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https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-transformational-leadership.html

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Transformational Leadership style: How to Inspire and Motivate

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Transformational leadership is a leadership style where leaders inspire, motivate, and stimulate their followers intellectually to work towards a shared and valued goal. These leaders encourage innovation, creativity, and personal development among their team members, fostering an environment of tru…

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-lead-empathy

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Six ways to build a school culture that prioritizes understanding the experiences and perspectives of others.

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How to become a transformational leader:

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How to become a transformational leader:

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Access the essential membership for Modern Managers

What makes a truly exceptional leader? Chances are we've all encountered them at some point in our careers: those leaders who stand out above the rest. Those who bring out the best in every one of their team members, and who consistently strive for greatness.

Take Molly for example. Everyone respects Molly. She inspires and encourages her team members, while expecting and demonstrating the highest standards. In return, her people are fiercely loyal, and they're highly successful - as individuals, and as a team. In short, Molly is a Transformational Leader.

By contrast, other leaders in the organization report that their people seem disengaged. They experience high staff turnover, and their results are often disappointing. So, what does Molly do that other leaders don't?

To begin with, Molly regularly reminds her team members of the purpose of their work. And she knows that she's a role model for her team, so she acts with integrity in all of her working relationships.

In this article and video, we'll explore what transformational leadership is, and discover what it takes to become a transformational leader.

What Is Transformational Leadership?

Leadership expert James MacGregor Burns introduced the concept of transformational leadership in his 1978 book, "Leadership." He defined transformational leadership as a process where "leaders and their followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation." [1]

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Watch this video to learn the definition of Transformational Leadership. Explore the theory behind this leadership style, and discover the characteristics of transformational leaders.

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https://www.wgu.edu/blog/guide-transformational-leadership2008.html#openSubscriberModal

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There are many different approaches to leadership. We see this in effective leaders and managers all around us. They may call on any one of the many styles and theories depending on their team, the workplace, or their overall goals. Business is constantly transforming, and it’s important for leaders to be able to adapt to new situations and change their leadership style to meet the current needs of their organization. Leaders and businesses who can’t transform likely won’t survive.

Good leaders use inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation to help their employees thrive. They want to be good role models for their employees, and work to motivate them so the entire organization can improve. Good leaderships is focused on the idea that the entire organizational structure relies employees who have high job satisfaction, and want the organization to succeed.

This is where transformational leadership comes in. This kind of leadership is crucial for organizations that are focused on disruption and inspiration. Transformational leaders use intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation to help add to employee empowerment and job satisfaction. Learn more about transformational leadership and how you can adopt this leadership style.

Transformational leadership is focused on motivation for employees to create change, innovate, and shape the future of the organizational structure. They know that being a charismatic leader is all about connecting with employees and helping them feel motivated to drive success. Transformational leaders don’t micromanage—instead they foster a culture of employee independence and ownership. This transformational organizational environment allows employees to help transform the culture and the organization into something that is innovative and always growing. Transformational leaders are encouraged to demonstrate their own creativity and innovation, becoming a role model for employees, and then inspiring employees to follow in their steps.

James V. Downton created the concept of transformational leadership in 1973, and James Burns expanded on the idea of transformational leaders in 1978, talking about how transformational leadership could help leaders and followers both push themselves to higher standards and better outcomes. Bernard M. Bass also continued to expand on this leadership concept in 1985, adding success measures to the process.

This leadership style is still practiced throughout the business world today. The transformational leadership theory applicable across every industry, but is particularly successful in innovative industries like technology, where lagging behind can ruin a company.

Sometimes transformational leadership and transactional leadership theories get mixed up and confused. Transactional leadership is more directly focused on a structured, directed environment. This leadership is focused on leading by telling people what to do, giving expectations, and requiring rules or regulations. Transactional leadership often involves rewards and punishments to get employees to do what they are told. Routines, schedules, rules, and formal authority are key components of transactional leaders.

This is very different from transformational leadership, where employees are given autonomy and ability to be innovative and creative. While creative people may not thrive under transactional leaders, transformational leadership systems can be a great place for creative minds to find success. The transformational leadership theory is all about changing routines and patterns to find something new and better, which is fairly opposite of transactional leadership.

There are many key characteristics of good transformational leaders, including:

Uses motivation to help encourage development and positive morale of followers

Demonstrates high moral standards, and encourages others to do the same

Creates a work environment that has clear values, priorities, and high standards of ethics and morals

Creates a company culture where employees have an attitude of working toward the common good, instead of focusing on their own interest

Emphasis on authenticity

Encourages collaboration and cooperation

Provides open communication channels for everyone

Focuses on coaching and mentoring where it is wanted

Encourages employees to take ownership of tasks

Allows employees to make decisions and helps them find success

At the root, transformational leaders give a focus and emphasis on employees making decisions, using innovation, and being creative to solve problems and move the organization forward. Transformational managers aren’t afraid of change, and focus on helping everyone on the team create important and valuable changes that will lead to greater success.

It’s easy to learn more about transformational leadership by seeing transformational leaders in action. There are many famous examples of charismatic leaders who utilize this leadership in their work. Some of the best examples of transformational leaders include:

Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is known for being one of the most iconic transformational leaders in the world. People who worked for Jobs said he was constantly challenging everyone to think beyond what they had accomplished, that he always pushed for and wanted more. He encouraged them to think about products people didn’t even know they needed and go for them at full speed. He used leadership to help transform his organizational structure, improve job satisfaction, and use products to change the world. Apple is well known for innovation and that is largely due to the way Jobs encouraged employees and used transformational leadership to allow everyone to use creativity.

Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is seen by many as a great transformational leader. His leadership style Involves always pushing employees and staff to think about new products and possibilities. Amazon has taken e-commerce and delivery to an unprecedented level due to his transformational and innovative style.

Barack Obama. Barack Obama is well known for running the White House with transformational style. He encouraged everyone who worked for him to be open about their ideas and thoughts for improvement. He wasn’t afraid of change, and encouraged it for everyone who worked with him. He made sure he was approachable for employees so they could come and communicate to him their creative thoughts and ideas. This helped him use innovation in government to make important changes for the future of the country.

In order to become a great manager who utilizes transformational leadership, you’ll likely need a degree. A degree in business management or an MBA can be critical helping you get the skills and experience you need to become an effective leader. In a degree program you’ll learn the critical hard skills you need for leadership—things like finance, communication, marketing, and strategy. You’ll also learn more about leadership styles and techniques, and gain an understanding of how to help employees thrive under your management. Transformational management style and leadership behavior is something you can learn about with your degree, along with day-to-day strategies and task-oriented concepts that can help you thrive.

A degree is a critical first step to getting the credentials and the skills you need to become a great leader. If you want to use the transformational leadership style and lead an organization to innovative success, start by enrolling in a degree program that can help you get there.

There are many pros and cons when it comes to transformational leadership, and it’s important to carefully evaluate them, your work environment, and your employees before deciding if this is a good leadership style for you.

Some pros of transformational leadership include:

Ability to communicate new ideas

Solid balance of long-term goals with short-term vision

Opportunity to create good collaboration

Ability to establish trust

Chance for increased innovation and creativity

Happy employees who feel seen and valued

Additionally, some cons of transformational leadership include:

Poor fit for bureaucratic structures

Potential for employees to drop the ball and not complete tasks

Loss of focus on immediate needs

Not a good fit for employees who need guidance and supervision

For many leaders, transformational leadership is a great way to increase the potential for a company and solve problems. If you find the transformational leadership style interesting and exciting, earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree in business so you can be prepared with the right credentials and skills for success.

