Leadership Skills for the 21Leadership Skills for the 21stst Century Century

Ray McNultyRay McNultyInternational Center for Leadership in Education

Ray@leadered.com

“Dilemmas Faced in Education”

Iowa

Three Themes

1. Opening thoughts

2. Skills for 21st Century Leaders

3. Ray’s Leadership Lessons

2018Dreams of the children

we have

Success to significance

Thoughts

• Rigor

• Relevance

• Relationships

• Relevance

• Relationships

• Rigor

• Relationships

• Relevance

• Rigor

The primary aim of education is not to enable students to do well in

schools or colleges, but to help them do well in the lives they lead outside

of the schools and colleges.

We’ve created false proxies for learning…

• Finishing a course or textbook has come to mean achievement

• Listening to lecture has come to mean understanding

• Getting a high score on a standardized test has come to mean proficiency

Learning should have its roots in..

• Meaning, not just memory

• Engagement, not simply transmission

• Inquiry, not only compliance

• Exploration, not just acquisition

• Personalization, not simply uniformity

• Collaboration, not only competition

• Trust, not fear

So why did you come to this conference?

How will what you learn here change what you do?

Skills for 21st Century Leaders

Essential Skills for 21st Century

• Leadership is Action

• Deliberate Practice

• Deep Understanding of Change (Possibility)

• Innovation (Disruptive Innovation)

• Understanding Our Place in Time and the Bigger Picture

“Leadership is action, not position.”

Donald H. McGannon

In almost every field people begin to learn something quickly and with energy, then more slowly

and then they stop.

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what researchers call “deliberate

practice.” It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance by reaching for

objectives just beyond one’s level of competence.

Change

Jim Collins, Good to Great 2001, p.205

“I am not suggesting that going from good to great is easy….. I am asserting that those who strive to turn good into great find the

process no more painful or exhausting than those who settle for just letting things

wallow along in mind numbing mediocrity.”

THE IMPLEMENTATION DIP….

THE POSSIBILITY CURVE..

Fullan--1990

The difference between cyclical and structural change.

Anything we’re trying to change away from will keep coming back unless we replace it with

something new.

Special Cause vs. Common Cause

Epidemic of Immediacy

• Clock of the Long Now….

Innovation

Some Questions…..

• How did we let ourselves get into the position of needing to re-invent our work?

• Why haven’t we over the years been able to recognize that something hasn’t been working well, and self correct it?

• What would it be like to work in a self correcting system?

Only dead fish swim with the stream all the

time!!!!

We lose 90% of our creativity between the ages of 5 and 7.

Allen Fahden, “Innovation On Demand”

In 1903 the U.S. Congress passed a special bill forbidding the Army to spend any more money on trying out flying machines.

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

Harry Warner, Warner Bros.1927

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Charles H. Duell, Director of the U.S. Patent Office 1939

There is no likelihood man can ever tap the atom.

Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1920

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.

Grover Cleveland, 1905

A Story….

• Not a bad idea, but to earn a grade more than a C+ the idea has to be viable! (Yale Professor)

• Fredrick Smith

• The idea FedEx

Disruptive Innovation

Creates Positive Turbulence

Thoughts

• Roger Bannister

• Honda

• Conestoga Wagon

• Power of Opposites >

The power of the OPPOSITE.

•Black is blackest in a field of white.

•Height is only measured in relation to the ground.

Stove Hot!!!!!

How to be a Creator….

• Outcome: Decide what you want to accomplish.

• Obvious: Determine the strongest beliefs you have about the outcome.

• Opposite: Create a statement (s) contradicting these beliefs.

• Opportunity: Stretch your mind to come up with an idea you’ve never thought before.

• Rules and Regulations

• Budget Constraints

• Union Contracts

• Devil’s Advocate

Understanding Our Place in Time and the Bigger Picture

• Agricultural Age… Farmers

• Industrial Age… Factory Worker

• Informational Age… Knowledge Worker

• Conceptual Age… Creator / Empathizer

Last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of mind:

Computer programmers who crank code

Lawyers who craft contracts

MBA’s who crunch numbers

But the keys to the kingdom are changing….

Three reasons for this…

• Abundance

• Asia

• Automation

#1 Abundance

• Malls, Target, PetsMart, Best Buy,

• Homes, Cars

• Self Storage

• Trash …. USA spends more on trash bags than 90 countries spend on everything

Abundance has produced an ironic result…

Lessened the significance of things because you can get it anywhere.

