We’ve been pushed to the limits these 12 months. From shutdowns and positive COVID cases to calls for superintendents to step down and deaths from COVID, it has been exceedingly difficult to be in public education.
Vacillating between hope and turmoil, superintendents and school boards had to be agile in their communications. Following are some lessons learned while working with a number of schools during COVID in the last year:
Employees first. While superintendents have complex multi-layers of constituents to communicate with, staff must come first. As one longtime school communicator said, an organization built on a foundation without internal communication is a foundation built on quicksand.
Empower staff. Rather than a top-down approach, ask staff and key parents to be part of the planning process via workgroups or for feedback via surveys. One District I worked with formed volunteer workgroups around key issues and found the insights invaluable. Later, there was strong support when presenting the plan to the public.
Get in the spotlight. The superintendent and admin team need to be in the spotlight throughout the crisis to instill confidence and resilience, to communicate a clear message, and to ensure trust in the organization. Record videos about your District’s plan, host a Zoom or Facebook Live Q+A for parents and staff or, hold special “office” hours. The admin team’s involvement also shows aligned leadership and helps drive key messages.
Increase communications. Teams should ramp up the cadence of communications. Create a dedicated, evolving web page and develop frequent news bulletins. Tell your audience what you’re going to communicate and when. Ask principals and other leaders to hold more frequent check-ins with their staff. Because of the large number of communications, consider using an integrated content system to push out messages to all platforms at once. Use Facebook’s Workplace platform to disseminate content. That way you can gauge how employees respond and then could adjust the approach or add to a Q+A, for example, nearly in real-time.
Show your empathy. Great superintendents have great empathy. Now is the time to listen, be fully present, leave judgment behind, and encourage those who don’t have a voice. This will help build rapport, trust and relationships, which are all needed to fuel success.
Be transparent. Silence creates a vacuum and critics are eager to fill it.
Listen. Communication is optimal when it’s two-way. Find ways to listen via surveys, town halls, dedicated email.
Rethink and re-evaluate. Explain why to your public and how you can do better.
All of these steps are critically important to gain and maintain trust with your public.