Creating Leadership

My Top Cop Years were overwhelmingly creative because every time I saw a problem, the focus was on solutions. I am illustrating a select few for you, drawn from my carefully documented archives. If the department did not have the resources I sought them from outside. I was never shy of asking for anything that would benefit the people to be served. Because they needed answers, not excuses. For all these solutions, I had the support of some of my seniors, team members and juniors. They were excited about the novelty and ease of doing their duty. They, equally, got the credits and due recognition. Many of them saw growth in their new learning. This sowed the seeds for empowered and creative leadership.

“It’s not the magic that makes it work; it’s the way we work that makes it magic.” The secret for creating “magic” in our careers, our organizations, and our lives is simple: outstanding leadership—the kind that inspires employees, delights customers, and achieves extraordinary business results. No one knows more about this kind of leadership than Lee Cockerell, the man who ran Walt Disney World® Resort operations for over a decade. And in Creating Magic, he shares the leadership principles that not only guided his own journey from a poor farm boy in Oklahoma to the head of operations for a multibillion dollar enterprise, but that also soon came to form the cultural bedrock of the world’s number one vacation destination. But as Lee demonstrates, great leadership isn’t about mastering impossibly complex management theories. We can all become outstanding leaders by following the ten practical, common sense strategies outlined in this remarkable book. As straightforward as they are profound, these leadership lessons include: Everyone is important. Make your people your brand. Burn the free fuel: appreciation, recognition, and encouragement. Give people a purpose, not just a job. Combining surprising business wisdom with insightful and entertaining stories from Lee’s four decades on the front lines of some of the world’s best-run companies, Creating Magic shows all of us – from small business owners to managers at every level – how to become better leaders by infusing quality, character, courage, enthusiasm, and integrity into our workplace and into our lives.

What is our best present understandingof good school leadership? How do I lead my school to make itrelevant to students of the 21st century? The idea for this book grew out of aninternational conference organized by theNational College for School Leadership,An International Future: learning frombest practice worldwide, which exploredinnovative and significant aspects ofeducational leadership and brought together internationalcolleagues to generate new understandings. The conference proved adynamic forum for debate for researchers, academics, policy-makersand practitioners. It was clear at the conference that there was aconsensus of understanding around certain key themes that crossednational boundaries. In Developing Leadership, well-knowninternational contributors explore this consensus to promote the keythemes which reflect our best present understanding of good schoolleadership, and to inform school leaders about leading edge thinkingwhich bears on their role. These key ideas, which are highlighted at various points throughoutthe book, are built around professional learning communities;distributed leadership; strategic thinking about ICT; sustainability;internship; mentoring and coaching. Contributors: Ray Bolam, Martin Coles, Gary Crow, Clive Dimmock,Dean Fink, David Green, Andy Hargreaves, Sing Kong Lee, BillMulford, Fred Paterson, Tony Richardson, Geoff Southworth, JamesSpillane, Louise Stoll, Ken Stott, Allan Walker, John West-Burnham

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.

This step-by-step how-to guide presents the six driving forces of instructional leadership within a multi-stage model for implementation, delivering lasting improvement through small, collaborative changes.

This informative and inspirational handbook describes how to successfully lead mergers and change in complex organizations. Drawing on a real-life experience, the authors share their insights on how leaders can deliver sustainable change by growing the capacity of everyone within an organization to deliver performance gains, behave like a leader, and encourage leadership in others. It is a book by practitioners for practitioners telling the real-life story of a leader and a facilitator working together in the complex reality of a multinational organization. It deepens this insight by drawing on a wealth of wider research by academics and leadership practitioners. Here you will find immediately useable tools, easy to relate to real-life examples, and a little bit of magic in the form of a fable that will sustain you and your colleagues through the twists and turns of what is certain to become an intensely human journey.

Both the framework and the book make notable contributions to both theory and practice. The book will be of value to scholars and organization leaders in understanding the concepts of value creation and organizational effectiveness. It will be an aid to consultants in conceptualizing strategies for organizations and in counselling leaders on how to operationalize the concepts in their organizations. S.R. Mohnot, Global Business Review This is a very readable and excellently presented volume. It will interest anyone concerned with organizational effectiveness and the competing values model. Economic Outlook and Business Review I recommend this book to anyone wishing to understand and practice leadership. Leadership is often treated in mutually-exclusive categories, such as Theory X vs. Theory Y, managers vs. leaders, transactional vs. transformative, initiation vs. consideration, etc. The Competing Values Framework presented in this book transcends these dualities. It features eight competing but complementary values that are critical for managing today s complex and pluralistic organizations. The framework emphasizes the need for balance among the eight leadership roles, and an appreciation of the context, timing, and contingencies when the leadership roles facilitate and inhibit collective endeavors. I have followed the development and testing of the Competing Values Framework over the years. It makes important contributions to both theory and practice. It stimulates positive learning outcomes for students and managers. Andrew H. Van de Ven, University of Minnesota, US Creating value in a firm is an enormously complex endeavor. Yet, despite its complexity, value creation is the objective of every enterprise, every worker, and every leader. The Competing Values Framework can help leaders understand more deeply and act more effectively. In the first book to comprehensively present this framework, the authors discuss its core elements and focus attention on rethinking the notion of value. They emphasize specific tools and techniques leaders can use to institute sustainable change. The Competing Values Framework was developed in response to the need for a broadly applicable model that would foster successful leadership, improve organizational effectiveness, and promote value creation. It helps leaders think differently about value creation and shows them how to clarify purpose, integrate practices, and lead people. Named one of the 40 most important frameworks in the history of business, it has been studied and tested in organizations for more than 25 years. Currently used by hundreds of firms around the world, the Competing Values Framework serves as a map, an organizing mechanism, a sense-making device, a source of new ideas, and a learning system. This accessible resource will be of great use to organizational scholars interested in the concepts of value creation, organizational effectiveness, and competing values; to leaders and managers interested in enhancing and creating value in their organizations; and to change agents and consultants who use the Competing Values Framework as part of their intervention strategies or who are looking to help improve organizations.

Containing ideas on key topics such as professional learning communities, distributed leadership, strategic thinking about ICT and sustainability, this title informs school leaders about current thinking, showing them how to lead schools in the 21st century.