Stop Leading Like It’s Yesterday!

LEADING LIKE IT’S

Yesterday!

— Miguel Cardona, Performance and Evaluation Specialist, Meriden Public Schools, Connecticut

In Stop Leading Like It’s Yesterday!: Key Concepts for Shaping Today’s School Culture, author Casey Reason offers a leadership model that meets the needs of 21st century students and educators. By explaining antiquated managerial techniques and their hold on education, he dispels the idea that leadership practices from the Industrial Revolution are in any way effective in 21st century classrooms. Instead, he offers the Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment (LEAF) model, which provides practical, research-based strategies that maximize innovation and are relevant to school leaders today and tomorrow.

K–12 administrators will: • Maximize learning and innovation through the practical, research-based LEAF model

STOP LEADING LIKE IT’S YESTERDAY!

STOP

“The evolution of our schools will depend on how our leaders are able to adapt and prepare others for the changes that are needed. This book does a masterful job helping leaders see their roles as catalysts for innovation.”

• Learn to recognize the Industrial Revolution–based education practices that are outdated and irrelevant to 21st century students

• Access ready-to-implement strategies • Read success stories from actual educators in their own words

solution-tree.com

CASEY REASON

• Understand how leadership practices influence students’ academic achievement and future success

STOP

LEADING LIKE IT’S

Yesterday!

Key Concepts for Shaping Today’s School Culture

Casey Reason

Copyright © 2015 by Solution Tree Press All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction of this book in whole or in part in any form.

555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@solution-tree.com solution-tree.com Printed in the United States of America 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reason, Casey S. Stop leading like it’s yesterday! : key concepts for shaping today’s school culture / Casey Reason. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-936763-19-1 (perfect bound) 1. Educational leadership.

2. School management and organization. I. Title.

LB2806.R34 2014 371.2--dc23 2014023924

Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President: Douglas M. Rife Editorial Director: Lesley Bolton Managing Production Editor: Caroline Weiss Production Editor: Rachel Rosolina Proofreader: Elisabeth Abrams Cover and Text Designer: Rian Anderson Text Compositor: Rachel Smith

Table of Contents

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

INTRODUCTION

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Industrial Revolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Carrot and the Stick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Humanist Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Chapter Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Spoiler Alert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

CHAPTER 1

Establishing Vision Clarity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . . 24 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

CHAPTER 2

Generating Enhanced Reflective Learning . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 vii

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Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . . 36 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

CHAPTER 3

Asking Meaningful Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . . 47 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

CHAPTER 4

Inspiring Dynamic Innovation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . . 63 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

CHAPTER 5

Developing and Enhancing Authentic Teacher Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . . 81 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

CHAPTER 6

Igniting Next-Level Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . . 94

Table of Contents

Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

CHAPTER 7

Using Conflict and Repurposed Energy to Improve and Inspire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . 110 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

CHAPTER 8

Encouraging Will, Determination, and Resilience. . . 123 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . 126 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

CHAPTER 9

Developing Individual and Systemic Belief in Next-Level Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . 148 Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

CHAPTER 10

Cultivating Organic Leadership. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Paradigms of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Key Concepts for Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment. . . . 165

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Exemplars and Signs of Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 The Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

EPILOGUE

Coaching in Your Corner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 References and Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

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 doctoratelevel leadership course he designed.

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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 pd@solution-tree.com.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

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.

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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 schools emerged due to significant historic and economic forces. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the United States was going through the Industrial Revolution, cities were growing, and work environments were defined very differently than they are today (Eisner, 2002; Gray, 1993). Frederick Taylor, a mechanical engineer, developed the managerial style of the Industrial Revolution; it was known as scientific management or Taylorism (Taylor, 1911). As you read the following list of scientific management’s work expectations and conditions, think about how different the world of work is now from the systems envisioned when these models were developed.

• Employers valued compliance and consistency over high performance and differentiation.

• The work being done was mostly boring.

• The workers were poorly educated and had very low skill levels.

• Meeting expectations meant following very specific work parameters.

• There was a great need for workers to respect authority and comply explicitly with everything they were told to do.

• Workers had to endure high levels of boredom.

• Everything was measured by time. Quality was assumed within the confines of the routine, and time was used to maximize efficiency (Eisner, 2002).

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!

These rules and standards led the way for mass production, which required large numbers of people working in strict unison and close quarters to produce a consistent product with high quality, in great quantity, and at a lower cost than ever before (Jones, 2000). This method drove people from rural areas into the city for these new factory jobs. It also drove the need for larger schools, which likewise structured themselves in a way that both mirrored the common thinking of the time and served as a mechanism for delivering future workers for these emerging institutions (Gray, 1993). In order to prepare workers for the Industrial Revolution, schools constructed during that time were organized to do the following.

• Schools were set up to reward compliance over high performance. Students were much better off going along with the crowd than standing out (Eisner, 2002).

• Students were taught that putting up with boredom was part of their work expectations. Complaining about boredom was not an option, and learning to live and comply with it was the expectation (Eisner, 2002).

• Fear, threats, and intimidation were utilized to keep control. This has proven to be historically effective in managing workers doing low-intellect, high-muscle jobs (Reason, 2010).

• Even though schools were technically designed as learning institutions, the real measure or metric was time. Students were taught to move en masse by taking breaks, eating lunch, and going back to work with a large group. All activities were controlled by a bell system very similar to the factories that students would be joining in just a few years (Jones, 2000).

Sadly, many of the conventions in place during the Industrial Revolution still carry a significant level of importance in our schools today. Having trained thousands of teachers and administrators at this point, I can say with confidence that there are still greater rewards in most schools for conformity than there are for creativity.

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These schools also admit to being more focused on the metric of time than the progress of learning. Similarly, they value the illusion of control over the opportunity to be creative.

Still not convinced that your school is carrying around elements of this old managerial framework? Ask math teachers why algebra is taught before geometry. During the Industrial Revolution, to stay organized and streamlined, policy makers and school leaders decided to choose algebra over geometry because A comes before G alphabetically (Thompson, 2005). Learning theorists tell us that the levels of abstraction necessary to learn algebra may be difficult for students in the latter years of middle school and early years of high school (Thompson, 2005). Not surprisingly, algebra continues to be one of those courses with an extraordinarily high failure rate in every state (Pappano, 2012). Here we are over one hundred years later, and we continue to follow an unsuccessful tradition based on alphabetical order.

The Carrot and the Stick As the Industrial Revolution unfolded, the United States developed management techniques that revolved around carrots and sticks. It was generally assumed that people performed more admirably if leaders clarified their expectations by offering explicit rewards and punishments (Skinner, 1938). Those in charge would put a metaphorical carrot in front of an individual or group of workers and encourage them to move forward. Leaders would likewise wave a threatening stick as an ominous reminder of what would happen if the workers didn’t follow the prescribed direction.

So does the carrot-and-stick routine work? Does it work for students? Does it work for teachers and staff? The answer is yes and no. Rather than relying on stories or homespun wisdom, I’m going to share some science with you. In studying human performance, we’ve come to realize that if you are providing human beings with a simple task with relatively few decision points and the need to execute maximum effort, the system of carrots and sticks works quite

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!

well (Ayres, 2010). After all, the human brain is capable of many nuanced expressions and iterations. While the ability to examine options puts us at our most creative, it can also be somewhat of a distraction. We’ve all had the experience of spending more time considering our options than bearing down and getting to work.

Therefore, in terms of carrots and sticks, if the job at hand is excruciatingly simple, the performance level will go up if the brain can associate some sort of punishment or reward associated with the simple choices in front of it.

Quite remarkably, however, there is an avalanche of research suggesting that the more complex the challenge, the more ineffective the carrot-and-stick routine becomes (Pink, 2009). In fact, even if you take away the notion of the stick and just focus on incentives, this research is clear that offering an incentive can become a distraction to an otherwise open and creative mind. What’s important to understand is that the evolution of our culture certainly saw a time when jobs were simple, tasks were boring and routine, and people weren’t asked to problem solve or collaborate with any great depth at work. Those days are over. However, just like the algebra problem, we unfortunately are living through a time in which the accelerated demands of the economy and new working environment in conjunction with our ideas about what it takes to get the best out of people have outpaced the leadership strategies available to us.

Before going further, I want to make it clear that we did make some progress in the latter half of the 20th century in terms of how we think about leadership, organizational behavior, and systems.

Younger readers may find this hard to believe, but it wasn’t that long ago when this simple notion that workers should be comfortable and somewhat happy on the job wasn’t assumed and had to be taught as a matter of undoing old management principles.

The Humanist Movement In what’s generally referred to as the Humanist Movement, leaders were advised to treat workers with a greater sense of humanity

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and concern. Rather than seeing them as replaceable parts of a big machine—as was the design in the industrial model—leaders were taught to show concern for people and offer reinforcement and encouragement (Rogers, 1959).

For the first half of the 20th century, it was common for workers to fear their bosses. In the second half of the 20th century, bosses attempted to portray a kinder, gentler, and more understanding image of management. Thanks to technology and the acceleration of the skill level needed in most jobs, the feelings that workers have about their bosses are perhaps less relevant than they once were. If you’re the boss, bluntly put, it isn’t all about you. In the most highly productive organizations, the workers don’t spend their days perseverating on every nuance of behavior from their boss or manager. Their focus is on their own work. They have the autonomy to lead in their own right and are busy finding solutions to problems rather than focusing on the maladies in management or leadership.

It should be clear that leading with a fear orientation simply doesn’t work (Reason, 2010). The learning and growth challenges that students and staff (including you) face each day are adequately complex, and the simple application of sticks and carrots won’t improve your performance. In fact, there is a significant amount of evidence that shows when fear is introduced, it actually shuts down learning (Lipton, 2008; Wood, Norris, Waters, Stoldt, & McEwen, 2008). Clearly, if you want the best in human performance in terms of creativity and learning, leading with fear isn’t leading at all.

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.

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!

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

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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 highengagement 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

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!

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.

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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

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!

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 quasiadministrative. 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 endeavors.

Chapter 6, “Igniting Next-Level Collaboration,” discusses the role of collaboration within professional learning communities (PLCs).

The promotion of PLCs has been a blessing. However, the ubiquitous PLC phraseology has been dampened by lazy interpretations.

Collaboration at a deep and meaningful level is more than just putting people together in a room and asking them to meet regularly.

This chapter helps leaders understand the impact of teamwork and consistent, quality group interactions on the learning process. A highly collaborative school culture can have a significant effect on the staff members who work there and the students they serve.

The most successful leaders are getting away from the notion that conflict is a bad thing. Actually, disagreement is perfectly acceptable, and a divergence of opinions is expected and can make a school far better prepared for the challenging world around it. In chapter 7, “Using Conflict and Repurposed Energy to Improve and Inspire,” we will explore how the best leaders reframe conflict and disagreement and repurpose that energy as a mechanism to improve the culture and inspire deeper levels of innovation.

In terms of psychological well-being, decades of research have been devoted to the importance of resilience and the merits of

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demonstrating high levels of will and determination. Healthy organizations work in very much the same way. In the past, we didn’t spend much time talking about leadership that encouraged accelerated levels of will and determination in response to difficult challenges. It was just assumed that the system would respond accordingly. As discussed in chapter 8, “Encouraging Will, Determination, and Resilience,” the reality is that schools have to be led toward these capacities in a thoughtful way.

In many cases, the greatest barrier to next-level performance is the belief that it is even possible. Striving for that next level can be difficult due to the fact that we are altogether transfixed on achieving this thing called “average.” The best leaders in schools and beyond understand that you must have a deeply held belief that a next-level performance is not only possible but is the expectation, as explored in chapter 9, “Developing Individual and Systemic Belief in NextLevel Performance.”

In many earlier texts there have been discussions about the importance of shared leadership. That principals or other system leaders would give away the power in certain circumstances is certainly a warm, benevolent idea. However, the complexity of organizations today makes this notion antiquated; due to the speed of technology and other change elements, leadership cannot grow only when these capacities are made available by the leader. Instead, organic leadership should emerge as needed, when needed, and with confidence.

In chapter 10, “Cultivating Organic Leadership,” we will address this powerful leadership potential.

In addition to a short discussion about each individual concept as it relates to outdated Taylorism ideals, I provide related strategies to help you lead your staff forward, including critical conversations you must have with your staff regularly. Each chapter also includes chats I’ve had with educators in the field. I’ve been fortunate enough to talk with many exemplars in leadership over the years, and I hope they inspire you as well. In addition, the chapters end with the impact, or takeaway, for each key concept.

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!

You have an incredibly important job, and you deserve a leadership coach who can encourage and support you—this book is written with that kind of coaching in mind. You’ll notice that my style will be encouraging, but I’ll also tease and cajole you.

And I’m willing to challenge you as well. I want to confront your assumptions, and I’ll be using a coaching platform to do it. Leadership coaching is available in most other professions, and I think the principals and building-level leaders in K–12 education deserve a good coach as well.

Spoiler Alert Let this be fair warning: optimism abounds in this book. If you’re somebody who loves to regale your friends with stories about gloom and doom in the field of education, you might be frustrated by my coaching efforts. I recognize the grim reality of the challenges we face in schools today, but I remain an incurable optimist. I was a principal in an extraordinarily tough learning environment, and in a relatively short period of time, our team came together and made a significant impact on the students we served. This progress wouldn’t have been possible without optimism and a belief that better outcomes were just around the corner. I carry this perspective with me today, not just in terms of the fortunes of one school at a time but also in terms of the profession in general. Here’s why. Even though our problems and challenges are as tough now as they have ever been, our opportunities to find answers have likewise never been this robust. A teacher in your school might have a challenge reaching a particularly difficult student with a very discrete and challenging learning deficiency. Rather than toiling away in frustration, with just a few clicks, that teacher can reach out to a limitless number of colleagues who may very well be dealing with the same issue. Therefore, even if we have more questions than before and the questions are more difficult, our access to answers has grown astronomically.

I have spent over a decade doing leadership and organizational culture work in private industry, as well as in private and public

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schools. These experiences have provided me with a unique perspective on what Fortune 100 companies do to compete in outlandishly challenging environments. After coaching CEOs in some of the fastest growing, highest performing businesses in the United States and working with executives in some of the most well-established businesses internationally, I have learned that the challenges of leadership remain remarkably consistent across disciplines. While public educators often wring their hands and bemoan the fact that they don’t have the same tools or resources as private industry colleagues, it is clear to me that it doesn’t come down to the tools or the financial accoutrements; rather, it has always, and will always, come down to the capacity to create a culture that encourages leadership.

After watching outrageously successful leadership in private industry, I’m more convinced than ever that, when it comes to leading meaningful innovation in schools, we can do this.

One great example of what it takes to be successful in leadership is American Express, which has a long tradition of investing in leadership training. After becoming familiar with my work, American Express invited me to train a handful of leadership cohorts on the vice president promotion track with the company. The human resources director was particularly interested in helping leaders stimulate systemic learning. At a key moment in the training, I remember one of the attendees reflecting out loud on the training components (highlighted in this book) that speak to the importance of leaders’ capacity to influence, which improves the learning acumen individually and collectively throughout the organization. During this salient moment, this future vice president said, “I think I get it now, Casey. All these tools you are sharing can really help me. I will be able to lead others by helping them become better learners. It really does seem to me that to be a great leader, I have to first and foremost be a great teacher.”

Obviously this was a teachable moment for both the young executive and for me. While I’ve always believed that what we learn in education is valuable, this exchange convinced me more than ever

Today Is Not Yesterday—Get Ready!

that the expertise educators carry with them is more important to our culture than many of us, even the biggest fans of the profession and of learning itself, could ever have realized.

To compound this, we are living in a time in which technology makes everything easier. Technology, if used correctly, allows machines or devices to do the laborious heavy lifting, freeing us up to focus on the most interesting and engaging aspects of our jobs. We are living in a time when handheld devices have given teachers access to just-in-time information about each student, allowing them to adjust their work as they go. Teachers can use technology to open up the entire world to their students—a world that wasn’t available to them just a few years ago. We are also living in a time when we can share resources and help each other dramatically increase our own performance levels like never before. With all of these blessings, however, comes a renewed need for good choices to be made and for schools to never stop striving to be well led. If we can step up and accelerate our leadership capacities and truly lead with strategies that are appropriate for today—not yesterday—I believe we can open up an unprecedented world of opportunity for the students we serve and do a better job than we’ve ever done before. So are you ready? Let’s get started.

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We tend to talk about vision in imprecise and almost mystical terms. For instance, we expect our school leaders to have vision, and that vision is supposed to provide direction and help the school consistently move forward in a focused and purposeful direction.

What we’ve learned, however, is that having a single visionary leader is an outdated presupposition in an increasingly complicated world.

You don’t have to go back that far to find numerous examples of well-intentioned schools working under the assumption that it’s the principal’s job to come in and clearly articulate every nuance on the path to success. The old top-down approach simply doesn’t work in this far more complex world where the choices are innumerable and the work being done by the professionals on the front line is more sophisticated than ever (Bush, 2004; McGregor, 1960). In the LEAF model, entire schools need to have a clear vision of where they are going and what they hope to accomplish. To that end, their vision must be so recognizable that they know it when they see it.

Sadly, many schools operate with great imprecision regarding their collective vision. Even if these schools arrived at their destination, it’s conceivable that many staff members wouldn’t even realize they had arrived. Why is it so difficult for us to reach clarity about vision?

There are many reasons, but what learning theorists and those who have studied the brain have discovered in the last several years is that from a learning and comprehension standpoint, the process of collectively capturing a similar image in an otherwise diverse group of

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

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No matter how charismatic or articulate a leader may be, he or she can never come into an organization and upload his or her image of the institution to everyone in the organization . . . at least not yet.

The vision is usually based on predictable construction points, and the best way for there to be a more solidified vision for your school is to construct it together. When a leader constructs the vision alone, the school becomes far too reliant on one person. No matter how great an influence a principal or other dynamic school leader may be, it’s a mistake to create conditions where the future of the institution exists primarily between the ears of one person. Even if that person performs at exulted levels, there are always other human factors that ultimately shape the destiny of the school. Therefore, for practical reasons, vision must be a shared proposition.

In some respects, it’s amazing we get anywhere at all in schools, given the difficulty in establishing a clear vision. In just about every school I have visited, I have noticed staff members with wildly different perspectives on essential school issues, such as the merits of technology, the advantages of online learning, the need to differentiate, the effects of collaboration, and so on. Our schools are more diverse than they’ve ever been, and that diversity gap is only going to increase in years to come (Cato Institute, 2013). As immigration numbers continue to expand, our teaching force will become less homogeneous. In addition, as digital natives and digital immigrants continue to work together, the cultural and experiential backgrounds will continue to create chasms that make establishing a solidified vision that much harder. This chapter, therefore, is all about setting up your school’s learning rhythms to create the clarity necessary to be more effective than ever.

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

people is far more difficult than could have been imagined (Reason, 2010). This new information is helpful in that now we can examine this otherwise dark and murky process of establishing a vision and can break it down into a handful of working components that thoughtful leaders can use to make vision clarity a reality.

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Paradigms of Yesterday

Key Concepts for Today Demonstrating mastery of this concept, establishing vision clarity, requires leaders to come into the school with the capacity to see things as better than they are today. This means they need to be able to conceptualize a highly effective system and imagine it working at even greater levels of effectiveness and optimization. This is more than just having the capacity to dream. It is about understanding the work in schools well enough to digest the current state and visualize improvements. These leaders also have enough knowledge of best practices in schools to be able to recognize opportunities when they emerge. To excel, a leader must be able to synthesize her leadership experiences and knowledge of best practice and resist the temptation to assume that any innovation effort will work as formulated. Leaders who truly understand vision recognize that every school building has to follow its own journey.

Leaders who master this concept must be able to listen extraordinarily well. Everyone in the school, including students, has a vision for what the school is and what it could be. Unless the principal

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

As you think about this arguably more evolved set of ideas about establishing and pursuing a vision in your school, it’s important for you to directly reflect on some of the old paradigms. In Taylor’s time, establishing a vision within an organization was all about the capacity of leaders at the top to appropriately word what should be accomplished at every level of the organization (Braverman, 1998).

The notion that everyone in the organization would have a say in what the ultimate goals of the organization were and would be involved in thinking about how the system worked was completely foreign to the Tayloristic model. What mattered was that you did your job, followed the rules, and simply executed your localized function. It was up to people with higher pay grades than you to see and pursue the big picture.

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Understanding basics about the neurological process points of establishing vision will help you consistently create a culture in which a more cohesive and connected vision is made possible throughout your school. When establishing a mental representation or a vision, there are three important elements to consider: (1) history, (2) mental models, and (3) current learning context. Keep in mind that this is a simplification of what happens neurologically. There are many other nuanced, but important, brain functions that work together to affect what you actually see when your brain goes from perception of experience and stimulus to the creation of a saved image. I don’t want this discussion to drive you crazy; rather, I want to share that establishing a vision is a neurologically complex process.

History Personal history has an effect on your capacity to establish vision for several very important reasons. First, most of our learning is based on the continuous construction of new information based

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

is able to listen well, he won’t be taking advantage of the learning power and capacity to innovate that are all around him. The leader also needs to be able to create a connected culture in which collaboration and communication are such that individuals are able to continuously articulate the details of the vision and work with others to co-construct the vision’s continuous evolution. This process of continually reflecting and refining should happen over a cup of coffee on the morning of the last day of school as thoughts are shared about what’s possible for the next year. It should happen on the soccer field as teachers talk about a key meeting they had two weeks earlier. It should happen as a result of an argument and the subsequent resolution. Actions, reactions, and all the stuff in between help shape what people believe about what’s possible for their school. The vision for what’s possible continues to ebb and flow based on every new voice that enters the conversation, the new challenges put in front of you, and the new opportunities that are suddenly revealed.

Establishing Vision Clarity

In terms of learning, think about working with a small group of teachers in your school. If you’re hoping to establish a vision, the history of each member will affect the vision the group establishes.

For example, if you have a group of seven, the fact that three members have more than thirty-five years of experience, lived abroad for ten years, and have English as their second language will all be contributing factors to a vision construction process very different from the one envisioned by the members without those experiences. Any series of words or images used with that group is likely to have a very different impact on the older, well-traveled individuals.

Mental Models The term mental model refers to elements of your memory or experience that have resulted in the creation of a predictable pattern in your learning system that you use as a filter or a lens for your observations of the world (Reason, 2010). Our brains are always looking for patterns; understanding patterns of weather, predators, and gravitational pull has helped us avoid extinction and maximize our own survivability. As humans observe these patterns, we look for symmetry and order (Reason, 2010). Thus, your experiences will ultimately shape your mental models.

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

on old information we’ve already gathered (Braine, 2009; Moss, Kotovsky, & Cagan, 2006). Burning a hand on a hot stove teaches us to change our behavior and affects how we visualize cooking, stoves, danger, and pain. The experience of burning your hand as a child can emerge in multiple ways in the future as you interact with the world and can shape how you visualize what’s next. I can remember visiting Pearl Harbor for the first time with my uncle, who had also never been before. I was in my twenties and had never served in the military. He was in his sixties and had five of his best friends die in World War II. As we considered visiting that memorial, our individual visions for what we thought we would see and what that experience might mean were obviously very different.

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Current Learning Context Thoughts about the learning context can vary dramatically. Thus, I refer to this portion as a current learning context, because in every instance of trying to establish a vision, it is a learning process. The current learning context will always have a significant effect on the ability to establish a particular vision. It can be extraordinarily comprehensive and include virtually any variable associated with the current situation where learning is happening and vision is being constructed (Hall, 2007).

For example, if the community pledged financial support for a school and the school received a special commendation from the state for improvement on testing, a retreat for establishing a school improvement plan for the next five years would probably be done in relative comfort, joy, and contentment. Conversely, if the school had recently gone through yet another round of failure and was being threatened by the state in terms of potential takeovers, a summer retreat to save the school by establishing a new school improvement plan would represent a very different learning context. While the goal in both situations is to establish a plan and a vision for

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Let’s think about how mental models are formed for some of the common elements that exist in teaching. One person’s mental model might revolve around the notion of a grand lecturer with pearls of wisdom flowing extemporaneously. He may see students gathering at the lecturer’s feet, attempting to model the behavior, and supporting the scholarship. Another mental model of teaching may be where the act of teaching revolves more around supporting the learning pursuits of others and creating stimulating learning opportunities. Neither mental model is necessarily wrong. They’re just very different. A student could go to school and experience both types of instructors yet come away with a very different mental model for the word teaching. Once again, this is complicated stuff, because two people could go through the same experience and establish very different mental models.

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the future, the context changes the challenge so dramatically that it shapes the experience as a result.

While history may be somewhat episodic, the creation of a context speaks to longer standing issues in place due to a confluence of variables. Context, in many respects, is the most static of the three essential components. Yet, as time goes on, different historical elements shape how we see our history, and we can always adjust how we think about our experiences. Our mental models can likewise be challenged, and we can adopt new perspectives about the prevailing mental models in a particular situation or institution.

History, Mental Models, and Current Learning Context Working Together So how do you make all of this fit together? It’s not hard to imagine how bringing together personal histories, mental models, and the current learning context can be complicated, even if it makes a great deal of sense in terms of establishing a vision. Furthermore, there may be disagreement about what the current learning context is all about. Some may see it as comfortable and interesting, while others may be in a state of panic.

The best way to respond to these differences in history, mental model, and current learning context is to acknowledge them as directly as possible. Have you ever been part of a strategic planning process where the facilitator spends a great deal of time talking about what people remember about the institution or about their values and beliefs? Even though these are important objectives in

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Consider a school community that has consistently served a bluecollar community with conservative political perspectives in a region where jobs have steadily been lost. These outside factors create a local context that affects the school’s vision. Other contextual factors include the size of the school and, to some degree, its physical makeup. Dark, dreary working conditions would indeed affect the context. Multiple decades of success or failure could also create a contextual expectation of achievement, or lack thereof.

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Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment Having this neurological understanding as a principal is helpful in dealing with almost everyone in the school. Keep in mind that if you’re twenty years older than the person you’re trying to communicate with, you undoubtedly have a different mental model and a different history. You may be interpreting the cultural contexts quite differently. As a result, your ability to connect and be consistent with a vision isn’t easy. That said, it isn’t impossible, and by talking those issues through, you put yourself in a much better position to reach clarity.

In addition to considering history, mental models, and current learning context, there are various strategies to help make the process of establishing a vision easier.

Clarify Recollections of Individual and Institutional History You may have been advised in the past that knowing the school’s history would be an enormous advantage to you in helping direct its future. This is indeed sage advice, but now we know it’s important because in order for our brains to even get close to having a collective vision, we have to understand how the similarities and differences and the individual or institutional history can shape that vision process (Braine, 2009; Kouzes & Posner, 2009).

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

and of themselves, exploring everyone’s background and articulating everyone’s values and beliefs are really about clarifying both the history and the mental models developed in the institution. Therefore, it’s extraordinarily important that, whenever possible, leaders talk about both collective and individual recollections of history, especially in relation to school issues. By having these conversations, schools can better differentiate the personalities and perspectives of any staff and can help clarify those differences whenever possible.

Establishing Vision Clarity

As a leader, you should be very explicit about describing mental models associated with a particular change issue. For example, if a new mathematics program is being instituted and teachers are being retrained, it is important for the staff to clarify their current mental models in relation to math issues. What do they think about the content area? Do they dread it? What do they think about the approach they’re being asked to embrace? What do they see when they imagine themselves implementing this new material? Harvesting the details of what’s currently in the hearts and minds of those who will lead an innovation is extraordinarily helpful. Keep in mind that this reflective process can potentially be very illuminating for the participants themselves, because in many cases, they’re carrying around mental models they may not have consciously thought about over the years.

In California, I once heard secondary teachers talk about block scheduling. One teacher asked the others, “Do you remember that?

They had us vote on that. We were arguing about whether or not to go with the block schedule or an A/B schedule. As if it mattered.

They were going to do whatever they wanted anyway, and the vote percentages were stacked in favor of administration. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like the block schedule. But that sure was a difficult time.”

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

This step can be instituted both informally and formally. Unfortunately, if it isn’t done formally, I’ve found that people can work right alongside others for years and not realize the many unique attributes they bring to the institution. Taking time to talk through one another’s history is beneficial because the more background information you gather about others, the better you can guess how they may respond in certain situations. Sharing memories of institutional histories is also extremely valuable. As you listen to long-standing veterans describe past change initiatives, you can often learn an awful lot about the vision process. You’ll hear them describing not only the change or innovation effort but also their mental models regarding the innovation.

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Clarify Mental Models In general, one weakness in education is how imprecise we are when it comes to terminology. A word like curriculum can have a very broad or very narrow mental representation for whoever is hearing the word. Even phrases such as diversity, English learners, special education, individual education plan, and new technology represent common education lingo that may wield widely different mental models depending on who you ask. If you tell digital natives they are getting new technology, their mental model may revolve around images of working at lightning speed with students gleefully breaking down learning boundaries and performing better than ever. Teachers less comfortable with new technology may hear the phrase and conceptualize long moments of frustration, confusion, and feelings of being obsolete. By establishing the practice of consistently clarifying mental models, you can get some of these ideas out in the open. Rather than allowing those mental models to fester, ask staff what they think or what they see when you mention key terms. This will help bring clarity to the process of establishing a school vision.

A principal and other members of the school improvement team could investigate the mental models that permeate the school regarding topics like school improvement planning, new curriculum, professional development, and so on. They may discover that, generally speaking, the mental models in these areas tend to cluster in

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Even though the teacher seemed somewhat positive about the alternative schedule, he didn’t make the connection between the use of time and either type of improvement. It’s clear there was suspicion regarding the administration and confusion over how decisions were made about these substantive instructional topics. If you were a principal overhearing that short dialogue, you could get a healthy perspective on the challenge you might face in getting that team of secondary teachers to think about change and visualize something new and different for their school.

Establishing Vision Clarity

Clarify Perceptions of the Current Learning Context Since the learning context represents a combination of the conditions we see and feel as we interact in a learning environment, it is often difficult to quantify these variables. However, to some degree, you can rely on common sense. For example, in an environment with many community, school, and classroom-based stressors, you may need to become a bit more deliberate and explicit as a leader about addressing how those issues may be affecting how your school sees the world.

For example, I was principal of a high school that consistently suspended one hundred students a month. With five full-time police officers walking the halls and the dean’s office and community police station by the front of the building, I began to recognize that the context we were living in was challenging. To some degree, where we had elected to situate our offices and the steps we took to process our behavioral issues exacerbated an already volatile situation. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been surprising that the first issues staff wanted me to address as principal were discipline, security, and dress code. Certainly each was an important component in creating a school environment good for students and learning. The physical presence and placement of these systems, however, created a vision that overrepresented what we needed to do.

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

one direction or another. This information could then inform the team regarding what steps are needed to begin establishing a new vision. For example, if the team found that there was a negative view of professional development and that the mental model was one of boredom and frustration, it might suddenly be clear that establishing new positive experiences around highly relevant and justin-time professional development would go a long way in changing both that perception and the school’s vision. Knowing this mental model and referring to the history behind it would be extraordinarily beneficial.

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See Things Better Than They Actually Are One of the more empowering things you can do as a principal is to not only take these elements of vision building into account but also encourage your staff to consistently envision their future in a way that’s empowering and successful. For fun, let’s refer to this process as establishing Bettervision: a vision of what’s just ahead that’s better than what we have right now.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of working almost daily with Brian Mueller, president and CEO of Grand Canyon University, while I was chairing the school’s very first doctoral program. In every meeting I attended with him, he had the uncanny ability to lead the discussion toward a vision of possibility that was outlandishly successful. He would talk in very concrete terms about doubling or quadrupling the business in a short period of time due to outstanding strategy and the energized efforts of everyone in the room. His construction of a future that was better than today was relentless, and you couldn’t help but be inspired by the exciting potential he portrayed.

I stayed at Grand Canyon long enough to realize that many of the visions he had for the future didn’t exactly come to fruition in as glorious a form as he had projected, but remarkably, they came relatively close in most cases. The message here is that when constructing a vision for what’s possible, we dream too small. If we can

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It was clear to me that challenging staff to think about our problems at a deeper level required a shift of context and, in this case, focusing on support and prevention before moving to more drastic measures. The result was dramatically improved student achievement and staff that became remarkably adroit at dealing with very difficult problems. In fact, the staff ended up cutting suspension and expulsion rates in half in a very short period of time. Even though the community hadn’t changed and the problems students were facing hadn’t gone away, our context allowed us to approach those problems differently and ultimately clarify our perceptions.

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consistently get those who work in your school to see a compelling and successful future, even if you fall short of a glorious expectation, you’re likely to still lurch forward and make progress where growth had perhaps eluded your predecessors.

Critical Conversations: Remember the Prize of Clarity and Vision The idea of establishing clarity for where you’re going is incredibly important. The clearer the vision, the more likely it is that the members of the institution will be able to work together toward a solution. Imagine if everyone in your school had great clarity about what was expected and how it was growing and evolving. That collective clarity could result in the ability to pull together and find solutions more readily than ever before. Reminding the staff of the importance of vision is important, as is openly asking them what the results would be of getting really good at establishing vision and being clear about what vision means to each person. If you do this right, you’ll establish a culture and a climate in your school that will hopefully outlast your tenure as principal.

Exemplars and Signs of Mastery Tim is the principal of a small rural high school in Ohio. He shared some interesting thoughts with me on how vision can impact leadership, learning, and innovation.

