The Leader in Me: How Schools Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time - Brossura

Covey, Stephen R.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1476772185 ISBN 13: 9781476772189

Casa editrice: Simon & Schuster, 2014

Riassunto

From the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen R. Covey illustrates how his principles of leadership can be applied to children of all ages.

In today’s world, we are inundated with information about who to be, what to do, and how to live. But what if there was a way to learn not just what to think about, but how to think? A program that taught young people how to manage priorities, focus on goals, and be a positive influence in their schools?

The Leader in Me is that program. In this bestseller, Stephen R. Covey took the 7 Habits that have already changed the lives of millions of readers and showed that even young children can use them as they develop. These habits are being adapted by schools around the country in leadership programs, most famously at the A.B Combs Elementary school in Raleigh. Not only do the programs work, but they work better than anyone could have imagined. This book is full of examples of how the students blossom under the program—from the classroom that decided to form a support group for one of their classmates who had behavioral problems to the fourth grader who overcame his fear of public speaking and took his class to see him compete in a national story telling competition.

Perfect for individuals and corporations alike, The Leader in Me shows how easy it is to incorporate these skills into daily life so kids of all ages can be more effective, goal-oriented, and successful.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Recognized as one of Time magazine’s twenty-five most influential Americans, Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) was an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and author. His books have sold more than twenty-five million copies in thirty-eight languages, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was named the #1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century. After receiving an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate degree from Brigham Young University, he became the cofounder and vice chairman of FranklinCovey, a leading global training firm.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

The Leader in Me 1

Too Good to Be True?

When I first started telling people about this leadership model, there were several naysayers who thought it all a bunch of “fluff.” But now they are believers.

—Leslie Reilly, Seminole County Public Schools, Florida

When the first edition of The Leader in Me was published toward the end of 2008, it began with the story of Drs. Rig and Sejjal Patel. They had just moved their family to Raleigh, North Carolina, and begun the task of looking for a school where their children could learn in a safe and mind-stimulating environment. As they talked to neighbors and colleagues, the name of one school kept popping up: A.B. Combs Elementary.

On paper, A.B. Combs was quite ordinary. It was a public school in a suburban neighborhood. There were nearly nine hundred students, of whom 18 percent spoke English as a second language, 40 percent qualified for free or reduced lunches, and 21 percent were placed in special programs. The building that housed them was fifty years old. Some teachers had been there for years.

But while on paper A.B. Combs appeared nothing too unusual, the stories the Patels kept hearing exceeded their loftiest expectations. They heard about confident and respectful students, an engaged staff, strong test scores, and a “Principal of the Year.” Discipline problems were minimal, and students who had struggled at other schools were progressing well at this one. It all sounded pretty good. In fact, to the Patels, it sounded a bit “too good to be true.”

The Patels decided to see the school firsthand. What they discovered was that just entering the front doors was an engaging experience. There was a feeling not felt in many schools. The walls were cheery and even motivational. Diversity was celebrated. They found that all students and staff learned The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the same leadership principles that top leaders around the world have been trained in for years. They observed that all students were assigned leadership roles, and that many decisions were made by students, not teachers. They saw students setting academic and personal goals and tracking progress in personalized notebooks. All this they found remarkable, enough so that they left the visit sensing that what they had been hearing about A.B. Combs was true after all.


A.B. Combs Elementary is a public school located in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Patels ended up enrolling their children. Those children have now graduated and moved on, having had a memorable experience. Many other parents have since visited A.B. Combs to see for themselves if the school is too good to be true. Most are not only pleased with what they see, they are delighted to discover that more than two thousand schools have now embarked on the same process, spanning over thirty countries.
What About for You?

The reason why the Patels, others, and perhaps even you have questioned the reports about A.B. Combs as being too good to be true is that they are in such stark contrast to what we have become accustomed to hearing in recent years. We are so inundated with stories of bullying, rude manners, low test scores, disrespect, lack of discipline, violence, poor graduation rates, mediocre teachers, and so forth, that many people are fully skeptical that anything so positive can come from schools. Either they find it too hard to believe, or they question its sustainability.

