Who This Book Is For
This book is not for everyone. This book isn’t for those who do not want to progress beyond blowing bubbles. It will challenge you. Yet it is meant to empower you. It is for those who want to build skills that will help move schools and the profession forward. It is for those who want to have more impact, no matter their role. It is for those who have been assigned an initiative to implement and are in need of some guidance and support to be successful. We all have roles in which we discover our credential programs did not teach us what it takes to do the work, and in which we need more cognitive, social, and psychological skills to be effective. These are what I refer to as deep-end skills.
If any of the following statements resonate with you, or you are an aspiring leader with no definitive leadership task ahead of you, yet you want to be even more prepared when you get a leadership role, this is your book.
• “I have this job, and I want to be successful, but I have no idea how to roll out this initiative I was just tasked to make happen.”
• “I was just told I am the person in charge of this project for the upcoming school year. What now?”
• “I have an idea I really would like to move forward in my school but there is so much pushback every time I bring it up.”
• “I know we have a lot on our plates but we still need to move ahead with a new curriculum because it is best for students. How do I negotiate the balance of caring for the teachers but dealing with the urgency of student needs?”
• “I became a leader because I see things can be better, and I want to make them better. And yet every day is a challenge, and I am overwhelmed. What do I need to know to stay afloat?”
You may be thinking, “What if I am an experienced leader who has rolled out quite a few initiatives? Can I still benefit from reading this book?” While some who pick up this book may be new to leadership or administrative roles, experienced leaders can also benefit from the ideas in this book. Some of the benefits it provides experienced leaders include, but are not limited to:
• Affirmation and validation of your existing work and efforts (and that is a good reason to read a book—to know you know a few things! How wonderful is that?)
• Reminders of a few things you want to be more consistent at doing in your role as a leader
• New strategies as you move along on your leadership journey
• Guidelines and support for your work as a mentor or coach of aspiring and emerging leaders
This book is a primer. A beginning. It doesn’t address in depth every skill you need to roll out a new idea, project, or initiative, or to take the lead in a group or a program, or to become a master administrator, but it is a good start. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow (as cited in Tracy, 2010), one will either step forward into growth or step backward into safety. This book will help you step forward.
How This Book Is Organized
As mentioned previously, there are certain cognitive, social, and psychological skills necessary for swimming in the deep end. I have identified four foundational skills for deep-end leadership: (1) thinking before you speak, (2) preempting resistance, (3) responding to resistance, and (4) managing yourself through change and resistance. These skills provide the main structure for this book no matter what your deep-end challenge will be; change management and resistance-related skills in this book cross all initiatives. From blended learning to changes in the mathematics curriculum at a school, from focusing more on wellness to moving from Advanced Placement to International Baccalaureate programs, change is change, and change often begets resistance. The concept of resistance and being aware of it, no matter the challenge, is a foundational skill.
Chapter 1 starts with the first of the four foundational skills for deep-end leadership: thinking before you speak. This chapter focuses on planning before beginning an initiative. If you have tasks and projects under your purview or you are asked to move a specific initiative forward, thinking before you speak and take action is critical. What do you need to think through before you roll out an initiative? What questions can you anticipate others will have for you as you begin a project or introduce a new program? How can you align this work with something that the folks at your site already value and support? How can you make sense of something in terms of both its story and the data so you connect with different types of colleagues as the rollout begins? How will you communicate a coherent plan while still knowing there are so many bumps in the road that you won’t anticipate?
Chapter 2 discusses the second foundational skill: preempting resistance. This chapter focuses on the ever-present need for understanding others that will arise when leaders present something new. Since pushback is a given when a leader brings forth an initiative, what might we need to know in order to work even more effectively with others at this crucial juncture? We examine filters of perception and how seeing through your colleagues’ eyes might assist you in preempting resistance, as well as learning about the neurology of threat so others can work with you in a more safe, understandable way.
Chapter 3 explores our third skill: how to respond to resistance once it occurs. This is social awareness in action. How do we speak to one another, promote a given point of view constructively, and articulate our perspectives with strength but without rigidity? What nonverbal and verbal skills do we need? How can we advocate effectively in both verbal and nonverbal ways?
Chapter 4 addresses the fourth foundational skill for deep-end work: managing yourself through change and resistance. Do you have structures and supports in place in your life to help you physically manage the challenges and challenging moments that will come your way? How do you stay calm in the face of conflict? How do you manage stress over the long term? This chapter shares strategies and techniques for managing yourself as you swim in the deep end.
Each of these four chapters dives into key questions I believe leaders need to be especially mindful of if they want to swim in the deep end. I explain each of these questions and offer resources or strategies to use in order to answer these questions more effectively as the chapter moves forward. After each question, I provide additional information or suggest resources that will help you stretch to make sure you have answered the question to the degree necessary to move forward with confidence.
The epilogue concludes our work in this book by answering the question, What is next? As this book is meant to establish the beginning of deep-end work, and is not the final word, you must ask yourself where you need to move to next on your leadership journey. This epilogue gives you some ideas of where you might want to go in the deep end of learning.
I offer reflection questions at the end of each chapter for individual readers, professional learning group discussions, or book studies to prompt readers to bring what they have learned from the book into the real world. These questions will involve you in conversation so you can evolve and then apply the work to your setting and context.
I have also included appendices with additional content to support your deep-end work. Appendix A includes links to online resources for building resilience. Appendix B lists online resources you can access to help you dive deeper into the concepts you encounter in this book. Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership for free reproducible versions of these appendices. Additionally, visit www.jenniferabrams.com/inspiration for a collection of inspirational quotes to keep yourself and your colleagues inspired to do deep-end work.
Now, on to the deep end. A Buddhist scripture says, “Few are they among humans,