Go back to my question of, “Were you ever a child?” Think for a moment about the kind of school you would like to attend if you were seven, or eleven, or sixteen years old again. What would keep you engaged, foster your curiosity, encourage you to persevere, help you learn to ask good questions, and trust that your efforts will bring about results? Are you seeing the answers to these questions reflected in the schools around you?
A vision of such a school, supported by research on what truly works, should be the most motivating force for a school leader. Leadership expert Margaret Wheatley (2017) states:
What are the values, intentions, principles for behavior that describe who we want to be? Once established, are these common knowledge, known by all? As we work together, do we refer to our identity to make decisions? How do we respond when something goes wrong? Do we each feel accountable for maintaining the integrity of this identity? … Only the leader is in the position to see the whole of the organization. No matter how willing people might be, everyone is overwhelmed and consumed with their own work. Sane leadership is developing the capacity to observe what’s going on in the whole system and then either reflect that back or bring people together to consider where we are now. (pp. 232–233)
Because a leader is the one person best positioned to see the whole of a learning community, I designed these pages to help you see that whole, even as you set goals for yourself and for other parts of it. To get the most out of Holistic Leadership, Thriving Schools, please don’t just read these pages. Instead, commit to the following process.
♦ Work on real goals for your development: Chapter 1 highlights the five essential components of effective leadership development and offers guidance for choosing the right kinds of goals and priorities using the Twelve Lenses of Leadership. It is the first step toward focusing your priorities.
♦ Learn to think in terms of both and and: Chapter 2 explains both–and thinking as it relates to the concept of polarities and how each of the leadership lenses in this book illustrates a basic interdependency between two seemingly competing poles.
♦ Develop your understanding of emotional intelligence: Chapter 3 explains the top-five truths about critical soft skills and then helps you to discover which of these are most important to you as they relate to the Twelve Lenses of Leadership.
♦ Understand the leadership lenses that are most critical to you: Chapters 4–15 each explain a specific leadership lens. Depending on the school you’re leading, your goals for the short term and long term, and your focus for leadership development, you will use specific chapters to build your understanding of the leadership lenses and develop your leadership abilities.
♦ Try the full Priority Focus™ process: Chapter 16 outlines a process, including reflection activities, for setting your focus on a goal that will guide your leadership development. What happens as a result?
♦ Partner with another leader: This final step occurs after you’ve put this book’s content to work for you. Meet with another leader to discuss ideas and to hold each other accountable in making progress toward your respective goals. In fact, use the reflection questions on page 209 (A Goal That Guides Development) together, offering the gift of listening carefully to each other to help clarify what is working.
Further, know that this book isn’t a one-time read. Instead, it’s a reference guide full of tools you can use for each new goal, position, team, initiative, responsibility, and more.
The goal is to become the best leader you can be by focusing your strengths, ensuring your blind spots don’t get in the way, and building your capacity to reach the goals you’ve set to make your learning community a visionary place for students and adults. Great leaders never stop developing; may these pages help you meet the ongoing challenges of guiding the schools upon which every student’s future, and the future of all who will benefit from what they can contribute to society, depend.
CHAPTER 1
Developing Leadership for Whole-Child Schools
ASCD (n.d.) well-defines the whole-child approach to education: “A whole child approach, which ensures that each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged, sets the standard for comprehensive, sustainable school improvement and provides for long-term student success.” Before we delve into the importance of this critical statement, let’s start where it all starts—at the top.
Here’s the repeating story of my work with school leaders. I’m called in to work on a specific initiative: creating collective efficacy through building trust and collaborative skills; launching effective, sustainable collaborative learning communities; differentiating instruction; improving instructional coaching; or resolving conflict are a few examples. Over the weeks or months that I’m involved, the leader gains a heightened awareness of his or her leadership style, its impact on a diverse staff, and strategies for avoiding overuse of strengths and related blind spots.
The leader moves to a new position, or a new building, or perhaps launches a major new initiative. “I’m set for the time being, what with all I’ve learned about leadership,” he or she tells me. “I’ll start with getting a good read on my new colleagues and team, listening to their ideas and working on strategies. Then I might call you in again. Thanks.”
And? Often within a month, I get a call, “I need you now. This staff is so different. We need to understand one another better.” Or, “I focused on A, lost track of B, and I can feel resistance on the rise. Help!”
These are effective, intentional leaders. They quickly grasp the situational nature of school leadership and have internalized the following.
♦ Each learning community is unique, with different histories, personnel, resources, assets, and challenges.
♦ Staff chemistry, habits, beliefs, values, and fears vary widely.
♦ To truly lead for academic success and success for the whole child involves more roles and responsibilities than any one person can shoulder.
♦ The most important leadership roles and responsibilities vary from situation to situation.
♦ Prioritize everything, and nothing will get done.
Further, they have learned that leadership roles are often in tension with one another. For example, it isn’t easy to communicate high expectations and create an atmosphere where teachers feel safe sharing dilemmas and mistakes. Nor is it easy for schools to ensure they are meeting each student’s academic needs and physical, social, and emotional needs.
That’s what this book is about: providing tools so that you can lead from who you are and focus on the right priorities for the students, teachers, staff, parents, local businesses, and other stakeholders that comprise your specific learning community.
To accomplish this, you’ll use a process aligned with the conditions necessary for true leadership development. Through stories of leaders who have successfully navigated competing priorities and stopped the pendulum swings so rampant in education reform efforts, you’ll learn about balancing twelve pairs of core leadership responsibilities that are essential for leading whole-child schools. These are the Twelve Lenses of Leadership I introduced at the start of this book.
You’ll