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Talking to high school students about leadership and character is tricky. Most of what is said sounds cliche at best and patronizing at worst. So I turned to Ted Talks for a little help. Following is a list of talks that are brief - six minutes at most - and often funny. They approach the topics in new ways that engage students instead of turning them off to the ideas.

I found this one through a comment on my previous post about Ted Talks. Dudley, the speaker, gives insight into how we've falsely built leaders up as having to be extraordinary Earth-changing individuals. But in reality, we all do something that positively impacts others and makes us leaders as well. His example from his own life is hysterical and something students can relate to.

I use this in my school with every student sharing their "lollipop moment" for a collaborative bulletin board that shows the leadership in the school. You can see his talk here.

A volunteer firefighter humorously tells about how he was the second to arrive at a fire, so instead of saving the dog, he saved the shoes. He was bummed, but learned later that getting shoes for a woman who was having the worst day of her life was pretty important as well. Similar to the above talk, this one reminds students that small acts of kindness, courage, leadership, etc. can positively impact others just as much as the large ones.

In closing, he reminds the audience to "save the shoes." If presented with the opportunity to do something good or kind, do it. It may seem small but it's always worth it. You can see this talk here.

Change is overwhelming and at times seems impossible. Cutts, the speaker, made small changes in his life like biking to work, hiking, and even writing. He did them one at a time and for thirty days each. The results were amazing: increased confidence, healthier lifestyle, and a published novel! Okay, so the novel is terrible and is not published; but he can now say he's an author and he did it.

Cutts explains how 30 days is just the right amount of time to create, or eradicate, a habit. So after 30 days, as long as your change is small enough to be manageable, you're likely to keep doing it.

I use this with my students and encourage them to pick something that day that they will start to do and will continue to do for 30 days. We discuss what is manageable and the possible benefits. I love hearing my students comment on what they are still doing months later! Check out the talk by clicking here.

This speaker uses a movie to show a movement in creation. Hilariously, the movement is a dance party of sorts in a field. The message of the talk is spot-on for most of my students: you don't have to be a leader to impact a movement. Sivers, the speaker of this talk, explains the importance of the early followers who take the risk of being one of the first, and have the essential job of getting more followers and teaching them how to follow as well.

The video used to demonstrate the movement is great and the message co-insides with the other videos: you can make an impact. You can watch the talk here.

Okay, not exactly funny. But the speaker, Narayan, keeps it light given the bleak topic. Narayan's focus in on how a majority of the obituaries that are not paid for by the families are for people in the arts who positively impacted their communities.

It's a gentle reminder that if you want to be remembered when you're gone, be kind to others. I also love that this talk reiterates how you don't have to be an engineer or a lawyer to be successful. We overlook the importance and significance of the contributions from the artists of the world. You can watch this talk here.

Another talk from Sivers who points out some of the humorous miscommunications and understandings between different cultures. For example, doctors in some areas of China are only paid when their patients are healthy because it means the doctor is doing a good job. Makes sense!

Students have already heard that they should keep an open mind, but this talk helps them to remember to practice it as well. One example is when he shows a map flipped from the way we usually see it. When students say the map is upside down, it already shows they are set in thinking our perception of the map is more correct than someone else's even though it is actually of the same Earth. Very short but still impactful. You can watch this talk here.

These specific talks are perfect for class discussion and quick worksheet when you have 15 minutes or so to fill. Since the focus is on leadership and character, they can work in almost any classroom. They can also be combined to create a mini unit on leadership and character.

Short on time? I have my worksheets available here at my TeachersPayTeachers store.

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Quick Ted Talks to Develop Leadership and Character - Engaging and Effective Teaching

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Talking to high school students about leadership and character is tricky. Most of what is said sounds cliche at best and patronizing at worst. So I turned to Ted Talks for a little help. Following is a list of talks that are brief - six minutes at most - and often funny.

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Do you remember the day you became a leader?

You might not even recognize that version of yourself. Maybe you shudder when you think about the answer to that question, and you're now trying to think about something else to focus on as fast as you can. I get it!

The day I'm thinking of isn't "the first day I led something." That was back in high school, and I do shudder when I think of that awkward, pimple-faced kid. The day I'm thinking of is the first day I had someone who was being paid for their work who reported to me. I had done their job until that particular day. With my recent promotion (and theirs), I was now their supervisor.

If you've made that shift in your professional life, do you remember what that season was like? I hope it went better for you than it did for me!

I made many mistakes and if I could back with what I know today, I'd inflict less pain on the young man I supervised. What I discovered leading someone else involved was not what I expected.

Leading others involves an incredible amount of adaptation and flexibility, much more than I realized.

I had a phone conversation with the man I oversaw recently. A couple of days after that call, I thought about all I learned from my first role as someone's boss.

Hopefully, these lessons can help you or someone you know make this transition. I hope you can learn from my mistakes.

No One is Great in the Beginning

I can remember being frustrated with my supervisee when he started - how much he didn't know and the gap between his performance and mine. In my head, I was thinking, "I'm better at this than you." A few moments later, though, I remembered, "But I wasn't when I started."

None of us are great in the beginning. If we reconnected to our past, maybe even walked a mile in the shoes of the person we're leading, we'd recognize that everyone has a learning curve and it's our job as leaders to help them navigate it well.

Performing and Managing Require a Different Skill Set

If you've not supervised someone else, there is one piece of wisdom I'd share with you. In the beginning, you're going to be better at doing their job than being the supervisor of their job.

It's crazy when you think about it. What got you the supervisor or manager role is a very different skill set than what will enable you to thrive in leading others. If I could go back to that young man I was leading, I'd tell him, "I'm better at this than you but I still suck as your boss. Please give me grace while I make this transition and I'll do the same for you."

Manage the Outcome, Not the Process

I quickly learned that "done by someone else" is better than "undone but still sitting on my plate." I didn't surrender and delegate well in the very beginning and if I'm honest, I still tend to hold on to the reigns tighter as a leader than I should. I remember that first supervisee apologizing when he did something different than I would have. I wish I had celebrated how his work was freeing me up to do what I only could do.

If you haven't made this shift, I'd encourage you to focus more on the outcome than the process it takes to get there. When we start managing to an outcome, not micro-managing the process, it's more likely we'll get stellar results and respect from our team.

Be as Clear as Possible

In this book, The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni describes the four habits of organizational health this way. "Build a cohesive leadership team, create clarity, over-communicate clarity, and reinforce clarity." Clarity is kind of important, I think!

Much of our frustration in organizational life comes from a lack of clarity. The drama, politics, unmet expectations, and meetings-after-meetings - they often stem back to a lack of clarity. We need to pursue and communicate even greater clarity, so our team knows what is sacred and where they can be flexible.

Offer the Training and Preparation You Never Got

Most of us were under-trained and under-prepared when we got started. We were thrown into the deep end and expected to swim. And there can be some value to this approach when done strategically. However, most of our experience in this area comes because someone else was haphazard, not intentional.

I didn't spend nearly enough time with the young man who took my job. I failed to help him understand how I thought, what drove my philosophy and approach, and how I ultimately became successful.

At the beginning of overseeing someone, we'll feel like we don't have time to help them learn and grow. We'll want to expedite the preparation stage. But if we were in their shoes, we'd want to be trained and invested in, empowered to succeed.

