Collective leadership

1. Understanding your team’s why

New efforts and reforms sometimes fail because a timeline has expired, and questions about how to make the effort sustainable have not been addressed. Collective leadership is a process, not a program, and it requires that work structures be redesigned or improved in order to make a sustainable shift in how schools operate. Each school has different assets and challenges related to the work structures that support collective leadership. Let’s explore how your team can determine where you are with enabling work structures, where you want to go, and why you want to go there.

Goal: Establish a theory of action

What do you want to learn from the staff at your school about the enabling work structures needed to implement collective leadership? What is already in place, and what shifts might need to occur? What questions do you have about how enabling work structures for

Big Questions

• Think of a time when you had the work structures necessary to work and learn with colleagues.
  • What formal and informal structures/processes were in place?
  • What autonomies and flexibilities were you afforded?
  • What skills did you use to collaborate effectively with your colleagues?
  • What was done to create a safe space to try new things and learn from each other?
  • To what degree do the current structures at your school align with what was described above?
• For your context, what work structures need to be added or strengthened for collective leadership to be implemented?
• How might creating enabling work structures support your team’s efforts to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• What is our theory of action for how your team can create or strengthen visible and formal administrative support for collective leadership?

Important Tasks

Discuss why it is important to your team and for your context to create enabling working structures for collective leadership. What benefits would you expect to see? What happens when those conditions are not in place?

Discuss and capture information about the questions above with your team. your team should also design a process to collect information about the questions above from staff members beyond those that are part of this team.

After engaging in discussion about the questions above and gathering input from people beyond this team, create a vision for how enabling work structures might look. Once the vision is set, assess aligned your school is to the vision. Where is your school closely aligned? Where are there opportunities for growth?

Determine what the biggest challenge or barrier is to developing or strengthening administration support. Be sure to focus on challenges and barriers that are within your realm of control.

Discuss why that barrier exists. Brainstorm ideas for how your team might address that barrier. Select one approach to addressing the barrier. Your team will use this to create a theory of action about how addressing that barrier will impact the school.

Develop your team’s theory of action about how to move forward from where you are to where you would like to be relative to supportive administration.

Connect and collaborate
Teams frequently struggle with developing a theory of action. Remember to articulate your goal and identify the problem of practice before developing the theory of action.

Need help crafting a theory of action?

2. Designing your team’s how

Now that your team has determined where you are, where you want to go, and why you want to go there, let’s create a plan for how your team will create and/or strengthen the enabling work structures at your school. Remember that creating enabling work structures will help your team create a sustainable collective leadership system.

Goal: Prepare to lead action

How will you learn about what others have done related to creating enabling work structures? What will you take on first? Who should be involved? What is the timeline? How will you measure success?

Big Questions

• What does the information collected and your theory of action tell your team about the best next step for creating enabling work structures for collective leadership?
• What else might your team need to learn about how others have created enabling work structures?
• How might your team be explicit and transparent about the shifts necessary to create stronger enabling work structures, and why they must be made? What is the plan for communicating what these shifts involve? (Hint: Revisit the change matrix for clues to all the components impacting change which should be considered, such as vision and strategy, supportive administration, capacity and resources, etc.)
• What is our timeline for this first effort?
• How will we know when we have made progress?

Important Tasks

Review the information and use the discussion questions from this guide to inform if and how your team will move forward with testing peer observation. If it helps, consider substituting the word observation for the word evaluation in this document. Also, be sure to align efforts with the collective bargaining agreement in those places that have one. For additional information on the ways unions have used and supported peer observation and evaluation, click here and here.

Review pp. 80 to 95 of these Discussion Starters to learn more about how some schools are using peer observation and feedback to improve instructional practice. While this discussion starter focuses on evaluation, there are a number of processes that can be used to improve practice without entering into an evaluation process.

Complete the Purpose Map to set the vision, identify the people who should be involved, and create the initial action plan for testing your team’s idea. For ideas about how to design and implement a pilot, check out the structure and resources in this micro-credential or contact CTQ.

