The four-quadrant leadership team: the authors' homegrown model for what it takes to develop high performers in a school system's administrative posts.

As superintendents, we can readily identify the superstars on our administrative teams. These individuals have the whole package--they are knowledgeable in their field and continuously engaged in their own reflective professional development; they demonstrate vision and initiative, work for results, involve stakeholders, foster teamwork and build strong relationships.

Every school system has some of these high-performing leaders, and the most fortunate systems have more.

Just as readily we can bring to mind school and district-level administrators who, although talented in several respects, never really excel and eventually bump up against a ceiling. When passed over for promotional opportunities, these individuals don't understand why they were not selected and feel the system has let them down. When promoted, they often struggle in their new role and fall short of expectations.

Two Key Variables

Building a high-performing leadership team is the greatest legacy we can leave behind as school system leaders--more important than the programs we put in place, the facilities we build, the budgets we balance or the improvement strategies we implement. The challenge lies in knowing which individuals are most likely to be successful in our hiring and promotion decisions, and in knowing how to help develop those staff members to be more effective in their leadership roles.

Our thinking on this subject has grown out of conversations over many years regarding what gets senior-level managers and school principals in trouble and how to hire, promote and develop those individuals with the greatest chance of success. With more than 30 years of combined experience in district-level leadership experience, we still struggle to understand the factors that account for the difference between leadership success and failure.

While many variables are at play, we believe two factors account for much of the difference between those who excel and those who struggle in key posts. We believe leadership focused on relationships and results are at the heart of a leader's success. These factors differentiate administrators who appear equally qualified on paper, yet who get vastly different results on the job.

Our hope is to help superintendents and other school system leaders to see their leadership team in a fresh way, to hire more strategically, to have more hard conversations around critical success areas and to develop more administrators into highly effective leaders. We also hope to offer a lens to better understand one's own strengths and weaknesses as an educational leader.

Four Quadrants

Two key attributes help define strong educational leaders and high-performing leadership teams. The first cluster of attributes and skills involves vision, goal setting, initiative, drive, high expectations, accountability and a focus on results. We call this attribute cluster "leadership for results."

The second cluster includes attributes and skills related to the ability to build relationships, attention to process, trustworthiness, problem-solving abilities, political savvy and culture building. We call this cluster "leadership through relationships."

The most successful leaders demonstrate both sets of attributes. Conversely, school site and district-level administrators who are less effective in their leadership roles typically struggle because of weaknesses in one of these two key areas.

The interplay between the two attribute clusters can be summarized in a four-quadrant model where "leadership for results" is represented on the vertical axis and "leadership through relationships" is represented on the horizontal axis. The upper two quadrants include administrators who are focused on realizing results, while the two right-side quadrants include administrators with strong relationship skills. The top right quadrant includes individuals who reflect both high drive and high relationship skills. The lower left corner describes those who are weak in both attribute areas.

Quadrant 1 includes administrators who are strong on both results-focused leadership and interpersonal relationships. These superstars possess the vision and drive for results as well as the ability to build relationships to help realize those results.

Quadrant 2 contains leaders with strong results orientation but weak interpersonal skills. These administrators have a focused vision and drive, but lack the ability to nurture the relationships to achieve the vision. They are all drive with too little concern for the social, emotional and political fabric of the organization.

Quadrant 3 describes administrators with strong interpersonal skills but weak results orientation. These leaders foster positive relationships with staff and community and often are well liked but are not driven to produce results. They may talk about accountability but do not attend to data and results in making decisions.

Quadrant 4 contains those who are neither strong on results nor relationships, lacking both heart and drive. These tend to be our least effective leaders.

Where individuals fall within the quadrants is more complex because individuals have varying skills within each cluster of competencies and therefore fall somewhere on the continuum. As a result, we might see significant variation among Quadrant 3 leaders, where one individual possesses well-honed skills within the leadership for results category, while another administrator is just developing such skills. Still, understanding individuals in terms of the four quadrants is helpful both in making hiring decisions and in identifying how to best support individual professional growth.

To bring to life these attributes and skills needed for effective leadership, we posit four fictional administrators (for a fictional school district) that we can all recognize to flesh out the quadrants. The profiles reflect a composite of characteristics we have developed from school administrators over the years.

Quadrant 1 Profile: High Drive, High Relationship

JoAnn Romano was recruited to serve as assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in Valley Oaks Unified after a long stint as a successful principal. During her first six months on the job, Romano sought out a full range of views. She recognized the importance of learning about the district culture, asking reflective questions, reviewing data and taking time before drawing conclusions or forming action plans.

At the same time, Romano started engaging the community in discussions around student performance, curriculum standards and best practices. She also rolled up her sleeves to pick up work that had gone untended. The school community appreciated her work effort, inclusive approach and ability to search for practical solutions.

Romano helped district-level staff prioritize their work and encouraged them to build stronger relationships with the school sites and with classroom teachers. She identified organizational strengths, weaknesses and opportunities at both the district and site levels. Within two years, Romano was recognized as future superintendent material. Possessing strong vision and drive as well as excellent interpersonal skills, she was clearly a budding superstar.

Quadrant 2 Profile: High Drive, Low Relationship

John Martin was pleased to be offered the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction position in Valley Oaks Unified, confident he could make a difference for his new district. He brought clear ideas regarding best practices and was eager to implement programs he had championed in his previous district. He spent hours poring over student data and developing strategies for improvement.

Confident he had the support of the superintendent, Martin convened a group of teachers and district-level staff to launch his initiatives. He hoped to quickly establish himself as knowledgeable on curriculum and instruction issues and as a strong advocate for using data to drive instruction.

As ideas poured out of his office with little involvement by school sites, questions began to emerge. Who is this person? Does he care about who we are? What happened to process? Martin assumed results would speak for themselves. He didn't seem to know when to push and when to back off. He was perceived as an outsider brought in to fix things. Consequently, his initiatives had trouble gaining traction and, in some instances, encountered outright resistance.

Martin was a driver with too little focus on relationships. His weakness on the human relationship side of the leadership equation got in the way of achieving results.

Quadrant 3 Profile: High Relationship, Low Drive

Bud Walters was delighted when he was appointed as the new assistant superintendent for curriculum of Valley Oaks Unified. He came from a neighboring district with strong recommendations as a principal. Walters immediately started visiting school sites and talking with support staff, teachers and administrators. Given his affable nature, staff members were welcoming and freely shared their views of the district.

Walters' friendly style and attention to detail was appreciated by staff. He saw no need to change the strategic plan nor to initiate changes in the instructional program. By the end of the school year, Walters had settled into his new role and was pleased with his efforts.

While the organization felt very comfortable with Walters, test scores hit a plateau. The board of education and superintendent became concerned the district was resting on its laurels. Walters listened to this input and made several attempts to review data and develop initiatives. Yet these efforts seemed out of context, lacking supportive data or research, and they were not well conceived.

Walters demonstrated strong relationship skills, but his focus on student results and vision fell short.

Quadrant 4 Profile: Low Relationship, Low Drive

Carol Smith was pleased with her appointment. While her prior experience had been in lower-performing school districts that couldn't hold a candle to Valley Oaks Unified, she felt confident that she had much to offer in her new role as assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.

When Smith arrived, she immediately focused on reorganizing the work flow in her office. These early changes met resistance from support staff. When her administrative assistant requested a transfer, Smith agreed the change would be better for everyone. The superintendent was concerned that she started out on the wrong foot and was tending to the wrong work but also recognized that new administrators coming from outside the district often make initial missteps until they develop an understanding of the district culture.

Smith's aloof management style also undermined her relationship with colleagues. She communicated with principals primarily through written memos of a formal, directive nature. When Smith launched several ill-conceived initiatives that lacked grounding in data and pedagogy, there was a decided lack of enthusiasm throughout the district, and implementation was half-hearted.

By spring, the pot started to boil over. With little involvement by key stakeholders, Smith's initiatives fell flat. It became increasingly evident that Smith was not the right person for the position. She lacked a clear vision of how to move the district forward and therefore tended to the wrong work. She also was unable to build the relationships required to drive improvement.

Smith was weak in both attribute clusters and thereby ineffective in her leadership role.

Hiring Top Leaders

If we could always hire or promote Quadrant 1 administrators, we would have the making for powerful leadership teams. While management team building is more than a collection of high-performing individuals, without the horsepower the superintendent has limited organizational capacity. So why, then, don't we hire more Quadrant 1 types?

