Administration and Supervision:

As an administrator or supervisor, part of your job is to foster positive relationships among the staff, so that they can collaboratively engage in the teaching and learning process with children. This involves continually giving value to the different perspectives each brings to working within your program's philosophy and core values. Exploring your individual communication styles is a good place to start. Understanding similarities and differences in how you communicate can be a source of new insights and appreciation, rather than judgment.

Try This!

• At a staff meeting make a list of communication styles you are aware of. Choose ones that are useful, such as creative, analytic, or indirect, rather than negative styles such as attacking, manipulative, or defensive.
• Spend a few minutes defining what is meant by each of the styles.
• Working in small groups, generate a list of common phrases you might hear from someone with this style. For instance, if the style is "friendly", phrases might include: "I like what you said." "You have great ideas." "Someone might not like that."
• Ask someone from each small group to bring their list and participant in a communications role play.
• For the role play, conduct a pretend staff meeting where you will decide what color you want to paint the walls of the staff room. As you facilitate this brief discussion, ask each volunteer to try to use as many of the phrases on their list as possible.
• Conclude the meeting by acknowledging the benefits of each style and asking staff members to identify their own style and how it could potentially conflict with another.

(Adapted from Carter and Curtis, "The Visionary Director," 2nd edition, 2010.)

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