Exemplars and Signs of Mastery
The Impact
Developing and Enhancing Authentic Teacher Leadership
Paradigms of Yesterday
Key Concepts for Today
Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment
Exemplars and Signs of Mastery
The Impact
Igniting Next-Level Collaboration
Paradigms of Yesterday
Key Concepts for Today
Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment
Exemplars and Signs of Mastery
The Impact
Using Conflict and Repurposed Energy to Improve and Inspire
Paradigms of Yesterday
Key Concepts for Today
Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment
Exemplars and Signs of Mastery
The Impact
Encouraging Will, Determination, and Resilience
Paradigms of Yesterday
Key Concepts for Today
Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment
Exemplars and Signs of Mastery
The Impact
Developing Individual and Systemic Belief in Next-Level Performance
Paradigms of Yesterday
Key Concepts for Today
Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment
Exemplars and Signs of Mastery
The Impact
Cultivating Organic Leadership
Paradigms of Yesterday
Key Concepts for Today
Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment
Exemplars and Signs of Mastery
The Impact
About the Author
Casey Reason, PhD, is an expert in collaboration, innovation, overcoming resistance to change, and next-level leadership. He has worked with a variety of clients, including some of the top Fortune 100 companies in the world.
Reason is the former principal of Whitmer High School, one of the largest urban buildings in Ohio. At the end of his five-year tenure as principal, his school was honored by the state of Ohio with a special commendation for dramatic improvement in student achievement. A strong promoter of teacher leadership and an early innovator in professional learning communities, he later applied these same principles of collaboration and innovation at the district level as an assistant superintendent for instructional services with Northville Schools.
His easily applied approaches are founded on the emerging body of research in brain science and adult learning theory. Reason has worked with leaders throughout the United States, Switzerland, India, and New Zealand. He earned a prestigious 2010 Blackboard International Exemplary Course Program Award for a doctorate-level leadership course he designed.
He earned a PhD from Bowling Green State University. To learn more about Casey’s work, visit www.caseyreason.com or follow @caseyreason on Twitter.
To book Casey Reason for professional development, contact [email protected].
INTRODUCTION
Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!
This book is devoted to helping you, the principal, challenge the absurd assumption that you can lead today as if it was yesterday. Simply put, you can’t. Even if you were a good leader yesterday, the game has changed significantly, and you have to change with it. I have been directly involved in designing award-winning principal and teacher leadership training since 2001, and I can safely say that much of what we designed just a few years ago either no longer applies or the application has changed dramatically. This book will help you recognize how leadership is changing in response to a very different set of challenges in schools; it will arm you with specific key concepts and requisite implementation strategies that will provide the tools you need to successfully lead—today and tomorrow.
In the pages that follow, I’ll be sharing a new leadership model that’s called Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment (LEAF). This model is designed for school leaders with the unique challenges of today in mind. Furthermore, the model takes advantage of the latest research on human performance, learning theory, and psychology. The ideas presented in this book aren’t just well-intended, homespun pieces of advice. They represent the synthesis of a generous amount of research on learning and human performance that will help you shape your leadership behaviors in the most productive way possible.
What’s rather surprising about this collection of key concepts and strategies is that, in many cases, it represents a distinct departure from much of the common wisdom about leadership from the past. You’ll learn in the following pages that much of what you were taught about leadership was designed for a world of work that doesn’t exist anymore. To illustrate this chasm between yesterday and today, I want to begin by taking a brief look back.
The Industrial Revolution
Our traditional notions of leadership and organizational development in