Coordinator, Planning & Program Evaluation Central Texas Independent School District, Texas, United States
Abstract Information: Educational organizations currently face a multitude of adaptive challenges. Organizational capacity to overcome challenges and emerge even stronger requires employee resilience. Research shows employee resilience is linked to job performance, commitment, and satisfaction (Purwadi et al., 2020), all of which are impacted by leadership competencies (al-Sada et al., 2017). Leaders who are able to create psychological, developmental, and relational conditions enabling employees to thrive are more likely to cultivate satisfaction, and therefore resilience. One problem districts may face is the conditions that contributed to challenges, also may lead to leadership instability, thereby increasing the likelihood of employee dissatisfaction. Organizational capacity decreases as employee satisfaction decreases, making a strong recovery less and less likely. A vicious cycle ensues. A qualitative study was conducted in a large, urban Texas school district which had undergone frequent leadership turnover and was experiencing adaptive challenges. Staff climate data indicated some employee dissatisfaction with district leadership. It was unknown, however, whether the satisfaction data was accurate and if so, it was unknown how widespread. A purposive sample of employees were interviewed to understand the story behind the data. Participants’ collective voice emerged to reveal what conditions are necessary for employees to push through difficult change–which they are willing to do–and how leaders can create such conditions. Story procurement became a healing agent for participants, and could have been a learning accelerator for district leaders.
Relevance Statement: Valuable aspects of this study are evident in the population of interest, theoretical framework, analysis method, positive effect of story procurement, and post-analysis efforts to communicate results. These aspects are described below:
Central office employees in a K12 district, the population, are reportedly underrepresented in educational research (Honig & Copland, 2008): District office employees were found to be essential for supporting campuses in implementing school improvement and equitable district reform, yet are rarely the focus of research.
Exploration of adaptive leadership framework (Heifetz et al., 2009): One adaptive principle is to elevate voices from below. “The people with ‘authority’ always seem to have their voices heard" (Blackie, 2018). Researchers enabled dissenting voices to be heard by letting particpants' words offer a counter-narrative to that of those in power.
Application of 'in vivo' analysis (Saldaña, 2014) method to authentically capture and honor participants' voices: In vivo–not the software NVivo–involves extracting actual words or short phrases from a participant’s textual data as codes. Codes are woven together into themes, resulting in literally telling the story in participants’ own words.
Healing effect voiced by participants after member-checking: After data from the interviews was analyzed and presented back to a sample of interviewees for member-checking, participants expressed gratitude for being able to “share their story”. Some described it as 'healing' , 'cathartic', and 'validating'.
Post-analysis of dissemination efforts using Duarte's (2013) sparkline: When both quantitative and qualitative data reports fail, how might a story be more effectively communicated for impact?
References: al-Sada, M., al-Esmael, B., & Faisal, M. (2017). Influence of organizational culture and leadership style on employee satisfaction, commitment and motivation in the educational sector in Qatar. EuroMed Journal of Business, 12(2), 163-188. Blackie, S. (2018). The enchanted life: Unlocking the magic of the everyday. House of Anansi. Duarte, N. (2013). Resonate: Present visual stories that transform audiences. John Wiley & Sons. Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Harvard business press. Honig & Copland, (2008). Reinventing district central offices to expand student learning. Issue Brief. Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement. Purwadi, Dio Caisar, Widya, & Dedy (2020). Exploration of Leadership, Organizational Culture, Job Satisfaction, and Employee Performance.Technium Social Science Journal, 6, 116. Saldaña, (2014). Coding and analysis strategies. In Leavy, P. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research. (1st ed., pp. 581-605). Oxford University Press, USA.
