The Leadership Challenge

What makes a leader? James Kouzes and Barry Posner's Leadership Challenge Model, is based on these five practices of exemplary leadership: Model the way | Inspire a shared vision | Challenge the process | Enabling others to act | Encourage the heart. These five practices arose out of their research on people’s personal experiences of excellent leadership. Each practice contains two key behaviours of excellent leaders.

Leadership tools: Leadership Practices Inventory involves a self-assessment where the leader records what they perceive as their behavioral frequency. Observers are then asked to assess the leader based on the same 30 behavioral statements on the scale, assessing how often they see the leader perform each leadership behavior. Observers are categorized as Manager, Direct Report, Co-Worker, or Other.

Reference: A good summary of this model is written by Business Balls (click HERE), and in THIS blog by Barry Posner. Further details can be found on FlashPoint's website and in THIS downloadable PDF.

Centre for management and organisation effectiveness

Helpful articles: Qualities of Leadership: common leadership beliefs and values & flexible leadership values | The 100 Best Leadership Blogs Based on Social Shares - this provides a rich resource for reading!

Leadership tools: useful introductions to change management, strategic planning, agility, alignment, management and thinking.

National College of School Leadership

This is now a defunct organisation, but all their work has been subsumed into the UK Govt. Department for Education, which means that their materials are copyright free. Among the many materials are:

• What we know about school leadership
• Seven strong claims about successful school leadership
• 10 strong claims about successful school leadership
• Growing tomorrow’s school leaders: the challenge
• Review of the Landscape: Leadership and Leadership Development 2008 A review of what is known about effective leadership and leadership development
• How do school leaders successfully lead learning?
• New perspectives on middle school leadership

Ontario Leadership Strategy

A good website to browse with a rich variety of articles on school leadership, including:

• Ontario Leadership Framework
• Five core capacities of effective leaders
• Promoting collaborative learning cultures
• Setting goals – the power of purpose
• Aligning resources with priorities – focusing on what matters most
• Exploring the ‘social’ personal leadership resources

• Exploring the “Cognitive” Personal Leadership Resources (PLRs) Problem-Solving Expertise, Role-Specific Knowledge & Systems Thinking

• Exploring the “Psychological” Personal Leadership Resources: Optimism, Self-Efficacy, Resilience & Proactivity

The Wallace Foundation

A good website for a collection of podcasts, articles and blogs relating to educational leadership, including:

• How Leadership Influences Student Learning: Leadership is second only to teaching among in-school influences on student success, according to this landmark examination of school leadership.
• The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning: A Wallace Perspective identifies five practices that are key to the work of effective principals.
• Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership Development Programs – Final Report: A ground-breaking report provides case studies and practical guidelines to help district and state policymakers reinvent how principals are prepared for their jobs.
• The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning.  A Wallace Perspective identifies five practices that are key to the work of effective principals.

Educational Leaders

A professional development site for school leaders from the New Zealand Ministry of Education. Contains a wealth of good information and links to articles and videos. Sections on, amongst others:

• Managing your school
• Leading Change
• Culture
• Pedagogy and assessment
• Problem solving
• Partnerships and networks
• Collaboration
• Leadership Development
• Leadership qualities

Coaching for leaders

A great resource library of leadership podcasts from experts in the field.

Tom Haak, Nearly 100 Leadership Models, February 2020: A fantastic blog providing nearly 100 visual models of leadership, including: Amazon leadership principles, Boyden leadership model, L'Arche servant leadership model, Collective leadership for sustainability model, Distributed Leadership, Educational Leaders Model, Emotional Intelligence Leadership Model, Exemplary Leadership, Goleman, Holistic Leadership, Inclusive Leadership, Inner Leadership Model, Level 5 Leadership Model, 4R Model of Transformation Leadership, Systems Leadership, Leadership in a VUCA World.

The Alphabet Soup of Leadership, John MacBeath, January 2003, is a good introductory article to the various forms of leadership. It introduces you to: Heroic Leadership | Authoritarian Leadership | Charismatic Leadership | Moral Leadership | Principle-centred Leadership | Visionary Leadership | Professional Leadership | Strategic Leadership | Transformational Leadership | Transactional Leadership | Situational Leadership | Distributed and distributive Leadership | Invitational Leadership | Shared Leadership | Collaborative Leadership | Instructional Leadership | Teacher Leadership | Learning-centred Leadership | Student Leadership.

Harvard Extension School, Professional development blog: Insights, tips, and tools for professionals interested in a variety of leadership and management topics.This is a great source of blogs, articles and videos which you could use with your leadership teams – senior and middle leadership.

The 100 Best Leadership Blogs Based on Social Shares

School Leadership: Resource Roundup - links to a wealth of resources on school leadership from the edutopia website.

Successful School Leadership:  international review of best practice, Day & Sammons, Education Development Trust

Eight leadership habits and how to encourage them, Caroline Sherwood, SecEd. The habits mentioned are: Be brave | Build trust | Invest in people | Be relentlessly positive | plan ahead | Look outwards | Create clarity | Expect quality