Covey's principles.

I came across The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey in the early 1990s when I was a central-office administrator in a small school district just outside of Boston. I consider the book foundational as I think about leadership. (I am now superintendent in a central Massachusetts district with nine schools and 6,000 students).

I could write about Covey's view that leadership is more about being genuine than it is about strategies or his reminder that people, regardless of age and experience, are very tender on the inside. However, two ideas from the book have been pivotal to me: Leaders should devote much of their time to issues that are "important but not urgent" and we should use "empathic listening" in dealing with conflict.

By committing time to issues of importance (what Covey calls quadrant II in his management matrix), I have focused on hiring and supporting high-performing administrators who manage and lead their buildings and departments. As the 13 members of the leadership team deal with day-to-day operations, I concentrate on what might be called the leadership agenda. The team's biweekly meetings generally are concerned with the direction of the district (long-term financial and facilities plans, student achievement, professional learning, etc.). Therefore, we tend to prevent crises (at least of our own making) and our lives as administrators are often less frenetic.

Empathic listening helps me deal with parents who make requests of the system that only the superintendent can ultimately resolve. Covey has taught me that working to understand the nature of their concern while trying hard to identify with their position can be of enormous benefit in reducing tension and resolving the issue.

The best example I can give is when we redistricted the entire system a few years ago and moved many 4th graders to different elementary schools for 5th grade. Understandably, parents of 4th graders were very reluctant to move their children for one year, given that 6th grade was in the middle school. I met with several sets of parents during that spring. In each meeting, I indicated I was disposed to help, but knew that many students had to be redistricted to make the plan work. Along with the parents, I probed to see if a particular child's situation was exceptional. In doing so, the parents began to join me in suggesting solutions and viewed me less on the opposite side of the decision-making fence.

At the conclusion of the meetings, I told parents my strong interest was that their children have a successful year in the new school and I would visit each child in the third week of September. I did visit each child. As you might guess, each was happy in the new school and one even whispered to me in the hall, "I like this school better than the last one."

Covey's book provides me with an essential value and a strategy for dealing with those who look to the superintendent to resolve problems. I use both regularly.

Anthony Bent is superintendent of the Shrewsbury Public Schools, 100 Maple Ave., Shrewsbury, MA 01545. E-mail: [e-mail]