19,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
A practical guide for school leaders and managers seeking concrete strategies for professional improvement Leading a learning community is a challenging endeavor that rewards those who build social-emotional and adaptive leadership competencies. In The Noble School Leader, veteran school leader and leadership coach Matthew Taylor delivers an inspiring and enlightening exploration of the mindsets that support leaders to thrive, as well as those that just get in the way. It is a field guide to creating learning conditions that make transformative growth happen in schools. In this book, readers will: * Uncover the most common internal obstacles that hold all school leaders back, from teacher leaders to superintendents * Apply the core domains of emotional intelligence and create personal growth plans using the invaluable 5 Square tool * Surface core values and drivers that shift mindsets and behaviors * Set goals and plans for challenging leadership moments Written for school leaders and managers seeking concrete techniques for building social-emotional and adaptive leadership competencies, The Noble School Leader is also an indispensable resource for any K-12 teacher, administrator, or professor with an interest in education and emotional intelligence.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 411
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Acknowledgments
About the Author
I: Preparing to Do Mindset Work
1 Seven Invisible Obstacles to Strong School Leadership
Why These Mindsets Matter
We Cannot Teach Mindsets …
… But Productive Mindsets Can Be Learned
… And EI Is the Key
Endnotes
2 Building New Mindsets and Behaviors with Emotional Intelligence
Applying EI with the 5‐Square
How the 5‐Square Works: A Personal Case Study
The Left Side of the 5‐Square: Doing Our Self‐Work
Building Self‐Awareness (What's My Stuff?)
Building Self‐Management: Leveraging Our Standard, Managing Our Stuff, and Plugging into Our Drivers
The Right Side of the 5‐Square: A Focus on Others
Social Awareness: Where Are They and Where Do They Need to Be?
Relationship Management: What Others Need from Me to Reach My Targets
Applying the Five Domains to Grow
Endnotes
3 Preparing for the Learning Journey by Connecting to Your Power
Our Power Map
Core Driver 1: Life Path
Activity 1: Lifeline
Activity 2: Values Sort
Activity 3: Connecting to Values in Context
Core Driver 2: Well‐Being
Activity 1: Wellness Audit
Activity 2: My Ideal Wellness Schedule
Core Driver 3: Relationships
Activity: Relationship Mapping
Core Driver Four: Self‐Expression
Self‐Expression and Flow
Activity 1: Finding More Flow
Self‐Expression and Personal Voice
Activity 2: Where and How Am I Bringing My Voice?
From Plan to Practice
Endnotes
II: Working the 5-Square
4 The Transactional Leader
Transactional Leadership and Its Costs in Learning Organizations
Step 1: Start with the End in Mind
Step 2: Building Self‐Awareness
Connect with Your Power to Choose New Ways of Being
Step 3: Building Self‐Management Strategies
Self‐Work: Pause and Reflect
Step 4: Build Social Awareness to Diagnose Needs and Set Targets
Where Do They Need to Be? (Defining Your Targets)
Step 5: Manage Relationships to Meet Your Targets
Other Work: Pause and Reflect
Now the Real Work Begins
Endnotes
5 The Unintended Enabler
Unintended Enabling in Learning Organizations
Step 1: Start with the End in Mind
Step 2: Building Self‐Awareness
Step 3: Build Self‐Management Strategies
Self‐Work: Pause and Reflect
Step 4: Build Social Awareness to Diagnose Needs and Set Targets
Where Do They Need to Be? (Defining Your Targets)
Step 5: Manage Relationships to Meet Your Targets
Other Work: Pause and Reflect
Now the Real Work Begins
Endnotes
6 The Negative Controller
Negative Controllers in Learning Organizations
Step 1: Start with the End in Mind
Step 2: Build Self‐Awareness
Step 3: Build Self‐Management Strategies
Self‐Work: Pause and Reflect
Step 4: Build Social Awareness to Diagnose Needs and Set Targets
Where Do They Need to Be? (Defining Your Targets)
Step 5: Manage Relationships to Meet Your Targets
Other Work: Pause and Reflect
Now the Real Work Begins
Endnotes
7 The Pacesetter
This Is Not Just About You
Pacesetting, the Sacrifice Syndrome, and Schools
Step 1: Start with the End in Mind
Step 2: Build Self‐Awareness
Step 3: Build Self‐Management Strategies
Self‐Work: Pause and Reflect
Step 4: Build Social Awareness to Diagnose Needs and Set Targets
Defining Your Targets (Where You Need Them to Be)
Step 5: Manage Relationships to Meet Your Targets
Other Work: Pause and Reflect
Now the Real Work Begins
Endnotes
8 The Doer
Doers in Education Organizations
Step 1: Start with the End in Mind
Step 2: Build Self‐Awareness
Step 3: Build Self‐Management Strategies
Self‐Work: Pause and Reflect
Step 4: Build Social Awareness to Diagnose Needs and Set Targets
Where Do They Need to Be? (Defining Your Targets)
Step 5: Manage Relationships to Meet Your Targets
Other Work: Pause and Reflect
