Leadership Competencies & Skills

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
June Jordan

How We Lead Change Is The Change

Leaders committed to leading effective change processes during these volatile and uncertain times need to prioritize bringing people together in new, more humanizing ways, seeking diverse and divergent perspectives across systems, and supporting communities to articulate and work toward a shared vision for the young people in their care.

Leading through complexity and uncertainty requires leaders to shift from managing the implementation of plans with pre-determined solutions, to direction-setting and creating the conditions needed for change. This includes developing high levels of relational trust, structures for collaboration, and cultures that support co-design and on-going safe-to-fail experimentation and learning with a focus on increasing belonging, interrupting us/them narratives, and activating collective agency to innovate and create change.

In most systems, this way of leading represents a significant shift. Systems tend to reward leaders who maintain the status quo (reproduce the system) and celebrate leaders who claim to have definitive solutions. Most leaders have not been trained and are not supported or incentivized to lead in more adaptive, complexity informed ways. Yet, transforming our approach to public education will require leaders who:

SEE how inequity operates and is maintained within current structures and see the potential and possibility that lives in all people and communities.

ENGAGE in ways that increases belonging, promotes healing, redistributes power, builds trust and fosters learning and innovation

ACT with courage to try new approaches and humility to learn from failure and keep going (see Leading for Equity Framework).

Leading for Equity Framework

To create systems that ensure the learning and well-being of every young person, it is critical to equip and support leaders with the knowledge, mindsets and skills needed to:

Understand and apply the latest science of learning and development
Embrace a holistic view of learning that extends beyond traditional classroom settings and curricula.
Bring communities together to explore and articulate a shared vision for the education and wellbeing of young people.
Embrace co-design to ensure that new approaches are responsive to the needs and interests of the young people, families, and communities they serve.
Create cultures and structures for innovation and collaboration among diverse groups across communities.
Acknowledge and address historic inequities in resource allocation, experience, and outcomes.
Facilitate open communication, shared decision-making, and collective responsibility for the well-being of young people across different organizations and sectors.