Regardless of whether you are the leader of a content department such as math, special education, or technology or whether you happen to be a principal, superintendent, or oversee the business department, visibility, credibility, and profitability lead are critical to having sustainable and meaningful outreach. Plus, they’re good for job security! Let’s look at how visibility, credibility, and profitability can impact your success.
Visibility
Visibility is essential for any leader to be successful. In order to build relationships with members of staff and the school community, leaders must be visible and easily accessible to them. This means having a strong online presence with a well-designed website, active social media accounts, and being present in day-to-day activities, relevant meetings, district events, and local gatherings. By increasing your visibility, you can reach interact with people in your community and establish yourself as a go-to leader.
Credibility
Credibility is crucial for a leader to gain trust. In order to be credible, a leader must be able to demonstrate expertise and knowledge in their field. This can be done through sharing relevant research and case studies, responding quickly to needs with appropriate solutions, and tracking data to identify (and anticipate) trends and problems that might need to be addressed. By building credibility, you establish yourself as a trusted source of support, guidance, answers, and more because you can be counted on and are reliable.
Profitability
Profitability is essential for sustainability and growth. Granted, as educational leaders, we aren’t in charge of selling goods and services to meet quarterly income goals as businesses, but profitability doesn’t always mean financial profit. We do still have ways to show profitability in the sense of advancement toward objectives. It could be as simple as making wise purchasing decisions, or it could be as complex as identifying various key performance indicators (KPIs) that your department has control over. This may include satisfaction survey responses, student learning data, employee turnover rates, the turnaround time for repairs and responses, or even summaries of logs of events and services provided.
As you reflect on your leadership, you may find that one or two of these key areas are going well. But to really maximize your leadership and success means focusing on all three areas. Visibility, credibility, and profitability are all essential for successful leadership. By focusing on these key areas, you can increase your reach, gain the trust of your staff and community, and be sustainable in the long term. If you want to thrive and make an impact, make sure to focus on visibility, credibility, and profitability.