Now the Real Work Begins
Endnotes
9 The Imposter
Imposter Phenomenon in Education Organizations
Step 1: Start with the End in Mind
Step 2: Build Self‐Awareness
Step 3: Build Self‐Management Strategies
Self‐Work: Pause and Reflect
Step 4: Build Social Awareness to Diagnose Needs and Set Targets
Where Do They Need to Be? (Defining Your Targets)
Step 5: Manage Relationships to Meet Your Targets
Other Work: Pause and Reflect
Now the Real Work Begins
Endnotes
10 The Implementer
Implementers in Education Organizations
Step 1: Start with the End in Mind
Step 2: Build Self‐Awareness
Step 3: Build Self‐Management Strategies
Self‐Work: Pause and Reflect
Step 4: Build Social Awareness to Diagnose Needs and Set Targets
Where Do They Need to Be? (Defining Your Targets)
Step 5: Manage Relationships to Meet Your Targets
Other Work: Pause and Reflect
Now the Real Work Begins
Endnotes
III: Staying Focused Over Time
11 Working Your 5‐Square for Lasting Behavior Change
Build Your System
Appendices Introduction
Appendix A: Transactional Leader Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Aspirational Leadership Headline
Vision for Success
Appendix B: Unintended Enabler 5‐Square Development Plan
Aspirational Leadership Headline
Vision for Success
Appendix C: Negative Controller Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Aspirational Vision
Appendix D: Pacesetter Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Aspirational Leadership Headline
Vision for Success
Appendix E: Doer Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Aspirational Leadership Headline
Vision for Success
Appendix F: Imposter Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Aspirational Leadership Headline
Vision for Success
Appendix G: The Implementer Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Aspirational Leadership Headline
Vision for Success
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1: Sample thought catcher.
Table 3.2: Sample thought catcher for journaling.
Table 3.3: Sample wellness schedule.
Table 3.4: Flow audit.
Chapter 4
Table 4.1: Sample targets.
Chapter 5
Table 5.1: Sample targets.
Chapter 6
Table 6.1: Sample targets.
Chapter 7
Table 7.1: A systems analysis for organizational change.
Chapter 8
Table 8.1: Sample targets.
Chapter 9
Table 9.1: Sample targets.
Chapter 10
Table 10.1: Sample targets.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1: Goleman's competency iceberg.
Figure 1.2: Wheatley's graphic illustration of the Green Line concept.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1: Goleman's model. From GS‐4 Paper. (2015). A Self Study History (...
Figure 2.2: The Noble Story Group's basic 5‐Square.
Figure 2.3: The motivational spheres from Goleman EI (2019).
Figure 2.4: The self‐limiting mindset chain reaction.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1: Motivational spheres.
Figure 3.2: The rudder.
Figure 3.3: Sample relationship map.
Figure 3.4: Flow model diagram.
Figure 3.5: Sample self‐expression Venn diagram.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1: The EI 5‐Square.
Figure 4.2: Wheatly's Six‐Circle Model.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1: The EI 5‐Square.
Figure 5.2: Wheatly's Six‐Circle Model.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1: The EI 5‐Square.
Figure 6.2: Wheatly's Six‐Circle Model.
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1: The EI 5‐Square.
Figure 7.2: The Sacrifice‐Renewal Cycle.
Figure 7.3: Common pacesetter competing commitments.
Figure 7.4: Wheatly's six‐circle model.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1: The EI 5‐Square.
Figure 8.2: Wheatly's Six‐Circle Model.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1: The EI 5‐Square.
Figure 9.2: Wheatly's Six‐Circle Model.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1: The EI 5‐Square.
Figure 10.2: Wheatly’s Six‐Circle Model.
Figure 10.3: The rudder.
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Appendices Introduction
Appendix A: Transactional Leader Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Appendix B: Unintended Enabler 5‐Square Development Plan
Appendix C: Negative Controller Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Appendix D: Pacesetter Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Appendix E: Doer Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Appendix F: Imposter Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Appendix G: The Implementer Sample 5‐Square Development Plan
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Pages
i
v
vi
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvii
xix
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
205
207
208
209
210
211
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
241
242
243
244
245
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
“There's no one better able than Matthew Taylor to show how the emotional intelligence framework can be applied to school leaders. The Noble School Leader democratizes leadership excellence.”
