Leadership, Myth, & Metaphor
Finding Common Ground to Guide Effective School Change
- Daniel Cherry - New Hampshire Department of Education; Director, Gates Foundation Leadership Orientation Project, NH
- Jeff Spiegel - New Hampshire Principal-in-Residence for Gates Foundation Leadership Orientation Project
Foreword by Michael Fullan
Use the creative energy of metaphor to clarify and make your leadership vision a reality!
How do you see yourself as an educator? How would you describe yourself as a leader? Have you ever considered using metaphors to reframe your leadership practice, vision, and mission? Often, leaders stumble when asked to articulate their values, ethics, and purpose. This book illustrates the significance of leadership archetypes and metaphoric reframing in understanding and facilitating organizational change.
Leadership, Myth, & Metaphor reports on the findings of a professional development study-funded by the Gates Foundation-of more than 250 superintendents and principals, celebrating educators' unique individual core values while acknowledging their shared intrinsic beliefs, including:
- A commitment to a cause beyond oneself
- A devotion to an ethic of care
- A desire to improve the condition of society
- A wish to make a significant impression on student and adult lives
- A conviction to inspire others to seek their full potential
Awareness of yourself on a personal and professional level leads to a deeper consideration of your mission as a leader and of your purpose in life.
"Cherry and Spiegel provide a valuable addition to the current literature on educational leadership. As the book demonstrates, metaphors and myths can provide educational leaders with a way to clarify for themselves and to communicate to those they lead the central themes, vision, and mission they have for the group. Metaphors assist in describing the incredible complexity that must be effectively managed in providing effective leadership in schools."
"Cherry & Spiegel provide a fascinating tour of ways in which metaphors - and their accompanying stories - are used by educators as leadership tools to spark change, reframe problems, and reveal core values."
"The authors have preformed a valuable service by demonstrating how a leader's metaphors - conscious or not - greatly influence how they lead. They also show the benefits of being self aware of one's own metaphor and its strengths and limitations in helping one successfully address the challenges of daily life as a leader."
"(The authors) have given me new ways to think about the meaning of my work, both personally and professionally; new insights into the power of the stories that all educators have to tell; and new tools with which leaders, staff and students can build a creative, productive, reponsive, and caring community for us all."
"Anything that causes administrators to be reflective about their leadership style is helpful. This book was instructive and enjoyable as it challenged readers to come up with a personal metaphor for their leadership styles."