This year, 2011, can be characterized many ways, but for the description to be accurate it must address the rapid change we all continually face. There’s no way to avoid it! You can try, but that doesn’t work.  As a professional you have to plan for and manage change so your students are prepared to be successful in the 21^st century. Just look around you and notice the things you now have and use routinely that did not exist thirteen years ago, the time most students spend between entering kindergarten and graduation.

Two Coaching For Results associates, Diana Williams and Essie Richardson, have written The Elementary Principal’s Personal Coach: Tapping Into Your Power for Extraordinary Leadership, Corwin Press, 2010. This is a book of stories illustrating how principals have successfully dealt with change related to each of the critical standards for principal leadership developed by The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). Don’t let the book title fool you into thinking it doesn’t apply to you if you’re not working at the elementary level. If you’re a school leader, you will find it useful! You will want to find a story that relates to what you are facing, and use it to spur your thinking, not as a recipe for what you should do. Leadership looks very similar for all levels. It’s the context that’s different.

In their latest book, SWITCH: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (Broadway Books, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath share three important points you should keep in mind as you manage the change process in your organization:

• “What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.”
• “What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.”
• “What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.”

As a school leader who plans for and manages change, instead of just reacting to it, what tips or thoughts can you contribute that will be helpful for the rest of us?

by Bob Carter
Coaching for Results Global