Leadership requires more flexibility and adaptability than we ever imagine. Some of our greatest struggles as leaders come when we're transitioning into new roles and letting go of old ones. We can all do better as we help other people succeed.

One of my leadership mentors, Todd Adkins, is always reminding those around him of an important truth. "A big part of leadership is recognizing that your fruit often grows on other people's trees."

The success of those we lead is our success.

Become a Patron!

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The Hardest Transition We'll Make: From Self-Leadership to Leading Others

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Do you remember the day you became a leader? You might not even recognize that version of yourself. Maybe you shudder when you think about the answer to that question, and you're now trying to think about something else to focus on as fast as you can. I get it!

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Thanks to its partnership with publisher Eye on Education, Education World is pleased to present this administrator tip from School Leader Internship (4th Edition): Developing, Monitoring, and Evaluating Your Leadership Experience, by Gary E. Martin, Arnold B. Danzig, William F. Wright, Richard A. Flanary, and Fred Brown. This article provides school leaders with five factors to consider when making quality decisions.

Decision making is sine qua non to education administration because a school, like all formal organizations, is basically a decision-making structure (Hoy and Miskel, 2001). Decision making is a process that guides actions. Decisions are based on the beliefs, values and previous experiences of individuals. Leaders must know themselves, know why they choose particular paths, know whom to involve, and know which particular decision-making model to use. Today, researchers and theorists know that those at the top cannot accurately gather or predict all alternatives. They know that followers deserve to be involved and that input and collaboration result in better decisions. The first decision is to decide what level of involvement is most effective.

Leaders have at least four options of involvement in decisions: deciding alone, seeking participation and input, seeking collaboration, and letting others decide. These approaches are termed autocratic, participative, collaborative, and laissez fair, respectively. A wise leader uses participative and collaborative strategies for all important decisions. However, such an approach is not always possible, nor is it preferable in all situations. The leader must assess 5 factors to decide on the level of involvement:

Time

Urgency may require the leader to make his or her own decision without consulting others. Participative decisions, especially collaborative decisions, require more time than a decision made alone. If important decisions are at stake, the leader must schedule more time for involvement.

Staff Interest in the Decision

Barnard (1938) found that individuals have a "zone of indifference" in which they simply accept the leader's decision and are apathetic toward the decision. In these cases, the leader would not benefit from trying to gain participation or collaboration. At higher levels of interest, however, more participation or collaboration is appropriate. Leaders who desire more collaboration must generate interest in the decision.

Staff Expertise

Followers who have very low levels of expertise accept the decisions of leaders. Staff members who have higher levels of expertise require either participation or collaboration to arrive at successful decisions. The leader who desires collaboration must raise levels of expertise to successfully involve subordinates.

Importance or Need For a High-Quality Decision

Some decisions are much more important and carry significant consequences. This is usually the case for instruction and learning, whether directly or indirectly. For important questions that demand high-quality decisions, collaboration is the best model. If the decision is relatively unimportant, then the leader should simply make the decision.

Degree of Need for Buy-In or Support for the Decision

Many decisions in schools need staff support for successful implementation and results. A collaborative model often increases buy-in and support.

Education World®
Copyright © 2012, 2017 Education World

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Decision-Making for School Leaders: Five Tips | Education World

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Thanks to its partnership with publisher Eye on Education, Education World is pleased to present this administrator tip from School Leader Internship (4th Edition): Developing, Monitoring, and Evaluating Your Leadership Experience, by Gary E. Martin , Arnold B. Danzig , William F. Wright , Richard A. Flanary, and Fred Brown .

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As leaders, we each need our own simple, profound leadership philosophy that is grasped easily and modeled consistently.

I believe the most authentic leadership is organic. Yes, it may borrow from various influences, but your most real philosophy is as individual as your fingerprint.

Your philosophy shapes your personal leadership statement. The statement can cover how you lead and influence, what you value, what you expect from team members, what you do not accept, and/or what type of environment you are committed to creating.

Let's look at how to get there.
8 Prompts to Your Core Beliefs and Behaviors
The following prompts can help drill down to your core beliefs and behaviors, as you can see by the examples that I have included from notable leaders.

By answering these, you will collect valuable insight that can help point to your unique leadership philosophy.

Example: "Always be fair and consistent in the principles that guide your decisions, because there will be people who disagree. If you are consistent, they will at least respect you when you make your decisions."- Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
2. I spend time....
Example: "I've made a point of spending a lot of time walking the building at HUD and listening to employees."- Julián Castro, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who describes himself as a 'man in the crowd' type of leader.
3. I value.... 4. I am curious about... Example: "By nature I am curious about life, and this extends to my business."-business magnate Richard Branson. 5. I respect.... Example: "[I] respect employees [by] making myself available to try to answer questions they have. It gives me a chance to educate, but it also gives me a chance to be educated."- U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. 6. I listen with.... 7. I care about.... Example: "The only thing I care about is winning. That's all. If you don't want to win, you don't want to be around me."-Los Angeles Laker legend Jerry West Your Game Changer Takeaway
Be inspired to fill in the blanks! Go deep with your 8 answers. Which ones resonate? Hone your philosophy to its simplest form, and practice it daily. You are taking a big step closer to your leadership potential, and that benefits everyone on your team.

Game Changers Podcast - Authentic Leadership

Kat Cole, Group President of FOCUS Brands, is keenly aware of how to hone and evolve her leadership style to inspire many different types of teams. Take a listen below to hear her story or visit the Game Changers Podcast page for more in-depth interviews with successful business leaders and athletes.
Molly Fletcher helps motivate and equip game changers to dream, live and grow fearlessly. A , Molly draws on her decades of experiences working with elite athletes and coaches as a sports agent, and applies them to the business world. Her Game Changer Negotiation Training™ has helped organizations and individuals across all industries more effectively ask for what they want, build stronger relationships and close more deals faster.

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These 8 Answers Will Fill Your Leadership Philosophy

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As leaders, we each need our own simple, profound leadership philosophy that is grasped easily and modeled consistently. I believe the most authentic leadership is organic. Yes, it may borrow from various influences, but your most real philosophy is as individual as your fingerprint. Your philosophy shapes your personal leadership statement.

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Editor's note: This is a guest post on lessons learned in leadership by Jim Kouzes. Jim is co-author of the award-winning and best selling book, The Leadership Challenge. The Leadership Challenge was the winner of the James A. Hamilton Hospital Administrators' Book Award and the Critics' Choice Award, was a BusinessWeek best-seller, and has sold over 1.4 million copies in more than twelve other languages. The Wall Street Journal has cited Jim as one of the twelve best executive educators in the United States. Here's Jim ... Jim is a foremost researcher, award-winning writer, and highly sought after teacher in the field of leadership.
Leadership Insights from 950,000 Responses

Since 1982 Barry Posner and I have been exploring together what leaders do to mobilize others to want to struggle for shared aspirations. We've coauthored over 30 books, workbooks, and assessment instruments based on our research, including our bestseller, The Leadership Challenge. Last year we completed one of our most ambitious projects, analyzing 950,000 responses to our Leadership Practices Inventory -80,000 self-assessments from leaders and 870,000 assessments from observers who know those leaders. Over the recent holidays I took a step back from all this data, and asked myself, "If I had to list the Top Ten Leadership Lessons I've learned over all these years, what would those Top Ten be?" Here is what I came up with. (Caveat: We've learned a lot more than ten things about leadership, so this is not an exhaustive list. And, I might change this list next week after I reflect some more!)