(no longer enough to create a product that’s reasonably priced and functional)

Products must be more R – Directed

beautiful, unique, meaningful, “aesthetic imperative”

Abundance Elevates R – Directed Thinking

Electric lighting was rare a century ago…

Today it is common place and abundant.

Yet,,,,,

Candles who needs them anymore?

2.4 Billion dollar business a year

#2 ASIA

• Knowledge workers new competition.. India, Philippines, China

• Programmers 70k – 80k are paid what a Taco Bell worker makes

• Chip designers 7k in USA …..1K in India• Aerospace Engineers USA 6K… $650 in

Russia• Accountant USA 5K… $300 in Philippines

#3 Automation

• Last century machines proved they could replace human backs

• This century new technologies are proving they can replace human “left brains”

• Any job that depends on routines is at risk.

• Automation is changing even doctors work.

• Outsource.com

Left hemisphere is sequential, logical and analytical. The Left powered the

Information age. Still necessary, but no longer sufficient.

Right hemisphere is non linear, intuitive and holistic. The Right qualities of

inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness and meaning will power the Conceptual age.

A new age valuing….

• High Concept: the capacity to detect patterns / opportunities to create, to be artistic / emotional beauty and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new.

• High Touch: involves the ability to empathize with others, understand the subtleties of human interaction to find joy and elicit it to others

High Concept / High Touch• GM’s top leader… I see us being in the art

business.• MBA’s becoming the blue collar worker for

the conceptual age.• Graphic designers have increased ten fold

in the last decade.• Since 1970, 30% more people are earning a

living as writers.• More Americans today work in art,

entertainment and design than lawyers, accountants and auditors.

The future belongs to a very different kind of mind..

• Creators and empathizers

• Pattern recognizers

• Meaning makers

• And more……….

Six Essential Aptitudes

• Design - modern version of creating

• Story - communicate

• Symphony - big picture

• Empathy - read emotions

• Play – fun doing it

• Meaning – focus on purpose

Essential Skills for 21st Century

• Leadership is Action

• Deliberate Practice

• Deep Understanding of Change (Possibility)

• Innovation (Disruptive Innovation)

• Understanding Our Place in Time and the Bigger Picture

Five Leadership Lessons

LESSON ONE

Educational institutions tend to be allergic to

conflict.

conflict is dangerousit can threaten friendshipsit can damage relationships

>

But, conflict is the primary engine of creativity and motivation.

So, a new tradition needs to be the norm: Courage to surface conflicts.

LESSON TWO

Communication is in the mind of the recipient.

If you are the leader, people tolerate your ideas, but they act on their own.

>

Here’s a tip, communicate with emotion as well as logic.

Latest research shows that the brain’s limbic system, which controls basic emotions, is more powerful than the brain’s neo cortex, which governs intellect.

LESSON THREELeaders look for and network with other leaders.

Want to make yourself even more effective as a leader? Want to heighten your influence and deepen your impact? Stop playing the role of the Lone Ranger! Look for allies, network with colleagues—and help those people to become better leaders.

LESSON FOURThe culture of change.

Detailed Complexity - determining all the variables in advance. (This is not reality)

Dynamic Complexity – unexpected, unplanned for situations that surface as you implement a change effort. (This is reality)

Senge suggests that those Senge suggests that those unpredictable, unplanned-for unpredictable, unplanned-for factors that seem to get in the factors that seem to get in the way, are in fact not merely way, are in fact not merely things that get in the way, things that get in the way, THEY ARE NORMAL!!!! And THEY ARE NORMAL!!!! And everyone in the system needs to everyone in the system needs to know this.know this.

LESSON FIVE

Most leaders die with their mouths open.

Leaders must know how to listen, and theart of listening is more subtle than mostthink. “Leaders must want to listen.”

>

Great listening is fueled by curiosity. It’s hard to be a great listener if you’re not curious about other people and their ideas. What’s the enemy of curiosity? Grandiosity—the belief that you have all the answers.

CLIP>

“We live in a world of possibilities . . . when we believe it, we’ll see it.”

Three Themes

1. Opening thoughts

2. Skills for 21st Century Leaders

3. Ray’s Leadership Lessons

2018Dreams of the children

we have

Success to significance

Leadership Skills for the 21Leadership Skills for the 21stst Century Century

Ray McNultyRay McNultyInternational Center for Leadership in Education

Ray@leadered.com

“Dilemmas Faced in Education”

Iowa