ALL ICING, NO CAKE!

When a defense attorney is representing a client in a capital (e.g. murder) case, what do they do in order to prepare for the initial court appearance?

You have seen this many times: the client gets a clean and neat haircut, they wear a nice suit, and they are coached to say “Sir / Ma’am” and “Your Honor” to the judge. Often, their appearance in this moment is in stark contrast to their mugshot or how they may have presented themselves on social media prior to arrest.

Why do attorneys do this?

Because appearance matters! We sometimes judge or evaluated or rate things by how they look, how attractive or kempt they are, or how they make us feel. This is the same psychological reasoning that supports using “pretty people” in advertisements or commercials.

Unfortunately, individuals can also make less overt or completely mask their professional incompetence in the same manner — by using an impressive or glossy outward appearance to distract from lack of substantive skills or abilities.

In K-12 education, this usually manifests itself in school or district leadership positions. Individuals, especially those with underdeveloped or missing competencies that are critical to success in their role, might be tempted to look the part without being able to produce the results that match.

Once I listened to a school leader address his entire staff. He said “It is important that we are a professional learning community.” I had spent significant amounts of time around this individual and I observed no evidence whatsoever that he even knew what a professional learning community was. I am confident he had never participated in a PLC. I am even more confident that he was not capable of leading one. My instincts told me that he read a book, saw that phrase, and was trying to feign credibility with his staff. (The approach of “fake it until you make it” does not work in most leadership positions, politics being one, perhaps the only, exception!)

This approach to school leadership may fool some. It will not fool the most competent and professional members of the faculty. They may not react overtly when they smell an imposter, but their baloney-detector is finely tuned. The best teachers know which leaders “have it” and which do not.

The educators most valuable to the success of any school or district can easily spot someone who is all icing and no cake!