Our focus on your success starts with our focus on four high-demand fields: K–12 teaching and education, nursing and healthcare, information technology, and business. Every degree program at WGU is tied to a high-growth, highly rewarding career path. Which college fits you?

Want to see all the degrees WGU has to offer? View all degrees

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Learn about different leadership styles and how they impact managers and employees alike. This guide will focus on transformational leadership and how you can work to utilize this leadership style.

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How School Leaders Can Build Hope and Prevent Teacher Burnout

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How School Leaders Can Build Hope and Prevent Teacher Burnout

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-school-leaders-can-build-hope-and-prevent-teacher-burnout

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How School Leaders Can Build Hope and Prevent Teacher Burnout

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The best cure for burnout is preventing it in the first place, by improving working conditions and fostering teachers’ sense of hope for the future.

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https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/356072/how-to-be-better-leader.aspx

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Effective Leadership: What Makes a Good Leader | Gallup

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Discover the key traits of effective leadership, learn to develop leadership skills, differentiate between leadership and management, and build successful teams.

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-give-teachers-better-feedback

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Administration & Leadership

When administrators are intentional about providing feedback and deliver it with care, it can boost teachers' confidence.

When I began teaching, I didn't have the confidence I have today. Wanting to do a good job, I was always eager to receive feedback, and I sought it from supervisors and colleagues I worked with closely. Unfortunately, some of the feedback I received then didn't come from a good place or at all other than my annual evaluation.

Other times, feedback I received was just praise that affirmed something done well but did very little to help me improve my practice and teaching confidence. I needed understandable and actionable feedback. As a result, my early teaching experience was plagued with uncertainty about my abilities. Since then, my coaching work has shown me that many other teachers also struggle to get reliable feedback that addresses their most significant concerns from their building administrators.

Recently, I presented at a conference for Virginia school superintendents on ways to improve teacher retention and job satisfaction-effective feedback strategies for teachers were at the top of the list. With many contemplating leaving teaching, the organizers wanted to promote awareness of possible intrinsic motivations that administrators could leverage for improving teaching conditions in their schools. I thought it essential to uplift how teachers' beliefs about their abilities can determine if they stay in the profession, which many in attendance found fascinating.

According to the Why Teach Survey compiled by LKMco and Pearson, the top reasons for people becoming teachers were the desire to make a difference in the lives of students and the belief that they could be good at it (it was a tie). Believing they were good at teaching was the top reason for staying.

Therefore, administrators should look for ways to provide empowering feedback to teachers that strengthens their confidence and self-efficacy for teaching at their best. More specifically, recent research by Thomas Guskey and Laura Link tells us that teachers want school leaders to focus on feedback that improves student learning, is trusted, and is offered in meaningful and nonthreatening ways.

6 Ways to Give Intentional Feedback

For example, school leaders can raise confidence for teachers by being more intentional about when and how to provide feedback by structuring conversations around what they observe in learning walks or formal observations rather than in passing or in response to hearsay, using these simple universal guidelines:

1. Feedback is variable and should not be one-size-fits-all. Instead, tailor discussions to someone who's doing an excellent job, someone who's doing well but could be better, or someone who's not working up to par. (See below for more elaboration.)

2. Engage in dialogue, not monologue. By sharing and using airtime to learn from teachers while constantly engaging them collegially, even during difficult conversations, you build trust.

3. Don't bombard teachers with unclear information. That can convey weak leadership. It's also confusing to newbies and offputting to those who know better.

4. Focus on impact on student learning while respecting what teachers know about their students. I find that teachers are the most prominent experts on the needs of their learners. So listen to what they have to say even when examining measures of student achievement from assessments or student outcomes gleaned from surveys about their attitudes, confidence, and self-efficacy for learning.

5. Make feedback quick when implementing a new initiative. For example, if using a new strategy or approach doesn't work in specific spaces, this should become known to the teaching staff as soon as it's discovered. Most likely, they will already know and resent being made to adhere needlessly.

6. Critique work, not people. By keeping the discussions to ways of improving teachers' abilities instead of things about them that they may not be able to change, you get more buy-in.

Using the abovementioned recommendations, here's how administrators can instill confidence in their teaching staff by differentiating feedback.

Feedback for Exemplary Performers

Feedback to teachers doing an excellent job should be positive and convey appreciation for work well done. Get to know your staff to learn how they wish to receive good feedback. For some, a well-thought-out thank-you note may make them feel valued and confident. Others may want recognition in front of colleagues or more autonomy in teaching content they're passionate about.

Excellent teachers have high value and should be treated as such. School leaders can leverage positive feedback opportunities to create an interchange of ideas to learn what works and what doesn't at the school or for particular students.

Feedback for Those Who Just Need a Nudge

Someone knowing that they're doing well may not be aware of the areas in which they need to improve. To affirm them but still inform them of an area of need, here are some adaptable speaking points for a fictitious scenario.

"It's clear that you're very passionate about teaching this unit, but I noticed that sometimes your passion doesn't allow room for students to ask clarifying questions during your mini-lesson. In particular, I saw that two kids raised their hands, and you didn't call on them. Did you see their hands raised? How can student questions help clarify what they need to do during work time?"

Feedback for Those Who Are Struggling

"What can I do to best support you?"

"Do you have the tools and resources you need to succeed?"

"Are our timelines respectful of your time and workflow?"

"Do you have any questions about our expectations?"

Struggling teachers need to feel their supervisors have their back along with the belief that they have the potential to improve. Therefore, don't hold them accountable for what they don't know yet-instead, help them build confidence by setting clear pathways to success and keep feedback kind, honest, and ongoing.
My sincerest gratitude to Dr. Marcus Newsome and Andy Stamp for being excellent thought partners.
Clear pathways to success may include norms and protocols outlining steps to completing deliverables, working well with others, contacting parents, and increasing capacity in their teaching abilities. Also, keep feedback a two-way street by asking questions like these:

Here's a handy feedback protocol you can adapt to help guide discussions following classroom observations.

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Administration & Leadership When administrators are intentional about providing feedback and deliver it with care, it can boost teachers' confidence. When I began teaching, I didn't have the confidence I have today. Wanting to do a good job, I was always eager to receive feedback, and I sought it from supervisors and colleagues I worked with closely.

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3 Inclusive Communication Habits Every Leader Should Adopt

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3 Inclusive Communication Habits Every Leader Should Adopt

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https://www.maxwellleadership.com/blog/inclusive-leadership-communication/

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What makes you feel valued and included in your work life? Is it your company's policies and values? The people you work with and for? Chances are, it's all the above. But it mostly comes down to our leaders. What leaders say and do make up to 70% of whether someone feels included at work. This is important because the level of inclusion in our lives determines some foundational aspects of how well we work: our well-being, our motivation, our collaboration, and how comfortable we feel contributing our unique skills and talents.

But we also know that what people say and what people do are two different things. We often hear leaders say they are committed to creating an inclusive workplace and even see that commitment reflected in company mission and values statements. But if those statements aren't reflected in how leaders communicate, they are missing a core element of what it means to lead well. And at Maxwell Leadership, we believe that everyone deserves to be led well.

Are you practicing inclusive leadership with an inclusive communication style?

In a 2020 analysis outlined in this Harvard Business Review article, researchers looked at how leaders who claimed to be inclusive talk. Their findings showed that, despite these leaders stated commitment to inclusion, very few of them had actually developed an inclusive communication style. This study prompted a summary of key practices and habits of inclusive communicators. Here's a look at three of those behaviors and how you can actively support an environment of inclusion through your communication and within your organization.

USE AUDIENCE-CENTERED LANGUAGE

Great communicators will tell you that the first and most important element in effective communication is your audience-knowing who they are and what they want and need. Audience-centered language puts the audience first and adapts the message to their values, identities, needs, and interests.

To do this, you'll need to take the time to understand not only your audience, but also how your identity and experience influences your communication. The opinions and perspectives of your audience may very well differ from your own, and that's a valuable thing to know and use.

This Maxwell Leadership blog post looks at five questions to ask yourself to help you understand and connect with your audience better. It's also important to ensure that your word-choice is inclusive. Here are a few common best inclusive language practices and what to avoid.

Use "we," "us," "team" and other collective words like "together" that unify, instead of divide or claim credit for yourself (like "I").

Avoid gendered language-language that involves assumptions about gender-based characteristics or bias towards one gender (e.g., 'listen, guys,' manpower, chairwoman, etc.)

Avoid excluding groups of your audience through jargon, idioms, abbreviations, and phrases that may not resonate with specific audiences or that can make people feel left out. (e.g., 'Some of you may be too young to remember...')

By adjusting your word choice to your audience, you'll not only avoid being tone-deaf, but you'll also avoid alienating the people you need to inspire.

BE AUTHENTIC

Authenticity in terms of communication is defined by the audience's perception of you as a leader. Do you appear genuine and natural? Do your words match your intention? Is your behavior consistent? When we talk about inclusive communication, authenticity refers to a leader's ability to engage with audiences-not speak at them. Inauthentic communication often looks like a leader adopting different behavior, like being conversational and funny with close colleagues, then formal and closed-off with a larger audience.

Avoiding inauthenticity in your communication comes down to three actions:

1. Know your material. People can tell if you're reading from a script or not familiar with what you're talking about.

2. Show emotion. Make sure your nonverbals and tone reflect how you feel and the circumstance.

3. Be natural. An over-choreographed or over-memorized message will signal that you either don't know or believe in your message.

KNOW YOUR STUFF

This behavior ties into authenticity but is key in fostering an environment of trust and inclusivity. By establishing yourself as an expert to your audience, you're communicating that you have the ability to engage with various perspectives and address complex topics. You're demonstrating a willingness to explore differing opinions and take the time to listen to and learn from others. And if people recognize that characteristic in you, they are more likely to feel validated and heard. Experts do four things in their communication:

1. They give context (what and why - not just what).

2. They tell stories.

3. They cite other experts and lean into data.

4. They prioritize clarity.

At the end of the day, it's all well and good to claim to be inclusive, but if your leadership actions don't support those values, then true change and progress stalls. By adopting an inclusive communication style as a leader, you'll not only show that you're doing more than talking about inclusion - you're living it.

Is improving your communication one of your personal growth and leadership development goals?

We have you covered. With C.L.E.A.R. by Maxwell Leadership®, you can join a community of people just like you who are focused on their personal growth and be mentored by our C.L.E.A.R. Guide to Communication Roddy Galbraith. Learn more and subscribe-or download our app to take your personal growth resources with you wherever you go!

Looking for more ways to transform your organization?

At Maxwell Leadership, we believe leadership shouldn't be a solo mission. Great leaders work among their people, not above their people. Our leadership experts can help you build a team of strong leaders around you, creating better performance for the whole organization. Learn more about our solutions, including executive coaching and leadership development programs and assessments tailored to your organization's needs.

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Inclusive, Effective Communication Tips | Maxwell Leadership

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What makes you feel valued and included in your work life? Is it your company's policies and values? The people you work with and for? Chances are, it's all the above. But it mostly comes down to our leaders. What leaders say and do make up to 70% of whether someone feels included at work.

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How George Floyd's Death has Change Your World

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How George Floyd's Death has Change Your World

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How George Floyd’s death has changed your world

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George Floyd died one year ago. TODAY viewers tell us how the death of George Floyd changed their world.

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3 Effective Communication Skills to Influence and Inspire

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3 Effective Communication Skills to Influence and Inspire

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https://www.maxwellleadership.com/blog/effective-communication-skills/

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In so many aspects of our lives - from work to relationships - the biggest barrier to our personal growth and success is often how we communicate. But the good news is, being a better communicator is something anyone can master! With the launch of C.L.E.A.R. by Maxwell Leadership®, we thought we'd focus on the first growth lane - Communication - and share three key skills for communicating effectively to not only influence, but also inspire as we focus on our personal growth and the clarity needed to lead powerful, positive change in ourselves and in others.
The following skills are adapted from Maxwell Method of Speaking mentor and C.L.E.A.R. by Maxwell Leadership's Guide to Communication, Roddy Galbraith. If you're looking for ways to continue your growth, personally or professionally, we invite you to learn more and subscribe to C.L.E.A.R. - your interactive, digital guide for personal growth and developing the leader in you.
Effective communication is all about serving your audience through values-based influence.

If you can improve the way you communicate, you will see more success in your life - from your personal relationships and the way you lead others to the way you approach your vision and goals for your life. The power of effective communication in everyday, ordinary lives can make an extraordinary difference. Communication - what and how we say - can change everything. But it doesn't start with you; it starts with your audience.

The first step in communicating effectively is recognizing that it's all about serving your audience and adding value to them - whether that's one person or a thousand. Once you've made this shift and taken the time to get to know your audience, the next step is to start incorporating these skills into your communication to become not only a better communicator, but also a better leader.

1. GRAB [AND HOLD] YOUR AUDIENCE'S ATTENTION

An engaged audience will be a receptive one. There are lots of ways to grab your audience's attention, from your personality to stories to visual effects. But holding your audience's attention comes down to these basic three steps:

1. Be clear and make a point. People will listen if they clearly understand the point of why they are listening to you and how it applies to them.

2. Make it interesting and enjoyable. People will listen if they are pulled in and aren't bored. If you don't take yourself too seriously, people are more likely to take you more seriously.

3. Make it shorter. People will listen if they know you are respecting their time. Have a strong opening, have a strong closing, and then shorten the time between the two.

2. CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE.

Talk is easy, but connection takes work.To influence and inspire (not impress), you need to make your audience feel like they know you and can trust you. There needs to be a sense of rapport to fill the space between you and them. Understanding who your audience is - their needs, their perspective, their goals - will make a huge difference in your ability to connect with them and deliver a message that matters to them.

3. CALL TO ACTION.

Finally, there needs to be an action - a tangible way for your audience to engage with your message. It can be as simple as a question you want them to ask themselves or think about. But whatever it is, the action (and the urgency around it) can have a lasting impact on how your audience is influenced and inspired by your message.

Get to Know Your C.L.E.A.R. Guide for Communication: Roddy Galbraith

Roddy Galbraith is passionate about the art of public speaking and believes it's a skill everyone can (and should!) master. He learned the power of communication the hard way: standing in front of an audience and absolutely bombing his talk. With words escaping his mind, all he could think was this will never happen to me again! So, Roddy set out to learn how to communicate and prepare properly. Today, Roddy is a professional speaker and speaker trainer with a true passion for helping people make an impact in the world by finding their voice, crafting their message, and developing a world-class delivery. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with well over 10,000 people individually on their presentations, keynotes, and signature stories. He proudly serves as a founding faculty member of communication with Maxwell Leadership and over the last 10 years, has co-creating the Maxwell Method of Speaking with John C. Maxwell.