Complete and use an action timeline tool like the one below to clearly articulate what will get done by whom and how the team will know that you have been successful.

Is your team interested in support for using these tools? Do you need hard copies?

3. Implementing your team’s plan

Now that the team has articulated the why and how for enabling work structures, it is time to implement your team’s plan.

What does your team need to do to implement and learn from the plan?

The implementation phase of the work is about much more than carrying out the components of your team’s plan. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the plan, data must be collected for evaluation. It’s helpful to remind yourself of your original goals as you prepare to gather the feedback needed.

Goal: Launch your team’s test, gather data, and study the results

Once the test is underway, gather the data needed to answer your burning questions. Analyze the data and results of your initiative. Decide whether your team wants to revisit supportive administration or move on to another condition.

Big Questions

• How will your team create and maintain a safe environment for those involved to provide honest feedback to each other and the team?
• What feedback is needed from those involved in this effort? How will your team know when you’re making progress?
• How will that feedback be used to make adjustments along the way?

Important Tasks

Implement the plan for how your school will create enabling work structures for collective leadership.

Collect data from participants about progress made relative to creating enabling work structures for collective leadership.

Create a process for how your team will respond to the data/feedback provided.

Want assistance measuring the impact of your efforts?

CTQ’s tools

Understanding your team’s why
1. Establishing a Theory of Action

Designing your team’s how
2. Purpose map
3. Action timeline

Implementing your team’s plan
5. Impact assessment

1. Understanding your team’s why

Without sufficient capacity and resources, any change effort is much less likely to be successful. It is absolutely imperative that educators be provided the tools, skills, and support via resources to implement collective leadership. Long-standing hierarchical structures are embedded in our understanding of how schools operate. When asked to operate differently, educators must be provided a different set of tools and must be supported in learning how to use them. Just as a mechanic who used to be a truck driver needs new tools and skills for a different job, educators also need new tools and skills to do school differently. They need the time, space, opportunity, and training to know how to operate differently.

Goal: Establish a theory of action

What do you need to learn from staff at your school about the capacity and resources needed to implement collective leadership? What questions do you have about how capacity and resources for collective leadership look? How will answers to those questions help you create a plan for providing what educators need to be successful?

• Think of a time when your team (or you) had the capacity and resources that you needed to do something well.
  • What skills and capacities did your team need to be able to implement something new?
  • What resources did you need?
  • What capacities and resources did your team think you needed at the beginning but weren’t actually necessary?
  • What guardrails and/or safety nets were in place?
  • To what degree do the current capacities and resources at your school align with what was described above?
• What strengths and/or assets emerged from the questions above?
• What opportunities for growth or areas of need emerged from the responses to question #1?
• How might building capacity and providing resources help your efforts to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• What is one actionable next step that your school can take to move towards or increase your school’s capacity and resources for collective leadership?
• What is your theory of action for how your team can create or strengthen capacity and resources for collective leadership?

Important Tasks

Review the information and discussion questions in this document to see and consider how to build leadership capacity among the staff at your school. Identify ideas from the discussion guide that your team may want to adopt or adapt to your context. Discuss additional opportunities that currently exist to build capacity at your school.

Identify the currently existing capacity and resources available to implement collective leadership. Discuss ways that your team might leverage current capacity and resources. Identify opportunities to restructure or redesign the ways that capacity and resources are currently being used.

Determine what additional capacity and resources your team may need to begin implementing collective leadership. Identify potential sources and opportunities for securing additional resources and building additional capacity for collective leadership implementation.

Develop your team’s theory of action about how to move forward from where you are to where you would like to be relative to building capacity and providing resources.

Connect and collaborate
Teams frequently struggle with developing a theory of action. Remember to articulate your goal and identify the problem of practice before developing the theory of action.

Need help crafting a theory of action? 

2. Designing your team’s how

Are you ready to create a plan for how your team will build capacity and provide resources for collective leadership? Remember that having sufficient capacity and resources will help your team avoid frustration.

Goal: Prepare to lead action

Are you ready to create a plan for how your team will increase capacity and provide resources for collective leadership? Remember that building capacity and providing adequate resources will help your team avoid frustration.

What will you take on first? Who should be involved? What is the timeline?  How will you measure success?

Big Questions

• What does the information collected thus far tell your team about the best next step toward increasing capacity and resources for collective leadership?
• How will your team go about building capacity and securing resources for collective leadership?
• What are the minimum levels of capacity and resources needed to get started? How would ideal levels look?
• What has already been tried? What was learned from that effort?
• Who else needs to be involved?
• How will your team know when you have made progress?

Important Tasks

Complete the Purpose Map to set the vision, identify the people who should be involved, and create the initial action plan for testing your team’s idea(s). For ideas about how to design and implement a pilot, check out the structure and resources in this micro-credential or contact CTQ.

Complete and use an action timeline tool like the one below to clearly articulate what will get done by whom and how the team will know that you have been successful.

Is your team interested in support for using these tools? Do you need hard copies? We can also customize the tools for your school or district.

3. Implementing your team’s plan

Now that the team has articulated the why and how for building capacity and securing resources, it is time to implement your team’s plan.

What does your team need to do to implement and learn from the plan?

The implementation phase of the work is about much more than carrying out the components of your team’s plan. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the plan, data must be collected for evaluation. It’s helpful to remind yourself of your original goals as you prepare to gather the feedback needed.

Goal: Launch your team’s test, gather data, and study the results

Once the test is underway, gather the data needed to answer your burning questions. Analyze the data and results of your initiative. Decide whether your team wants to revisit adequate resources or move on to another condition.

Big Questions

• How will your team know it is making progress? How will your team define success?
• What feedback is needed from those involved in this effort to ensure that the processes you have developed are having the impact you intended?
• How will that feedback be used to make adjustments along the way?

Important Tasks

Implement the plan for how your school will build capacity and secure resources for collective leadership.

Collect data from participants about progress made relative to building capacity for collective leadership.

Create a visible and formal means by which to share the resources that are being used to grow collective leadership.

Consider how your school might leverage the additional capacity that was developed as a result of your efforts. How will your team continue to grow these efforts?

Want assistance measuring the impact of your efforts?

CTQ’s tools

Understanding your team’s why
1. Establishing a Theory of Action

Designing your team’s how
2. Purpose map
3. Action timeline

Implementing your team’s plan
5. Impact assessment

If you don’t allow people to contribute, to offer their point of view, or to criticize what has been put out before them, then they can never like you. And you can never build that instrument of collective leadership.

– Nelson Mandela

Today’s public schools face a number of challenges — including diminishing resources, increasing academic expectations, and growing proportions of students living in poverty, with trauma, and even without homes. The job of leading a school, as reported by principals themselves, has become too complex.

The concept of distributed leadership in education has been around for many decades and often is used reverentially by academics in the field. Yet, the ill-defined concept, even when applied, typically translates to principals finding a few teachers to whom they delegate instructional or administrative responsibilities. Deeper learning outcomes for every student mean schools need to look and act differently: student-centered instruction and personalized, competency-based learning are needed in order to serve the whole child.  

This kind of schooling demands a new kind of leadership and cannot rest on a few individual administrators or even a handful of assistants and teacher leaders. It requires collective leadership — where teachers and administrators together inform, inspire, and influence colleagues, parents, policymakers, and other stakeholders to improve student outcomes.

Let’s be clear. Collective leadership is not another K-12 program. It is a process that taps into the unique talents and skills of everyone in the school, district, or charter. In schools, collective leadership begins (but does not end) with educators (teachers and administrators) leading together, recognizing that long-term success rests on diverse perspectives and contributions. 
As Jon Eckert explains in his recent book, in distributed leadership clear boundaries between leaders and followers are always intact. In collective leadership those boundaries become murky — with poignancy and power in this murkiness.  Recent research continues to highlight the power of peer learning, teacher leaders, and collective leadership in improving student achievement. And related research highlights how teaching expertise is more likely to spread among teachers on the basis of relational, not positional, leadership.

Collective leadership is adaptive work.

It is common in education to implement technical solutions in an attempt to solve adaptive challenges. Technical fixes are those that apply current knowledge to a clearly defined challenge and do not require new knowledge or a different mindset, whereas adaptive challenges are those that need new knowledge to solve and require those who are applying those solutions to behave in new and different ways. Watch the video below to learn more about technical vs. adaptive change.

While there are technical aspects to making the shift to collective leadership (setting schedules, determining compensation, articulating job responsibilities), the effectiveness of the shift to collective leadership relies on managing the adaptive changes associated with this work. Simply redistributing responsibilities to different people without considering the new knowledge and skills that are needed, as well as the impact on the educator’s role and identity, is not likely to work. In order for collective leadership to take root and thrive, administrators, teachers, and all other members of the school community need to learn a new way of being. And this is what makes the shift to collective leadership primarily an adaptive one.

1. Understanding your team’s why

The work of leading schools is too complex for any individual educator to do alone. In fact, even in 2013 more than 75 percent of administrators agreed or strongly agreed that the job of leading a school has become too complex to be done well by any one person. Not unlike what has happened to teachers, administrators have had additional roles and responsibilities layered onto their roles. Most school administrators are expected to carry out all of the responsibilities of chief executive officers, chief operating officers, chief financial officers, chief strategy officers, personnel directors, wellness directors, community liaisons, marketing directors, and let’s not forget — instructional leaders.

In addition to administrators’ jobs becoming undoable, one in four teachers is interested in leading improvement efforts within their schools. Teachers are one of the largest college-educated workforces in the United States, with a large percentage holding advanced degrees. Yet, the job of teacher as most conceive it is rarely structured to leverage the intellectual and leadership capacities of the teaching professionals. Redesigning the way that teacher and administrator work is structured so that all educators (teachers and administrators) can help collectively lead school improvement efforts is a better means by which to leverage all of the human resources in a school.

The most significant driver for collective leadership should be that the world we live in and the one we are preparing our students for no longer operate with industrial structures that still exist in our schools. If we are indeed supporting our youth to be prepared for and actively engaged in our society, then school structures need to more closely model the collaborative, creative, and solutions-oriented world in which they live.

Goal: Establish a theory of action

To make the shift towards collective leadership, a team of stakeholders should develop a compelling why for engaging in this work. That why, like all of the other work outlined in this playbook, should be collectively developed by members of the school community. During this initial conversation, the team needs to identify its core beliefs about why collective leadership is important and how it will benefit students, teachers, and any other individuals impacted by this shift.

• What does your team believe about the currently existing teaching talent within your school? To what extent does your team believe that teachers can also lead school improvement efforts?
• What does your team believe about the collective capacity of the adults in your school to meet the needs of students in your care?
• What does your team believe about the capacity of students to learn when all of the adults involved in their schooling take ownership of that learning?
• Why would you let go of traditional top-down structures? What will you say no to so that you can make space for collective leadership? What will you say yes to?
• When collective leadership is fully implemented in your school, how will things be different? What will be better?
• What is your team’s theory of action for how collective leadership can impact your school?

Important Tasks

View Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action. Discuss how the key concepts from this video can be applied to your collective leadership efforts.

Identify a core group of stakeholders that will be charged with identifying the initial why for collective leadership implementation.  Develop and implement a process for the collective creation of the why for collective leadership implementation in your context. Be sure that the process reflects collective leadership in both its development and execution.

Create a plan for how the why for collective leadership will be communicated across the school community. What process might your team use to create ownership of the shift to collective leadership, rather than requiring buy-in?

