Building Relatinoal Trust Leading Professional

Building Relatinoal Trust Leading professional organizations Professional issue: Building relational trust Fostering an atmosphere of relational trust in which reciprocal dialogue between teachers and administrators can take place is essential for a school to function. This enables an alignment between teaching styles and the goals and objectives of the school as a whole. There also must be mutual respect between teachers and administrators must be willing to learn from the lived experience of teachers in the classroom.

A mutually beneficial, trusting relationship ensures that goals are realistic yet the activities of teachers in the classroom support those goals. Unfortunately in my present employment situation, there is a great deal of animosity between teachers and administrators and a reluctance to support current professional development and assessment methods. Teachers are mistrustful of administrators; administrators feel that teachers are unwilling to comply with reasonable requirements to improve the educational process.

When different components of the school see one another as 'the enemy' or even simply as misguided, this indicates a clear lack of relational trust, a critical component of organizational improvement.

According to Bryk & Schneider (2002) when they asked what factors "made the difference between schools that got better at educating children over the course of that decade -- as measured by improved test scores -- and schools that did not? The answer was not money, models of governance, up-to-date curricula, the latest in teaching techniques, or any other external variable. The answer was 'relational trust' between teachers and administrators, teachers and parents, teachers and teachers.

Schools with high relational trust, and/or leaders who cared about it, had a much better chance of serving students well than schools that ranked low on those variables" (Cited by Barkley 2008). Schools without relational trust are riddled with factions which are more apt to advance their own personal interests than the interests of the students the school is ultimately supposed to serve.

To encourage more accountability, at my own school teachers are presently required to compare their activities to a predetermined rubric describing effective teaching and asked to identify professional learning goals. After identifying areas in which they are lacking, they then are expected to work on these areas in need of improvement. However, this method of self-reflection has failed to substantially improve student outcomes. Teachers do not seem to take the process seriously or 'trust' that it can be helpful.

Our proposed solution to reform the program is to mentor teachers to help them set more useful and concrete objectives while engaging in dialogue with administrators to ensure that the goals and expectations are commensurate with the realities experienced by the teachers in the classroom. This is designed to take transformational approach to leadership. "Applied transformational leadership encompasses the act of empowering individuals to fulfill their contractual obligations, meet the needs of the organization, and go beyond the 'call of duty' for the betterment of the organization" (Santamaria & Santamaria 2012: 3).

However, unless the organization responds to the human needs of teachers and students, the full benefits of this transformational, personalized approach cannot be realized. Relational trust requires face-to-face interactions.

According to one educator striving to build relational trust in her school: "I did that in a number of ways: meeting with all our staff one-on-one, face-to-face, kanohi-ki-te-kanohi; asking them about what they saw as the successes in this school; what were the values that we needed to carry on; what were the aspirations; and also suggestions for improvement or how they wanted to see their career developing" (Building relational trust, 2013, Educational Leaders).

At present, the 'career development' aspect of the requirements for teaching are lacking, the change is something that is being done 'to' teachers rather than something that is evolving in a relational fashion. A transformational leader will fully incorporate followers into the organizational strategy. Part of this problem lies in the way in which the program was imposed upon teachers.

The administrators created this program to enhance student and teacher accountability: teachers were encouraged to engage in self-scrutiny and to improve their professional standards and this was hoped to lead to a more enriching educational environment for students. Teachers, however, resented the additional paperwork required by the program while the loosely-structured program meant that administrators were frustrated when they felt that teachers gave the program 'short shrift.' In reconfiguring the program, we have come to realize that there are four core elements of building relational trust.

The first is respect: "Do we acknowledge one another's dignity and ideas? Do we interact in a courteous way? Do we genuinely talk and listen to each other?" (Barkley 2008). In this instance, teachers and administrators are not in a dialogue, because the teachers are setting goals by themselves, but in a programmed manner imposed upon them by administrators. There is no opportunity for dialogue about the reasons for this new program and how to structure it so teachers will take it seriously.

Teachers by nature resent having to do additional paperwork and if there is no clear benefit for their classroom, they tend to be even more resistant. The second element of building relational trust is a mutual sense and exhibition of competence. "Do we believe in each other's ability and willingness to fulfill our responsibilities effectively? Incompetence left unaddressed can corrode school wide trust at a devastating rate" (Barkley 2008).

With the current situation, there is a clear lack of confidence amongst the teachers that the program is of value to them; while administers are extremely frustrated by the performance and attitude of the teachers. Teachers also do not feel as if they are treated as competent individuals because of what they regard as excessive paperwork while administrators are upset that teachers are not using the program as it was originally intended.

The inability of both parties to engage in dialogue and express their feelings results in festering distrust and the questioning of one another's mutual.