Developing Leadership Opportunities

One of the key components of leadership is developing the next generation of leaders, whether that is classroom leaders, model classrooms, or school or district level leaders. We have an obligation to ensure that the leaders who come after us have a mindset and beliefs that will serve the students of tomorrow and provide them with the absolute best education. In some ways, that means that leaders are always developing teachers out of the classrooms in their own building, which can have a significant impact on the instructional program in a school. So, it is necessary to have a leadership development plan.

Developing a leadership development plan starts with your own leadership as the school building leader. You must have an idea of where you need to learn and grow if you are going to model and create opportunities for leadership development in your school. As a leader, you must learn and grow alongside your staff - simply providing them with opportunities to learn is not enough, and expecting them to learn for you is poor leadership. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Deborah Rowland cites that many employees do not trust their boss and that most in-house leadership development is less about "doing leadership" and more about "how to do" leadership. As school leaders, we must start with ourselves if we want to develop highly effective leaders.

Having a leadership plan requires a common language around the competencies of leadership. There are certainly many to choose from - I have used the Turnaround Leadership Competencies by Public Impact for myself, my leadership teams, and my classroom leaders. Hearing my teacher leaders talk about recognizing the early wins or requiring all staff to make changes is exciting and it underscores the importance of having that common language throughout an organization in order to make substantive change. Here is an example of a self-assessment tool that leaders can use when beginning to make a leadership development plan.

The next levels of leadership vary based on the size of your system. Identifying these levels of leadership is essential for any strong leadership development plan. In my system, I have a leadership team (their primary role is leadership within the building), teacher leaders (they have additional leadership responsibilities that they have taken on outside of their classroom role), team leaders (they are the key person on their grade level team or department), and classroom leaders. There is some crossover between the layers of leadership, as some people are involved in multiple levels of the work.

My responsibility as the building leader is to distribute the leadership of our school vision through internal leadership and also provide opportunities for them to learn and grow their own skill set. Within this system, I have several leaders who aspire to be building leaders, several who wish to become model classrooms or instructional coaches, and some who are working on developing stronger communication skills within their grade level team. Differentiating leadership development and opportunities for growth requires that school leaders know the skill sets and leadership capacities of their staff as well as creative opportunities for leadership to live in your school. Leadership development also requires clear visioning, strong communication regarding the vision, and regular feedback and check-ins. Two-way communication and checking-in on progress have to be a priority in order for budding leadership to grow and yield the expected results.