Complete the graphic organizer below to help your team set the vision for collective leadership implementation. What should people think, see, say, hear, and feel when collective leadership is fully implemented in your school?

Create your team’s theory of action about how collective leadership implementation will impact your school.

Connect and collaborate
Teams frequently struggle with developing a theory of action. Remember to articulate your goal and identify the problem of practice before developing the theory of action.

Need help crafting a theory of action? We would love to support your efforts.

2. Designing your how

Goal: Prepare to lead action

Are you ready to create a plan for how your team will begin to implement collective leadership? Remember that clearly articulating your team’s why and including others in the co-creation of the process will create a sense of ownership.

What will you take on first? Who should be involved? What is the timeline?  How will you measure success?

Big Questions

• How will stakeholders at the school be engaged in the development of implementation plans for collective leadership? How might collective leadership be modeled during the development process?
• How will educators be supported to learn the new knowledge and skills needed to effectively implement the adaptive shift to collective leadership?
• How might school community members’ (staff, students, families, etc.) behaviors and roles be expected to change as a result of the implementation of collective leadership?
• How will the school community collectively develop the anticipated and expected behavioral shifts together?

Important Tasks

Deepen your team’s understanding of technical vs. adaptive change.  Apply knowledge gained about adaptive vs. technical change to the school setting by clearly identifying the new knowledge, skills, and roles that will be needed to implement collective leadership.

Discuss what will change as a result of collective leadership implementation. What will teachers and administrators do differently individually and collectively? Anticipate where challenges might arise as a result of this shift and create agreements about how those challenges will be addressed.

Create a plan for how you will approach working on the different system conditions. Decide the order in which you will work on the conditions. Set aside focused, intentional time within your current structures to work on these guides.

Review the resources found in the Planning a pilot micro-credential as your team prepares to work through the other guides in this playbook. The processes from this micro-credential can be applied as you begin piloting ideas for strengthening each of the collective leadership conditions.

Is your team interested in support for preparing to lead the shift toward collective leadership? Feel free to reach out to us for support.

3. Implementing your plan

Now that the team has articulated the why and how for the move toward collective leadership, it is time to implement your team’s plan.

We have found that school teams that experience the most success as they move to collective leadership structures are those that ground their work in specific problems of practice. Collective leadership in and of itself will not make a difference in your school unless it is used to address a specific need within your school. The specific needs and/or problems of practice serve as your what for collective leadership.

Some examples of needs or challenges include:

• How do we build meaningful, productive relationships with every student and every colleague?
• How do we increase teacher efficacy and engagement in every teacher in order to increase student achievement?
• How can we help teachers feel confident to share what they are doing well and reflect on their practice collaboratively?
• How might we implement effective collaboration strategies to align to the Profile of an SC Graduate?
• How do we facilitate the spread of expert practice across the faculty at our school?
• How do we implement teacher-led professional learning that balances autonomy with structure?

Once the team has identified a problem of practice that can be addressed through collective leadership, then the team can go about designing the what of collective leadership roles and responsibilities.

What does your team need to do to implement and learn from the plan?

The implementation phase of the work is about much more than carrying out the components of your team’s plan. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the plan, data must be collected for evaluation. It’s helpful to remind yourself of your original goals as you prepare to gather the feedback needed.

Goal: Launch your team’s test, gather data, and study the results

Once the initiative is underway, gather the data needed to answer your burning questions. Analyze the data and results of your initiative. Decide whether your team wants to revisit the condition your team has been working on or move on to another condition.

Big Questions

• What challenge is the school seeking to address through the implementation of collective leadership? What need is your team trying to meet through collective leadership?
• What benefits does your team intend to see for educators and students?
• Are there other intended beneficiaries of collective leadership? If so, who are they, and what benefits does your team intend?

