Bring Back the Renaissance Leader

Nick Baughman is associate superintendent for teaching and learning for Community Unit School District 115 in Yorkville, Ill. PHOTO BY KRISTINE ROGOWSKI

The 2020s are a personalized, expertise-driven society. In this world, the art of the Renaissance leader has been lost, replaced by a need to fine-tune knowledge bases and engineer job descriptions into silos. Today’s organizations tend to hire specialists who master specific tasks. But that may be to their detriment because complex problems are not easily compartmentalized.

Enter the lessons of the global pandemic. A major public health crisis reinvigorated the polymath in us all, or at least the institutions and industries that flourished despite the challenges. In these professions, successful leaders began to weigh ideas versus experience, bravely letting go of tradition.

Public school districts, long centered on the power of community in a school building, were forced to plan for instruction that required physical separation, reduced class sizes and interrupted student attendance. The only way to offer in-person, hybrid and remote instruction was to let go of the traditional school model and look for new ideas in new places. This complex problem required leaders to lean on their employee teams in a broader sense, putting roles aside and placing ideas on the forefront.

This begs the question: Has the desire for organizations to develop leaders with specialized skills inhibited their ability to adapt? Renaissance leaders do not fit their staff members into silos. They appreciate multidimensionally skilled individuals and support bold action. To flourish, Renaissance leaders need problem solving, creativity and humility.

Problem Solving

Complex problems are rarely solved with simple solutions.

In fall 2019, our 6,500-student school district set out to tackle several complex problems: How do we create engaging learning experiences at all grade levels, connect students to their school community and leverage the use of physical space? At the outset, we recognized that it would require commitment from a team of educators, an architect’s expertise, a deep knowledge of multiple programs and an ability to adapt to unforeseen issues.

The pandemic did not derail our team’s pursuit of the goals. We implemented new schedules, designed engaging interdisciplinary units, built outdoor classrooms and funded wellness clubs and initiatives. Though we only have begun to solve the complex problem, the courage of Renaissance leadership has set the course for a solution.

German psychologists Dietrich Dörner and Joachim Funke, writing in Frontiers in Psychology in 2017, said that in complex problem solving, “creative combinations of knowledge and a broad set of strategies are needed.” We have to analyze a problem from multiple angles and vantage points while keeping an open mind.

Our research helped us design a problem-solving strategy that connected the purist nature of theories with reality. For example, when in-person classroom instruction stopped in spring 2020, school administrators were faced with the reality that access to education now solely depended on access to personal technology. 

To resolve this dilemma, Renaissance leaders sent home devices to students, provided families with mobile hotspots, parked Wi-Fi-equipped buses in high-density neighborhoods, created printing hubs to pick up instructional materials and adopted digital platforms with video communication tools to connect students, teachers and families.

Three Facets

Typically, each change requires extensive training, marketing and budgeting. But when a crisis hits, complex problem solving must begin immediately with the courage to fail and the faith to change course when mistakes arise.

»Start without delay. Bravely identifying and accepting the challenge is the first strategy. This can be especially hard today. The permanence of the digital footprint has reinforced the idea of a cancel culture, where one mistake erases a lifetime of success, perpetuating the fear that erring can be debilitating and stop a leader from starting. The bravery to begin requires the removal of distractions and an extreme focus on the importance of forward progress, even when the solution has not yet been revealed.

»Be prepared to fail. Decisions will be made, reconsidered and made anew. This ability to adapt and accept temporary failure becomes the strategy. This is a difficult realization for leaders who are uncomfortable with ambiguity. Ambiguity paralyzes when it prevents leaders from acting. Leaders must recognize ambiguity and then take it on for themselves, deflecting paralysis for the team. In doing so, leaders can eliminate the barriers that “not knowing” creates. Failure and success are temporary states. Waiting for a perfect plan to act carries more risk than implementing an idea that can be fixed along the way.

»Have faith. Renaissance leaders have faith in the team, their abilities and the team’s abilities. They have a genuine faith that when the cards are on the table and the challenges are in the open, the goodwill of the group will reveal the solution.

In May 2020, we came together as a school community in a team of 100 teachers, principals, custodians, nurses, counselors, leaders and board members to redesign our schools. We put aside bell schedules, seat time and traditional roles to create a new model for our families. Each family could send their students full time in person, part-time online/in person or fully online. This 2020-21 model was only possible because we had faith in our team to build quickly, efficiently and thoughtfully.

Creating a framework that affects the jobs of your peers and the lives of students is a big responsibility, but we had faith in one another, and that was everything.

Though building trust usually takes time, in a crisis, it becomes an accelerated process. The quickest way for a leader to build trust in the team is to exhibit vulnerability. In the words of Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly, “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weaknesses.” Renaissance leaders do not worry about perfection. They admit their mistakes, demonstrating fallibility and in this, accelerate trust among those they serve. 