Looking for More? Subscribe to C.L.E.A.R. - Your Personal Growth Plan

C.L.E.A.R. by Maxwell Leadership is your interactive, digital classroom guide for personal growth. An acronym for five lanes of growth that leadership and personal growth expert, John C. Maxwell, believes is the path to develop your personal growth and leadership: Communication, Leadership, Equipping, Attitude, and Relationships. No matter where you are on your personal growth journey, C.L.E.A.R. by Maxwell Leadership will help you get to the next level.

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3 Effective Communications Skills to Influence and Inspire | Maxwell Leadership

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In so many aspects of our lives - from work to relationships - the biggest barrier to our personal growth and success is often how we communicate. But the good news is, being a better communicator is something anyone can master! With the launch of C.L.E.A.R.

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How School Leaders Can Rebalance Teachers’ Job Demands and Resources

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How School Leaders Can Rebalance Teachers’ Job Demands and Resources

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-school-leaders-can-rebalance-teachers-job-demands-and-resources

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Teachers have always felt like the balance at work was tenuous: It often feels like there is insufficient time, too many changes, and too many students with complex needs for one teacher to handle alone. Yet teachers generally found a way to persist and maintain their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

This past year, things felt different. Prognosticators who imagined the year would be easier than the previous one were sadly mistaken. School shootings. Security threats at school board meetings. Covid fatigue. Insufficient pay. Insufficient support. As teachers struggle with the combined weight of these issues, it has led to a greater physical, psychological, and emotional imbalance for our nation’s educators than ever before.

There are real costs to the stress that teachers are currently experiencing. In the National Education Association’s November 2021 teacher survey, 55 percent stated that they were more likely to leave the profession early, up from 28 percent in July 2020. Ninety percent of teachers in the same survey stated that they perceived burnout as somewhat or very serious. The RAND 2021 State of the U.S. Teacher Survey found that, compared with the general population, a higher percentage of teachers reported frequent job-related stress and depression symptoms.

To establish and maintain a highly effective teaching staff, we must acknowledge that management practices profoundly affect our educators. As important as instructional leadership is, it will not resolve teachers’ professional imbalance between job demands and available resources. Emotional leadership, or leadership that tends to the social and emotional well-being of adults in schools, is explicitly aimed at balancing job demands and resources so that teachers can experience a state of well-being at work. Emotional leadership might help address the current state of imbalance for teachers.

The Demand-Resources Equation

Consider an equation that places job demands on one side and job resources on the other. When job demands outpace job resources, imbalance emerges, negatively impacting teachers. For instance, increased stress levels can lead to decreased job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. All of those factors raise the potential for increased burnout and attrition, which flow downhill to impact children.

Job demands this year included teaching children as well as stressors like awareness of school safety or the potential consequences of using a controversial book. Potential resources, in this context, include intangible supporting dynamics like time, job control, social support, or supportive leadership. When resources are lacking, teachers are more prone to stress and begin to experience burnout.

The long-term consequences of imbalance are pervasive and expensive, both economically and personally. Imbalance costs school districts directly for physical and mental health treatment expenses; in the long term, imbalance becomes even more expensive due to increased insurance premium costs, diminished productivity, and turnover.

Creating a Better Balance

Kenneth Leithwood, a leadership professor at the University of Toronto, identifies four school leadership “paths”: the rational, organizational, family, and emotional paths. The first three relate to leaders’ investing time and resources in instruction, operations, and relationships. The emotional path, however, is rarely addressed. Emotional leadership brings increased balance by centering the emotional path, tending to the emotional needs of the community that can result from the stresses of job imbalances.

So, how might an emotionally attuned leader work to balance the demand-resource equation?

Subtracting demands: First, as leaders, we need to learn to subtract. It is easy to believe that we need to add more programs to address some of the deficiencies from the past few years. Our leadership brains tell us overwhelmingly to add, but this mindset increases demands on teachers’ time, focus, and energy. Instead, school leaders need to think longer-term and consider subtracting demands in the following ways:

Decrease demands on a teacher’s mental energy. As a school campus, focus on achieving one essential school improvement goal, like getting all students back on grade level. Then, see whether that focus has a greater impact than if you were focusing on four to six goals. From an emotional leadership standpoint, this strategy can decrease stress and burnout and increase teachers’ sense of efficacy by minimizing the need to juggle multiple priorities.

Reduce demands on teacher time. Audit each demand placed on the teachers that does not directly impact the essential goal you identified above, and suspend it for a time to see what happens. Look at all your meetings, reports, and testing dates and ruthlessly ask, “If we didn’t do this anymore, would it hurt our students?” If yes, keep it; if no, pause it. You can always add things back in. You are trying to free up time for teachers to feel like they have more control over their lives. For instance, allow teachers to use their planning times for actual planning as much as possible. Again, from an emotional leadership standpoint, this strategy can decrease stress and burnout and buffer teacher time for more focus on students.

Explicitly state what is not important. This clarity is key: After you reduce the number of goals for teachers, you must also clarify what teachers do not need to worry about completing. Providing focus means not just reducing the number of demands you make on teachers but also making plain which previously held demands can now float off their radar.

Increasing resources for support: After subtracting demands, consider increasing resources if the equation still isn’t in balance.

Return as many decisions as possible back to teachers, especially when it comes to their students. Job control is the largest factor that helps teachers feel satisfied with their work. From an emotional leadership standpoint, giving more control back to teachers can help develop more trust and job satisfaction.

Research has shown that teachers need supportive leadership to build trust, self-efficacy, and motivation. Leaders must learn to support these common emotional needs most frequently mentioned as important to teacher well-being. These can be supported by leaders who learn how to recognize when they are low and build them through leadership actions such as reinforcing the meaning of being a teacher or helping them manage stressful situations.

Teachers may be in the midst of a great resignation, and there is little mystery why. Teachers have led unbalanced lives for too long, and administrators have neglected to provide tools for balancing job demands and resources. By subtracting demands and supporting teachers with more resources, school leaders can increase the satisfaction and commitment of teachers to their profession.

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How School Leaders Can Rebalance Teachers’ Job Demands and Resources

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Teachers are experiencing increasing demands on their time and decreasing resources to meet those demands. Here’s a way to put things back in balance.

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At weekly A Team meetings, pass out a few blank cards to each admin and have them write a note of appreciation to staff.

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9 Tips for Building Trust in the Workplace

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9 Tips for Building Trust in the Workplace

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9 Tips for Building Trust in the Workplace

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Building trust in the workplace is invaluable in today’s world. Learn how to build trust with these nine actionable tips.

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How to Build Trust on Your Cross-Cultural Team

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How to Build Trust on Your Cross-Cultural Team

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One of the most essential characteristics for a high-functioning team - perhaps the single most important characteristic - is trust. Anyone who has worked on a team knows that team members must be able to trust each other to get the job done, and be committed and dedicated to the overall welfare of the group. In any group of individuals, trust is challenging to create and sustain, but in the case of a multicultural team it can be especially difficult for a variety of different reasons.

First of all, communication styles vary across cultures; so, too, does the extent to which people socialize or get down to business at the start of a meeting. There are differences in conventions around time, giving feedback, and disagreeing publicly. Multicultural teams are prone to friction due to perceptions of ethnocentrism, with minority team members feeling ignored or not taken seriously.

How can leaders of multicultural teams leverage the upside of diversity without falling prey to its inherent challenges? In our collective experience working with hundreds of individuals on cross-cultural teams around the globe, leaders of multicultural teams can use the following five tips to build trust between team members.