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Within this context, you may also want to ask how clear the vision is in the school, what you can do as principal to help make the vision and direction clearer, and what each staff member can do to help clarify your path forward and make sure everyone understands the vision. This can be an inquiry that’s held extemporaneously one on one with a staff member, or it can be part of a small- or largegroup processing point to help you move forward. Certainly, this approach can lead you toward the process of clarifying a vision for the future that’s engaging, appealing, and worth striving for.

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S T O P L E A D I N G L I K E I T ’ S Y E S T E R D AY Casey: So, Tim, how do you establish a vision for where you’re going in your school?

Tim: Well, it’s kind of like you’ve always said, Casey. It’s reflect on what all of us hope and dream in terms of bringing improvement to the school. We all have to come together and have that conversation to make that vision a reality.

Casey: Did you find that early in your tenure there was an overreliance on the staff’s expectation that you would provide the vision?

Tim: Absolutely. I think it is part of the feeling-out process that many principals have to go through early in their tenure. Staff members are curious as to what you might be up to and the types of changes you might be interested in manifesting. As a result, they ask a lot of questions and consistently expect you to articulate your vision.

Casey: It’s kind of like a tennis match, isn’t it? They want you to serve the ball, but you have to bounce it back to them, don’t you?

Tim: Yes! And, it doesn’t have to be a negative process. I think that you can actually learn a lot from one another in those early formative conversations. They learned from me right away that I wasn’t an educator without ideas about how to improve the school. But they also learned that I was someone who was open, would listen to others, and wanted to help create a school that would be in the image of everyone who was here to create it.

Casey: It’s not just about you, is it?

Tim [laughing]: No, it isn’t.

Casey: How do the school’s history and the mental models associated with that history affect the school’s vision?

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more about our ability as a staff to come together and

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Tim: It affects them quite a lot. I think, in many cases, principals neglect to dig in deep in terms of trying to understand the history, background, and mental models, as you call them, in the school. I grew up in the state of Ohio I’m now principal. That said, there are still a number of unique components to this community, to this school district, and specifically to this staff that make our work here very unique. The longer I’m here, the more I continue to reveal certain aspects of that unique history to make my efforts to lead even more effective and efficient.

Casey: So you think your vision for the school gets better the longer you’re here?

Tim: No, I believe our vision together for what’s possible gets better. The longer my staff work in this culture and climate of shared leadership with a vision that we all build together, the more we learn to become effective and efficient as a team and the better job we do in serving our students.

To reiterate, vision is one of the most important aspects of leadership and goal attainment. Simply put, you can’t get anywhere very quickly if you don’t know where you’re going and aren’t clear about your destination. Unfortunately, vision is a terribly overused, imprecise word. The more specificity we can add to the process of clarifying our vision by defining our mental models, history, and current learning context, the more likely leaders will be able to both understand and be understood. Building, implementing, and sustaining a systemic vision is a never-ending job; by using tools and strategies that complement learning, thoughtful school leaders can improve the clarity of the school vision.

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and went to a school very similar to the building where

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The Impact

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Hopefully this chapter has helped demystify the vision process a bit. If, as a school leader, you’re able to understand the mechanics of establishing a vision and use those mechanics to the advantage of everyone in the school, your school will have more clarity about what’s possible regarding innovation, learning, and leading.

In terms of culture, a unique advantage of clarity is that you’ll notice a greater sense of calm and fulfillment in your building due to the fact that people tend to feel better when they have a clear idea of where they’re going. Everyone can relate to the nervousness of driving down the road unsure if you are heading toward the destination.

When you’ve removed that confusion from the system and given the staff at your school the confidence they need to believe they are indeed moving in the right direction, there is a much greater likelihood that the resulting school culture will be calmer, more reflective, and more fulfilled, with more creative outcomes.

LEADING LIKE IT’S

Yesterday!

— Miguel Cardona, Performance and Evaluation Specialist, Meriden Public Schools, Connecticut

In Stop Leading Like It’s Yesterday!: Key Concepts for Shaping Today’s School Culture, author Casey Reason offers a leadership model that meets the needs of 21st century students and educators. By explaining antiquated managerial techniques and their hold on education, he dispels the idea that leadership practices from the Industrial Revolution are in any way effective in 21st century classrooms. Instead, he offers the Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment (LEAF) model, which provides practical, research-based strategies that maximize innovation and are relevant to school leaders today and tomorrow.

K–12 administrators will: • Maximize learning and innovation through the practical, research-based LEAF model

STOP LEADING LIKE IT’S YESTERDAY!

STOP

“The evolution of our schools will depend on how our leaders are able to adapt and prepare others for the changes that are needed. This book does a masterful job helping leaders see their roles as catalysts for innovation.”

• Learn to recognize the Industrial Revolution–based education practices that are outdated and irrelevant to 21st century students

• Access ready-to-implement strategies • Read success stories from actual educators in their own words

solution-tree.com

CASEY REASON

• Understand how leadership practices influence students’ academic achievement and future success

STOP

LEADING LIKE IT’S

Yesterday!

Key Concepts for Shaping Today’s School Culture

Casey Reason