How are we building the capacity of new leaders when K12-higher ed is not focusing on 21C leadership?

 It is not just K12-Higher Ed – it is our culture as a whole. We continue to see education policies that are top-down mandates. We continue to have to ask for Federal “waivers” to address funding needs. Federal and State mandates do not encourage any school or district leader to risk doing what the students need vs. doing what they are told. Leadership, at this point, is about all educators saying, “enough!” That would be the beginning of real leadership in education.


Funny…… learning is either “have to” or “want to”. “Have to” (compliance-based) is what we have in school today… “want to” (desire and meaning-based) is what we should aspire to. I do not see any meaningful change happening in our schools until our leaders understand that we need to change our worldview about how we consider how our students "want" to learn. When students are running to school because they can’t wait to learn, THEN we will know we have become successful – NOT because we have better test scores.

A Reflection on Leadership

 Recently I've been reflecting on my own journey as a leader. I've had positions of leadership as defined in the org chart but does that qualify me automatically as a leader?  Reflecting, I think not. An organizational position is a title, not a behavior. Leading is a behavior, and even as I have said in my previous writing leadership is often a collective energy within the organization.  Maybe an individual, maybe the collective. For that matter, I'm sure leadership is more about the collective than the individual.  No one can be an organizational leader alone. This is why the concept of leadership gets so much attention in writing, youtube, and social media.  Leadership at its essence is about relationships within the organizational collective.

In discussing leadership as a concept, I've often said, "We are emotional beings in a social setting." What I mean by that is with everything that happens to us we each first experience emotions and/or feelings about that experience or situation. Yet, we need to exist within a social setting where not everyone else experiences or feels the same.  Our experiences are formed by each of those situations individually. When we take an organizational position of leadership, we need to acknowledge those unique differences.

Not to oversimplify, but I will!  Basically, all organizations have some similarities- they are groups of people with a common perceived/desired outcome.  Size makes a difference but they are all similar in their shared goals/outcomes.  Organizations are about the relationships among the members and how well they work together to accomplish the desired outcome.  In my humble opinion then, the leader is first responsible for those relationships, not just the desired outcome. People first!