Using Leadership ‘voice’ to advance racial equity

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Equity Memo: 7 tips for sharing our leadership ‘voice’ You are incredible.  Thank you for your work in sharing our equity voice and vision with staff.  Six weeks ago, I asked district leaders to begin sharing our racial equity commitment – at every opportunity.  We worked on our leadership voice: the heart (feeling); the head…

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Keep looking up!

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Communicate Hope in multiple ways to multiple audiences  Leaders, in crisis and under stress, often retreat to dominate traits. Personality inventories (there are many) often divide the world into four “types.” Each type respond differently – especially when we retreat to our preferred safe zone..  Use, True Colors One of the personality inventories, for example,…

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Influence: Leading When You Are Not in Charge

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Influence: Leading When You Are Not in Charge COVID-19 is a test lab for influence.  We watch it play out on the nightly news.  Who has the most influence?  The President? Governors? Doctors? What should we do? How fast should we do it?  We keep hoping that someone will step up, bring people together, build…

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‘Representing’ our Bosses

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Representing our Employer Promotions … require us to step up to greater levels of responsibility – and ambiguity. The higher we rise, the greater the obligation to speak for the common good of the organization.  We get promoted for being great technical experts.  Then we get promoted INTO jobs that require very different skills –…

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Review: Nine Lies About Work

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Review:  Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World  by Marcus Buckingham  and Ashley Goodall https://store.hbr.org/product/nine-lies-about-work-a-freethinking-leader-s-guide-to-the-real-world/10214 Marcus Buckingham Many of Buckingham’s earlier books have been best sellers:  First Break All the Rules, The Truth About You, and GO Put Your Strengths to Work.  He turns number crunching – from 1000s of participants…

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Growing Your Own … Diversity

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Growing Our Own Teachers of Color: Diversity: Teachers of color have a life-changing impact on the success of students of color.  Black Female students who have at least one Black Teacher are 29% less likely to drop out Black Male students who have at least one Black Teacher are 39% less likely to drop out.…

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How We Can Support Paraeducators in Improving Student Learning

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10 ways we can help Paraeducators improve student learning Professional Training for Paras Paraeducators provide much of the service to high needs students.  Washington State now supports and requires professional training for paras. Washington State has 27,000 paraeducators Much of the remediation support students receive comes from paraeducators Two days of paraeducator training are provided…

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Moment of Lift Review

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The Moment of Lift: how empowering women changes the world – Melinda Gates In Moment of Lift, Melinda Gates tells how she, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, morphed from health issues to empowering women. Three Take Aways:  I had three great take aways from reading this book: Improvement science. She describes initiative after…

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From Good to Great: Lessons Learned

From Good to Great: Lessons Learned I recently interviewed Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and a new monograph, Turning the Flywheel.  As, I have been writing and re-writing those interview notes, I have also been eagerly applying those ideas with school districts and non-profits. Here are some of my take-aways: The AHA!  The…

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Keeping Hope Alive in Tough Times

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Keeping Hope Alive … In Tough Times These are challenging times for educational leaders.  Expectations for student learning keep rising while available funds shrink.  Leaders face pressures to balance budgets, keep teacher salaries competitive, AND invest more in student learning.  Often the district leaders, especially the superintendent, are the only ones that see the bigger…

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