First, it is surprisingly difficult to determine from letters of recommendation, reference calls and personal interviews which job candidates possess these attributes or are capable of developing them over time. Many applicants present strong resumes and can talk the talk. The challenge is to identify those who can actually walk the talk.

The challenges are nearly as difficult for promoting candidates. How do we judge which of our assistant principals have the capacity to take on the role of principal or which principal is ready to move to the district office? The task is compounded by the difficulty of envisioning staff members outside their current role. The challenge is to identify which individuals possess the two sets of attributes required for high-level leadership.

The second reason we don't always hire Quadrant 1 leaders is the insufficient supply. Often, applicant pools include Quadrant 2 and Quadrant 3 candidates at best. In these instances, we tend to focus hiring and promotion decisions on questions of match and attempt to assess an applicant's strengths and respective weaknesses.

Our experience is that when two candidates are equally qualified, the management team will tend to pick in its own image. If the organizational culture is strong on drive, then they will tend to hire the candidate with a strong results orientation and hope the relationship issue can be addressed. Conversely, if the organizational culture focuses on relationships, then they will tend to hire the applicant with strong relationship skills and hope that a results orientation can be fostered over time.

Where applicants for key leadership positions fall into either Quadrant 2 or 3, we need to be more diligent in understanding how big the potential liability is for the particular position. We also need to pay attention to which candidates have the potential to grow into Quadrant 1 leaders.

Consider two equally qualified candidates with a similar focus on results. One has the ability to relate well to others but doesn't give sufficient attention to relationships, whereas the interpersonal skills and style of the other candidate almost immediately distance him from others. Obviously the first candidate is a far better choice, particularly if the candidate recognizes his or her area of weakness. Sometimes the best option is to leave a position unfilled until the right candidate appears or fill the position temporarily rather than hire someone without the necessary interpersonal and results-driven leadership skills.

In sum, we believe the four-quadrant model not only provides useful feedback to the hiring team, but also serves as a powerful tool for selecting new team members and making internal promotions.

Developing Top Leaders

If we have hired right, the focus of professional development for managers will be on enhancing Quadrant 1 leadership skills and developing a solid leadership team. However, if we have hired or inherited Quadrant 2 or 3 administrators, what can be done to help develop these team members into top performers?

Our experience suggests that movement among the four quadrants is not easy. In part, this is because most individuals have a difficult time recognizing their own weaknesses. The first step to personal growth lies in accepting the need for growth in one of the two key attribute areas. Style inventories, like the Myers-Briggs instrument or the Social Styles Inventory, can provide insights into one's own leadership style.

The second reason that personal behavorial change is hard is that these attribute clusters reflect an individual's fundamental being and world view. These are not technical skills that are easily taught, but rather they reflect complex skill sets and deeply internalized values affecting how we see the world and how we operate within that world.

Recognizing these limitations, we believe that over time focused professional development can foster latent capacities in these two areas by using several strategies.

The first strategy is to nurture the area of weakness through training. Often when we attend professional conferences, we choose the sessions that fall within our comfort zone. Drivers tend to avoid sessions on team-building and relationship skills. Conversely, relationship-oriented leaders tend to avoid sessions on data-driven research and decision making. If we are serious about developing new leadership capacities in areas of weakness, then we must seek out training opportunities that will broaden our horizons rather than reinforce existing strengths. Leaders must be encouraged to take risks and develop their areas of relative weakness.

A second strategy to develop Quadrant 1 leadership is to adopt a coaching model where administrators are paired with a coach who possesses the skills to help develop the capacities and attributes necessary for effective Quadrant 1 leadership. Coaches can provide direct on-the-job feedback grounded in reality in a one-on-one environment where individuals can safely try new approaches and think freshly about problems through the lens of the attribute cluster they are trying to develop.

The third strategy uses a 360-degree feedback system to provide helpful feedback. This approach is never easy because our performance often gets confused with who we are as a person, and honest feedback often feels like a personal attack. As humans, we rarely seek out critical feedback. Still, using 360-degree feedback in conjunction with the other two strategies can increase the chances for success in developing Quadrant 1 leadership skills.

Hard Conversations

What are the options you have when a Quadrant 4 administrator on your team who, in your judgment, is not capable of moving toward Quadrant 1 leadership?

In some situations, these individuals can function as a utility player in a specific niche. These tend to be technical positions requiring minimal interpersonal contact or vision, a strategy we have used is to separate work functions within a department to build around the strengths of an individual while minimizing their responsibilities in areas with noted shortcomings.

Another option is to move the Quadrant 4 administrator to another position with lower demands. One downside of this approach is that it reduces the opportunities for the next generation of leaders to gain the experience needed before moving into higher-level positions. When positions are filled with Quadrant 4 types who clearly will not move up, the overall organization will struggle with continuity and succession planning. In many cases, the best option is to have the difficult conversation with the individuals to let them know their capacities do not match the system's needs.

These hard conversations also need to take place with administrators in Quadrants 2 and 3 and even Quadrant 1 leaders. Too often school leaders receive little constructive feedback. By nature, we are a helping profession and believe in positive input. This belief system carries over to how we evaluate and give feedback to colleagues. We tend to highlight strengths and hesitate to offer feedback in areas needing attention that could help the individual grow.

This becomes problematic when an individual repeatedly gets passed over for promotions. Typically, after selecting another candidate, we say little more than that the successful candidate was better qualified or had more experience. The situation is similar when an administrator fails short of expectations in his or her position, but the performance review is vague when it comes to areas needing development. This is unfair to our administrative team members. They deserve fair and honest feedback given in the spirit of helping them grow professionally.

Our experience has been almost a sense of relief when honest feedback is given. The common response is that, "I didn't like hearing what you said, but I appreciate your honesty and forthrightness and desire to help me improve."

A Balancing Act

In Quadrant l, an organization has a healthy tension between results and relationships, with an ebb and flow between the quest to get better results on the one hand and attention to people on the other. Recognizing we seldom have all our key leadership team members in the top quadrant, the next best solution is to bring new members onto the team whose strengths help collectively balance the leadership team--that is, balancing results with relationships.

Many leadership teams have a culture that leans more heavily either toward Quadrant 2 (results) or toward Quadrant 3 (relationships). In fact, it is rare these two dimensions are evenly balanced. School organizations (districts, schools, departments) that emphasize relationships may feel like one big happy family with good vibrations permeating the organization but little real progress being made.

On the other hand, organizations in which the predominant culture emphasizes results, the organization may suffer from lack of attention to relationships and low morale and once again produce disappointingly low results. Hiring new team members with personal strengths in the deficit area can help foster effective leadership teams. This is particularly true if the new team member has the potential to become a Quadrant 1 leader.

Our task as system leaders is to take a hard look at ourselves and each of our senior staff members to determine individual strengths and weaknesses, assess where we are as a leadership team, and develop strategies to move the team forward by supporting our Quadrant 1 leaders and by developing our Quadrant 2 and 3 leaders.

An understanding of the four-quadrant model can help make better hiring and promotion decisions, provide critical feedback and mentoring to help administers grow professionally, and collectively build stronger leadership teams.

RELATED ARTICLE: Using the four-quadrant model.

As superintendent for 17 years, I have made many decisions related to hiring and promotion of staff for key leadership roles and am continually involved in coaching these team members to grow professionally.

Occasionally I have made the hard decisions to let staff members go. While many of these personnel decisions have proven to be excellent choices, others have been disappointing.

On the flip side, some of the individuals passed over in the hiring process have proven to be highly successful in leadership roles in other districts. One applicant who didn't make the cut for a principal opening was subsequently hired for a senior-level district position in another school system.

These experiences convinced me we needed a more systematic way for determining our needs, evaluating candidates and developing staff for leadership positions.

The four-quadrant framework provides a more focused lens for viewing candidates and for developing leaders. As superintendent, I now see our leadership needs more clearly and the questions I ask are more focused. The framework does not ensure every decision we make will be a success. However, it increases the likelihood of a successful match.

In some cases we are hiring different candidates than we would have in the past. In other cases the four-quadrant model reaffirms the decisions we would have made. Additionally, our management team is now having more focused discussions around developing key school leadership based upon the framework. We are providing more focused feedback to individual leaders to improve their effectiveness and strengthening our professional development efforts.

Finally, we are doing a better job of balancing our leadership team in terms of the strengths team members bring to the table.

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--Don Phillips

Don Phillips, an AASA Executive Committee member, is superintendent of the Poway Unified School District, 13626 Twin Peaks Road, Poway, CA 92064. E-mail: [e-mail]. Robyn Phillips is associate superintendent of business services for the Oceanside, Calif., Unified School District.