Having Clarity on What and Why and Having Flexibility on How
When Successful Ideas Aren’t Universal
Flexible, Yet Not Fuzzy, Clarity
The EQ Connection
Priorities Inherent in the Clarity and Flexibility Lens
Planning for the Predictable and Embracing the Possible
The Possible and the Probable
Effective Plans for a Complex, Unpredictable World
The EQ Connection
Priorities Inherent in the Predictability and Possibility Lens
Making Measurable Whole-Child Achievement Progress and Finding Purpose
Of Campfires and Pressure Cookers
Engaging Journeys and Goal-Oriented Destinations
A Key Neuroscience Truth
Priorities Inherent in the Goal Orientation and Engagement Lens
A Goal That Guides Development
The Beginning of the End of the Beginning of the Journey
Personality Type and the Lenses of Leadership
About the Author
Jane A. G. Kise, EdD, is the author of more than twenty-five books and an organizational consultant with extensive experience in leadership development and executive coaching, instructional coaching, and differentiated instruction. She is considered a worldwide expert in Jungian type and its impact on leadership and education. She works with schools and businesses, facilitating the creation of environments where everyone—leaders, teachers, and students—can flourish.
Jane trains educators around the world on coaching, collaborative practices, effective change processes, and differentiated instruction, especially in mathematics. A frequent conference keynote speaker, she has spoken at education conferences and type conferences across the United States and in Europe, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and New Zealand. Jane has also written articles for several magazines and has received awards for her differentiated coaching research.
Jane teaches doctoral courses in educational leadership at the University of St. Thomas and is a past faculty member of the Center for Applications of Psychological Type. She also served as president of the Association for Psychological Type International (APTi).
Jane holds a master of business administration from the Carlson School of Management and a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of St. Thomas. She is certified in neuroscience and Jungian personality; is qualified to use Myers–Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) Steps I, II, and III as an MBTI Master Practitioner; and is certified in emotional intelligence instruments, Hogan assessments, and Leadership 360° tools.
To learn more about Jane’s work, visit her website (www.janekise.com).
To book Jane A. G. Kise for professional development, contact [email protected].
Introduction
You’re leading, or aspiring to lead, a complex system—not just a team or even a professional learning community (PLC), but a broad scope learning community of students, teachers, staff, parents, and even local businesses and other stakeholders—and you’re doing it in what leadership experts are now calling a VUCA world—a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
In systems, if you push too hard on one place, something else gets out of whack. If you pay too much attention to A, B starts acting up out of neglect. Particularly as a school leader, when you implement a solution, you just may see a dozen other problems pop up as unintended consequences. So, what can a leader do to navigate this complexity?
Part of it is being able to see the whole of a system, but it also requires you to look two ways at once, learning to see the value in both A and B. If you’re truly going to lead a school that meets the needs of the whole child—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—then recognizing and working with ongoing paradigms, rather than searching for a magic bullet, becomes your number one, ongoing, always-evolving priority for leadership development. It’s about leading holistically so that your school thrives.
It’s easy to default to a checklist when we think about whole-child learning. Physical education? Check. Academics? Check. Anti-bullying and social-emotional learning curriculum? Check. But to me, whole-child learning is a much bigger concept. Move away from buzz words like full potential and 21st century skills and global citizen and really think about both a child’s holistic experience of school and the holistic experience of the adults in the building. Do they get out of bed with a sense of purpose? Do they feel part of a family—a condition necessary for collective efficacy? Are they working on something each and every day that puts to use their skills and involves their interests? Are they growing not just in knowledge but in the wisdom that helps people see both their own needs and the needs of others? Are they able to navigate creating a meaningful life while making a living and to learning that fosters their own goals and growth that also fits with community goals? In other words, are they holistically thriving? This can only happen if the leaders take a holistic, wise approach to both the day-to-day decisions and long-term choices that affect both students and staff.
If it sounds easy, know that most adults never really learn to hold such tensions well, navigating that holistic view from 30,000 feet up and all of the details that go into leadership (Berger, 2012). This book will help you see and work with the whole system through a series of twelve core leadership paradigms represented in this book as lenses. It will help you recognize which one or two of them are at play in a given decision or initiative, and then target what you need to know and do so that you don’t lose sight of one set of a paradigm’s values or the other.
For a warm-up, try this: think through a current decision you are facing through the lens of adult educators and the lens of the students in your charge.
Were you ever a child? I ask this because sometimes I hear people arguing over learning strategies or school rules or education policies when they could answer disputes by considering, “How