Top 10 Leadership Lessons

Lesson 1. Leadership is everyone's business.

Lesson 2. Credibility is the foundation.

Lesson 3: Personal values drive commitment.

Lesson 4. You either lead by example, or you don't lead at all.

Lesson 5. Looking forward is a leadership prerequisite.

Lesson 6. It's not just the leaders vision.

Lesson 7. Challenge provides the opportunity for greatness.

Lesson 8. Leaders are team players.

Lesson 9. Leadership is a relationship.

Lesson 10. Caring is at the heart of leadership.

Lesson 1. Leadership is everyone's business.

We keep finding leaders everywhere we look. They come from every type of organization, public and private, government and NGO, high-tech and low-tech, small and large, schools and professional services. They are young and old, male and female, gay and straight, and are present in every ethnic group. They come from every imaginable vocation and avocation. Leadership, in other words, is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women who are genetically endowed with some special power. Similarly, leadership is not about organizational power or authority. It's also not about celebrity or wealth, the family you are born into, being a CEO, president, general, or prime minister. And it's definitely not about being a hero. Leadership is a set of skills and abilities that are accessible and learnable by anyone who has the motivation and desire to learn it.
Over these last 26 years we've asked people around the world to answer the question, "What do you look for and admire in a leader, someone whose direction you would willingly follow?" (The key word in this question is willingly!) What we've found in our investigation of admired leader qualities is that, more than anything, people want leaders who are credible. Quite simply, people need to believe in their leaders. Because our findings have been so pervasive and consistent, we've come to identify it as "The First Law of Leadership": If you don't believe in the messenger, you won't believe the message.
Lesson 2. Credibility is the foundation.

And, what is credibility behaviorally? How do you know it when you see it? When we ask these questions, the responses we get are essentially the same, regardless of how they are phrased. Credible leaders walk the talk, practice what they preach, are consistent in word and deed, put their money where their mouth is, and follow through on promises. This has led us to the Second Law of Leadership: To become a credible leader you must Do What You Say You Will Do, or DWYSYWD for short.
DWYSYWD has to fundamental parts to it-the say part and the do part. People expect their leaders to stand up for their beliefs. But to stand up for your beliefs, you have to know what you stand for. To walk the talk, you have to have a talk to walk. To do what you say, you have to know what you want to say. To earn and sustain personal credibility, you must first be able to clearly articulate deeply held beliefs. And we know from our research that those leaders who are the clearest about their own values, and who see the fit between their own values and the values of the organizations they serve, are the most committed leaders. Personal values clarity is essential to commitment...and to integrity and authenticity.
Lesson 3: Personal values drive commitment.
The second part of earning credibility-or, DWYSYWD-is the "do" part. The only way people know we value something is when they see it in action. When leaders practice what they preach they become role models for their constituents, and leaders who are seen as exemplary role models have higher performing units. In fact, in our most recent analysis of over 950,000 responses to our Leadership Practices Inventory, we found that Model the Way is the leadership practice that has more impact on constituents' performance than any of the other Five Practices in our model. If you could only do one thing as a leader to energize the performance of others, it would be, based on our data, to be set an example based on a set of shared values.
Lesson 4. You either lead by example, or you don't lead at all.

Lesson 5. Looking forward is a leadership prerequisite.

In our most recent surveys, 72 percent of respondents selected the "forward-looking" as one of their most sought-after leadership characteristics. Among the most senior executives, the percentage expecting this quality is 88 percent. People expect leaders to have a sense of direction and a concern for the future of the organization. Exemplary leaders are able to envision the future, to gaze across the horizon of time and imagine the greater opportunities to come. They are able to develop a unique image of the future. This ability, more than any of the other leadership skills, differentiates leaders from individual contributors.

Lesson 6. It's not just the leaders vision.

At some point during all this talk over the years about the importance of being future-oriented, leaders got the sense that they were the ones who had to be the visionaries. Wrong! This is not what constituents expect. Yes, leaders are expected to be forward-looking, but they aren't expected to be prophets. Exemplary leadership is not about uttering divinely inspired revelations. What people really want to hear is not just the leader's vision. They want to hear about their own aspirations. They want to hear how their dreams will come true and their hopes will be fulfilled. The very best leaders understand that they are supposed to Inspire a Shared Vision, not sell their idiosyncratic view of the world.

Lesson 7. Challenge provides the opportunity for greatness.

When we ask people to tell us about their personal best leadership experiences, they talk about times of crisis, adversity, change, and great difficulty. We don't do our best as leaders when we are maintaining the status quo or when we feel comfortable. The situations that bring out our best are those that challenge us. The study of leadership, then, is the study of how men and women guide people through adversity, uncertainty, hardship, disruption, transformation, transition, recovery, new beginnings, and other significant challenges. It's also the study of how men and women, in times of constancy and complacency, actively seek to disturb the status quo and awaken new possibilities. Leadership and challenge are simply inseparable.

Lesson 8. Leaders are team players.

Leaders can't do it alone. No leader in history ever got anything extraordinary done by himself or herself. When it comes to superior performance collaboration out produces both competition and individualistic efforts. And, at the heart of collaboration is trust. Without trust you cannot lead. As one leader put it to us: "I have a strong willingness to be a part of what is going on, rather than apart from. I don't think people enjoy working for long stretches for someone who won't be part of what's happening."

Lesson 9. Leadership is a relationship.

Leadership is a relationship between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow. Any discussion of leadership must attend to the dynamics of this relationship. Exemplary leaders are devoted to building relationships based on mutual respect and caring, because they know that the quality of the relationship will determine the quality of the results. The emotional intelligence of a leader has more to do with their effectiveness than their experience and their expertise. One leader told us, "I may not be the most knowledgeable person...but I know how to get other people to think well about themselves." What an awesome ability to have. The very best leaders know that their job is to make others feel powerful and capable, not to acquire power for themselves.

Lesson 10. Caring is at the heart of leadership.

Contrary to a lot of public myth about how managers have to be cold and rational - "it's not personal, it's just business" - research indicates just the opposite. The highest performing managers and leaders are the most open and caring. The best demonstrate more affection toward others and want others to be more open with them. Exemplary leaders excel at improving performance through more attention to the human heart. The climb to the top of the summit is arduous and steep. The challenges are immense and often frightening. Against these odds leaders must sustain hope and offer encouragement. And the research is very clear. High hope leads to high performance.

I hope you'll add your most important leadership lessons to this list. The best leaders are the best learners, and I know we have so much more to learn from you.

Additional Resources

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Editor's note: This is a guest post on lessons learned in leadership by Jim Kouzes. Jim is co-author of the award-winning and best selling book, The Leadership Challenge. The Leadership Challenge was the winner of the James A.

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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"What's the point, Mrs. Adams?" asked Brian.

I will never forget the confused yet honest look on my 8th grade student's face when he asked me this question after I had concluded my riveting lecture about the causes of the Civil War.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Brian again repeated, "What's the point ... of our lesson?"

To be honest, his question both irritated and baffled me, as I wasn't sure how to answer it. I shrugged and told him the point was for him to know the information because it would be on the test.

