Blending Leadership

Blending Leadership

by Stephen J. Valentine, Dr. Reshan Richards, Dr. Brad Ovenell-Carter
Released July 2016
Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9781119222057

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Book description

An organizational approach to more effective school leadership, online and off

“Leadership, especially in a school setting, is too important to be merely intuitive. In this generous book, Steve and Reshan outline a new way of thinking for a new kind of leader. Recommended.”

Seth Godin, author of What to Do When it’s Your Turn (and it’s Always Your Turn)

"If you're a school leader, Blending Leadership is the book you need to guide your thinking in today's increasingly networked educational environment. Your students and staff may have varying degrees of comfort with technology, but this book will give you solid guidance on how to lead them both online and offline and chart a path to the future.”

Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive

Blending Leadership provides all school leaders with a unique approach to utilizing technology for more effective learning and leadership. As the online aspects of schools become just as important as their brick-and-mortar counterparts, leaders must be as effective screen-to-screen as they are face-to-face. Drawing from research, experience, and real-world examples, this book explores and unpacks six core beliefs necessary for the blended leader to succeed.

Between email, websites, apps, updates, tweets, attachments, infographics, YouTube, and unceasing notifications, most people are inundated with digital detritus, and they either grow to ignore it or get swept under it. Effective blended leaders see these distractions as spurs to action, models, test cases, remixable commodities, and learning opportunities. Blending Leadership gives you the perspective you need to excel and the knowledge to leverage the tools at your disposal.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Praise for Blending Leadership
  3. Preface
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. About the Authors & the Artist
    1. Authors
    2. Artist
  6. Introduction
    1. The Case for Blended Leadership
    2. Leadership Anthropology and Learning: Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Forward
    3. Ahmad's Magic Card Case
    4. Why We Need a Core Set of Beliefs, Especially in The Digital World
  7. Belief #1: Blended Leaders Engage with Thought Leaders and Engage as Thought Leaders
    1. Crotty's Wrestling
    2. Broader Entanglements
    3. Walking the Oregon Trail
    4. Networking, But Not That Kind
    5. Pyramid Searching For the Greater Good
    6. Our Learning Process Made Visible
    7. A Proof of Concept
  8. Belief #2: Blended Leaders Design Spaces and Care for Spaces
    1. IKEA Boxes and Garbage Cans
    2. Something Everyone Can Use
    3. A Platform for Professional Growth
    4. Monitoring Successful Ventures
    5. Managing by Surfing Around
    6. Where the Fish Are
    7. Beyond Designing and Caring for Spaces
  9. Belief #3: Blended Leaders Reject Insularity and Embrace Sharing
    1. Riding With Tom Nammack
    2. The Business Case for Humility or Q + BA = (I)2
    3. Asking Old Questions to New People
    4. Building Small Public Work Groups
    5. Building, and Contributing to, Large Public Work Groups
    6. Public Troubleshooting
    7. Troublefinding and Troubleshooting
    8. Bug Bounty
    9. Learn to Share, Mix to Distribute
    10. Sharing and Not Sharing
    11. Blended Leading With Digests
    12. Blended Leading with Templates
    13. Saving Our Assets
    14. Mindful Organizing, Mindful Organizations
  10. Belief #4: Blended Leaders Challenge Meeting Structures and Change Meeting Structures
    1. “Too Small to Do Anything Hard in”
    2. What to Do About Meetingocrity?
    3. Face-to-Face (F2F) Meetings
    4. The Dance of the Blended Leader
  11. Belief #5: Blended Leaders Articulate a Mission and Advance a Mission
    1. If a Mission Falls in yhe Woods
    2. Between Two FERNS and WTF
    3. Dad's Old Radio—for the Masses
    4. Dr. Gray Smith Reaches for the Pneumatic Nail Gun
    5. Bill Stites's Social Numbers
    6. Binge Watching with Jennie Magiera
    7. Microstorytelling: Working More Versus Working Different
    8. Measuring Faith to Have Faith
    9. Cautionary Tale #1: If you Don’t Do IT, Someone Else Might
    10. Cautionary Tale #2: Playing the Long Game
  12. Belief #6: Blended Leaders Keep the Off-ramp Open and Use It Frequently
    1. Non-doing Space
    2. Highways and Off-ramps
    3. Leading Others As You Were Led
    4. The Habit of Wearing your Habits Lightly
    5. Teach Others to Wear Their Habits Lightly, Too
    6. SAMR As the Anti-Habit Habit
    7. The Moral Component
    8. Talking With the Tech Rabbi
  13. Conclusion
    1. Contexts
    2. Limits
    3. Spread the Screwdrivers Around
    4. Off Role
    5. Profiles in Exactly That
    6. “Both–and”
  14. References
  15. Index
  16. End User License Agreement

Product information

  • Title: Blending Leadership
  • Author(s): Stephen J. Valentine, Dr. Reshan Richards, Dr. Brad Ovenell-Carter
  • Release date: July 2016
  • Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
  • ISBN: 9781119222057