— Daniel Goleman, author of Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence
“Matt has created a new approach that takes the concepts of emotional intelligence and makes them specific to the lived realities of school leaders. You will see yourself reflected in this book, and you will walk away with deepened insight and actionable strategies for shifting the deep mindsets that can hold us back.”
— Sara Keenan, founder and CEO of AF Accelerate
“When Matt was a principal, he led his school to be the #1 middle school in the entire state for student growth – and then he went on to coach hundreds of other school leaders to achieve remarkable success for their students. Matt has always deeply believed in the potential of all students. What he figured out is how to help leaders develop the emotional intelligence they need to unlock the potential of the adults on their team – an essential and too‐often overlooked pre‐requisite to student success. As we navigate the unprecedented challenges facing education right now, Matt's practical wisdom will help all of us see and break through our self‐limiting ‘brick walls' so that we can be the leaders our students and teachers deserve.”
— Dacia Toll, founder and former CEO of Achievement First
“Matt's ingenious five‐square approach provides a practical way for everyday people like you and me to bring emotional intelligence up off the page as a concept and into our daily lives as parents, spouses, colleagues, leaders, coaches, and educators. Often what stands between us and actualizing our own capacity is a sound approach, a method by which we can again and again activate our own wherewithal and potential irrespective of the situations we find ourselves in. His years as a teacher, school administrator, leadership coach, and emotional intelligence practitioner have resulted in the practical wisdom and insight he has brilliantly weaved together and is sharing in this book. Matt's five‐square methodology will forever transform how you think of yourself, your students, and your own capacity to become an emotionally intelligent person and noble school leader!”
— Michele Nevarez, founder and creator of the Goleman EI suite of Coaching and Training
The Noble School Leader
The Five-Square Approach to Leading Schools with Emotional Intelligence
Matthew Taylor
Copyright © 2022 John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved.
Jossey‐BassA Wiley Imprint111 River St, Hoboken, NJ 07030
www.josseybass.com
Except as expressly noted below, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, phone +1 978 750 8400, fax +1 978 750 4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, phone + 1 201 748 6011, fax +1 201 748 6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Certain pages from this book (except those for which reprint permission must be obtained from the primary sources) are designed for educational/training purposes and may be reproduced. These pages are designated by the appearance of copyright notices at the foot of the page. This free permission is restricted to limited customization of the DVD‐ROM materials for your organization and the paper reproduction of the materials for educational/training events. It does not allow for systematic or large‐scale reproduction, distribution (more than 100 copies per page, per year), transmission, electronic reproduction or inclusion in any publications offered for sale or used for commercial purposes—none of which may be done without prior written permission of the Publisher.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: Although the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Jossey‐Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey‐Bass directly, call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800–956–7739, outside the U.S. at +1 317 572 3986, or fax +1 317 572 4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e‐books or in print‐on‐demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:
9781119762874 (Paperback)9781119762867 (ePDF)9781119762928 (ePub)
Cover Design: Paul MccarthyCover Art: Courtesy of the Author
Introduction
This book is about a kind of leadership development that we haven't paid much attention to in the education sector. Every school leader experiences the need for this approach when they have been working hard to grow a technical leadership skill and inexplicably hit a brick wall. We double down on skill and knowledge building over time, and still there's no movement. As managers we begin to assume that our leaders may not have what it takes, or that there's some fixed trait that will keep them from getting there (they just have a low bar … their awareness is too low). As leaders we just can't figure out why we don't do something (delegate to our teammates, show vulnerability) that we deeply want to do. Or we assume that some competencies are just not our strengths and that we are fixed in certain ways (I will never be good at conflict. That's just the way I am.).
We've gotten increasingly good in our sector at technical leadership skill and knowledge building in the areas of instructional leadership, data practices, and building school‐based systems. But this brick‐wall phenomenon falls into a different category of leadership competency building that calls for a very different approach. We can't see the obstacles to growth because they are hidden inside of us—or below the surface—and they're very personal. So even when we are teaching and learning discrete skills, we're not getting to that level of figuring out the real obstacles. Practicing skills without figuring out a leader's inner obstacles is like riding a merry‐go‐round that never stops.
I have been obsessing about these brick‐wall leadership competencies for close to a decade now. Through hundreds of coaching and training sessions with school leaders across the leadership pipeline, I have built a development model based on Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (EI) theory. EI brings an essential lens to leadership development with its focus on self‐awareness, self‐management, and social awareness—what we need to know about ourselves and others before we ever engage them. In the book, I share how we have operationalized EI to create a common language and road map for building personal leadership competencies. My framework—The 5‐Square—is applicable across competencies and across all levels of the leadership pipeline. This book introduces the 5‐Square, takes readers on a guided tour for applying it to their personal leadership challenges, and provides practice opportunities to build those brick‐wall leadership competencies over time.
