“Local control is dead and gone.” So said a panel of retired superintendants convened to discuss the issue of local control. Whether it is as a result of innumerable state mandates, federal legislation, or global calls for standardization, local school districts are not left with much discretion or decision-making ability.

While the panel emphasized the loss of local control, they did acknowledge some hope in the offing. They recommended two actions: 1) look for the gaps in what government tells you to do while exercising discretion; look for the holes in the “what”, and 2) exercise team leadership related to “how” you are going to implement the mandates.

It is relative to this second recommendation that we wish to address the rest of this paper.

People Management

As districts deal with accountability issues and Return on Investment (ROI), a serious concern arises – will the soft skills of leadership become less prevalent and seen as less important as leaders seek higher test scores? Will higher education institutions change their administrator preparation courses to emphasize hard skills and relegate soft skills to the dustbin or at least minimize them?

Harvey and Drolet (2004) remind us that in the twenty-first century, “the future will call for leaders who can build teams and build people, because only through strong teams and strong people – ‘ a people infrastructure’ – will these organizations survive.” Kouzes and Posner (2002) caution us about reliance upon top-down leadership: “Leadership is a reciprocal process between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow.”

We forget the importance of leadership soft skills at our peril both in terms of leadership effectiveness and the long term health of the organization. Top down leadership alone may work in the short term in today’s emphasis on accountability but without the support of those who choose to follow, organizational failure is a long-term risk.