Are You Accountable?

True leaders recognize that accountability is a choice. Leaders can inspire ownership and commitment … or conversely, they can create a culture of fear that stifles growth.

This article from SmartBrief takes a closer look at three core components of effective accountability. While it’s written for businesses, the key principles outlined here clearly apply to schools, too.

Your Leadership Style Matters!

A recent Gallup Poll on “what people need most from leaders” highlights the importance of your leadership style and the impact it can have on your faculty and staff.

When the Gallup team disaggregated the data from over 70,000 responses, they found four key areas that followers valued most. The underlying concepts that emerged from this study remind us that great leadership is not defined by authority alone. And these findings carry a significant message (and challenge) for educational leaders … providing insights that can help good leaders become great!

Five Ways to Drive Change

Being a change agent is hard work! But successful change agents can help their organizations become both more effective (focused on the right things) and more efficient (maximizing time and resources). 

In this article, management expert Paul Thorntan offers five suggestions that can help you better navigate the messy business of effective change. Properly applied, these simple concepts can help you create the kind of positive momentum that leads to a highly successful program and lasting change.

Nine Rules to Correct Culture

Here’s a fascinating article from the business world about “fixing” a distorted corporate culture. In many ways, it’s essentially an expansion of the “You can lead a horse to water, but …” mantra that we’ve all heard before, but with specific tips on getting that horse to drink!

Executive coach, Art Petty, posits that in struggling organizations (or in our case, schools), we should never assume that the culture is broken. Instead, we need to realize that it’s simply been distorted … possibly by poor leadership or flawed decisions. And the job of any new leader is to respect and leverage the existing culture, not to “fix” it by attempting to force immediate change.

Creating a supportive, effective school culture takes time. But by focusing on key issues and leading by example, you can move your school culture towards a climate of renewal and positive growth.