The leaders who have used my 5‐Square have experienced significant growth in competencies that they often believed were fixed, and the impact of that growth has been evident in their 360 feedback, org health data, staff retention, and other organizational outcomes. Just as importantly, this work has reduced suffering, sparked hope, and helped leaders and the people they lead thrive in their work and their lives.
This book is essentially an EI‐based, replicable approach to social–emotional learning for leaders. Social–emotional leadership is a prerequisite to student growth because leaders are the creators and the keepers of the conditions for learning in our schools. Students depend on us to create the conditions for learning that everyone in our schools—from students to teachers to principals—needs to meet their full potential. I have learned that these conditions primarily result from the way that people feel. Because these conditions are difficult to name and measure, they tend to be overlooked and undervalued
Since the days when I first started teaching 27 years ago, our profession has been moving toward an increasingly technical approach to teaching and learning. We have reacted to the pressures to improve student achievement—increased exponentially with the arrival of Common Core—by building more efficient systems to grow academic skills as fast as possible, for as many students as possible. I have watched as these technical practices that serve us in improving student achievement have also led to disconnection, inequitable conditions, and a limited growth trajectory.
As a sector we have arrived at a moment of reckoning. Schools that have taken an increasingly technical approach have become increasingly unhappy places for both the adults and students. The conditions we have created hold everyone back—adults and students—from reaching their potential. This is because emotions are contagious, and they are most contagious when they come from leaders. When adults are working under leadership and conditions that are antithetical to social–emotional health and growth, they create those same conditions in their classrooms for students. Very few students will develop the social–emotional competencies to be strong learners in spaces that are unhealthy for adults. The learning and life outcomes of our children depend on healthy adults, and leaders create adult conditions to thrive. This has become even more painfully clear as we have all experienced the trauma of the Covid pandemic. Academic growth has stagnated for sure, but our collective emotional capacity to teach and learn as educators and students is at rock bottom. Without addressing the affective—the social–emotional—obstacles of the moment, most of us and our students will remain academically incapacitated.
It is time to rebalance the conditions for learning in our schools. That rebalancing must start with the adults; not the kids. And it must come from the leaders.
When I was immersed in schools as a teacher and then a leader, I felt but did not understand all of this. My eyes were opened when my work training school leaders collided with my introduction to Goleman's work on Emotional Intelligence (EI).
I became a principal after 11 years of teaching in urban neighborhood, magnet, charter, international, and private schools. Amistad Academy Middle School was the flagship school of the three‐school Achievement First (AF) charter network. When I left the principal seat six years later, we had expanded to 31 schools. During my tenure, I experienced a shift from an entrepreneurial spirit of “build it yourself while flying the plane” to a determined focus on aligning to a set of organizational systems. From student discipline and culture to curriculum and instruction, we were leveraging our collective wisdom and energy to create best‐in‐class resources for teachers and school leaders so that kids were consistently receiving the very best teaching in the very best schools we could build—and fast! Our sense of urgency came from the belief that kids who were behind simply did not have time for adults to slowly get better at teaching. We had to develop the very best teachers and leaders as fast as possible.
During my last two years as principal, we launched three major systemic initiatives. Our school was one of the first in the network to turn our merit/demerit‐based student culture approach into a tight, aligned system. We used Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion book and teaching model to double down on the technical training of core teaching strategies. This enabled us to take a giant leap forward in our ability to systematically and quickly teach teachers common instructional moves. Finally, during that same year, we launched a robust instructional coaching system in which every teacher was observed and received feedback and planning support weekly.
These three initiatives, supported by a data‐driven culture that regularly reflected on whether we were doing what we said we would do, and that we were doing it well, were some of the foundations on which we built breakthrough levels of student achievement across our network. We were proving that Amistad was not an anomaly, and that we could replicate its breakthrough results for kids. Meanwhile, we were also seeing early signs that our systemic approach might have an unintended effect on morale. These early signs didn't get much attention because of our focus on instructional expertise and student outcomes.
Then Common Core dropped like a bomb on public schools. We were horrified when we saw our students' test scores plummet; the new assessment showed that not half as many reached proficiency compared to the previous year's state test scores. We had thought that our kids were closing in on their counterparts in the wealthiest public school systems in the country. We were wrong. But we were not alone. Almost every public charter and district had the same wake‐up call. AF's response to this crisis was one of humility, accompanied by an all‐out instructional leadership campaign to build our capacity to meet the rigorous expectations of Common Core. I was proud of our organizational response. It was not long, however, before I started to understand the unintended consequences of our reaction.