Structure the team for success. The great organizational behavior scholar Richard Hackman used to argue that the best way to ensure a positive process in a team is to create initial conditions that set up the team for success. For a multicultural team, that means making sure the team has a clear and compelling direction, its members have access to the information and resources they need to successfully carry out the work, stakeholders in different geographies and functions are on board with the team's agenda, and the team is staffed wisely - ideally with people who have the requisite technical skills as well as cultural intelligence and global dexterity. Given the built-in challenges these teams face to begin with, it's essential to staff them with as many curious, flexible, thoughtful, and emotionally stable members as possible.

Understand the cross-cultural makeup of your team. The leader of any cross-cultural team needs to understand the different cultures, language differences, and "fault lines" within the team, as well as the potential for misconception and miscommunication. For example, if the team comprises three Germans and three Koreans, you might guess that feedback will be a cultural tripwire. Many Germans are notoriously comfortable giving direct, unmitigated feedback, whereas the reverse is typically the case in Korea unless the dialogue is between senior and junior colleagues. Making note of these tensions can help you anticipate potential challenges and resolve them swiftly and effectively.

That said, leaders also must understand individual personalities. What if the three Korean members of the team all went to school in the U.S., lived and worked in Europe, and are anything but prototypical Korean in their cultural style? That would make for a very different set of predictions about group dynamics.

Set very clear norms and stick to them. Multicultural team members are inevitably going to bring a wide variety of different work styles and personal preferences to the table. The team leader must establish team norms that everyone sticks to - no matter what their personal default might be. Rather than simply imposing your own preferred style, start by taking into account what will work best for the team as a whole, and consider incorporating practices from other cultures that could be useful. For instance, if you normally assign individual responsibilities but many team members have a preference for handling work in small project groups, you could assign complex tasks to small groups.

You and Your Team Series

Managing Across Cultures

Make the norms clear, but be aware of who on the team might find it difficult to meet those expectations due to cultural backgrounds. You may need additional communication for those team members. For example, if you have established that team members must arrive at meetings by the designated time to ensure a prompt start (Western-style punctuality), you'll need to reinforce that norm consistently across the group. The same goes for patterns of communication. Multicultural team members benefit from knowing what type of information they will receive when, and from having a regular rhythm for video conferences, teleconferences, email updates, and one-on-one discussions. This creates context and predictability that helps to compensate for those instances when team members are remote from one another. Of course, sometimes things change and adjustment is required, but in general, keeping a consistent, clear structure regarding work styles and expectations is a critical way to create a common-ground team culture.

Find ways to build personal bonds. Both of us have found that one of the most powerful tools in easing potential conflict on a team is establishing personal connections. Naturally, different global cultures have different norms about relationship building. In some cultures, like the UK, it takes a long time for people to build a friendship; in other cultures, like Brazil, it seemingly happens overnight. Given this, you may not be able to encourage deep, personal relationships - but you can foster rapport and individual connections. Perhaps you discover that someone with a completely different background from you is also an amateur photographer, or you both have children who play the piano. You'd be surprised at the power of these personal bonds, especially on a multicultural team. Leaders must create conditions for these connections to form: Organize social events, pair quieter team members with vocal ones, or directly facilitate introductions between specific members who you think might have hidden commonalities. Chances are, the benefits will circle directly back to the team.

When conflict arises, address it immediately. Conflict is inevitable in any team, let alone a multicultural one. If tension arises, address it quickly so that a small conflict doesn't balloon into something impossible to manage. Leaders need to be capable of understanding multiple cultural perspectives and serving as a cultural bridge between parties in conflict situations. This may require an understanding of indirect as well as direct communication styles, and a readiness to have a frank group discussion or confidential side conversations, depending on the situation.

Trust is the glue that makes any team function at a high level, but it doesn't happen magically, especially in the case of a team composed of culturally diverse members. With the motivation to make things work and the tips above, you should be in a great position to leverage the benefits of diversity while minimizing its challenges.

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How to Build Trust on Your Cross-Cultural Team

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One of the most essential characteristics for a high-functioning team - perhaps the single most important characteristic - is trust. Anyone who has worked on a team knows that team members must be able to trust each other to get the job done, and be committed and dedicated to the overall welfare of the group.

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7 Tips for Designing a Leadership Self-Reflection Practice

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7 Tips for Designing a Leadership Self-Reflection Practice

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Executive and Leadership Coach, Lecturer, Founder of unabridged - engaging your power and potential for greater personal and social impact. 1. (Re)commit to continuous learning.
Self-reflection, at its simplest, means taking time to slow down and think about you and your experiences, as part of increasing your self-awareness, learning and growth. Self-reflection in leadership means devoting time to think about yourself as a leader and is critical for your leadership development. It involves contemplating your current level of skills, strengths, weaknesses, behavioral patterns and how you seek to influence others. It is also about exploring and getting clarity on your values, goals and ambitions. All this serves to increase your self-awareness, alignment, authenticity, learning and growth. Self-reflection also accelerates improvement in your leadership skills and practice - including your emotional intelligence - and enables you to better understand others.

So how can you prioritize this essential development activity and build a regular reflection practice? Here are seven tips to get you started.
2. Set an intention to reflect consistently.
You may already identify as having a growth mindset or being a continuous learner. Go one step further by making it explicit and add self-reflection to your existing repertoire.
3. Start with one prompt or theme and see where it goes.
Professor Peter Miller says, "Reflective learning is a well-grounded theory based on the capacity of an individual to reflect on their own words and actions and to undertake a learning process through such reflection. This can be done every day at work while you are on the job."

Schedule 10 or 30 minutes a day (or week) into your diary to protect the time for reflection. Ideally, you'll set time aside to write every day. However, just making time each week is a great start. Try to find a quiet time and place without distractions.

You might start by reflecting on a meeting you led, a difficult conversation or your week in review. You may want to choose a specific area for self-reflection, such as your goals and ambitions, values or even your emotional intelligence.

* A meeting: What went well? What would you like to do differently in the future? What did you learn?

* The week in review: What went well this week? What did you learn? If you had the chance to do something over, what would it be and why?

* Highlights: What was your best leadership moment this week? How could you do more of this next week?
4. Give yourself permission to narrate your experiences.
* Your leadership: What kind of leader do you want to be? How do you think your team sees you as a leader? How does this compare to how you see yourself? What do you want to be remembered for?

* Values:If you were to lead with your most important value, what would that look like? How do your values align with your organization's values?
5. Be honest.
Focus on getting all your thoughts, feelings and ideas down. Be as descriptive as possible in your writing. For example, when you're describing your feelings, write about the thoughts connected to them and how those emotions felt in your body. For instance, "My heart was racing when I was confronting my boss and telling him that I did not appreciate him going directly to my team, asking them for help and bypassing me," or "I felt completely disengaged and my mind was wondering why when my colleague monopolized the discussion again, and no one challenged this - including me." This will help to increase your awareness and give clarity to your emotions and thoughts. Use the prompts to reflect on your experiences - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Don't self-censor and don't worry about spelling or grammar - nobody's checking! This is for you and your development alone. This is a great learning, processing and development strategy to add to your healthy leading repertoire.

It's important to be realistic and acknowledge weaknesses. This also means checking our negativity bias and mining for the positive, which may be disguised as a learning opportunity.

* Challenge yourself to identify what went well and/or one strength you exercised or something learned.
6. Switch things up.
* Be solution-focused. Take the learning from any "failures" and plan actions to improve.

