Many leaders talk about having an open-door policy, but Doug Jennings lives it. The double doors of Jennings’ office at Park
Tudor School open into a large hallway accessible to students, teachers, administrative staff and anyone else who might need to
speak with Jennings, who is head of Park Tudor School, a $26.5 million, 1,000-student independent college preparatory school.
Jennings keeps his doors open as often as possible and encourages people to stop in and share their ideas about what is going
on at the school. He believes that interaction and collaboration are two of the most powerful tools that any leader needs to take
his or her organization to the next level. Smart Business spoke with Jennings about why he plants the seeds of ideas in people,
then sees how they grow.
Get out of your office. Getting people
involved has a lot to do with managing
by walking around, so each morning, I’m
trying to see the campus, stop and talk to
people, listen to them, show genuine
interest in what is going on.
I have literally an open-door policy.
The double doors of my office open into
a hallway, so kids, faculty members,
whomever, are welcome to stop in and
talk. I try to put down what I’m doing if I
can and show that I care about them and
am happy to talk with them.
I think the other way would be collaborative, and I know that can be kind of an
overused term, but in a school, you have
to involve everyone that you can with
buying in to decisions. We work a lot
with committees, parent organizations,
student council, all sorts of things to try
to reach a mutually accepted decision.
Bring people together. It’s my job as the
head. I need to keep reading and keep up
with the research and talk to people in
the industry so I’ll come up with some
new ideas or find some visionary things
that are being done out there.
My method is usually to talk to individuals first and sort of plant some seeds,
see how they grow, then bring them to
the committee level and eventually bring
them to the all-school level. But I’d never
come in and just impose an idea, even if
I thought it was a great idea. I would like
to plant the seeds and see if there is
interest in the people.
The best ideas are really the ideas people came up with themselves, and I try to
engender that. Collaboration is usually
the best approach because of buy-in. If
people are part of the decision-making,
they are going to be part of the implementation or at least have a much
stronger stake in making something
work.
If the boss comes in and says, ‘This is
what we’re going to do,’ if it works, it’s
his credit, if it doesn’t work, it’s his fault.
It’s just not the same buy-in that you get
with collaboration.
It usually takes me at least two meetings to get that level of buy-in. One is
sort of the introduction, the listening,
the airing of it. Then I usually tell people
to go away, do some homework, think
about it, talk it over, go on the Internet,
whatever, and we’ll meet again in a week
or two weeks. As much as I like to do
things quickly, going more slowly gets
more buy-in and gets people to add to
the original idea.
Remember the importance of communication.
Remember your mission and core customers. So for me, that’s kids. My core
business is kids, so I have to remember a
lot of my communication is to kids as
young as kindergartners.
I have to make sure I relate to them,
that I know what they’re doing. I think you try to communicate on an appropriate level to everyone in your organization. You don’t just have one style or one
level of communication because that
won’t reach everybody.
Someone told me it’s all about communication, especially as a leader. People
are always watching and listening to
what you are doing. To be an effective
communicator, listening is extremely
important. I use electronic media a lot, e-mail, but that is no substitute for a face-to-face talk. I like to write, so I’ll write
something for our school magazine or
for our weekly newsletter.
It’s important to see, particularly in a
school, that the head teacher is a pretty
good writer, so I try to keep my writing
skills up to snuff. And speaking, there
are always opportunities to speak to
groups. I take them seriously, even
though I try not to give very formal
speeches.
Attract people who want to be involved. I look
for people who are eager to grow, eager
to listen to other people. We look for
expertise, but we really want them to
become part of a team. We don’t want
them to come in and just import a set of
skills.
We want them to get a feel for the Park
Tudor culture, bring some new ideas, but
work within that culture. It’s a balance of
a strong personal ego but also a willingness to change and grow and listen to
other people.
The key to attracting and keeping good
people is just making it a darn good
place to work. We work hard, but we
have very good working conditions,
good compensation and benefits packages; it’s just a nice place to work, right
down to the lunch that we serve. When I
bring someone in from another part of
the country and they get a feel for the
place, I want to make it so they want to
work here.
HOW TO REACH: Park Tudor School, (317) 415-2700 or
www.parktudor.org