During that first year's push to align to Common Core, I left Amistad to start a leadership development partnership with our district counterparts in New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport, CT. In this new program, built on the medical residency model, district leaders spent a half year in AF schools and then a half year in a strong district school, working with a principal mentor to apply what they had learned. Our pitch to Residents: “You are smart, passionate professionals. We are going to expose you to the best of what charter and district schools have to offer, and we expect you to make your own decisions about what works and doesn't work.”
Over time, clear themes emerged about what district leaders experienced at AF: “These instructional approaches and the teacher coaching practices are INCREDIBLE! But the student and adult culture systems and approaches? We can't figure out why you would do those things.”
With time, it became difficult to give my Residents a compelling rationale for some of our core practices around student and adult culture. From my new perspective gained from observing schools, I was seeing large numbers of unhappy, disinvested students on a spectrum from apathetic compliance to outright resistance. I was seeing many teachers, deeply invested in our teacher taxonomy skills, hanging their authentic selves up at the door of their classrooms and adopting a teaching persona—a kind of performance—that often disconnected them from their students. I was seeing teacher coaches who excelled at teaching instructional skills but were often stuck in a leadership persona that disconnected them from teachers and students. And I was seeing principals who, having been promoted because they were really good at teaching instructional moves to teachers, struggling mightily and sometimes failing miserably with the real, messy human aspects of their jobs.
Meanwhile, I was getting to know district schools that were happy, inclusive places for kids and adults. The challenge many of them faced, however, was that large percentages of their students were significantly underperforming academically. Between district and charter schools, I was experiencing a wide range of learning communities that fell on a continuum between two poles: on one end happy yet underperforming and enabling, and on the other negative, controlling, yet (relatively) academically high performing. I saw very few schools that were hitting the sweet spot where inclusive, nurturing cultures and high academic performance were embodied simultaneously.
A year into this work, I found myself questioning my beliefs and my training. I loved AF, our people, and our mission. I deeply believed in the direction that our curriculum and pedagogy was heading. And yet some of our schools were unhappy places for adults and kids.
I was in the midst of this internal struggle when I discovered Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (EI) theory. To support my principals‐in‐residence as a coach, I enrolled in an executive coaching training course at the Teleos Leadership Institute that was grounded in EI. The training opened my eyes to both the emotional conditions necessary for learning and the personal leadership competencies it takes to create those conditions. I came to understand the extent to which learning is inherently emotional and deeply personal. The competencies of EI gave me a language to make sense of what I was experiencing.
My epiphany also sent me straight into therapy. The Teleos coaching experience awoke parts of myself that I had been neglecting for years. I realized that as a school leader and trainer of school leaders, the intensity of my work, my total immersion in it, and the technical way I had learned to approach it had led me to disconnect from myself and many of the people I loved. Focusing on my own self‐awareness and self‐management led me to experience transformative personal growth. It changed the way I show up as a leader and also as a person, and I know that I am still evolving because of it.
Learning is much more dependent on the emotional conditions we create than our sector's collective approach to teaching and learning suggests that we believe. For people to experience deeply transformative learning, we need the right combination of two elements: personal connection and challenge. The more challenging the learning, the more the personal connection matters. Each person requires a different balance of these elements, and to get the right balance, we have to know a person well enough to understand where they are and what they need. To create these conditions is human work, and it takes emotional intelligence.
I returned from Teleos seeing opportunities to apply this new EI language and understanding everywhere I looked. I came to see the conditions we are currently creating by default in our schools as an emergency. Our overreliance on data‐driven systems and protocols leaves adults and children in our schools feeling less connected and experiencing less care from one another. Classrooms and adult teams are less inclusive of the identities people bring to them. The structures and pace of the work take away the space and time that the adults need to be able to ground themselves in their personal WHY for doing the work, and to be able to be fully present as themselves in the moment. I find myself working with a generation of highly technical school leaders in highly structured schools who are deeply unhappy and feeling unsuccessful in their work. Many feel stuck and cannot figure out why. Others know why they are stuck but feel powerless to change within their existing system. Most of them wonder how long they will be able to last as school leaders.
With the perspective gained through the EI coaching, I felt called to advocate for change. Doug McCurry and Dacia Toll, AF's co‐CEOs, embraced this work and created the opportunity to share it with our AF principals through cohort training and one‐on‐one leader coaching. I had the privilege of making my passion for EI leadership my day job for seven years. During that time, I trained and coached many of the leaders in our organization. It was through that work that my colleagues and I created the tools for the practical application of EI theory. We discovered that the training and coaching is relevant for leaders at every level of seniority. Actually, there is usually a greater need for this social–emotional approach to development the higher one travels up the leadership pipeline. We also found that, unless the leaders at the top of an organization are doing their own social–emotional work, it is not likely that others down the chain will be able to do so effectively.
