The LEAF model is constructed with this evolution in leadership in mind. You will see that this new leadership model is, indeed, quite contradictory to many of the old presuppositions about managing from the late 1800s. Instead, it’s designed to take advantage of our natural learning rhythms as well as all the research we have at our fingertips about maximizing individual and collective human performance.
The Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment Model
The emphasis on excellence within this leadership model represents the continuous pursuit of the very best. Too many modern leaders aim to simply get by or for outcomes that are “good enough.” The best leaders in schools are striving for excellence in everything they do. They recognize that it will take excellence to do more with less, as is the cold, harsh reality of many schools today. Leading in a way that achieves unprecedented excellence in a humanistic way to maximize learning and innovation certainly isn’t easy.
The emphasis on fulfillment is not simply an extension of the Humanist Movement. It goes deeper than that. You will see that human performance is significantly impacted by the degree to which individuals or groups feel that the work they’re doing is meaningful and important; the feeling that one’s work is part of a bigger and more important mission has a tendency to maximize effort and engage individual and collective learning systems (Reason, 2010). This isn’t a motivational moment. It’s a scientific fact (Cheung & Chiu, 2005). Therefore, leading with an emphasis on fulfillment is good for the human spirit, is motivational, and is enormously productive. Following are six priorities these leaders exhibit.
1 Maximize learning potential—When using the LEAF model, you should always be looking for opportunities to maximize the individual and collective learning power and potential that exist in every school. Having visited thousands of schools over the years, I’ve never been to a building without pockets of excellence waiting to emerge. The passionate pursuit of maximizing this learning potential is paramount to this type of leader.
2 Create engagement—Engagement is a learning term that references the amount of mental energy a learner is bringing to any learning situation. As you know, levels of engagement vary depending on learner interest, learner commitment, and the relative stimulation of the learning situation. We’ve all had the experience of tuning out what’s in front of us and only providing enough mental engagement to capture the major talking points. The best leaders understand this dynamic and make it their mission to maximize high-engagement learning opportunities for the staff.
3 Create autonomy—Psychologists and brain researchers agree that in order to get individuals and groups to perform at their creative best, leaders must provide autonomy whenever possible (Volmer, Spurk, & Niessen, 2012). The advantage of autonomy is that it opens up the art of possibility and gives the individual and collective learning systems a chance to flourish. Without autonomy, those wonderful “what if” questions never get asked. Leaders who lead with excellence and fulfillment understand that autonomy can’t come without responsibility, accountability, and necessary checks and balances. Many of the challenges accompanying change have high levels of prescription that make this autonomy harder to achieve. That said, these successful leaders never stop pursuing that autonomy whenever possible.
4 Relentlessly pursue excellence—These leaders don’t give lip service to the pursuit of excellence. It is a cause they chase relentlessly. It’s so easy in a moment of fatigue or distraction to lower our standards and come to accept what should be unacceptable. These leaders hold a standard of self-excellence and create a culture within the school in which heightened sensitivity to excellence and high performance is everywhere.
5 Identify and advocate purpose and fulfillment—When individuals understand that their work has meaning and purpose, they are far more likely to bring their creative best to the situation. This is true of individuals and groups, and the best leaders today understand this dynamic and consistently infuse purpose in the conversation.
6 Make work fun—Research has shown that one of the advantages of having fun is that it breaks the tension and allows the brain to go back to whatever it’s been focusing on with renewed energy, focus, and heightened levels of neurological engagement (Reason, 2010). Research also clarifies that institutions or groups that play all the time without meaning or purpose generally don’t gain this benefit, because the pursuit of fun isn’t connected to a bigger purpose (Meyer, 2000). Those schools that have a clearly defined meaning and purpose can pursue their goals and objectives with stalwart seriousness and can laugh uproariously at themselves in the process. The best leaders understand this and make this working condition possible.
Unfortunately, far too many leadership books give you stories but 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