Leaders Gonna Lead: Leading through Change

I have worked in enough different school districts and organizations to know that leaders lead, regardless of if it is good leadership or bad. Leadership is power. It is what and how the leader uses that power that determines the result. In 5304 we looked at several different change strategies that all rely on excellent leadership and as I overlayed these with my innovation plan I had to think very critically with the question of... Could this actually work?

Jon Maxwell discusses the Law of the Lid and how our Leadership abilities determine our effectiveness (Maxwell, 2022). I believe that the strategies discovered in this course and help raise that lid and bring my Leadership capacity to a new level.

To begin building my leadership and change strategy, I needed to define My Why. Simon Sinek discusses why this so so important and tells us that if people don't have a heart connection to the why of something they will not care about the how or what (TEDx Talks, 2009). I often find this true with my own students and try to explain why when appropriate now.

Next, we delved into how to influence and change behavior with the Influencer Strategy

(Grenny et al., 2023). My innovation plan is a little complex (developing an application start to finish) and has multiple phases, so I chose to approach this change strategy from the very end of my plan. After all, what good is developing an amazing application if no one uses it. This strategy really helped me thing through an effective role out plan and how to get people on board to help bring this tool to the most students.

Our next strategy complimented my Influencer Strategy so well. While the first strategy was very helpful for the final role out, I believe that the 4DX Strategy would be most helpful for the start to finish development and Implementation of my overall innovation plan as it lays out specific steps for change and achieving goals and milestones (McChesney et al., 2022).

Finally, all of these strategies are wonderful, but you have to get your people on board. And one of the best ways to do that (and raise your leadership capacity) is to work through the emotions of change and leadership. Leading through Emotions is not easy. Friedman discusses self-differentiated leadership which Is basically leading yourself and managing your own anxiety so that you can in turn help your team do the same (Camp, 2012). Crucial Conversations gives wonderful strategies for having those difficult conversations when those difficult situations arise, and let's face it, they will arise (Grenny et al., 2023). They are big on maintaining safety in conversations, which I think is something that many have lost. As an effective leader, we can help those we lead to have safe, productive, and effective conversations to help move change initiatives forward.

I look forward to continuing in the ADL and seeing these strategies and others applied to my innovation plan!

References

Camp, J. (2012, February 10). Friedman's theory of differentiated leadership made simple [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ixEI4_2Xivw

Grenny, J., Patterson, K., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2023). Crucial Influence, 3rd Edition: The new science of leading change. McGraw-Hill Companies.

Maxwell, J. C. (2022). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: Follow them and people will follow you. Thomas Nelson.

McChesney, C., Covey, S., Huling, J., Thele, S., & Walker, B. (2022). The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Revised and updated: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals. Simon and Schuster.

TEDx Talks. (2009, September 29). Start with why -- how great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek | TEDxPugetSound [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA