Top 5 Leadership Moves to Sustain Your Own Growth

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing education landscape, leadership is not just about guiding others — it’s also about personal growth and continuous development. Sustaining your growth as a school leader ensures that you remain effective, adaptive, and resilient. Here are five essential leadership strategies to help you maintain and accelerate your personal and professional growth:

1. Stay Aligned with your Purpose 
Your purpose serves as a guiding compass, enabling you to focus on what truly matters and steer clear of distractions. Aligning with your purpose allows you to make decisions with greater clarity and confidence, reducing stress and uncertainty. Staying anchored to your purpose is also closely tied to professional longevity and job satisfaction. For instance, if your purpose revolves around promoting equitable outcomes for all students, intentionally seek and prioritize opportunities to contribute to that work, even in small ways. By staying true to your purpose, you create a work environment that is meaningful, intentional, and deeply fulfilling.

2. Prioritize Your Well-being
School leadership roles are inherently demanding, with competing priorities, complex challenges, and long hours often being the norm. As a school leader, prioritizing your well-being is essential for maintaining your health, sustaining your effectiveness, and fostering a positive school culture. A critical aspect of this is establishing clear boundaries between work and personal life — and adhering to them. Ask yourself: Do you really need to respond to every email or text in the evening or on weekends? Is it truly necessary to attend every after-school event? In most cases, the answer is no. As author Simon Sinek aptly put it, “The best leaders are those who prioritize their own health and happiness, so they can serve others from a place of strength.”

3. Seek Constructive Feedback
Navigating professional growth without constructive feedback is like embarking on a cross-country road trip without a map or GPS — you might reach a destination, but it likely won’t be where you intended to go. If feedback loops are weak in your organization, take the initiative to seek input from key stakeholders like parents, teachers, and students. Remember, the most impactful feedback is often informal. This could involve collecting exit tickets at the end of a faculty meeting, engaging a small group of parents to discuss their perceptions, or surveying students about their experiences. By modeling a proactive feedback process, you can help dispel the negative associations often tied to feedback in schools, while fostering a culture where staff feel valued, heard, and engaged.

4. Build a Strong Mentor and Peer Support System
School leadership can often feel isolating, as leaders are tasked with making tough decisions and managing significant responsibilities. Building a robust support system helps alleviate this isolation by connecting leaders with a network of peers and mentors who can share experiences and offer guidance. Additionally, a strong mentor and peer support system opens doors to broader professional opportunities, including collaborations, partnerships, and access to new resources and ideas.

Todd Simendinger, CLEE Continuous Improvement Coach and Facilitator

5. Consider Leadership Coaching

Leadership coaching is a transformative investment in your growth, offering valuable insights into their strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots. This deeper self-awareness empowers leaders to make more intentional and effective decisions. Coaches also support you to hone critical skills like communication, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence, enhancing your ability to inspire and guide teams. Additionally, a skilled coach can help alleviate the isolation and burnout often associated with school leadership, fostering resilience and balance.

In conclusion, sustaining your growth requires intentional effort and continuous improvement. By integrating these leadership moves into your routine, you’ll not only enhance your leadership capabilities but also inspire those around you to strive for their own growth. In doing so, you create a thriving environment where both you and your team can excel.

Not sure how to get started? CLEE can help. We offer coaching, facilitator training, support in implementing initiatives through our Cycles of Improvement professional learning,  and other peer support programs that help leaders like you strengthen skills, build networks and achieve your career goals.