January: Adaptive Leadership and Midyear Meetings

Pre-Work

Mid-Year Growth Meeting

Case Consultancy Preparation

The Mid-Year Growth Meeting occurs in January of the Fellowship year, with the purpose of giving Fellows the opportunity to reflect on their growth as a leader to date, and the movement of their school towards the set goals. Fellows will participate in case consultancies with each other in order to learn from their own cases and each other’s, to increase their self-awareness and their awareness of the adaptive layers of the work, and to set action steps and commitments moving forward.

Preparation/Pre-Work:

• 1. Read "The Work of Leadership" by Ronald Heifetz and Donald Laurie. (It is short, but dense with content. Please read carefully.)

  2. Please enjoy these videos:

More than funny | Michael, Jr. |TEDxUniversityofNevada

Tig Notaro's Lessons in Remaining Present | CONAN on TBS

• 3. Send to your LC by Monday the 24th: Please prepare a 2 page write up of an adaptive leadership challenge you are facing at your school as it relates to your Equity Impact Initiative and adaptive issues of equity. The challenge should be a high-impact, complex and adaptive challenge that is hindering the maximum increase in equity in some way. In other words, if you could resolve this issue, the culture of achievement could be significantly strengthened and inequity measurably and noticeably disrupted. When writing up your case, please be sure to explicitly address the following:

a) How are you turning up the heat at a rate higher than people can stand? Or not high enough? Why?

b) Get on the balcony--what trends and patterns do you see?

c) How do(es) the stakeholder(s) feel about this issue? How is it challenging their beliefs, values and assumptions?

d) What is your role in the challenge? How are you as a leader contributing to the challenge? What is the adaptive work you have to do in yourself and your leadership to see more clearly and to move the work forward? What have you succeeded at so far? Where have you failed? What are your blind spots? What do you need to guard against?