Three Keys to Success for Principals (and Their Teachers)

This is the author's accepted manuscript, post peer-review. The publisher's official version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00228958.2008.10516527.What is successful leadership and how can leadership concepts be applied to schools? Hundreds of books and articles and a plethora of executive seminars describe what leadership is and propose strategies for what effective leaders do. Most of these writings and presentations, however, focus on business, with much less information available about how to lead schools. In addition, there is a diversity of opinions about what makes leaders effective. This article suggests that it is possible to extract, reframe, and apply the best of what is known about leadership to help principals be more successful. Moreover, if principals are successful, teachers also are positioned to be successful, with the ultimate impact being successful student learning