Important Tasks

Identify a small pilot group to start testing the implementation of collective leadership structures. We strongly suggest that the test group be structured so that educators opt in. Mandating collective leadership through top-down directives is not likely to create the conditions for successful implementation.

Have the test group identify a challenge or problem of practice to be addressed via collective leadership implementation.

Now that you have the why, how, and what for shifting to collective leadership, let’s take a deeper dive into the seven conditions that support collective leadership by initiating work on one of the strategy guides.

Want help creating and implementing a plan for collective leadership?

1. Understanding your team’s why 

Administrative support can make or break any change efforts in a school or district. Administrative support is so important that it is the gatekeeper to no fewer than three other conditions (vision and strategy, capacity and resources, and enabling work structures) and plays a key role in the other three conditions (vision and strategy, shared influence, and orientation to improve).[link to each of these sections] As your team moves toward a more collectively led model, it is crucial that you determine the current level of visible and formal support and then develop a plan for how to strengthen the support that already exists.

Goal: Establish a theory of action

What do you need to learn from the staff at the school about the visible and formal supports needed to implement collective leadership? What questions do you have about how visible and formal supports for collective leadership look?, How will answers to these questions help you create a plan for how administration can be supportive?

• Think of a time when you felt well supported in your work.
  • What formal and informal structures were in place?
  • What freedoms and flexibilities were you given?
  • What limitations were in place?
  • What was done to create a safe space to try new things and learn from “failure”?
  • To what degree does the current administration at your school align with what was described in a through d above?
• Frequently, administration and teacher perceptions of the level of supportiveness may not be aligned with each other. How will your team go about checking administrator and teacher perceptions of supportiveness? If working in a context other than a single school, how will your team go about checking perceptions of supportiveness of the involved parties?
• For your context, how would visible and formal supportive administration for collective leadership look, sound, and feel? What might administrators do or not do that signals visible and formal support for collective leadership?
• How might strengthening administrative support help your efforts to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• What is your theory of action for how your team can create or strengthen visible and formal administrative support for collective leadership?

Important Tasks

Do an Internet search for images of traditional vs. collaborative leadership. What do you notice? How do these images reflect your current reality of school leadership? How do these images reflect your ideal perception of collective leadership?

Reflect on the strengths and challenges related to supportive administration that were identified in your team’s initial self- assessment at the beginning of this guide. Discuss ways that your team might help to amplify the strengths and address the challenges identified in the self assessment.

Consider ways that teachers can help administrators be more supportive. Ideas include willingness to design and be part of solutions to challenges that come from implementing collective leadership; helping with budget prioritization; and willingness to take responsibility for results when afforded the opportunity to design solutions.

Create a vision for how visible and supportive administration might look and assess how well aligned your school is to the vision. From that vision determine what the biggest challenge or barrier is to developing or strengthening administrative support. Be sure to focus on challenges and barriers that are within your realm of control.

Discuss why that barrier exists. Brainstorm ideas for how your team might address that barrier. Select one approach to addressing the barrier. Your team will use this to create a theory of action about how addressing that barrier will impact the school.

Create your team’s theory of action about how to move forward from where you are to where you would like to be relative to supportive administration.

Connect and collaborate
Teams frequently struggle with developing a theory of action. Remember to articulate your goal and identify the problem of practice before developing the theory of action.

Need help crafting a theory of action?

2. Designing your team’s how

Are you ready to create a plan for how your team will strengthen the condition of supportive administration for collective leadership? Remember that having supportive administration will help your team avoid inaction.

Goal: Prepare to lead action

Are you ready to create a plan for how your team will strengthen visible and formal administrator support for collective leadership? Remember that having visible and formal support from administration will help your team avoid inaction.

What will you take on first? Who should be involved? What is the timeline?  How will you measure success?

