The Noble School Leader. Matthew Taylor

and adopting a teaching persona—a kind of performance—that often disconnected them from their students. I was seeing teacher coaches who excelled at teaching instructional skills but were often stuck in a leadership persona that disconnected them from teachers and students. And I was seeing principals who, having been promoted because they were really good at teaching instructional moves to teachers, struggling mightily and sometimes failing miserably with the real, messy human aspects of their jobs.

      Meanwhile, I was getting to know district schools that were happy, inclusive places for kids and adults. The challenge many of them faced, however, was that large percentages of their students were significantly underperforming academically. Between district and charter schools, I was experiencing a wide range of learning communities that fell on a continuum between two poles: on one end happy yet underperforming and enabling, and on the other negative, controlling, yet (relatively) academically high performing. I saw very few schools that were hitting the sweet spot where inclusive, nurturing cultures and high academic performance were embodied simultaneously.

      A year into this work, I found myself questioning my beliefs and my training. I loved AF, our people, and our mission. I deeply believed in the direction that our curriculum and pedagogy was heading. And yet some of our schools were unhappy places for adults and kids.

      I was in the midst of this internal struggle when I discovered Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (EI) theory. To support my principals‐in‐residence as a coach, I enrolled in an executive coaching training course at the Teleos Leadership Institute that was grounded in EI. The training opened my eyes to both the emotional conditions necessary for learning and the personal leadership competencies it takes to create those conditions. I came to understand the extent to which learning is inherently emotional and deeply personal. The competencies of EI gave me a language to make sense of what I was experiencing.

      My epiphany also sent me straight into therapy. The Teleos coaching experience awoke parts of myself that I had been neglecting for years. I realized that as a school leader and trainer of school leaders, the intensity of my work, my total immersion in it, and the technical way I had learned to approach it had led me to disconnect from myself and many of the people I loved. Focusing on my own self‐awareness and self‐management led me to experience transformative personal growth. It changed the way I show up as a leader and also as a person, and I know that I am still evolving because of it.

Learning is much more dependent on the emotional conditions we create than our sector's collective approach to teaching and learning suggests that we believe. For people to experience deeply transformative learning, we need the right combination of two elements: personal connection and challenge. The more challenging the learning, the more the personal connection matters. Each person requires a different balance of these elements, and to get the right balance, we have to know a person well enough to understand where they are and what they need. To create these conditions is human work, and it takes emotional intelligence.

      I returned from Teleos seeing opportunities to apply this new EI language and understanding everywhere I looked. I came to see the conditions we are currently creating by default in our schools as an emergency. Our overreliance on data‐driven systems and protocols leaves adults and children in our schools feeling less connected and experiencing less care from one another. Classrooms and adult teams are less inclusive of the identities people bring to them. The structures and pace of the work take away the space and time that the adults need to be able to ground themselves in their personal WHY for doing the work, and to be able to be fully present as themselves in the moment. I find myself working with a generation of highly technical school leaders in highly structured schools who are deeply unhappy and feeling unsuccessful in their work. Many feel stuck and cannot figure out why. Others know why they are stuck but feel powerless to change within their existing system. Most of them wonder how long they will be able to last as school leaders.

      With the perspective gained through the EI coaching, I felt called to advocate for change. Doug McCurry and Dacia Toll, AF's co‐CEOs, embraced this work and created the opportunity to share it with our AF principals through cohort training and one‐on‐one leader coaching. I had the privilege of making my passion for EI leadership my day job for seven years. During that time, I trained and coached many of the leaders in our organization. It was through that work that my colleagues and I created the tools for the practical application of EI theory. We discovered that the training and coaching is relevant for leaders at every level of seniority. Actually, there is usually a greater need for this social–emotional approach to development the higher one travels up the leadership pipeline. We also found that, unless the leaders at the top of an organization are doing their own social–emotional work, it is not likely that others down the chain will be able to do so effectively.

Since starting the Noble Story Group, I have worked with hundreds of leaders in over 60 school and nonprofit organizations across the country. This work has confirmed in very powerful ways that what I experienced as a teacher and school leader is playing out all across the education sector and beyond. A lopsided focus on building and measuring technical skills has created organizational conditions that are not conducive to people—children and adults—reaching their full potential. All of my clients share the same top three organizational challenges: people experiencing inequitable and exclusive conditions across lines of difference; teachers and leaders feeling that their work is not sustainable over time; and leaders not knowing how to challenge people while staying personally connected. Everyone I work with feels a deep desire to change. Harnessing EI has proven to be an effective way to support them.

      Science can broadly be separated into the theoretical and applied. EI theory is not new. What we have done is develop a practical, applied approach to using EI in leadership development. This means helping leaders build the awareness of self and others and generate effective self‐management and relational strategies to become stronger adaptive leaders. Over time, clear patterns have emerged about the internal obstacles—the self‐limiting mindsets—that get in the way of this growth. I have found that there are archetypical self‐limiting mindsets that leaders at all levels of leadership must contend with inside of themselves to reach their potential. This book describes these seven self‐limiting mindsets in detail and offers an approach to enable leaders to transcend them.

      I wrote this book for school leaders and for their managers who are looking for ways to overcome their brick walls. I introduce readers to the seven most common school leader self‐limiting mindsets that have emerged as patterns of behavior as I have applied it over the last decade. Leaders will determine which of the seven self‐limiting mindsets hold them back and develop their own self‐management strategies to overcome them. For leaders, this is a self‐guided tour “below the surface” to build self‐awareness about both self‐limiting mindsets that get in their way and the source of their personal power that will support them to build new mindsets and behaviors. For managers it is a field guide for supporting leaders “below the surface” and creating the learning conditions that make that work possible. Adopting its language and approaches with fidelity can jump‐start transformative learning at every level of a learning community.

      I know school leaders. We choose this work because of our personal commitments to children and to making this world a better place. I hope that you chose this book to become a better leader. I hope your personal mission and commitment to students helps you stick with the deep personal learning you will be asked to take on in these pages. The learning below the surface will make you a better human being for your students, your team, your family, and the rest of the world.

Acknowledgments

      I would like to thank Delea Deane‐Allen, Brian Behrman, and my editor Adaobi Obi Tulton for their wise feedback through the writing process; my family and my Noble Story Group partners for their unflagging support; and most of all my dad for editing every inch of this book with his writer's eagle eye.

About the Author

      Matt Taylor is the founder and CEO of The Noble Story Group, a consulting group that leverages emotional intelligence to unleash leadership potential