are woefully weak in providing strategies. On paper, the idea of the LEAF model certainly sounds great, but it is my intention to provide you with Monday-morning strategies ready for implementation. Thus, I present ten key concepts to be explored in the chapters that follow.
Chapter Overview
These concepts are designed with the busy practitioner in mind. While they will cause you to rethink your approaches to professional practice and will reshape your filter and how you contemplate leadership and innovation, they are not designed to completely overtake your agenda. You’ll see that in executing these concepts, you’ll actually address much of what you’re already doing on a consistent basis. They will likely serve as a framework that will allow you to create and ultimately support a leadership culture destined for both excellence and fulfillment.
Each chapter focuses on one of the following concepts.
Chapter 1, “Establishing Vision Clarity,” focuses on the actual steps we know leaders must take to create a clear, durable, and implementable vision. Vision is a neurological construct that requires us to both see and respond. The ability to create these mental representations and make sure that they are sustainable with groups requires very different types of leadership activities than most leaders have ever been shown. Creating a better vision means more progress for everyone!
In chapter 2, “Generating Enhanced Reflective Learning,” we will explore the pursuit of learning capacity in your school. If you believe that nothing can change until the adults in your school begin to work and interact differently, you have to also believe that learning is at the center of that transformation. As a leader, your most powerful gift is developing the capacity to support quality learning experiences in your school—first for the adults but ultimately for the students you serve every day. Leading to enhance learning is an altogether essential component of leadership training that has been all but ignored.
Learning is all about asking and answering questions, isn’t it? In chapter 3, “Asking Meaningful Questions,” you’ll learn about the power of questions asked strategically and consistently in schools and the impact they have on the climate and culture of the organization. The pursuit of one question over another fundamentally changes both your end goal and the steps you take to get there, so this chapter shows you how to strategically use questions to create a better culture.
Sadly, schools spend very little time innovating their way toward a new outcome. In the past, schools were largely measured by their degree of compliance to preestablished standards. While the accountability movement has created some lofty goals, we understand that the pathway toward achieving those goals is uncharted at best. The most successful schools in the future are going to require dynamic levels of innovation, and chapter 4, “Inspiring Dynamic Innovation,” shows you how to create a culture with rich, dynamic innovation.
Does your school spend more time talking about what’s going on in the principal’s office than what’s going on in the classroom? In chapter 5, “Developing and Enhancing Authentic Teacher Leadership,” we will discuss the fact that teacher leadership is not quasi- administrative. It is a unique leadership opportunity that can help teachers establish a unique position in the lives of their students, their school, and in the communities they serve. Encouraging authentic teacher leadership doesn’t happen by accident. In this chapter you will learn how to lead in a way that makes enhanced levels of teacher leadership the center of your school improvement endeavors.
Chapter 6, “Igniting Next-Level Collaboration,” discusses the role of collaboration within professional learning communities (PLCs). The promotion of PLCs has been a blessing. However, the ubiquitous PLC phraseology has been dampened by lazy interpretations. Collaboration at a deep and meaningful level is more than just putting people together in a room and asking them to meet regularly. This chapter helps leaders understand the impact of teamwork and consistent, quality group interactions on the learning process. A highly collaborative school culture can have a significant effect on the staff members who work there and the students they serve.
The most successful leaders are getting away from the notion that conflict is a bad thing. Actually, disagreement is perfectly acceptable, and a divergence of opinions is expected and can make a school far better prepared for the challenging world around it. In chapter 7, “Using Conflict and Repurposed Energy to Improve and Inspire,” we will explore how the best leaders reframe conflict and disagreement and repurpose that energy as a mechanism to improve the culture and inspire deeper levels of innovation.
In terms of psychological well-being, decades of research have been devoted to the importance of resilience and the merits of demonstrating high levels of will and determination. Healthy organizations work in very much the same way. In the past, we didn’t spend much time talking about leadership that encouraged accelerated levels of will and determination in response to difficult challenges. It was just assumed that the system would respond accordingly. As discussed in chapter 8, “Encouraging Will, Determination, and Resilience,” the reality is that schools have to be led toward these capacities in a thoughtful way.
In many cases, the greatest barrier to next-level performance is the belief that it is even possible. Striving for that next level can be difficult due to the fact that we are altogether transfixed on achieving this thing called “average.” The best leaders in schools and beyond understand that you must have a deeply held belief that a next-level performance is not only possible but is the expectation, as explored in chapter 9, “Developing Individual and Systemic Belief in Next-Level Performance.”
In many earlier texts there have been discussions about the importance of shared leadership. That principals or other system leaders would give away the power in certain circumstances is certainly a warm, benevolent idea. However, the complexity of organizations today makes this notion antiquated; due to the speed of technology and other change elements, leadership cannot grow only when these capacities are made available by the leader. Instead, organic leadership should emerge as needed, when needed, and with confidence. In chapter 10, “Cultivating Organic Leadership,” we will address this powerful leadership potential.
In addition to a short discussion about each individual concept as it relates to outdated Taylorism ideals, I provide related strategies to help you lead your staff forward, including critical conversations you must have with your staff regularly. Each chapter also includes chats I’ve had with educators in the field. I’ve been fortunate enough to talk with many exemplars in leadership over the years, and I hope they inspire you as well. In addition, the chapters end with the impact, or takeaway, for each key concept.
You have an incredibly important job, and you deserve a leadership coach who can encourage and support you—this book is written with that kind of coaching in mind. You’ll notice that my style will be encouraging, but I’ll also tease and cajole you. And I’m willing to challenge you as well. I want to confront your assumptions, and I’ll be using a coaching platform to do it. Leadership coaching is available in most other professions, and I think the principals and building-level leaders in K–12 education deserve a good coach as well.
Spoiler Alert
Let this be fair warning: optimism abounds in this book. If you’re somebody who loves to regale your friends with stories about gloom and doom in the field of education, you might be frustrated by my coaching efforts. I recognize the grim reality of the challenges we face in schools today, but I remain an incurable optimist. I was a principal in an extraordinarily tough learning environment, and in a relatively short period of time, our team came together and made a significant impact on the students we served. This progress wouldn’t have been possible without optimism and a belief that better outcomes were just around the corner. I carry this perspective with me today, not just in terms of the fortunes of one school at a time but also in terms of the profession in general. Here’s why. Even though our problems and challenges are as tough now as they have ever been, our opportunities to find answers have likewise never been this