Nick Baughman (left) and Jennifer Waldvogel (center), both of Community Unit School District 115 in Yorkville, Ill., see solutions to complex problems in education coming from “renaissance” thinking. PHOTO COURTESY OF COMMUNUTY UNIT SCHOOL DISTRICT 115 IN YORKVILLE, ILL.

Humility

Renaissance leaders believe in the power of their team. Because they are not purporting to be experts, they know how valuable the voice and experience of their employees will be in creating viable solutions. So they are humble in asking for feedback and forgiveness.

In the 2021-22 school year, we experienced humility in realizing we missed the mark on reading our community’s desire for future remote learning. After offering full remote learning as an option in 2020-21, we worked toward a permanent remote option in the years ahead. Teachers were recruited, handbooks were created, legal issues were addressed and families were surveyed about their students’ interests. In the end, the demand for remote learning disappeared, so we had to humbly abandon our plans for remote instruction.

How can leaders embody humility? A Renaissance leader would approach it like this:

»Listen with empathy and respond. Pediatrician Claudia M. Gold, in her Psychology Today article “True Empathy: A Physical Sensation,” wrote, “Empathy has healing power, both for the listener and the person being heard.” Understanding the feelings and perspectives of others is not a transactional interaction, but a transformational connection. For example, understanding the stress a short deadline has on a teacher’s time differs from taking action to assist the teacher in meeting the deadline. This type of service-minded approach exemplifies humility.

»Resist the urge to solve. A therapist helps patients arrive at their own solutions by asking probing questions that spark inquiry and reflection. In this way, the patient generates personal solutions to the complex problems that are proving to be barriers. By resisting the urge to solve, the Renaissance leader becomes a leadership therapist, supporting the creative problem-solving process without using the position of authority to exert influence.

»Ask for forgiveness. Renaissance leaders prepare themselves to seek forgiveness if their solution doesn’t please everyone. They care about the needs of all stakeholders but know that solutions to complex problems rarely satisfy everyone. Instead, good solutions are the best move for that moment. This does not negate the emotions and mindsets of staff but requires leaders to be comfortable moving for-ward with a messy unpolished solution.

Creativity

Renaissance leaders reward creativity. To transform ideas into reality, they embrace authenticity, unorthodoxy and ownership to solve problems. Renaissance leaders recognize and admit when their communities hold polarizing beliefs. For example, navigating the politicization of school health and safety policies during the pandemic demanded creativity. One stronghold of parents may believe mask mandates violate their rights, with another group insisting that removing a mask mandate will endanger students.

Authentic Renaissance leaders take ownership by developing unorthodox solutions that honor all beliefs because they understand, de-spite sharp differences, these views are grounded in love for children.

»Begin with authenticity. Authentic leaders reveal their genuine personality, not separating who they are as people from who they are as professionals. Doing so involves emotional and professional risk. However, “(o)rganizations that foster authentic behavior are more likely to have engaged, enthusiastic, motivated employees and psychologically safe cultures,” according to a 2020 newsletter article on authentic leadership published by the Center for Creative Leadership.

»Brave the unorthodox. A creative visionary explores ideas that transcend the current reality and develops potential solutions that live beyond the idea of returning to what once was. Static systems need Renaissance leaders who look far beyond current reality. This forward thinking may look strange to the outside observer, involving ideas and strategies that seem unorthodox to current industry standards. In 2000, the notion that mobile phones could take photos and pay for products probably seemed far-fetched.

»Ownership. Ownership of innovation is shared, but consequences are not. “A true leader takes 100 percent ownership of everything in his domain including the outcome and everything it affects,” wrote Jocko Willink and Leif Babin in their co-authored book Extreme Ownership. Embracing this fundamental principle allows those on the leader’s team to operate in a protected space that mitigates personal and professional risks. At day’s end, the leader carries the responsibility to accept the consequences related to success or failure.

Inspired to Lead

A crisis can reveal a leader’s true philosophical style that will impact organizational culture and outcomes. Renaissance leaders who model problem solving, humility and creativity and who understand the risks involved with embracing these values are prepared to inspire those they lead to embody the same attributes. This creates the conditions to overcome complex problems arising in a crisis.

The silos of an expertise organizational structure may be useful at times, but effective organizations of the future will embrace the concept of the polymath Renaissance leader who does not fear uncertainty and is ready for the next crisis.

NICK BAUGHMAN is the associate superintendent of Yorkville District 115 in Yorkville, Ill. Twitter: @DrNickBaughman. JENNIFER WALDVOGEL is a K-12 teacher on special assignment in Yorkville District 115.