* Consider your responsibility (How am I contributing to this difficult relationship with X?) and the consequences for your (in)action (What are the effects of what I did or didn't do?).

There are many ways to develop your own reflection practice to suit your preferences and style. Experiment until you find a practice that works for you.

* Change up the time. If you normally reflect at the end of the week, try the beginning. Or start a morning ritual of writing down three things that make you a good leader.

* Reflect with others. While reflection is often about being alone with your thoughts, it can help to talk things through with others, too. Reach out to a colleague, trusted mentor or coach.
7. Think of self-reflection as part of your self-care.
* Try different journal formats. Simple pen and paper work well, but you can also try reflection apps, dictating your thoughts into a recorder or filming a video of your thoughts and feelings.

* In addition to the prompts above, search online for reflective questions or keep a running list of ideas for your next session.

Taking time to slow down and reflect on your experiences is vital for improving your self-awareness and creating space for intention and choice. We learn and grow from all our experiences, and taking the time to consider these lessons is an act of self-care. Reflective practice accelerates improvement in your leadership skills and enables you to better understand yourself and others. So, invest in yourself!

Set an intention to reflect every day, even if you start small. You and your leadership deserve it!

Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?

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Council Post: Seven Tips For Designing A Leadership Self-Reflection Practice

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Executive and Leadership Coach, Lecturer, Founder of unabridged - engaging your power and potential for greater personal and social impact. 1. (Re)commit to continuous learning. Self-reflection, at its simplest, means taking time to slow down and think about you and your experiences, as part of increasing your self-awareness, learning and growth.

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Don't Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection

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Don't Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection

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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection

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Research shows the habit of reflection can separate extraordinary professionals from mediocre ones. But how do you sort which experiences are most significant for your development? To answer this questions, the authors asked 442 executives to reflect on which experiences most advanced their professional development and had the most impact on making them better leaders. Three distinct themes arose through their analysis: surprise, frustration, and failure. Reflections that involved one or more or of these sentiments proved to be the most valuable in helping the leaders grow. Surprise, frustration, and failure. Cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. These parts of you are constantly in motion and if you don’t give them time to rest and reflect upon what you learned from them, you will surely fatigue.

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After Wall Street firms repeatedly had to shell out millions to settle discrimination lawsuits, businesses started to get serious about their efforts to increase diversity. But unfortunately, they don’t seem to be getting results: Women and minorities have not gained much ground in management over the past 20 years. The problem is, organizations are trying to reduce bias with the same kinds of programs they’ve been using since the 1960s. And the usual tools—diversity training, hiring tests, performance ratings, grievance systems—tend to make things worse, not better. The authors’ analysis of data from 829 firms over three decades shows that these tools actually decrease the proportion of women and minorities in management. They’re designed to preempt lawsuits by policing managers’ decisions and actions. But as lab studies show, this kind of force-feeding can activate bias and encourage rebellion. However, in their analysis the authors uncovered numerous diversity tactics that do move the needle, such as recruiting initiatives, mentoring programs, and diversity task forces. They engage managers in solving the problem, increase contact with women and minority workers, and promote social accountability. In this article, the authors dig into the data, executive interviews, and several examples to shed light on what doesn’t work and what does.

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Tell Compelling Stories While Avoiding Exploitation

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Tell Compelling Stories While Avoiding Exploitation

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Recently, Rainier Valley Corps' Fellows completed a training on storytelling and nonprofit communication. The training was led by Nikkita Oliver, organizer, educator, lawyer, and poet. I was particularly interested in attending this training myself because of the challenges I face in attempting to share and communicate highlights and lessons learned from the Fellowship Program. Even now, as the second cohort of fellows are halfway into their first year, I am cautious of how we share the stories and complexities of each individual fellow as well as the cohort as a whole.

Nikkita began the training with a question:
How do we acknowledge our multiple identities, both the ones we claim and the ones that have been put onto us?
It was a powerful way to consider the identities we embrace and ones forced on us or the ways others see us impact our identities. The point of this activity was to understand how our identities intersect in relation to others and the world.

For example, I am the daughter of middle-class Ethiopian immigrants who moved to the United States and whose parents were regulated to working-class status. The experiences of my parents have deeply impacted my experience as a first generation person in the US. I don't have first-hand experience of leaving behind everything I knew and moving to a new, unfamiliar land with hope and enough resilience to overcome the disdain they surely faced as Black immigrants. But I understand and have been impacted by those experiences. It's one of the profound sources that dictates many of the choices I make, the paths I take, and what led me to commit my time, skills, and passions towards this work.

The nonprofit sector has a long history of exploiting the stories of the people they serve, particularly, people of color. This perpetuates racism and oppression, etc. Known examples are the stories and images you see on TV of "the starving and dying and warring" children and peoples, particularly in Africa. The nonprofit sector continues to struggle with diversity among staff, which contributes to non-people of color telling the stories of people of color.

The great African storyteller Chinua Achebe said, "People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories." When we tell the stories of the people we serve we are creating people in the imagination of our audiences and contributing to their existing biases, narratives, opinions, and idea about the people in the story. We have to acknowledge this power. Words have power. Stories have power. They can be revelations for change or destruction. Achebe also said, "Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

With that said, until there is a radical shift in social, political, and economic power locally and globally, we must be cautious and tell stories that empower people and highlight the strengths, liberation, and self-determination of our communities.

Questions to ask yourself when sharing stories

Here are some guidelines and things to consider when writing or sharing the stories of the people we serve.

Think about how your own story (identity) or parts of your story show up in the story you are trying to share. What are the stories and identities you embrace and own? What are the stories and identities that are placed on you? What are those shared stories and experiences?

Is this the story that you, as the facilitator of the story, should be telling or can someone else? Are you connected to, part of, or a member of this individual's community? This, especially, is a critical question for white folks telling stories of people and communities of color, able-bodied people telling the stories of people with disabilities, cisgender people speaking for and telling stories about trans folks, etc.

Assess whether the person whose story you're trying to share is prepared to share their story. If yes, ask for their consent to share. If no, are they open or want to share? If there is openness then how are you providing the technical and emotional support in allowing them to tell their own story?

Is their consent informed? Do they know how and where the story will be used? What content it includes? Do they agree with the way you're sharing how your services have impacted them? Are they able to approve changes and edits? If necessary, do you have written informed consent?

Ask yourself if you're sharing their story with dignity, nuance, and with their humanity intact. Are you oversimplifying or over-sensationalizing their story? Are you prioritizing the voice of the person whose story and experience is being shared over that of the audience or the funders?

How can you tell the impact of your organization without exploiting the stories of the individual participants and perpetuating existing narratives about vulnerable or marginalized people and communities?

Are you fighting stereotypes and myths or contributing to it? Are you pathologizing them or have you provided sufficient socio-historical and political context?

Have you considered who this story helps by telling it?

By telling this story, are you showing your organization as a savior?

Do you have a process for those who have told their story to have the agency to retract consent/permission? This means if you've used their story, they can take back their permission and consent to no longer share or highlight their story.

Lastly, considering putting your money behind your values and convictions and offer to compensate people for their stories. Even if they're receiving services from your organization. The stories you're telling are directly connected to financial benefits for organizations. It's only right those same funds benefit them as well.
This article was originally published on Rainier Valley Corps' Change-Makers blog and is reprinted here with permission.
I encourage you to create your own guidelines that align with the mission and values of your organization and your personal identities.

