High Impact Leadership (HIL) for School Renewal

High Impact Leadership

High Impact Leadership uses the best of school leadership, implementation science, systems thinking, and adult learning theory to provide principles, practices, and a process that lead to systemic, sustainable change in schools.

High impact leadership principles

An infographic titled "High Impact Leadership Principles for School Renewal" detailing four key quadrants centered around a "Change Initiative" diamond. A horizontal orange arrow divides the diagram, with the left side labeled "Motivation" and the right side labeled "Capacity." The four quadrants are: Top Left - Positive Core: Features an icon of people building steps so one can look through a telescope. The bullet points are: Mission & Vision Focused, Growth Mindset, Appreciative Lens, and Strengths-Base

The four overarching principles and sixteen practices help build the motivation and capacity of school personnel to sustain the challenging work of school renewal. 

Positive core

  • Mission and vision focused: identify a critical focus area
  • Growth mindset: set actionable, achievable growth targets
  • Appreciative lens: employ appreciative inquiry to learn about the school’s current state
  • Strengths-based: leverage current strengths

Evidence-based decisions

  • Collaborative inquiry: collectively identify strengths and growth opportunities based on data
  • Performance profiling: design and maintain shared data dashboards
  • Progress monitoring: create monitoring plans to measure progress
  • Leading and lagging indicators: track real-time, interim, and post-hoc data

Collective ownership

  • Distributed leadership: empower new and established leaders
  • Shared responsibility: define roles and responsibilities and share accountability
  • Social trust: learn, adapt, and grow in emotional safety
  • Interdependence: foster cocreation and interdependent thinking

Organizational learning

  • Reflective practice: engage regularly in reflective dialogue
  • Double loop questioning: probe evidence to reveal deeper understandings and assumptions
  • Systems thinking and alignment: align resources, systems, and routines to support progress
  • Levels of learning: attend to the developmental level and experience of school personnel to scaffold growth

 

Continuous school renewal process

A graphic titled "Continuous School Renewal Process" illustrating a five-phase cycle spiraling along a forward-pointing arrow, with a larger arrow looping back to the beginning. The five phases are: Phase I: Appreciative Inquiry, Phase II: Current State Profile, Phase III: Aligned Goals & Targets, Phase IV: Progress Monitoring, and Phase V: Reflection & Renewal.

The continuous school renewal process provides the structure for short cycles of implementation and growth that lead to sustainable change in schools. 

Phase I

Appreciative vision: appreciate, via collaborative inquiry and SOAR analysis, the current status of the school and develop a vision for its future state

Phase II

Current state profile: gather and analyze data about students, instruction, leadership, systems, and other school characteristics, and choose a priority focus area

Phase III

Aligned growth targets: create an aligned implementation plan to collectively focus on helping students and adults achieve 1-3 priority growth targets in the focus area. 

Phase IV

Progress monitoring: identify real-time, interim, and post-hoc success measures for the growth targets and assign timelines, benchmarks, and responsibilities to track progress. 

Phase V

Reflection and renewal: determine when priority growth targets are achieved, celebrate, and transition to new priority growth targets.