It was 20 years ago and I was in my second year of teaching 8th grade Core, a three-period Humanities block of reading, English, and U.S. History in California. I began my teaching career for the same reason many other educators do - I wanted to inspire and teach students to reach their fullest potentials. The only problem was that I had shelves of textbooks filled with educational theory but still a nearly empty toolkit with which to accomplish my goal.

"What's the point, Mrs. Adams?"

To this day, Brian's provocative yet earnest question lingers in my mind. However, his question provided the impetus that pushed me to seek wisdom from Instructional Leaders (ILs) and examine and build my instructional philosophy and repertoire.

Teacher leadership comes in many forms and among the most influential in promoting student success and positive school culture are those educators who serve as Instructional Leaders. It has been said that great leaders do not set out to be leaders, they set out to make a difference; and that is particularly true when it comes to ILs.

Studies show that student achievement is directly related to the effectiveness of the classroom teacher but the million-dollar question is, "How does a teacher become effective?"

The golden rule in any leadership position is to develop and nurture positive relationships. Perhaps Ghandi said it best, "I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people." People do not want to collaborate with someone who is negative, confrontational, or critical, and successful ILs quickly learn that principle. First and foremost, they work to establish positive relationships with colleagues so learning and growth are possible.

Instructional Leaders also provide clarity, support, and resources for teachers to identify "the point" in our instruction and in our students' learning, thereby increasing effective teaching.

Since I have had the privilege of working with many skilled ILs, I know there are several habits they have in common that cultivate an environment that is conducive to learning, reflection, and growth for both students and teachers.

Habit #1-Instructional Leaders Understand Neuroscience

The young brain is very different from the mature brain and we see examples of it all the time in the learning environment. When Jeremiah makes a bad choice and we ask him why he made that choice, he almost always responds with a shoulder shrug and an, "I don't know."

The brain develops from the stem forward, with the last area of the brain to activate called the Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC). The PFC, otherwise known as the Executive Functioning Center, is in charge of processing cause and effect, impulse control, attention span, organizational skills, and emotional stability.

Experts believe the PFC fully activates in the female around 20 years old. The male PFC often takes a little longer, fully activating in the mid-twenties. This has serious implications for educators as we sometimes place the same expectations on the young brain that we have for the mature brain, which sets our students up for failure.

The good news is that we can accelerate healthy brain development and help students develop the skills they need for success. When we provide students explicit instruction in literacy, communication and critical thinking strategies, reflection, social-emotional learning, and growth mindset, the neural connections in the PFC increase.

Instructional Leaders are knowledgeable in neuroscience and they provide professional development opportunities and resources to ensure routines, expectations, learning experiences, and assignments are developmentally appropriate, while simultaneously fostering healthy brain development.

Habit #2-Instructional Leaders Are Connected Lead Learners
As society changes, student and teacher needs change. From Standards Based Report Cards to PBL to 1:1 deployment, education is an evolving entity. It is imperative that educators evolve as well. To remain current, effective ILs model and demonstrate the importance of continued learning.

Instructional Leaders are often involved in one or more professional education organizations, such as AMLE, and are also connected to other educators via social media, such as Twitter. They may also facilitate staff book studies, Tech Tuesdays, webinars, and collaborative analysis of student work. These opportunities provide continued growth, collaboration, and networking with others in and outside our districts and maximize our resources and learning capacity.

Habit #3-Instructional Leaders Support Content AND Comprehension Instruction

Instructional Leaders know that effective teaching is not rocket science ... it is far more complicated.

Making school relevant to our students requires that we teach students both content AND comprehension. Many educators have heard a teacher lament, "I don't have time to teach comprehension because I'm too busy covering math standards." If a teacher believes his only role is to cover content, the teacher is doing a disservice to his students because authentic learning requires comprehension.

An IL's expertise and instructional resources are invaluable in helping others develop the knowledge and skills needed to increase student achievement and independence.

For example, an IL may provide training and resources in how to teach note-taking, analysis, or supporting a claim with evidence. A few strategies that I am often asked to share are PDP Cornell Notes, Somebody Wanted But So, Close Reading, Episodic Notes and Exit Tickets. All of these strategies work well across the content areas and with all skill levels. More importantly, when students are explicitly taught how to use strategies, they develop competence and confidence and retain the comprehension strategies, resulting in more self-reliance and less teacher dependence.

Effective teaching and learning requires competence, confidence, and comprehension. Instructional leaders provide the support in which to meet those goals.

Habit #4-Instructional Leaders STOP, Collaborate and Listen

Instructional leader develop instructional leadership capacity in others by investing the time and effort to meet with novices and veterans to clarify what is needed for success to occur. They also provide the resources and support in order to encourage continual growth.

Habit #5-Instructional Leaders Promote Peer Coaching & Observation Opportunities

An effective way to evaluate and develop our skill sets is to participate in peer coaching. Unlike evaluative observations performed by administration, peer coaching focuses on colleagues observing each other a few times per year and analyzing data to encourage reflection and growth.

Peer coaches do not act as evaluators; they simply observe a lesson and collect data based on what the observed teacher requests. For example, Mrs. Smith has an instructional goal of incorporating more multi-leveled questions and 50-50 teacher/student talk time in class. She asks her colleague to serve as a peer coach to observe her class and collect data on levels of questioning used and the percentage of time both she and her students spend discussing the content. The peer coach will observe and collect that data and then give it to the observed teacher so she can reflect and make adjustments in order to meet her goals.

This peer coaching structure is not a formal observation that is evaluative or punitive; it is a collegial way to collect classroom data to determine if an instructional goal is being met. Instructional leaders provide the support to facilitate this learning opportunity.

Habit #6-Instructional Leaders Encourage Growth Mindset through Reflection

In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck shares the importance of developing a growth mindset in our students by reflecting on mistakes and persevering to make adjustments to increase success.

Instructional Leaders foster a growth mindset in colleagues by modeling and practicing reflection. Some valuable reflection questions include:

1. What was the content objective of the lesson?

2. What was the critical thinking objective for the lesson?

3. Were the objectives met? If so, what did students do throughout the lesson to meet those objectives?

4. What changes would you make to the lesson? Why these changes?

5. What are your teaching strengths and what would you like to improve?

6. How do you differentiate to meet the needs of both struggling and advanced students?

7. How do you promote positive relationships with students and colleagues?

8. How do you encourage students to learn from mistakes?

Instructional Leaders encourage the development of a growth mindset by helping colleagues to reflect on what works and what does not and then use that data to guide their thinking and instruction.

Habit #7-Instructional Leaders Adjust Support Based on Need

In her book, The Instructional Leader's Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers, author Robyn Jackson categorizes the four types of teachers as:

high will/high skill
high will/low skill
low will/high skill

low will/low skill

Just as we wouldn't use the same approach for each student, based on a teacher's will/skill level, an IL coaches a teacher to develop goals and provide the proper support based on the educator's needs.

For example, a high will/low skill teacher is often a new(er) teacher who has the desire to increase student proficiency yet may lack the knowledge or skills to do so at such an early stage in his/her career.

An IL crafts a personalized plan that includes learning experiences, training, and mentoring to help this teacher move into the high will/high skill range. Realizing the need to differentiate, an IL adjusts support based on a teacher's will and skill levels to increase teacher effectiveness.

After working with skilled Instructional Leaders, I better understand what my role is as a teacher. I am not a gatekeeper of information but a conduit who promotes content comprehension through critical thinking, debate, analysis, role-playing, synthesis, and reflection.