Big Questions

• What does the information your team collected and your theory of action about an ideal state of supportive administration tell your team about the best next step toward increasing administrator support for collective leadership? What one thing can your team test to strengthen administrator support for collective leadership?
• How might your team be explicit and transparent about the shifts that are being made to create a more supportive administration?
• How will the team support administrators as they become vulnerable, relinquish some control, and work toward increasing their support of collective leadership?
• What is your timeline for this first effort?
• How will your team know when you have made progress?

Important Tasks

Use the discussion questions from this guide to inform how your team about what could be tested that might increase visible and formal administration support of collective leadership.

Complete the Purpose Map to set the vision, identify the people who should be involved, and create the initial action plan for testing your team’s idea. For ideas about how to design and implement a pilot, check out the structure and resources in this micro-credential or contact CTQ.

Complete and use an action timeline tool like the one below to clearly articulate what will get done by whom and how the team will know that you have been successful.

Is your team interested in support for using these tools? Do you need hard copies? 

3. Implementing your team’s plan

Now that the team has articulated the why and how for the supportive administration, it is time to implement your team’s plan.

What does your team need to do to implement and learn from the plan?

The implementation phase of the work is about much more than carrying out the components of your team’s plan. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the plan, data must be collected for evaluation. It’s helpful to remind yourself of your original goals as you prepare to gather the feedback needed.

Goal: Launch your team’s test, gather data, and study the results

Once the test is underway, gather the data needed to answer your burning questions. Analyze the data and results of your initiative. Decide whether your team wants to revisit supportive administration or move on to another condition.

Big Questions 

• How will your team create and maintain a safe environment for those involved to provide honest feedback?
• What feedback is needed from those involved in this effort? How will your team know when you’re making progress?
• How will that feedback be used to make adjustments along the way?

Important Tasks

Implement the plan for how your school will strengthen visible and formal administrator support for collective leadership.

Collect data from participants about progress made relative to increasing administrator support for collective leadership.

Create a process for how your team will respond to the data/feedback provided.

Want assistance measuring the impact of your team’s efforts?

CTQ’s tools

Understanding your team’s why
1. Establishing a Theory of Action

Designing your team’s how
2. Purpose map
3. Action timeline

Implementing your team’s plan
5. Impact assessment

1. Understanding your team’s why

The vision and strategy for collective leadership should be collectively developed by members of the school community. That vision and strategy should be based on your team’s core beliefs about why collective leadership is important and what it can accomplish for students, teachers, and any other individuals impacted by this shift (see the Overview discussion starter).

Goal: Establish a theory of action

What do you need for the staff at the school to know about the associated vision and strategy for collective leadership? In other words, what burning questions might they have about the vision and strategy for collective leadership, and how will answers to those questions help you develop the vision and strategy in your context?

• Why are you letting go of traditional top-down structures? What are you saying no to in terms of vision and strategy for collective leadership?
• What do you believe about the collective capacity of the adults in your school to meet the needs of your students? What is your vision for how the collective capacity of educators can lead and be strategically deployed?
• What do you believe about the capacity of students to learn when all of the adults involved in their schooling take ownership of that learning? What is your vision for how student learning will improve when all of the adults collectively own student outcomes?
• When collective leadership is fully implemented in your school, what will be different? What will be better?
• How might collective leadership support help your efforts to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• What is your theory of action for how collective leadership can impact outcomes at your school?

Important Tasks

Assemble a team that represents multiple diverse stakeholders from within your school community.
Be sure to include representatives of those who will be charged with carrying out the vision and strategy for collective leadership. You may also want to include representatives of those who will be impacted by the shift toward collective leadership.

Develop a process for collective creation of the vision and strategy for collective leadership implementation.
The team selection and development process reflect the beliefs stated in response to the questions above. For instance, if you state that you believe in the collective capacity and leadership of teachers, implementing a top-down mandate for how the process is developed does not align with stated beliefs.

Create your team’s theory of action about how a vision and strategy will support efforts to implement collective leadership in your school.

Connect and collaborate
Teams frequently struggle with developing a theory of action. Remember to articulate your goal and identify the problem of practice before developing the theory of action.

Need help crafting a theory of action?

2. Designing your team’s how

Nearly every school has a vision statement that articulates what that school community intends for their learners. A vision statement is a view into the future that describes a school’s inspirational, long-term plan for what they’ll be able to accomplish and the students they will serve. It is frequently out of reach for now but attainable over time. The vision statement gives everyone a description of what they’re working toward and should be used to guide all decisions about how the school is structured and how it operates, which leads to strategy. The strategy should be developed to ensure that the vision becomes a reality.

As schools begin to shift toward a more collective leadership model, it is important that the community collectively develop a vision and strategy for that shift. Confusion can be avoided if the vision and strategy are collectively developed because the people charged with implementing the vision and strategy are the ones who developed it.

Goal: Prepare to lead action

Who will participate in the investigation, exploration, study, or pilot? What is the timeline? What support will be provided?

Big Questions

• How will the staff at your school engage in the development of a vision and strategy for collective leadership? How might the process developed model collective leadership?
• How will implementing collective leadership serve the vision that you have for your students? Will it allow you to better meet their needs? Will it model the ways that they will be working in the future?
• How will the vision and strategy be communicated to the larger school community?
• How might school community members’ (staff, students, families, etc.) behaviors be expected to change as a result of implementation of this vision for collective leadership?
• How will the school community collectively develop the anticipated and expected behavioral shifts together?

Important Tasks

Charge the team with defining a vision and strategy for collective leadership implementation. The vision and strategy should be built from the contributions and input of all impacted constituents and align with the beliefs articulated in the big questions above.

Identify specific strategies and processes that will integrate the use of the vision and strategy into the everyday life of the school community. Read and use the questions in this document to inform your team’s decisions about creating and actualizing the vision and strategy for collective leadership.

Create a plan for communicating the vision and strategy to the larger school community. Structure the communications plan so that it engages the school community in the co-ownership of the vision and strategy. Remember that people will own what they help to create so be explicit about what input was gathered from constituents and how that input is reflected in the vision and strategy.

Complete the Purpose Map to set the vision, identify the people who should be involved, and create the initial action plan for testing your team’s idea. For ideas about how to design and implement a pilot, check out the structure and resources in this micro-credential or contact CTQ.

Complete and use an action timeline tool like the one below to clearly articulate what will get done by whom and how the team will know that you have been successful.

3. Implementing your team’s plan

Now that the team has articulated the why and how for developing the vision and strategy for implementing collective leadership in your school, it is time to implement your team’s plan. Because the shift to collective leadership is a change in the fundamental way that work gets done, we encourage your team to integrate this plan into any other strategic planning process that takes place in your school. We have also provided additional tools in case that is not feasible right now.

What does your team need to do to implement and learn from the plan?

The implementation phase of the work is about much more than carrying out the components of your team’s plan. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the plan, data must be collected for evaluation. It’s helpful to remind yourself of your original goals as you prepare to gather the feedback needed.

Goal: Launch your team’s test, gather data, and study the results

Once the test is underway, gather the data needed to answer your burning questions. Analyze the data and results of your initiative. Decide whether your team wants to revisit vision and strategy or move on to another condition.

Big Questions

• What is the timeline for vision and strategy development? When will work start? How will the team know when their work is done? Who will be responsible for which tasks?
• What resources (time, people, and money) will the team need to be able to do their work?
• What tools will the team use or need to gather input from all stakeholders (educators, students, parents, school staff, etc.)?
• What constraints will the team have? What autonomies?

Important Task

Implement the plan for how your school will define, communicate, and use the vision and strategy for collective leadership implementation. Be sure to articulate what success will look like and then track progress relative to the definition of success.

Want assistance measuring the impact of your efforts?

CTQ’s tools

Understanding your team’s why
1. Establishing a Theory of Action

Designing your team’s how
2. Purpose map
3. Action timeline

Implementing your team’s plan
5. Impact assessment