New Bestseller: Change Starts Here

I want to share something personal with you today and this is a journey that has been years in the making that me and someone else have really poured our heart into. If you've ever felt that your school is constantly looking outward for solutions, when the answers actually probably lie right in front of you, then this episode is especially for you. I want to talk to you about why me and my co-author wrote Change Starts Here and how it might just help us all reclaim our profession. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning.

Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. As an organisational coach, I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence, make better decisions and create winning teams. And on this show, we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership. Before we jump in, I'm really happy that today's episode is supported by the International curriculum Association.

Stay tuned to learn more. Alright, so as I said, today's episode is a bit special to me. It's a little bit different. I want to share something I've been working on for years and it feels pretty personal.

This is my new book, Change Starts Here. What if everything your school needed was right in front of you, which I have co-authored with my dear friend, Ephraim Lerner, and guess what? It is now available for pre-order. I can't believe it.

I'm really stunned. I'm grateful. And I'll tell you why, because it's just been out at the time of recording for just over a week and it has already achieved best-selling status. It's a best-seller.

I can't believe I'm even saying that. I really think, though, that that speaks volumes to how much the message resonates with educators right now. So I want to take this opportunity in this episode today to share why we wrote the book and what it's all about. So rewind a bit back, it began with a bit of a simple observation, really.

That school leadership and community confidence in schools is at an all-time low. We feel that many of us are experiencing a confidence crisis in our schools. Decision-making, strategizing, leading for ourselves. We feel confidence seems to be at an all-time low.

We are constantly looking outside our school walls for solutions, to consultancies, to companies, to experts who seem to have all the answers. And don't get me wrong, they absolutely do have much knowledge. But do they have the answers for your school? I'm not sure, because with each external solution we adopt in our schools, we're inadvertently outsourcing our thinking and we're diminishing our own capacity for change.

And this pattern, if you like, has really profound consequences, because each time an external player drives change within a school, valuable knowledge about how to deliver those outcomes is lost. We've exported it. And we're gradually handing over our expertise to people who, no matter how well-intentioned, can never and will never know our schools as intimately as we do when we're inside them. Now, I am blessed that I've worked with schools around the world, and combined with my co-author Ephraim's wonderful knowledge, we have seen this pattern repeat itself.

Leaders drowning under competing pressures, teachers feeling totally disconnected from decision-making, parents and students even, whose voices go unheard, and through it all, just a nagging sense that the solutions that we're implementing in our schools just don't quite fit our context. And this is where the idea of the book was born. What if we really flipped that script? What if, instead of looking outside always for solutions, we looked inward to the collective wisdom of our school communities?

The teachers, the leaders, the parents, the students, the communities, the staff. This is what's at the core of why we wrote our book. And we've offered a slightly different approach to change as well. This is one that's guided by questions rather than solutions.

It's not like your classic leadership book where you're going to be talked through a load of techniques, do this, do this, do this, do this. No, we haven't done that. Instead, we've framed it around questions. We've actually based this on a model as well.

We adapted the British Design Council's Double Diamond model. If you haven't seen, it's a wonderful design thinking model to create a framework that works really well for schools. And as I mentioned, unlike so many change models, what we're not doing is telling you exactly what to do, but we're going to ask you powerful questions for yourself and for your community. Because at its heart, this book is built around 40 questions designed to unlock that wisdom that already exists in your school.

They're organized into eight stages. These questions connect, discover, define, align, develop, learn, deliver, sustain. And this is, as I mentioned, based on that Double Diamond model from the British Design Council, these stages are designed to facilitate meaningful conversations around change and involve everyone, everyone from the teachers to the leaders, the parents, the students. Everyone is involved.

This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Now, I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years, but they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world. I really, really love that at their core is a model for improving learning. And this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources, and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours.

So if you're interested, and I really do recommend you check them out, head over to internationalcurriculum.com. There's a quote that we include in the book actually from Powell and Kusama Powell who once said that it's all about reclaiming our profession. And that's what the book's about.

Can we help educators, leaders, communities reclaim their agency and confidence in driving meaningful change? Now, throughout the book, as well as those questions, we also share some stories of real people. We've got Alex May, Taylor Jordan. This is a parent, a teacher, a student and a school leader.

So four different vantage points on to change, each facing their own challenges and their stories really show how this works for the different community members in your school. I think there's three things if I was to try to summarise what makes this approach in this book different and what might make it helpful for you. First, when we say there's a lot in our book, we know that change is inherently complex. Why is it complex?

Because it involves people and people are just beautifully complex. So in the book, what we do not try to do is to simplify or streamline that human element. Instead, let's embrace that complexity and get real. It's complex, deal with it.

Second, the communities at the centre, the quality of change is always better when it involves multiple perspectives. We know that. And when people go from passive recipients of change, if you like, to active ambassadors in change, they're going to develop genuine buy into the process. The change is going to last longer because the organisation feels safe with the change and it also affects our future changes because we're feeling like we can share more openly in the future.

And finally, I would say third, it's our hope that this book really connects with both the head and the heart. We're looking through our questions to engage with our feelings just as much as our thoughts. We're humans, after all. Feelings are a part of how we think.

And this helps us follow through with change even when it becomes challenging. So who's the book for? Well, I'm telling you about it, so I hope you can go and pick it up or go and pre-order it now. That would be really, really wonderful.

And let me know. But it's for everyone. Obviously school leaders are the primary audience, but this is written for teachers who are developing the minds in their classrooms, for parents who are supporting their children and want to understand how change can work. Maybe for HR managers thinking about recruitment challenges, for CEOs of big school groups, this book is for anyone who believes in the power of community-led change.

We talk in the book at the end that change is not an end point, it's a continuous process. It's a path waved with questions, enriched by collaboration and guided by the collective wisdom of a willing community. And that's what change starts here is all about. In our book, we're really inviting you to start a different type of conversation and change in your school, one that values every voice and recognises that the wisdom you need to solve that next challenge might already be in your community.

Now if that resonates with you, and I really hope it does, I would be absolutely honoured if you check out the book. You can actually find the pre-order link in the show notes. And if you do read it, or you do get it, just let me know questions. Use the hashtag, hashtag change starts here on social media.

We'll pick it up. I would just love to hear how these ideas really develop your thinking and what you're looking forward to getting out of this book. The Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning. Thanks to the show editor, Pete McGill, and for the original music by Guillermo Silva.

I'm so grateful you tuned in today. And as always, if we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week. If you want to learn more about the brilliant work from the International Curriculum Association, head to internationalcurriculum.com.