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How to tell compelling stories while avoiding exploitation | NTEN

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Recently, Rainier Valley Corps' Fellows completed a training on storytelling and nonprofit communication. The training was led by Nikkita Oliver, organizer, educator, lawyer, and poet. I was particularly interested in attending this training myself because of the challenges I face in attempting to share and communicate highlights and lessons learned from the Fellowship Program.

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May, 2022 - 3 Lessons Administrators Can Learn From This School Year

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May, 2022 - 3 Lessons Administrators Can Learn From This School Year

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Confront Your Past, and Learn From It

In order to learn from our mistakes, we have to admit to them. I can go first.

This year, I attempted to implement a new block schedule that would have students in their A-day classes on Monday and Tuesday, B-day classes on Thursday and Friday, and a "zipper" day Wednesday when they would go to both A- and B-day classes. In theory it sounded great; in practice it was awful.

Kids were confused and went to the wrong classes, our bells and clocks wouldn't sync, and we realized that a few staff missed lunch or had overlap of classes during the same period! I was mortified at how quickly such a well-intentioned idea went from great in theory to awful in implementation. So after three Wednesdays of trial and error, I had to stand in front of the staff and say that I had messed up.

But here is the thing: I was expecting booing, eye-rolling, and staff walking out on me. Instead, the message was received with smiles, laughter, and a few "bless your heart" comments. So we adjusted the schedule, experimenting with different rotations. It didn't take long before people found a groove with the new schedule and moved on from the epic fail.

In reflection, acknowledging the mistake taught me a lot. Although it can sting a bit to reflect on what didn't go as planned, there are lessons to be learned from our mistakes that we can transform into future successes. What I learned from this very public lesson was to admit my errors, make amends, and move forward.

Listen to Your People, and Reflect on Their Feedback

The best way to move forward is to make sure you have people willing to follow you. As you are reflecting on this year and planning for the next one, don't forget to ask your people for insights and ideas to make plans better.

Feedback can take many different forms. Every week, we ask teachers to answer an open-ended question: "Jess, I have a question about..." Staff can ask us anything (and we are a middle school, so they really do ask anything: "If two wrongs do not make a right, why do two negatives make a positive in math?" Or my all-time favorite: "Which is better-pancakes, waffles, or French toast?"). We respond to all of the questions and share out the responses in our weekly staff update.

This year, some of the questions helped me realize that staff were confused about processes I thought were clear. Other questions helped me look ahead to special events, end-of-year planning and prep, and other things on the minds of teachers that weren't on my radar.

Opening up a door to provide staff with the opportunity to ask anything gave me room to improve communication with my whole campus.

Celebrate the Steps-Think Process, Not Perfection

This may sound strange, but as a school campus, we celebrate our epic failures as well as our successes. We call it our celebration of learning. In my first year, I kept hearing "This has never happened before!" as we faced a series of unique challenges. From that came the mantra "Once in a Career Year," which we put on a button and distributed to every staff member. This year, we're celebrating this: "It's Fine, I'm Fine, Everything Is Fine."

My goal in sharing some of the rough spots from 2021-22 is to give you a chance to laugh a little and to learn a few things. My overall message is this: As leaders, we should stop trying to be perfect and start focusing on moving forward in a process.

Our block schedule experiment, though far from perfect, had an important goal: trying to bring middle school students back to campus five days a week in a way that felt sustainable after two years in a hybrid mode of learning. Our process gave us multiple moments to pause, reflect, and calibrate as we moved forward through the school year. Even though it took some trial and error, block scheduling gave students more time to immerse themselves in the classroom again-and that was worth getting right.

A big takeaway from 2021-22: It is OK to make mistakes, and it is essential to own them when you do. As you are planning the next school year, make sure you are finding strategic and intentional ways to reflect on how this year went, how you receive insight and feedback from important people, and when to celebrate the small steps toward the big wins.

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3 Lessons Administrators Can Learn From This School Year

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In order to learn from our mistakes, we have to admit to them. I can go first. This year, I attempted to implement a new block schedule that would have students in their A-day classes on Monday and Tuesday, B-day classes on Thursday and Friday, and a "zipper" day Wednesday when they would go to both A- and B-day classes.

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Districts Make Progress—and Encounter Resistance—as They Update Grading Models

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Districts Make Progress—and Encounter Resistance—as They Update Grading Models

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Districts Make Progress—and Encounter Resistance—as They Update Grading Models

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Even as schools across the country experiment with new models for assessing students, they aren’t ready to commit to a wholesale divorce from the A to F letter grades that have been around since the 1940s.

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A book excerpt from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead book — We need braver leaders and more courageous cultures.

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Leadership in education is more important now than ever. Demands on instructional time are escalating, and accountability pressures are increasing. The historically neglected areas of social-emotional and civic competence are emerging as essentials. For leaders who know what direction they want to head, there are six key tasks that must be undertaken.

Based on a combination of interviews with educational leaders by Mark Goldberg, and the observations of David Gergen after serving in the White House under several presidents from both political parties ( Eyewitness to Power, 2000), here are the six tasks:

1. Believe and Envision

Leaders must have a core belief that can be communicated with clarity, concision, and passion. This is referred to as a bedrock belief (Goldberg) and a compelling vision (Gergen).

2. Start Strong and Simple

Leaders must get off to a quick, sure start. This is especially true for those new to the leadership role: leaders must inspire confidence. Rather than take on the most challenging problems, it's best to start with a small, potentially solvable challenge. This gives everyone a chance to see how the leader will work, and for those more directly involved, a chance to experience the new leadership style together. When efforts flounder, much will be learned from how setbacks are handled.

3. Persuade and Inspire

Leaders must have skills to persuade and inspire. They must be able to articulate a realistic and clear vision of how the organization will look in the future, and help others see the vision as congruent with their own concerns, goals, or deep beliefs. They must communicate and model their strong convictions so that they inspire others to sustained action, even when the leader is "not looking." Others with leadership roles or responsibilities also must embrace and articulate the vision.

4. Lead Morally

Leaders must have a strong moral compass. To follow any leader, others must be convinced of that leader's dedication to equity, fairness, overcoming disadvantage, and giving voice. It's fair to say that not everyone will perceive these attributes on the part of the leaders, but his or her core followers definitely must.

5. Demonstrate Courage and Compromise

Leaders must have the courage to swim upstream. Because leadership ultimately is a moral commitment, leaders must be prepared to take risks, buck trends, show courage, persist, embolden others, and use a nuanced sense of compromise. (In an instructional setting, these are qualities that teachers ultimately want to transfer to their students so that their educational default is not passive compliance.)

6. Optimize Any Situation

Leaders must excel at situational mastery and emotional intelligence. According to Goldberg (June 2001, Phi Delta Kappan, p.760), "I do not believe that any of the people I interviewed could have exchanged positions and had the same success." Ultimately, leaders must have the emotional intelligence skills to optimize the situation in which they find themselves and the resources at hand, and inspire others to undertake maximal efforts. Even more than technical training, the leader must help members of the organization and constituents have a deep understanding of the mission and vision and a commitment to collaborate in pursuit of that shared understanding. What the leader can accomplish directly is limited, especially in large and complex educational settings. Hence, distributed leadership is essential for sustainability.

One need not be a principal, superintendent, or school board president to be a school leader. Leaders are those who step up to help their organizations succeed. They take a larger measure of responsibility for keeping track of the big picture. Consider the areas where your involvement can help make your school or district a better place. Let this year be your own personal leadership year.

