success by developing facilitative leadership skills for building a shared mindset of respect and collaboration with all stakeholders in ensuring student success: students, teachers, principals, administrators, families, and the community-at-large.
 
Who do you impact with your program?
The target audience for this program is the thousands of educational leaders who lead schools in the State of Florida.
 

What are the lessons you’ve learned this year from facilitating your program?
In any organization and across geography or culture, leadership matters. It is true for Fortune 100 companies, and it is true for Florida schools. The research is clear: principals are the single most influential agents of change in their institutions – the most important factor in improving the climate and working conditions of the schools they lead, resulting in powerful positive student outcomes. Florida’s school children deserve the best education available.

The lessons we’ve learned from facilitating the program this past year reinforce our findings that the importance of leadership training for educational leaders may be underestimated and there is a need to expand leadership development training to include new content on intricacies of developing self-insight and developable leadership skills. Based on our Competency Builder paradigm, The Center’s educational programs are developed to complement technical skills with a focus on essential leadership skills that will further assist educational leaders in becoming more effective change agents in their schools.
 
How do you measure the return on investment and success of the program?
There are two main ways that we measure the success and return on investment of this program. First, through the use of participant evaluations during the program we are able to gauge what participants find meaningful and had the most impact. Since inception, this program has received overwhelming high evaluation scores from participants. Over time, evaluations have ranged from 4.8 to 5.0, on a 5-point scale. For the last year, evaluations remained high rating the year-long program at 4.95.
 
We also measure the success of the program through the expansion and renewal of custom programs. The success of this program has led to an expansion of The Center’s collaboration with school districts in Florida. Since it started in 2010, this program has trained more than 240 principals and now serves as the hub for ancillary programs for principal supervisors, aspiring leaders, principal-mentors, teacher-leaders, and other administrators. These ancillary programs have trained an additional 305 educational leaders. This year alone, The Center will graduate more than 100 school administrators from Center programs.
 
What lies ahead for the program and how will it continue to succeed?
The Educational Leadership Development Program has achieved remarkable resonance and applicability across all levels of public schools in the State of Florida. We have observed a powerful cascading effect that is reaching and rooting deep into the public school system providing yet another tool for impacting positive student outcomes for the long-term. We look forward to reaching out even more broadly across the system and expanding this work to other school leaders to further positively impact students, teachers, and administrators.