Leading When the System Just Wants You to Manage

I was updating my website with assignment rubrics when I got a text from a former colleague who's now a principal in another district.

"Do you remember Dr. Williams from when you were at Jefferson? She just retired. Made me think about the difference between leaders and managers."

I did remember her. Dr. Williams was my principal back when I was teaching at Jefferson High School, fifteen years ago. She's the one who supported me when I first started giving parents my cell phone number, even though district policy didn't exactly encourage that kind of accessibility.

"Teachers who build strong relationships with families should be supported, not questioned," she used to say. And she meant it.

Dr. Williams understood what leadership looked like when you actually care about kids.

When I wanted to try new ways of connecting with parents and students, she didn't shut it down because it was unconventional. She asked if it was helping kids. And when she could see it was making a difference, she backed me up when other administrators questioned my methods.

But even back then, I watched her struggle against demands that pulled her away from what she did best—supporting teachers and students. Budget meetings, data reviews, district initiatives that changed every semester but never seemed to make things better for teachers or kids.

She spent more time in conference rooms talking about test scores than in classrooms seeing what was actually happening with students.

The system wanted a manager. Jefferson needed a leader.

There's a difference, and it matters more than we want to admit.

Leaders focus on people. Managers focus on compliance. Leaders ask how they can support the people doing the work. Managers track metrics that may or may not have anything to do with whether kids are actually learning and growing.

Dr. Williams was a leader caught in a system designed for management. She knew what good teaching looked like because she'd done it for twelve years before becoming an administrator. She knew what teachers needed because she'd been one. But her role kept pulling her away from the people she was supposed to be supporting.

I remember the conversation we had during my third year at Jefferson.

I'd been getting pushback from the district office about my communication methods with parents. Someone had heard that I was giving out my personal contact information and questioned whether it was appropriate.

Dr. Williams called me into her office. "Tell me about these parent connections," she said.

I explained how parents would text me when their kids were struggling with assignments, how we'd work together to help their children succeed, how it had improved both student performance and family engagement.

"Are students learning better because of this?"

"Yes."

"Are parents more connected to their kids' education?"

"Absolutely."

"Then keep doing it. I'll handle the district office."

That's what real leadership looks like.

It's understanding that your job as a school leader isn't to manage teachers according to some handbook—it's to support them so they can reach students better.

It's recognizing that when teachers go above and beyond to connect with families, that's building the relationships that actually matter, not creating policy problems.

It's knowing that connections matter more than compliance reports, even when compliance reports are what get reviewed in district meetings.

Dr. Williams got it. But the system made it harder for her every year. More meetings that pulled her away from classrooms. More reports that had nothing to do with whether kids were actually thriving. More pressure to manage teachers instead of champion them.

The frustration was real for both of us.

We'd created leadership positions that had no time for the relationships that make schools work. We'd promoted our best teachers into roles where they couldn't focus on what made them great teachers in the first place—connecting with students and families.

By the time I left Jefferson, Dr. Williams was spending most of her time in meetings about meetings. She knew what was happening in classrooms only through reports and data dashboards that told her nothing about the real work of teaching and learning.

She retired two years later, knowing she couldn't do the job she'd been called to do.

If you're a school leader reading this, you probably recognize this tension.

You know what meaningful education looks like because you lived it in your own classroom. You know what teachers need because you were one. You know what students need because you worked with them directly.

But your job description has less and less to do with any of that. You're evaluated on metrics that don't measure the relationships that actually make schools work. You spend your time managing compliance instead of leading people.

You're not failing. The system is asking you to do something different than what you signed up for, just like it did to Dr. Williams and countless other good leaders who got into this work to make a difference.

Next week, we're talking about something every teacher needs to hear: Your classroom isn't broken. You're not the problem. The challenges you're facing are real, and they're not your fault.

Because until we start having honest conversations about what's really happening in education, we can't support each other the way we need to. And our kids deserve better than that.

Find more resources and join the conversation at WeAreAcademicAllies.com.