Leadership
The Leader’s Primary Responsibility – A Clear Focus
As this new year gets well underway it is a great opportunity to pause and simply reflect on your leadership role in providing a clear focus for the work. Here are a few questions to support your thinking: What is the focused mission of the year? What outcomes are the most critical to celebrate…
Read MoreLead with Principles not Rules
Our world seems to be full of uncertainty. It spills over into our work in schools. So many kids with so many needs; so many things to do with so little time. How can we possibility get it all done. Recently I was with a young teacher leader and when asked how she was, she…
Read MoreThe Principle of Coaching
The focus this month has been essentially about the things that guide our thinking and direction, expectations, standards, principles or core values. As we consider the very fundamental importance of these conversations we learn and recognize that the conversations never are final and always need revisiting about what they mean and what we stand for.…
Read MoreManaging our Biases
We define coaching as being nonjudgmental. Yet we know that we do have judgment, biases and filters that pop up as interference from time to time as we are acting as thinking partners with another. The first step in managing our own biases, filters, judgments, and assumptions is to recognize that we have them and…
Read MoreA Principal’s Positive Bias
Not all biases are negative. Some of our biases move us to assist others or to make contributions that benefit our families, our communities, our schools, our cities, and our world. Principal Terri recently told us of an experience she had when she noticed a fight in progress in the hall at her large urban…
Read MoreWhat Do You Resolve to Change?
“What You Get By Achieving Your Goals Is Not As Important As What You Become By Achieving Your Goals.” Henry David Thoreau As we begin the year 2018 with renewed energy and commitment, dedicated leaders, just like you, are reflecting and considering changes they deeply desire for themselves and for those they lead. And,…
Read MoreFocus On What You Want
Recently, I arrived early for the final day of a four-day Leadership Coaching for High Performance Seminar. On top of one of the RCG seminar notebooks were two drawings by one of the participants who had captured two critical points dealing with leadership and coaching. Both the SCARF and TARP ideas come from the work…
Read MoreTesting Out the Accuracy of a Fear That May Be Holding You Back from Goal Achievement
How are you doing on accomplishing the goal you set for yourself earlier this month? If you have achieved the goal, a big congratulations to you! Which of the strategies worked best for you? What resources did you call on to support goal achievement? What obstacles did you face and overcome to achieve your goal?…
Read MoreThe Importance of Setting Goals
“A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the toughest road.A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road.”—Thomas Carlyle Many of us sat around the dinner table on New Year’s Day and espoused our goals for the upcoming year. How many will come true? Well, that’s…
Read MoreThe Importance of Work-Life Balance
“I’ve learned that you can’t have everything and do everything at the same time.” Oprah Winfrey In our work as coaches, this may be the number one subject of many of our coaching conversations. We all want it AND we all have plenty of trouble achieving it! Lohrer & Schwartz say in their book, The…
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