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Andy Hargreaves, Alan Boyle & Alma Harris UPLIFTING LEADERSHIP—How Organizations, Teams and Communities Raise Performance

Author's Thoughts:

Uplifting leadership is based on a seven year study from a diverse group of global communities including leaders from business, sports and schools. These author's extensive research defines the practices of an "uplifting leader" in action. They have what "it" takes to make "it" happen without quickly racing or pushing people or by pursuing milestones to be on top. "What the organizations and leaders we studied did do was to engage in a process of uplifting leadership involving six interrelated factors that composed a journey to improbable success" (pg.9).

Uplifting leaders:

• Dream with Determination in a moral fight for what they believe.
• Demonstrate Creativity and Counter-Flow to think in and outside of the box.
• Collaborate with Competitors to share innovation and to propel everyone forward.
• Push and Pull to build and develop shared ownership and responsibility.
• Measure what is Meaningful and what matters.
• Sustain Success for now and in the future.

Uplifting leadership:

• "Is the beating heart of effective leadership" (p. 3).
• "Is a collective force that leaders create together to raise everyone's prospects" (p. 4).
• "Is an "insatiable desire to learn along with the uncompromising demand for success (p. 6).

Uplifting leadership is a direction and a process for "enduring achievement" (pg. 7).

My Thoughts:

This is hard work to harness and harvest ones dreams. It requires an Uplifting Leaders to:

• Encouraging creativity but with a mindset to be innovative around what we know research tell us works.
• Engage in on-going collaborative conversations around what we can do together, not what we have no control over.
• Pushing forward with a belief in those doing the work and pulling them forward towards new thinking.
• Measure what matters most relentlessly and revisit it frequently to make our impact meaningful.
• Develop teachers as leaders to uplift all of our team leadership capacity.

Uplifting leaders make the dream into a sustainable reality for our students now and the ones who will join us.