Upon reflection, I would teach my Civil War lesson from 20 years ago differently, and I would also answer Brian's question differently. Instead of lecturing about the causes of the war, I would have students read, write, act out, listen, draw, view, and speak about it and then provide them assessment choices to demonstrate their knowledge. I would begin by clarifying both the content and critical thinking objectives so that students understood "the point" of the learning experience. Most important, I would involve them in the experience itself and not relegate them to being passive bystanders to my "sage on the stage" delivery.

Instructional Leaders use many (or all) of these 7 Habits to provide resources, promote collaboration, encourage reflection, and support opportunities that cultivate instructional expertise, which positively influences student and teacher learning and effectiveness.

How many of these habits do you have?

Julie Adams is an NBCT and Educator of the Year who specializes in neuroscience, content area literacy, critical thinking, instructional leadership, and digital literacy trainings. Her most recent book is titled, Game Changers-7 Instructional Practices that Catapult Student Achievement.
effectiveteaching@sbcglobal.net
@adamsteaching
www.effectiveteachingpd.com Published inAMLE Magazine, October 2016.

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Instructional Leaders

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"What's the point, Mrs. Adams?" asked Brian. I will never forget the confused yet honest look on my 8th grade student's face when he asked me this question after I had concluded my riveting lecture about the causes of the Civil War. "What do you mean?" I asked.

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Here are 11 lessons I've learned about leadership-mostly from much-admired colleagues, and just a little of my own experience.
Please agree, disagree or add yours.....
In no particular order:

11 Leadership Lessons

1. Talk less, listen more. People will pay attention to what you say, just because of your position. The leader's job is to pay attention to what other people say, especially those who think their views don't count. Show you're listening by acting on what people tell you, and gain their trust by giving them the credit.

2. Don't step in with solutions too quickly. No-one learns anything new if you keep doing what you already know how to do, and don't allow others to try. Anyway, they may find a different, or better way, and if not... mistakes are valuable too.

3. Be authentic, passionate, even emotional, about what you believe in. Share your vision and live your values. The personal is more engaging, even inspiring, than the process.

4. Don't 'dis' downwards. Once a decision is made by the Board, or the leadership team, it's yours even if you argued against it during discussions. Your job as leader is to get others to believe in, and work towards, a shared goal, not to divide opinion or loyalties.

5. I'm OK: You're OK. Start from the position that everyone is doing the best they can, then look for ways to support and encourage them - which is so much more rewarding than finding fault.

6. Don't be the smartest person in the room. Being a leader does not mean knowing more than anyone else. Recognise, encourage and promote others as experts. Give them the trust and autonomy to be creative and do excellent work, defined in their terms. You simply provide the direction, so that this excellent work contributes to a shared purpose.

7. Sense of purpose. Your team know what they do and how to do it, but you can make a big difference by sharing a strong sense of why they're doing it and where it's heading. Help them develop a broad understanding of the team's purpose, and faith in how their role contributes to the whole. (Remember the floor-sweeper at NASA?)

8. Being right isn't enough. A great idea is of no consequence unless you can convince others to believe it too, and then persuade them to help you make your idea a reality. The best way to do this is to make the idea theirs.

9. Focus on a few things that really matter and where you can make a difference. There may be a hundred different distractions and demands on your time and a hundred ways you could respond, but it's the dozen carefully chosen actions that deliver the results.

10. Get out and about, and in the work. It's hard to retain that sense of what the job's really about when you are sitting in your office. You'll see what people actually do, rather than what people tell you they do. And you'll see their commitment, effort and achievements first hand, and feel proud to be part of the same team. Always inspiring, and informative, and better than any meeting!

11. Keep trying. Don't beat yourself up when you don't live up to your own expectations. Reflect and learn from those times when you stumble and fall over the other 10 resolutions.
What have been your top leadership lessons learned? This post first appeared on Kate Farley's blog, Hearts and Minds.

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11 Leadership Lessons Learned - Be Leaderly

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Here are 11 lessons I've learned about leadership-mostly from much-admired colleagues, and just a little of my own experience. Please agree, disagree or add yours..... In no particular order: 11 Leadership Lessons 1. Talk less, listen more. People will pay attention to what you say, just because of your position.

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Great tips to evaluate how you're doing

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The more that you, as a leader, manage each of these areas, the higher your emotional intelligence. So, let's look at each element in more detail and examine how you can grow as a leader.

Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

1. Self-awareness

If you're self-aware, you always know how you feel, and you know how your emotions and your actions can affect the people around you. Being self-aware when you're in a leadership position also means having a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and it means behaving with humility.

So, what can you do to improve your self-awareness?

Keep a journal. Journals help you improve your self-awareness. If you spend just a few minutes each day writing down your thoughts, this can move you to a higher degree of self-awareness.

2. Self-regulation

Leaders who regulate themselves effectively rarely verbally attack others, make rushed or emotional decisions, stereotype people, or compromise their values. Self-regulation is all about staying in control.

This element of emotional intelligence, according to Goleman, also covers a leader's flexibility and commitment to personal accountability.

So, how can you improve your ability to self-regulate?

Hold yourself accountable. If you tend to blame others when something goes wrong, stop. Make a commitment to admit to your mistakes and to face the consequences, whatever they are. You'll probably sleep better at night, and you'll quickly earn the respect of those around you.

Practice being calm. The next time you're in a challenging situation, be very aware of how you act. Do you relieve your stress by shouting at someone else? Practice deep-breathing exercises to calm yourself. Also, try to write down all of the negative things you want to say, and then rip it up and throw it away. Expressing these emotions on paper (and not showing them to anyone!) is better than speaking them aloud to your team. What's more, this helps you challenge your reactions to ensure that they're fair!

3. Motivation

Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals, and they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work.

How can you improve your motivation?

Re-examine why you're doing your job. It's easy to forget what you really love about your career. So, take some time to remember why you wanted this job. If you're unhappy in your role and you're struggling to remember why you wanted it, try the Five Whys technique to find the root of the problem. Starting at the root often helps you look at your situation in a new way. And make sure that your goal statements are fresh and energizing. For more on this, see our article on Goal Setting.

4. Empathy

For leaders, having empathy is critical to managing a successful team or organization. Leaders with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else's situation. They help develop the people on their team, challenge others who are acting unfairly, give constructive feedback, and listen to those who need it.

If you want to earn the respect and loyalty of your team, then show them you care by being empathic.

How can you improve your empathy?

Respond to feelings. You ask your assistant to work late - again. And although he agrees, you can hear the disappointment in his voice. So, respond by addressing his feelings. Tell him you appreciate how willing he is to work extra hours, and that you're just as frustrated about working late. If possible, figure out a way for future late nights to be less of an issue (for example, give him Monday mornings off).

5. Social Skills

Leaders who do well in the social skills element of emotional intelligence are great communicators. They're just as open to hearing bad news as good news, and they're experts at getting their team to support them and be excited about a new mission or project.

Leaders who have good social skills are also good at managing change and resolving conflicts diplomatically. They're rarely satisfied with leaving things as they are, but they don't sit back and make everyone else do the work: they set an example with their own behavior.

So, how can you build social skills?

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Emotional Intelligence in Leadership - Learning How to Be More Aware

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Relating to others is vital in today's workplace. Learn how to build your emotional intelligence (EI) with this article.

