Sean

Murphy Component Two Interim Assignment NCPAPAs Distinguished Leaders in Practice 29 November 2011 2.3: Human Resource Leadership

In the Human Resource standard, I see a picture of school executives as

positive and sensitive figures, fostering the development of staff and maintaining an environment where people feel safe to grow. This wasnt always a clear to me, though. During my first year with NELA, this standard was ripe with objective skills. In my original assessment, an effective Human Resource leader was someone who could spot talent and create school-wide systems for PLCs. While I know these are both critical skills for successful leaders, my understanding of effective Human Resource Leadership shifted drastically after my first week at South Johnston High School. Within first five minutes of walking through the door, my mentor principal,

Eddie Price, was already emphasizing the art of being a principal. It was something hard to nail down and even harder to quantify. Yet, I quickly learned that ensur[ing] that the school is a professional learning community, required finesse and supportive leadership. I began to grasp that coaching was just as much about knowing a person as knowing their issues. Even in the last two months, Ive come to realize that evaluating [] in a fair and equitable manner and utilizing results [] to improve instruction, takes as much patience, ethos and understanding as it does pedagogical knowledge or skill. With Human Resource Leadership, as with all the other standards, it is

pivotal to remember that this is, above all else, a people business. Transformational

leadership pivots on relationships. Although its hard to quantify, the words in the School Executive tool, to some extent, capture the spirit in the art of being a principal. As time goes on, I gather experiences like so many tokens of wisdom, slowly refining my understanding of both people and leadership. That I now make that connection implicitly signals a growth in Human Resource Leadership that Im proud of.