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Leadership in education is more important now than ever. Demands on instructional time are escalating, and accountability pressures are increasing. The historically neglected areas of social-emotional and civic competence are emerging as essentials. For leaders who know what direction they want to head, there are six key tasks that must be undertaken.

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To Inspire Your Team Share More of Yourself

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To Inspire Your Team Share More of Yourself

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My client, let's call him Karl, was struggling to motivate his team. Karl came across as mildly stern even when smiling, and his presentational style in team meetings was clinical and measured. One-on-one, Karl was known to be a good listener and thoughtful boss, but in large forums, he tended to freeze, defaulting to offering quick solutions or doubling down on the company line when presented with complicated questions instead of taking time to share his own perspective. The result? His audience felt he was formal and lacked authenticity, and his employees gave him low marks for his ability to inspire.

It was once believed that scrubbing notions of the self from presentations and regulating emotions at all cost was key to being perceived as an effective leader. However, it's becoming increasingly clear that in order to inspire people to follow you, sharing personal stories with vulnerability, humor, and humility allows audiences to see you as human and thus be inspired by you.

The reason? Telling personal stories helps lead to more trust in relationships. Research tracks three key drivers of trust: authenticity, logic, and empathy. We tend to trust people who we believe are acting as their real selves and demonstrating empathy. Increasing realness and humanity by sharing personal stories is one powerful way to build that trust.

Luckily, connecting more personally in this way is a teachable skill. The following four steps will help you add humanity to your presentations and increase your team's inspiration.

Cultivate your top three stories about failure.

Stories of failure help us relate, normalize setbacks, and create intimacy. When they end with a lesson in resiliency, they galvanize audiences to keep going. Karl took a risk in his most recent leadership team meeting by sharing a critical mistake he had made in front of a well-respected colleague. This helped normalize risk taking and earned him several private notes of gratitude for his vulnerable share. Write down your top three stories of failure and think of venues where you could safely share them in the coming weeks.

Incorporate vulnerability in real time.

Research shows that when we think back on leaders who took time to build emotional resonance with us, our brains show increased positive emotion and social connection. As you respond to questions in real time, find quick and easy ways of inserting your vulnerability. Tag your statements with phrases like "my feeling is," "it feels scary to share this," or "I hesitated to bring this forward" - they peel back the curtain on your thinking and build a connection with your audience.

Share what's top of mind for you.

Karl now starts his monthly all-staff meetings with a personal story about something that has been impacting him that also relates to the larger world, current events, or business. These stories are not always positive, but he has been getting feedback about how they're appreciated and make people feel close to him. By spending a few minutes ahead of time to prepare his story and jot down notes, he has been able to incorporate more warmth and authenticity into meetings he leads.

Study inspiring stories from others.

Watch your favorite TED Talks and listen to podcasts to collect cues on how powerful and persuasive strangers share stories to inspire. When do you feel most connected? What did the speaker do and share that helped lead to a feeling of authenticity and human connection? Note your favorite techniques and practice incorporating them into your daily speech for low-stakes practice.

By incorporating more personal storytelling into your presentations, you will be able to quickly connect with larger and larger audiences to get your message across. As you become more real, accessible, and inspiring, business outcomes will improve, and people will feel like they have permission to share their own stories. After practicing his new techniques for a few months, Karl received feedback that he was seen as more accessible by junior members of the organization, and his team felt more connected to the overall vision of the group. Leaders who take steps to break down walls of stoicism and let audiences see the human behind a business-focused front will create better followership.

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To Inspire Your Team, Share More of Yourself

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It was once believed that scrubbing notions of the self from presentations and regulating emotions at all cost was key to being perceived as an effective leader. However, it's becoming increasingly clear that in order to inspire people to follow you, sharing personal stories with vulnerability, humor, and humility allows audiences to see you as human and thus be inspired by you.

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Share excerpts from this book as needed with individuals or groups to affirm where they are. - EFA

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Have staff journal E - effort, S - Success, & P - Progress from that day at each division meeting. - EFA

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Create a topic each month for the division meeting where two teachers (one new to teaching - wonder-  and one further in their teaching - wisdom) share their thoughts and advice for all to benefit and to support the idea of honoring tradition while innovating at the same time. - EFA

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To begin the year, ask teachers to identify their top ten moments professionally - challenging them to continue adding new moments as their life as an educator continues to encourage iteration and innovation. - EFA

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We discussed so many great ideas about motivating and connecting with our staff. Making sure to take time to thank your staff and appreciate them. So ideas would include:  two truths and lie activities, let them share their stories, Every story matters protocol-question: Think of  teacher that has made an impression on you in the past. would you rather personal questions, team building-activities, mindfulness strategies to practice.    SPED DLT 

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We discussed so many great ideas about motivating and connecting with our staff. Making sure to take time to thank your staff and appreciate them. So ideas would include:  two truths and lie activities, let them share their stories, Every story matters protocol-question: Think of  teacher that has made an impression on you in the past. would you rather personal questions, team building-activities, mindfulness strategies to practice.    SPED DLT 

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Identify one goal and revisit it regularly (not something else). Celebrate/Acknowledge/Praise small wins - MS

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Perhaps have staff journal on focus question. Model this with staff and then can do this with their students. You could even provide them with a journals. Whatever you decide upon, provide the teachers the time to do it within their professional work day. - MS

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Be present and visible in classrooms in a non-evaluative way - API

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Take a supportive leadership stance: "How can I help?" "How can I support you?" "What barriers can I help remove for you?" API

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To build trust, solicit and act upon feedback regularly -API

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Personalized "Thank you's" and acknowledging individualized work - API

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Here are a few ideas to motivate and support our teams:               -*Individual Survival Packs (Bandaids, lotions, mints, etc.)  *Bday Month Celebrations (Breakfast once a month)            *Woo Hoos (Winner Receives a Gift Card)                                          *Awesomeness Awards            *Deliver Thank You Notes in Person                   -APSS Buddies

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Here are a few ideas to motivate and support our teams:               -*Individual Survival Packs (Bandaids, lotions, mints, etc.)  *Bday Month Celebrations (Breakfast once a month)            *Woo Hoos (Winner Receives a Gift Card)                                          *Awesomeness Awards            *Deliver Thank You Notes in Person                   -APSS Buddies

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Empathy/Compassion: Acknowledge the challenges that staff faced over the past two years and show compassion in helping them move forward.

Community: Bring back successful community building traditions from the past and create new ways to build community.

Communication: Gauge the right amount of communication. Make it matter!

SS/WL

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We need to building strong solid relationships with staff. Like students, staff also want to be seen, heard, valued and validated. Monthly meeting, individual meetings, communicate, give everyone a voice, create a sense of belonging and connectedness. The little things make a difference - send thank you cards and take it a step further - praise face-to-face. Restorative circles with staff is also valuable.

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Being a humble and honest leader, being clear and approachable, and serving with empathy attracts people towards a common cause, in this case our athletic programs.  By supporting our athletic coaches with these elements, we will undoubtedly support the overall school culture.

Leading with an equity mindset with participation data, recruitment and retention of coaches and teachers, putting an educational emphasis on athletics, and being consistent with a positive sports culture that supports the staff and SEL of all students are goals of ours moving forward. - ADs

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Coming along side teachers in authentic work that they identify as being important.  This requires us to listen to them, prioritize their needs and wants, and prioritize them with our own time and energy.

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Coming along side teachers in authentic work that they identify as being important.  This requires us to listen to them, prioritize their needs and wants, and prioritize them with our own time and energy.