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I'm passionate about helping other female lawyers flourish in the legal profession and one of the most powerful ways that women can support each other is to serve as mentors to other females in their chosen industries.

I am proud and happy to be 'mentor-rich'. My array of mentors include trial attorney mentors, networking mentors, style mentors, judicial mentors, and rainmaking mentors. These women and men have been instrumental in guiding me through the first nine years of practice, allowing me to land in the wonderful place I am today. Some of my mentors have played small but important roles in my life, and others have changed its direction completely.

As an undergraduate student, I was involved in the planning of an Alumni Law Day. One of the guests was an esteemed Chicago trademark attorney and I was tasked to pick her up from the airport. I was mildly irritated at this prospect being that it cut into my...um...studying time, but I shouldered through the 90-minute drive to the airport to escort our prized speaker back to campus.

I was prepared to be miserable and suffer through dry, forced conversation until she was safely tucked away at the campus inn. I could not have been more wrong. To say the very least, we hit it off straight away. We chatted the entire time about my aspirations to be a lawyer, her experiences in the practice of law, including being in one of the first classes of women to graduate from her law school and many other subjects.

The next day we met again for lunch and at the end, my new mentor asked me if I had considered applying to her law school alma mater, Chicago- Kent. I had not but the next thing I knew I was in Chicago, staying with my mentor and visiting my future law school. This wasn't the only way that my mentor changed my life - although recently retired, she continues to share her experiences as a practitioner, advice on how to handle tricky situations and support when I need a cheerleader. Despite being one of the busiest attorneys I have ever met, this woman dedicated time and energy to me - a young woman from Ohio that she did not have any reason to help - and consequently changed my life.
We don't have to be at the beginning of our careers to have a mentor and we don't have to be at or near the end to serve as one.
At all stages of our careers, we can use the support of another woman who shares our experience and love of our chosen career. Nor does mentorship have to be a time-consuming endeavor- some of my mentors and I have quick phone calls, emails or coffee when time permits, but I know they are there and I know they support me. In turn, I have hired four female associates during my years in leadership of my law firm. I have served as a mentor to a woman through the Women's Bar Association of Illinois and I regularly accept coffee invitations from law students or attorneys looking to connect. Although I know I am doing something good for the mentee, I also benefit from these exchanges because they invigorate me in my practice and remind me of why I started out on this path to begin with - because I wanted to make a difference.

In this digital age where most human contact involves looking at a 'newsfeed,' it's understandable that most people feel disengaged and isolated. Therefore, it's important that we do not allow the community that we have built to fall prey to separation. Women must continue to foster relationships that provide support, hope and transfer our knowledge and power so that the presence of women in leadership of law firms matches our presence in the legal field. We are much more likely to succeed as friends than as detached individuals or worse yet, foes.
So in closing, I challenge you - whether you are a graduate or CEO - to reach out to two people - one that you would like to mentor and one that you would like to mentor you.

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The Importance of Mentoring: How Strong is Your Network?

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I'm passionate about helping other female lawyers flourish in the legal profession and one of the most powerful ways that women can support each other is to serve as mentors to other females in their chosen industries. I am proud and happy to be 'mentor-rich'.

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Online June 2017 | Volume 74
Gearing Up for Change Pages 8-14

Naomi Thiers

The accountability movement has tried to put maximum pressure on teachers to get results-and it doesn't work because teachers need to know how to do the right thing, not just that the right thing should be done. Building accountability into our working lives is one of the key actions I talk about in Six Secrets that will lead everyone in a school to be more productive. But if you want to motivate teachers, you can't just try to convince them through, for example, research evidence. That doesn't work. Nor can you motivate people just through moral exhortation. You convince them by giving them experience as teachers in relatively nonthreatening circumstances, with others who can be helpful. And then when they start to experience success with their students, with other teachers, they really get motivated. Then it kind of accelerates.

Andy Hargreaves and I call it collaborative professionalism. It's the teacher with a degree of autonomy interacting with other teachers, figuring out the best things to do to get results for the particular students they're working with.

The overall thrust of our work is to strengthen the middle (districts) and the bottom (students and their schools) so that they're less at the mercy of policies coming from the top. At the same time, we see schools and communities as proactive partners moving upward as they take into account and influence policy.
What kind of accountability would promote motivation and positive change among teachers?
Richard Elmore said 15 years ago, "No amount of external accountability will be effective in the absence of internal accountability." So what's internal accountability? It's when the group individually and collectively has a sense of responsibility about their work. When we look at collaborative cultures, the districts, the schools, even some of the systems that have strong degrees of collaboration, they have built in a growing and increasing sense of responsibility about what they're doing and how they need to explain themselves-not just to themselves, but to the wider system.

To have accountability that works means to have a framework of goals, to monitor the results that come from those goals, but to be transparent and specific about the evidence that people themselves are using to improve. And once you have trust, transparency, specificity, evidence, and nonjudgmentalism, you get a constellation of conditions that make progress possible. In effect, this turns accountability on its head. Such accountability is built at the level of action, which in turn interfaces with the external accountability system-inside-out more than the reverse.
In Freedom to Change, you note that research from the business world finds that employees need freedom from constraints like micromanagement to contribute their best. How does this concept of "freedom from" play out in education organizations?
There is a big difference between "freedom from" constraints and what you do with "freedom to" once you get it. This idea of "freedom to" has a long history, starting with sociologist Erich Fromm around 1930. Here's the essence of it: What people try to do first-because we all want "freedom from"; we want to not be imposed upon-is to get rid of constraints. So accountability is a big constraint. How do we reduce that? How do we reduce testing? Educators work to get rid of a whole bunch of constraints like that.

If you work on those things and you're successful, there's an inclination to declare victory. We got rid of the constraints! But what people realize once that happens is, now that they have the freedom to change, they're kind of at sea. They don't know where to go. And that's the part we've been working on-to provide educators with individual and small-group autonomy connected to collaboration.

Collaborative professionalism is fueled by both good autonomy and good teamwork. Autonomy is not isolation. If you have good autonomy, it means that you're your own person; you're trying things. But you have to be connected and learn from the group, otherwise your autonomy won't get stronger. You have to contribute to and learn from the group. These conditions of "freedom to" are the real solution to the dilemma that if you're completely free, it won't work, and if you're completely subsumed by the group, it won't work.

So this sophisticated type of freedom to change is really the part we're moving towards now. I think we're making progress getting rid of constraints, so there's a real opportunity. One thing I say to principals and teachers and district people is, your job is not to implement government policy. It's to exploit government policy for local priorities, to be less on the receiving end and more on the initiation end. So it's a proactive solution.
Can you give an example of a district or a local entity doing this?
Our team has been working a lot in California for the last five years. California has a thousand districts and seven million students. Five years ago, at all levels-the governor, the state superintendent of education, the key districts-California took a strong interest in our theory of school change, which values capacity building over compliance, moving towards coherence and internal accountability. Some key districts have been working proactively with the governor's policy of decentralization of resources, or local control in the context of a state policy of continuous improvement and accountability. This has liberated local districts, and we see several of them taking advantage of that. But interestingly, the "freedom to" problem shows up here. There's more leeway for local initiative, but some districts don't know how to do it. So they haven't taken advantage of the freedom the way they could.
Let's talk about how successful leaders perceive obstacles to school change.
One of my mentors, Seymour Sarason, said in 1970 that school principals and other leaders perceive more barriers than actually exist in the system. In other words, they're not pushing hard enough. I think part of how you treat obstacles resides in the individual leader. Those individuals who show more initiative, who have a greater sense of efficacy, will do more under the same conditions than somebody else who might say, well, I'm not allowed to do that. It's having a growth mindset.