Since starting the Noble Story Group, I have worked with hundreds of leaders in over 60 school and nonprofit organizations across the country. This work has confirmed in very powerful ways that what I experienced as a teacher and school leader is playing out all across the education sector and beyond. A lopsided focus on building and measuring technical skills has created organizational conditions that are not conducive to people—children and adults—reaching their full potential. All of my clients share the same top three organizational challenges: people experiencing inequitable and exclusive conditions across lines of difference; teachers and leaders feeling that their work is not sustainable over time; and leaders not knowing how to challenge people while staying personally connected. Everyone I work with feels a deep desire to change. Harnessing EI has proven to be an effective way to support them.
Science can broadly be separated into the theoretical and applied. EI theory is not new. What we have done is develop a practical, applied approach to using EI in leadership development. This means helping leaders build the awareness of self and others and generate effective self‐management and relational strategies to become stronger adaptive leaders. Over time, clear patterns have emerged about the internal obstacles—the self‐limiting mindsets—that get in the way of this growth. I have found that there are archetypical self‐limiting mindsets that leaders at all levels of leadership must contend with inside of themselves to reach their potential. This book describes these seven self‐limiting mindsets in detail and offers an approach to enable leaders to transcend them.
I wrote this book for school leaders and for their managers who are looking for ways to overcome their brick walls. I introduce readers to the seven most common school leader self‐limiting mindsets that have emerged as patterns of behavior as I have applied it over the last decade. Leaders will determine which of the seven self‐limiting mindsets hold them back and develop their own self‐management strategies to overcome them. For leaders, this is a self‐guided tour “below the surface” to build self‐awareness about both self‐limiting mindsets that get in their way and the source of their personal power that will support them to build new mindsets and behaviors. For managers it is a field guide for supporting leaders “below the surface” and creating the learning conditions that make that work possible. Adopting its language and approaches with fidelity can jump‐start transformative learning at every level of a learning community.
I know school leaders. We choose this work because of our personal commitments to children and to making this world a better place. I hope that you chose this book to become a better leader. I hope your personal mission and commitment to students helps you stick with the deep personal learning you will be asked to take on in these pages. The learning below the surface will make you a better human being for your students, your team, your family, and the rest of the world.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Delea Deane‐Allen, Brian Behrman, and my editor Adaobi Obi Tulton for their wise feedback through the writing process; my family and my Noble Story Group partners for their unflagging support; and most of all my dad for editing every inch of this book with his writer's eagle eye.
About the Author
Matt Taylor is the founder and CEO of The Noble Story Group, a consulting group that leverages emotional intelligence to unleash leadership potential through the power of social–emotional leadership to promote sustainable, thriving, and equitable communities. He is a co‐author of Daniel Goleman's Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence primer series and a contributor to School Administrator magazine, the Fordham Institute's Education Gadfly, and other coaching blogs.
IPreparing to Do Mindset Work
Chapter 1: Seven Invisible Obstacles to Strong School Leadership
Chapter 2: Building New Mindsets and Behaviors with Emotional Intelligence (How You Will Drive Your Learning Using This Book)
Chapter 3: Preparing for the Learning Journey by Connecting to Your Power
1Seven Invisible Obstacles to Strong School Leadership
Every school and educational organization is led by leaders who are seeking to develop and get better. All are learning skills and knowledge that will make them stronger, but few of them are able to focus on what is truly holding them back from succeeding, or from reaching their next level of personal growth.
The most significant obstacles to growth are “below the surface” of skills and knowledge. This book will refer to what lies below the surface as mindsets. Mindsets are made up of the elements that dictate our habits of human interaction: values, beliefs, motives, traits, and other personal attributes.
Every leader arrives in their role with mindsets that serve them and mindsets that get in their way, or self‐limiting mindsets. Leaders will work through some of these self‐limiting mindsets on their own, but with others they will hit a brick wall. These more elusive, deep‐seated habits of mind and behavior have been with leaders most of their lives. They tend to be so deeply engrained that leaders—and people in general—think of them as “just the way I am.” When we step into the role of leadership for the first time or are promoted to a new level, these self‐limiting mindsets often become more pronounced or take on new significance.
