Photo by Angie Garrett

Essential Skills for 
EFFECTIVE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

A succinct, practicable text that equips school leaders with an expansive repertoire of essential skills and reinforces the leadership knowledge necessary for success.

All leaders, particularly school leaders, share five essential skills:

Confidence. Leaders believe in themselves and their ability to mobilize others to act.

Communication. Leaders are able to articulate their goals and transform words into deeds, and rhetoric into results. 

Collaboration. Leaders recognize that success is a team effort.

Coaching. Leaders invest time and energy into developing their team.

Continuous Improvement. Leaders view change as opportunity.

This book is based on the premise that there is no single ideal school leader profile or leadership style. It contains tools for activating and motivating the community on behalf of students, developing the ability to be decisive and achieve results, facilitating collaboration to improve teaching and learning, implementing detailed action plans, and balancing leadership challenges.

Designed for individual school leaders and those who aspire to be, this book contains easy-to-understand, ready-to-use leadership lessons created to inspire the acquisition of pertinent decision-making and school leadership skills. A valuable resource for every reader, it is designed to be easily customizable. Topics that are most relevant to each situation are easily selected and tailored to every leader's individual development program.

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This reader wishes that he had this text when he led the restructuring of his own school eight years ago. The author provided an excellent balance of research coupled with practical hands-on resources for the practitioner seeking to lead school change and provide effective leadership.
The text is highly relevant for lead-teacher and administrator in-service programs. It is an "easy read" and provides highly practical contexts, hands-on materials for workshops and reflection for continuous improvement. Critically, the author provides us with a step-by-step guide that school leaders may institute to create an atmosphere supporting school improvement focused on ensuring that all children meet with success.
The format provided an excellent balance of research-based direct and clear leadership statements followed by excellent hands-on materials. This is an excellent tool-kit for effective leadership and organizational change.

Peter Osroff
Principal, Garden City Middle School
Garden City, New York

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