The school district or the state education department may not even be forbidding certain things. Those who are able to do something don't ask for permission a lot. If they think it's going to work, they try to do it. You have to be proactive in every system and do the teamwork and capacity building that will enable you to go further.

There's another even deeper obstacle. Some people have called it-it's an odd phrase- pedagogical legacy or cultural legacy. This means that you as a teacher are used to a certain culture. You're used to teaching in a certain way. You want to change, and you even start to change-but you find yourself slipping back into the old, comfortable way. We need to help educators persist at the early stages of promising change to get the payoff.
How might a school leader confront pedagogical legacy?
Research shows that the biggest factor in the effectiveness of a principal is the degree to which he or she "participates as a learner" working with teachers to get to a solution. Let's take a principal that goes into a school that's siloed: Teachers are teaching on their own. There's very little interaction. So what would an effective principal do in relation to the teachers? In my experience, that leader would do two things. One, he or she would start to interact with teachers individually and collectively as a learner, creating a climate where teachers are encouraged to take risks, to work together, to be supportive. A climate of trust, but one focused on results.

The other thing the leader would do is "use the group to change the group." Teachers are less likely to fall back into that pedagogical legacy if a whole bunch of teachers-helped by the principal-are pushing for what's more effective.

For example, Park Manor, a grades 6-8 school just west of Toronto that I worked with, uses this procedure: Every Friday, the three grade 6 teachers sit down together-as do the three teachers in grades 7 and 8-and use a protocol to examine the progress of one student from each of their classes. Let's say one of the grade 6 teachers says, here's Student X and here's what I'm trying with Student X. This is working, but I need some advice on that. Over the course of an hour, they discuss one student from each of their classes, every Friday, week after week. When you do that, you're pushing one another for what works. You pull out the knowledge.

So it's changing the culture-and I want to use the word culture -of the school and the culture of the district. Such a culture establishes the conditions for sustainability.
"Seeking balance between autonomy and cooperation" is one of the four important actions for change you mention in Freedom to Change. What does it look like when teachers in a school are both autonomous and connected?
First of all, we want to bring it into the open, to name these principles of autonomy and connectedness as two crucial aspects of the organization. We don't want to be, like, "I want people to be autonomous and collaborative, but I'm not going to tell anybody." This means that everybody knows that people have a degree of autonomy in this culture-they can be their own person-but they also have a responsibility to interact with one another.

The schools and districts I'm talking about think this way. The checks and balances that occur between the individual's degree of freedom and the interaction of the group are quite strong. They allow you to sort out what is effective.

At Park Manor, a high-technology pedagogy school, teachers are in fact doing their own thing, but they share when they discover something promising and begin to develop even better solutions together. They have many mechanisms to engage in collaborative professional learning. For example, they have each of the school's nine teachers demonstrate two things he or she is doing with technology that are highly effective. So each teacher has his or her own ideas and their colleagues can recognize what each of the nine teachers are doing that's working. This makes it likely that people will be drawn toward things that are working better. So the dynamic between individual initiative and group processing is quite strong.
You mention feedback as another guidepost for this constructive "freedom to." What kind of feedback leads to motivation to change?
Feedback is one of the hardest things for humans to get right. People will say, "I like feedback. I don't get enough of it. But I only want feedback that's positive." That's a natural human tendency. Even under the best of circumstances, we don't want feedback that feels, to us, judgmental. So in our work we try to help schools reduce inappropriate, negative, judgmental interventions, those that really decrease the possibility that feedback will be heard, and instead emphasize collaborative cultures. A collaborative culture has all kinds of feedback built into it. Teachers visiting one another's classroom, looking at what works with students together-if you're a teacher inside that, you're getting lots of feedback from colleagues. In this way, feedback is organically built into the day-to-day culture of the organization.

Ed Catmull, the CEO of Pixar, wrote a book a few years ago in which he explored how Pixar made 14 blockbusters in a row in a highly competitive industry. Pixar achieved that because they set up a culture that incorporated peers giving feedback to peers. Their two guidelines were-his words-candor and autonomy.

At the beginning of each project, the directors presented their early ideas to other directors and people in the company who formed what Catmull called the brain trust. They got lots of feedback. The ground rules were, don't hold back-give people strongly critical feedback if it's deserved-but with the understanding that people receiving the feedback don't have to take it. That's the autonomy. Most people who get that kind of feedback are more likely to take it.
Another key action for change you mention is educators spreading their positive actions or ideas. You say that diffusion works better than traditional "scaling up" for this. Can you explain?
My coauthors and I have actually been writing about diffusion-or what we're now calling intentional social movement -in our new book on the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning initiative, which is forthcoming from Corwin. We're trying to change the nature of teaching so there's more partnership among students, teachers, and families. We're relating deep learning to six global competencies-character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. Scaling up school by school will never work; you have to mobilize large numbers of schools and districts learning from one another while discovering and retaining what works.

I'm always interested in changing the whole system. A district would be the minimum size, but the preferred size would be a state or a province. And when I looked at bringing any new practice to scale, there have been examples over the years where people have had success. For example, the Annenberg Foundation worked on really tough problems like concentrated intergenerational poverty and the underachievement of black and Latino youth, and found out what it would take to change that dynamic; they identified factors similar to those we've been talking about. But their successes were very much in the minority. They didn't spread.

The assumption behind going to scale is, if we get some good pilot examples, we'll know what works there, and we can transfer it to other places, expand it. Well, that doesn't work. Why not? Because the new places don't have the capacity. Or the replication is too slow: You get 20 pilots, then 30, but it never adds up to the whole system. People lose interest; they change priorities.

What's going to work is what I call diffusion or intentional social movement. Let me give an example. About eight years ago, we worked in Ontario, which has 900 high schools. Their graduation rate was stuck at 68 percent. So we created an innovation that enabled schools to develop programs involving applied work in various sectors, such as aviation, forestry, finance, or whatever fields were of interest to the community. But instead of doing this innovation in a few of the 900 schools and trying to scale it, we said any school can apply for it and we'll support that school. And as we support those schools, we'll quickly disseminate what's being learned laterally to other schools. Eventually almost all the high schools were doing one or another part of this innovation, and learning from one another. The high school graduation rate went up from 68 percent to its current 85.5 percent. Moreover, the number of students involved in the programs grew rapidly, from 600 students in the first year to 48,000 within a decade. That's convincing. Pilots don't go to scale, culture does.

In our deep learning work, instead of sequential thinking (doing a pilot and going to scale), we're trying to get to the idea of simultaneous learning-people learning from one another. It's a bit complicated because you're investing in a lot of initiatives, some of which don't work out. People should not be too constrained at the beginning, so that they can do different things. Then you need to sort out rapidly what's working and what's not working and do more of the things that are working. It requires good leadership. It also requires that ability to look outside yourself, to "go outside to get better inside." Whether you're an individual school or a school district, make sure you're connecting to what's happening beyond yourself, and contributing to that as well as learning from it.
So you need to do rapid measurement as you go along?
Yes. Rapid measurement and looking at things as they develop, always paying attention to any change's impact on student motivation, student learning, and student achievement. You don't have to prove it works within 12 months, but you have to show progress in measurable ways as you go from year one to year two. People latch on to what is working if they have early access to the ideas.
Is there anything you'd like to mention about your current work?
Here's one exciting thing. When you start to implement those global competencies, the six Cs, with the new pedagogy, students gravitate towards wanting to do something that's worthwhile. More students and teachers get turned on because they're doing something relevant-and they feel they need to help change things. It's obvious that the world is a lot more complex and anxiety-producing now; even little kids know something's up.

