Your Secretary Deserves Your Attention First

With all the scramble and excitement involved in starting the new year, diving into instructional leadership, and planning for the months ahead, it’s easy to overlook the one person who keeps your entire school running: your secretary. This season, before you rush out to observe classrooms, don’t forget to give your secretary some much needed kudos and attention by simply watching him or her manage the front office. Just be a fly on the wall. Don’t jump in to help. Don’t rescue. Just watch.

Why Watching Matters

Because although you know your secretary is busy, many of you would be hard-pressed to describe exactly what your secretary does all day, until you spend time watching. And when you spend time watching, you’ll be shocked by what you see. You may notice that your secretary has quietly taken on tasks that actually belong to others. You’ll witness your secretary smoothing over systemic dysfunction to shield you from unnecessary distractions. You’ll marvel at the degree to which your secretary has become the buffer between you and everyday chaos. And while that may feel helpful in the moment, it impedes your ability to deal with your school’s deeper organizational issues.

The Hidden Costs of “Keeping the Peace”

Your secretary has taken on these extra responsibilities to “keep the peace” for you,  but this preference for placidity comes with a price:

• Your secretary is most likely stretched thin, doing work that doesn’t align with their highest value to the school.
  
• Teachers, parents, and students may come to expect that your secretary will handle all of their immediate needs, creating unhealthy patterns.
  
• You remain disconnected from dysfunctions in your school’s systems because your secretary has become the default problem-solver.

This isn’t sustainable. It’s not fair to your secretary, and it prevents you from addressing the real breakdowns in your organization.

Work On Your System, Not In It

It’s time to stop burdening your secretary with the weight of a potentially broken system and get to work on it, not in it. For administrators this means:

• Pointing out where inefficiencies or misplaced responsibilities exist.
  
• Redesigning workflows so that the right people are handling the right tasks.
  
• Empowering your secretary to focus on the high-leverage work that only he or she can do like coordinating front office operations, project management, and ensuring that you stay focused on your instructional leadership priorities.

Start The School Year Right

As the new school year gets underway, commit to giving your secretary the attention they deserve. Watch them work, learn from what you see, and provide strategic direction where necessary. When you re-engineer your front office system to run smoothly, you not only protect your secretary from burnout, but you also free yourself to focus on the instructional leadership your school needs most. Your secretary is the linchpin in this effort. Make sure you treat them as such.