How Leadership Works
A Playbook for Instructional Leaders
- Cathy Lassiter - Consultant and Author
- Douglas Fisher - San Diego State University, USA
- Nancy Frey - San Diego State University, USA
- Dominique Smith - Health Sciences High and Middle College, USA
Illustrations by Taryl Hansen
Instructional Leadership | Staff Supervision / Evaluation / Retention | Visible Learning
Sharpen your instructional leadership skills and guide your school toward equity and excellence for all.
Just think about how great schools could be if every instructional leader exercised their influence to create change—maximizing the efforts of others and mobilizing those efforts to work toward a shared goal.
How Leadership Works: A Playbook for Instructional Leaders walks educators through the processes of clarifying, articulating, and actualizing instructional leadership goals with the aim of delivering on the promise of equity and excellence for all. Grounded in Visible Learning® research, the exercises in this easy-to-use playbook illuminate the essential mindframes necessary for effective instructional leadership and prompt veteran, new, and aspiring educators to identify challenges and determine next steps. It includes:
- Ten essential mindframes for leaders, together with the leadership practices that illustrate each mindframe in action
- Teaching practices, such as teacher clarity or student engagement in learning, that support teachers in delivering quality instruction, along with tools to document the impact of those practices on learning
- Strategies for leading learning, including establishing school culture, utilizing feedback, and supporting professional learning communities as a pathway to building collective teacher efficacy.
- Tools for applying the principles of change, conducting an initiative inventory, and implementing and de-implementing initiatives
Exercise-by-exercise, educators and front office staff will deepen their knowledge, frame their priorities and practices, and gain new tools for supporting the instructional focus and initiatives designed to support learning at your school.
Free resources
Look-Fors and Listen-Fors in Teacher Clarity
This resource from How Leadership Works includes a teacher self-reflection and planning guide for teachers to engage in metacognitive thinking.
Mindframes for Effective Leadership
This resource from How Leadership Works includes 10 mindframes for effective leadership including impact, change and challenge, and learning focus mindframes.
Types of De-implementation
Explore the 4 types change that should be considered during de-implementation planning: reverse, reduce, replace, and rethink, from How Leadership Works.
How's Your Instructional Leadership Self-Efficacy?
This extract from How Leadership Works includes a checklist for examining your sense of self-efficacy for instructional leadership.