We have hundreds of examples being produced by schools we are working with in many countries. In Uruguay, for example, we have 10-year-olds saying, "I am supposed to be helping humanity, so I think I'll start in my neighborhood." They then address specific local problems. Birds were eating vegetables in local gardens, so the students built an electronic device that vibrated when birds came nearby, scaring them away.

The exciting part is, with these new pedagogies-which are more tied into real problems, more about humanity and citizenship-the students who are most alienated from regular schooling are the ones who move the furthest and fastest into this learning mode I just described. Our preliminary evidence-I call it the equity hypothesis-shows that by doing this new work, those students who are least connected are being drawn in in a way that changes their lives. We call it attacking inequity with excellence. The breakthrough is that all students end up learning and being more equipped to cope with and influence the world. Indeed, our newest motto is "engage the world, change the world."

Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

Naomi Thiers is senior editor of Educational Leadership.

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Making Progress Possible: A Conversation with Michael Fullan

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Online June 2017 | Volume 74 Gearing Up for Change Pages 8-14 Naomi Thiers The accountability movement has tried to put maximum pressure on teachers to get results-and it doesn't work because teachers need to know how to do the right thing, not just that the right thing should be done.

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Online: Kravis Leadership Institute website, Twitter

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What Is Authentic Leadership? Do You Have It?

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Here are the four components of authentic leadership. Which do you possess?

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Interviewing tips -
interviewer and interviewee

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Research by the respected Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the U.S. found that the primary causes of executive derailment involve deficiencies in emotional competence. Each year, CCL serves more than 20,000 individuals and 2,000 organizations, including more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies. It says the three main reasons for failure are difficulty in handling change, inability to work well in a team, and poor interpersonal relations.

International search firm Egon Zehnder International analyzed 515 senior executives and discovered that those who were strongest in emotional intelligence were more likely to succeed than those strongest in either IQ or relevant previous experience. Research that has been done on the relationship between emotional intelligence (EQ) and IQ has shown only a weak correlation between the two.

The Carnegie Institute of Technology carried out research that showed that 85% of our financial success was due to skills in "human engineering", personality, and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. They found that only 15% was due to technical ability. In other words people skills or skills highly related to emotional intelligence were crucial skills. Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don't, even if that that person is offering a better product at a lower price.

People would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don't, even if that that person is offering a better product at a lower price.

To test out his findings, think of the last time you purchased a major item, a home, automobile, or large appliance where you had to dealings with a salesperson. Was the person someone who you liked and trusted? In my talks, I have found that whenever I asked that question, inevitably the entire audience answered that, yes, the person they bought a large item from was someone they liked and trusted. This theory about why salespeople with the right people skills do better than those who lack them is borne out by a study carried out by the Hay/McBer Research and Innovation Group in 1997. In a study carried out in a large national insurance company in 1997, they found that sales agents weak in emotional areas such as self-confidence, initiative, and empathy sold policies with an average premium of $54,000, while those strong in 5 of 8 emotional competencies sold policies on the average worth $114,000.

Much of the research that has been done on emotional intelligence has been at the executive leadership level. The higher up the organization, the more crucial emotional intelligence abilities are as the impacts are greater and felt throughout the entire organization. There have been some studies, however, that show impacts at all levels.

The higher up the organization the more crucial emotional intelligence abilities are as the impacts are greater and felt throughout the entire organization.

For example, a study by McClelland in 1999 showed that after supervisors in a manufacturing plant received training in emotional competencies such as how to listen better, lost-time accidents decreased by 50% and grievances went down from 15 per year to three. The plant itself exceeded productivity goals by $250,000.

The same principles apply in all areas of life, whether at work or in relationships. Everyone wants to work with people who are easy to get along with, supportive, likeable, and can be trusted. We want to be beside people that do not get upset easily and can keep their composure when things do not work out according to plan.

Self-awareness. The first thing that is essential for any degree of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. People with a high degree of self-awareness have a solid understanding of their own emotions, their strengths, weaknesses, and what drives them. Neither overly critical nor unrealistically hopeful, these people are honest with themselves and others. These people recognize how their feelings impact them, other people around them, and their performance at work. They have a good understanding of their values and goals and where they are going in life. They are confident as well as aware of their limitations and less likely to set themselves up for failure.

We can recognize self-aware people by their willingness to talk about themselves in a frank, non-defensive manner. A good interview question is to ask about a time that the interviewee got carried away by their emotions and did something they later regretted. The self-aware person will be open and frank with their answers. Self-deprecating humor is a good indicator of someone who has good self-awareness. Red flags are people who stall or try to avoid the question, seem irritated, or frustrated by the question.

Ability To Self-Regulate Emotions. We all have emotions which drive us and there is nothing we can do to avoid them. People who are good at self-regulation, however, are able to manage their emotions so that they do not control their words and actions. While they feel bad moods and impulses as much as anyone else, they do not act upon them. People who act upon their negative feelings create havoc, disruptions, and lasting bad feelings all around them. We feel before we think and people who constantly react from an emotional state never wait long enough to allow their thoughts to override their emotions.

People who self-regulate have the ability to wait until their emotions pass, allowing them to respond from a place of reason, rather than simply reacting to feelings. The signs of someone who is good at self-regulation are reflection, thoughtfulness, comfort with ambiguity, change, and not having all the answers. In an interview, look for people who take a little time to reflect and think before they answer.

Empathy. Empathy is another important aspect to look for when hiring. Someone who has empathy will have an awareness of the feelings of others and consider those feelings in their words and actions. This does not mean that they will tiptoe around or be unwilling to make tough decisions for fear of hurting someone's feelings. It simply means that they are aware of, and take into consideration the impact on others. They are willing to share their own worries and concerns and openly acknowledge other's emotions. A good way to look for empathy in an interview is to ask a candidate about a situation where a co-worker was angry with them and how they dealt with it. Look for a willingness to understand the source of the co-workers anger, even though they may not agree with the reasons for it.

Social skills. Social skill is another area of emotional intelligence that is highly important in the workplace. To have good social skills requires a high level of the other skills aforementioned as well as the ability to relate and find common ground with a wide range of people. It goes beyond just friendliness and the ability to get along with others.

People with social skills are excellent team players as they have the ability to move an agenda along and keep focus while at the same time remaining aware of the emotional climate of the group and possess the ability to respond to it. These people are excellent at making connections, networking, and bringing people together to work on projects. They are able to bring their emotional intelligence skills into play in a larger arena. To look for social skills in an interview, ask questions related to projects and difficulties encountered around varying agendas, temperaments, and getting people to buy in.

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Why Emotionally Intelligent People Are More Successful

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Research by the respected Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the U.S. found that the primary causes of executive derailment involve deficiencies in emotional competence. Each year, CCL serves more than 20,000 individuals and 2,000 organizations, including more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies.