Without question, knowledge about content and pedagogy remain critical; however, today's educational leaders also have to be agile thinkers and skilled
at adaptive leadership.
Urban school leaders need to be agile thinkers skilled
at adaptive leadership to address the many out - of - school factors students struggle with in these environments.
Among those lessons learned are operationalizing adult learning / development and
adaptive leadership by simultaneously attending to the personal and professional development of the people at all levels of the organization; creating and sustaining conditions and support mechanisms for effective teamwork and collaboration to occur; and redefining community engagement in ways that value families and communities and engage them as true and equal partners who possess funds of knowledge.
We like leadership guru Margaret Wheatley's Six Circle Model, which includes both technical work (operations, structures, and strategies) and
adaptive leadership skills like building relationships and practicing effective communication.
In this 2004 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Ronald Heifetz, John Kania, and Mark Kramer show how foundations can confront society's most pressing challenges by
exercising adaptive leadership to focus attention, generate positive distress, frame the issues, and mediate conflict among stakeholders.
Leading successful schools requires an extensive set of technical and
adaptive leadership skills, but the often competing demands of the job can make it difficult to find time to reflect, learn, and grow.
In doing that, I relied on my experiential learning of
adaptive leadership and adult leadership development from those strands of the program.»
Leading Change will focus on three essentials for school improvement:
adaptive leadership, culture, and equity.
national impact, achieving equity, and
adaptive leadership.
We believe that both the technical and
adaptive leadership skills are critical and learnable.
«We're seeing the shift to
adaptive leadership,» Abel says.
I find
the adaptive leadership approach to be quite effective.
Creative Capital's President and Executive Director Ruby Lerner recently shared her leadership philosophy on the ArtsFwd blog as part of a month - long series of
adaptive leadership.