Setting Quality Improvement Goals

In her article, "Effective Leadership Behaviors for Child Care Administrators" in the new book Leading Early Childhood Organizations, Rachel Robertson offers this advice on measuring your success in achieving goals for quality improvement:

Have high expectations. Identify what your expectations are. Write them out and be sure you understand them and have aligned them with your vision for your program. Then share them. Make sure you are very clear about what you expect from your staffing team (including yourself) and don't hesitate to tell them.

Set small goals. Identifying how each staff member and classroom needs to improve, developing achievable and realistic goals, providing the support that staff needs to achieve goals, and monitoring progress are all important aspects of the process. Breaking tasks into small achievable goals will help everyone meet your expectations and realize the vision.

Delegate. This means allowing staff the opportunity to contribute, to play a part in collaboration, and to develop professionally. But delegation doesn't mean assigning a task and then forgetting about it — or checking it off a to-do list; a manager must still follow-up on delegated tasks as she would with any other goals.

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