Building Sustainable Leadership Capacity

Bringing together a powerful group of leading educational thinkers, including Michael Fullan, Dennis Sparks, Linda Lambert, and Dean Fink, this volume examines how to sustain improvement through shared leadership.

Among the many challenges faced by educational systems in the 21st century, leadership succession is universally recognized as being a major concern. Rather than retain the current paradigm of a single figure at the top of the school hierarchy, leading researchers Patrick Duignan and Helen Cannon argue the case for a more inclusive, collaborative, and distributed leadership. In this book, they offer a series of alternative models and gather views from existing school principals to demonstrate what might be possible and what might work better than the model followed today. The Power of Many emphasizes how a new paradigm must work to retain those who are already in the job, but must also act to encourage potential candidates to apply for the job. The book offers specific recommendations and advice to system policy makers, human resource personnel, and to practitioners in schools, especially school principals and deputy principals, on new models and paradigms. Practical guidelines are proposed that offer sustainable leadership solutions and promote educational systems and schools as 'communities of learning.' Ultimately, The Power of Many shows how a shortage of principals can and must be substantially reduced, and the collective capacity of leadership in schools enhanced and sustained.

This Open Access book features a school development model (Arizona Initiative for Leadership Development and Research AZiLDR) that offers a roadmap for schools to navigate the complexities of continuous school development. Filled with processes that balance evidence-based values with democratic, culturally responsive values, this book offers strategies to mediate the tensions and to address school culture, context and values, leadership capacity, using data as a source of reflection, curricular and pedagogical activity, and strengths-based approaches to meeting the needs of culturally diverse students. You will find: - Active, reflective activities - Case studies illustrating each concept - The research base supporting each concept - Descriptions of processes from other contexts (South Carolina, Germany, Australia, Sweden) - Thoughts about next steps for contextually sensitive and multi-level school development - Suggestions for cross-national dialogue and research within the Zone of Uncertainty Use this ideal source to guide school leadership teams in creating productive schools that continually grow!

With today's increasing accountability requirements, developing and sustaining leaders is a major challenge for all educators. Developing Sustainable Leadership brings together eleven outstanding writers to provide insights, frameworks, and ideas on sustaining school leaders and developing values-based leadership to counter existing short-term management solutions. Andy Hargreaves, Dean Fink, Michael Fullan, Brent Davies, Kenneth Leithwood, David Hopkins, Geoff Southworth, Brian Caldwell, Chris Day, Terrence Deal and Gib Hentschke represent some of the most powerful thinkers and writers in the educational leadership field. Their contributions take leadership thinking to the next level, help empower school leaders, and make this book a key source of strategies, insights, and frameworks for anyone involved in sustaining high-quality leadership.

In Sustainable Leadership, Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink address one of the most important and often neglected aspects of leadership: sustainability. The authors set out a compelling and original framework of seven principles for sustainable leadership characterized by Depth of learning and real achievement rather than superficially tested performance; Length of impact over the long haul, beyond individual leaders, through effectively managed succession; Breadth of influence, where leadership becomes a distributed responsibility; Justice in ensuring that leadership actions do no harm to and actively benefit students in other schools; Diversity that replaces standardization and alignment with diversity and cohesion; Resourcefulness that conserves and renews leaders' energy and doesn't burn them out; and Conservation that builds on the best of the past to create an even better future. This book is a volume in the Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in Education—a series designed to meet the demand for new ideas and insights about leadership in schools.

The Graduate Program in Sustainability Science under the Department of Urban Engineering of The University of Tokyo has been running an environmental leadership education program at the graduate student level since 2007 called the Asian Program for Incubation of Environmental Leaders (APIEL). This book describes the University’s experiences in establishing and organizing that program and provides some lessons learned for those who are considering starting environmental leadership education programs. APIEL’s curriculum includes the classroom topic “Environmental Challenges and Leadership in Asia.” As well, the APIEL program has field units to provide experience in problem solving, decision making, and participation, taking into consideration ecological, political, economic, social, aesthetic, and ethical aspects. Another characteristic feature of the program is that it promotes changes in attitudes and behavior that will help to solve existing environmental problems and to avoid a generation of new ones. Over the four years of study, efforts have been made to bond leadership with field-oriented exercises such as: 1) The Intensive Program on Sustainability; 2) an integral approach focused on sustainable integrated watershed management of arid regions; 3) sustainable development of programs in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand for qualifying students with problem-solving processes to combat issues such as flooding, lack of proper urban environmental infrastructure, and health risks; and 4) the Greater Pearl River Delta program with multicultural diversity to bring about sustainable urban development for a green city. All of those are described in the book. Last but not least, APIEL’s resonance throughout international networks and alumni are introduced.

Studies consistently show that quality leadership development programs pay off for companies -- in the form of shareholder returns, market share growth, and sales. However, many companies have inadequate leadership development programs. This book challenges traditional views of leadership development with a perspective that focuses on recognizing leadership as a source of competitive advantage. If you're a manager or an HR leader, The Leadership Gap offers the practical, effective strategies you need to close the leadership gap in your organizations, unleashing leadership potential for better business results and a sustainable competitive advantage.