Over the last decade I have been immersed in the coaching and training of adaptive leadership—the human, emotions‐driven side of leadership where there are no right or wrong answers and decisions come down to choosing between competing values. Developing leaders through this adaptive lens, my colleagues and I have noticed several archetypes emerging in the kinds of self‐limiting mindsets that are common to school leaders at all levels. While these archetypes aren't new (most are leadership types that have been widely studied in the fields of social psychology and business), we are bringing them together in a new way and applying a new lens to addressing them. We have identified a group of seven self‐limiting mindsets that we see in various combinations across leaders, roles, and schools.
They are:
The Transactional Manager
The Unintended Enabler
The Negative Controller
The Pacesetter
The Doer
The Imposter
The Implementer
The Transactional Manager
There is much written about the transactional manager management approach (McClesky 2014; Spahr 2014; and Hargis et al. 2011).1 My use of this term emphasizes its technical, compliance‐driven aspects that can demotivate stakeholders when the approach is overused.
Transactional managers assume that the world is a mostly rational place, that adult human beings are rational creatures that receive clear (to me) information, process it (like I do), and then behave according to the expectations I have communicated: a simple transaction. They under‐prioritize understanding other people's needs, and inevitably tell too much and listen too little. When these leaders do not know where their people are and what they need, they are likely to misdiagnose the problem and choose the wrong leadership action to accomplish their objectives. These errors can lead the transactional manager to make the fundamental attribution error—the assumption that people themselves are the reason for their lack of growth and not the conditions in which they are working, which the leader is largely responsible for creating (Heath and Heath 2010).2
The Unintended Enabler
The concepts of unintended enabler and negative controller (the next self‐limiting mindset) have been applied effectively to the education sector in the last decade by the CT3 professional development group (CT3 2018).3
Unintended enablers are uncomfortable with conflict and are afraid of damaging relationships. These leaders often hold a negative view of positional power. When acting from an unintended enabler mindset, leaders default to attempting to build or preserve positive relationship and inspire stakeholders, even when those approaches will not achieve the outcomes they desire. Enablers “let things go this time” and retreat to silence when observing behavior that doesn't meet their standards.
When leaders enable, what they allow becomes the unwritten rule. When their teams and students know that they are not going to be held accountable, leaders lose credibility, and inadvertently communicate that they don't believe in their people. Schools led by unintended enablers may be positive on the surface but lack real investment in learning, and they are marked by underperformance in all substantive areas.
The Negative Controller
Negative controllers assume that, when people struggle, there is something wrong with them (CT3 2018).4 When driven by the negative controller mindset, a leader who sees a teacher struggling thinks, “This teacher is struggling because he/she is not committed, or not willing to work hard enough, or blames kids, or is an excuse maker, or a racist.” Like the transactional manager, the negative controller misdiagnoses leadership challenges by making the fundamental attribution error—the assumption that people themselves are the reason for their lack of growth, rather than the conditions in which they are working. This assumption lets the negative controller off the hook. It also leads to negative relationships, insecure learners, and an emotionally toxic organizational culture.
The Pacesetter
The pacesetter is one of Daniel Goleman's six leadership styles (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 2002).5 Pacesetters are driven by an admirable desire to reach and exemplify excellence. In schools, excellence is often equated with the social justice–related drive to close the opportunity gap for students, as measured by outcomes on achievement tests. This is mission‐driven work that attracts mission‐driven people. Leaders create organizational cultures around this goal that both deeply resonate with educators and create intense urgency. School leaders often assume that embodying this ideal means sacrificing themselves for the mission. This is an emotionally contagious phenomenon. When school leaders lead this way, their teams respond in kind.
While this approach may work for short periods of time, such as during start‐up or turnaround, it is not sustainable. Staff perceive their pacesetter leader as not caring about them as people. Schools and leaders who attempt to maintain the pacesetter approach to teaching and learning experience chronic stress. Teachers pass on their stress to students, who respond in kind. Performance of both adults and students decreases. Over time, there is significant teacher and leader attrition. The constant turnover of staff leads to even more urgency to develop new people quickly, which intensifies the pacesetter response over time.
The Doer
Doers believe that their job is to the be the #1 performer (Charan 2011).6 Leaders who demonstrate this mindset are usually promoted to their new roles in part because they were great doers in their previous roles, so the mindset and behaviors are deeply engrained. Often the doer hasn't been taught that, in their new role, they are supposed do less and instead direct other doers. Even when they have been taught, they struggle to let go of what served them and made them feel competent in the past. (In this way a mindset can shift from being a strength to an obstacle as one climbs to new levels of leadership.)
Doers do not delegate well, if at all. They tend to take on the work of others at the expense of doing their own work (which they are likely the only person in the organization qualified or tasked to do). They send the inadvertent message to their teams that they do not trust them to do their own work. Their teams become increasingly dependent on the doer to solve their problems for them. Doer leaders take on more and more while their teams do less. They become overwhelmed, drop balls more and more frequently, and communicate reactively. Doers lose credibility and sink into chronic stress, while their teams become less empowered and less effective over time.
The Imposter
While all seven of these self‐limiting mindsets are very personal in nature, this one—commonly called imposter syndrome or imposter phenomenon—is anchored most deeply in self (Mount and Tardanico 2014; Mount 2015).7 Leaders struggling with imposter syndrome believe that they aren't really qualified for their job, that others believe this too, and that sooner or later they will be confronted about this ugly truth by the people they lead. In challenging moments, imposter syndrome sends leaders into their head, causing disconnection, indecisiveness, and avoidance of difficult decisions or actions in the moment. It leads to the very loss of credibility that the leader fears.
The imposter syndrome may be the deeper mindset at work when one or more of the other mindsets on this list shows up in practice. When combined with any of the others, the impact on leader behavior is multiplied.
The Implementer
Implementers believe that the leader's primary job is to execute on the best practices they are given by others. The implementer should not be confused with the doer, who is driven by the desire to be the performer. Implementer believes that the results will be better, and the process will be more efficient if they fully follow the school leadership playbook that they are given by their manager or their organization.
Our sector has done a lot of great work on building efficient systems in schools. We have gotten smarter about how to pool our resources to build better and better curriculum, and then to share it efficiently and widely, resulting in a significant, positive impact on student achievement. We have increasingly valued the implementer competency in our selection of leaders. And implementers are not wrong about the importance of being able to replicate great practices! Where they go wrong is in the degree to which they try to replicate.
When implementers lead from someone else's playbook without connecting to their values, they may inadvertently lose touch with their own visions. Implementers tend to lead from a persona that is not authentic to who they are and to what they believe. They are less likely to truly connect with others, particularly when confronted by adaptive leadership challenges that require authentic influence and inspiration to be able to solve.
Why These Mindsets Matter
These self‐limiting mindsets have a deep impact on the leaders whose behaviors are governed by them. These obstacles lead to constant overwork and significant emotional turmoil that has become known as chronic stress or power stress. In their book Becoming a Resonant Leader, Boyatzis and McKee refer to the cycle of constant stress as the sacrifice syndrome, which ultimately leads to burnout and diminished effectiveness (Boyatzis and McKee 2005).8 Leaders who can't find their way through these obstacles suffer. They do not live the lives that they imagined for themselves. Further, they will not realize their potential for growth as leaders and human beings, and they know it. While all of this is terrible for the leaders themselves, the negative impact of their self‐limiting mindsets on the people they lead, and their educational outcomes, is much greater. This is because teaching and learning are emotional work, and emotions are contagious.
School Leadership Is Primarily Emotional Work …
In our focus on educational outcomes, we often lose sight of the fact that learning and teaching are fundamentally emotional work. People need to feel emotionally safe to learn. There have been multiple studies showing that emotional connection is a condition for learning:
A concept from graduate school that has stayed with me is Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development theory. The idea here is that, for people to learn new skills, a trusted “knowledgeable other” must guide and encourage them as a first step (Penguin Dictionary of Psychology 2009).
9
Research on memory has made it very clear that what makes its way into long‐term memory is almost always associated with a strong emotion (Bloom 1956).
10
Bloom's Taxonomy identifies the affective domain—marked by feeling tone, emotional acceptance, or rejection—as one of three domains for learning. The affective domain is the gateway to learning. If the emotional gates aren't open, learning can't get in. Research on memory makes sense when considering the affective domain. What makes its way into long‐term memory is almost always associated with a strong emotion (Conway, Anderson, and Larsen 1994).
11
Goleman writes that how the brain’s reaction to emotional stimuli shows that negative emotions shut down cognitive function while positive ones both reinforce existing synapse connections
and
create new neural pathways (Karen 1998).
12
Attachment research shows that connection and trust is a prerequisite to learning for people who have experienced trauma, and that this connection does not come easily (Boyatzis in Coursera).
13
Meeting a human being's needs for connection is a prerequisite to their being able to learn from their teacher. Once a teacher has met their student's need for connection, the work of learning can begin. The second core ingredient then comes into play: challenge. The education sector is much more fluent in the challenge component of learning. Academic rigor is the focus du jour, and as a sector we are making headway on the “what” of academic skills. However, effective challenge in teaching and learning is both a “what” and a “how” endeavor. Effective challenge stimulates intrinsic motivation and energizes a learner to strive to meet their full potential. This is a largely human, emotional endeavor that is inextricably linked to the connection between teacher and student.
