Developing Staff: Developing Unity Instead of Uniformity

Is the goal of staff development to duplicate yourself or to duplicate your efforts? When you duplicate yourself, you find and/or create another staff member who can do what you do: they teach like you teach and manage like you manage. Although that may sound good, you have to realize that they not only develop your same strengths, they develop your same weaknesses. If you’ve ever run a photo through a copy machine, you know that duplication always loses a little something in the process. The copy is never quite as good as the original. When your staff members say that they can never be as good as you, you