Such skepticism has value. It cautions us against latching on to every flashy fad or flimsy program that comes along, only to see it fade with no lasting impact. Yet while skepticism has its benefits, it is a sour source to draw upon for vision and passion. Skepticism is a critic, not a model. Skepticism does not think out of the box; it shrinks the box. Skepticism designs weak school-improvement strategies and anemic lesson plans. That is why skepticism and its peers—pessimism, cynicism, apathy, and despair—should never be hired to run a school, a classroom, a counseling office, a library, or a playground.

A far better source of inspiration for making decisions and leading in a school is hope. Hope informs us of better ways of doing things. Hope keeps students and staff members progressing. Hope shines light beyond the darkness of school tragedies. Hope sees potential in people—all people.

What the Patels and now many more parents are witnessing at A.B. Combs and these schools is hope. They see hope in the form of teachers engaged in their work. They see hope in the form of students learning skills that will help them throughout life. They see hope in the form of involved and satisfied parents. All this is bringing a new level of hope to the field of education under the banner of The Leader in Me.

As you come to the conclusion of this book, we hope you will have enough insight into The Leader in Me to determine whether or not you feel it is too good to be true.
Matching Today’s Realities

A comment we hear regularly is that what the schools highlighted in this book are doing is “perfectly matched to today’s realities.” Let us explain.

Not that long ago, we lived in the information age. In that age, the individuals with the most “facts” in their heads scored highest on fact-based exams, which got them into the best fact-based universities, which accelerated their climb up the best fact-based career ladders. In those days, about all schools needed to worry about was inserting as many academic facts into students’ brain cells as possible.

Well, that era is over. It has given way to the age of the knowledge worker. What happened is that the same facts that we formerly tried to cram into students’ heads, and were once available only from top experts and top universities, are now accessible to most every nook on the planet. Whether sitting on a plane, waiting for a bus, working at a desk, or living in a thatched hut, people can now access more facts in a matter of seconds from pocket-sized devices than they could from spending an entire month in a university library only a short time ago. As a result, many of the elite jobs that previously required extensive factual knowledge are being handed off to computers or individuals with far fewer credentials. Factual knowledge alone, therefore, is no longer the great differentiator between those who succeed in the new reality and those who do not.

So if factual knowledge is no longer king, what then is the great differentiator between those who succeed in the new reality and those who do not? According to Daniel Pink and others, those who are succeeding are those who possess above-average creativity, strong problem-solving skills, and a knack for foresight. They are the inventors, designers, big-picture thinkers, meaning makers, and pattern recognizers. They are those who know how to analyze, optimize, synthesize, present, and do worthwhile things with facts. That is why they are called knowledge workers.

But there is more.

With the shift to the age of the knowledge worker has come simultaneous shifts in societal norms. Among them is the reality that more and more students are heading home after school to sit behind locked doors and play video games by themselves until mom or dad arrives home at night. Many of the games entail seek-to-destroy activities with no need to communicate or work out amenable solutions with others, and no real consequences. Other students are opting to get together with friends after school digitally rather than meeting face-to-face. One school we work with reports that 90 percent of its students come from single-mother homes, with most of those students having never met their fathers. Another is in a drug-infested area and its exterior walls are pocked with bullet holes. Meanwhile, advances in technology and transportation have turned the world into a global playing field and more students are thinking in terms of being global citizens. Others feel they are entitled to certain privileges. And the list of societal shifts goes on, many of which are causing adults to wonder how today’s students will ever learn to communicate properly, to resolve conflicts in a civil fashion, to work with people of diverse backgrounds, or to effectively lead their lives in a competitive world that is in commotion.

The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands.

—Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind

So yes, we know it is an old line but “Times have changed.” In fact, they have changed so much that the age of the knowledge worker is no longer sufficient to describe our age. That is why Daniel Pink has observed that, in addition to possessing the traits of knowledge workers, the people who are truly thriving in today’s reality are those who are also good listeners and team builders. They are able to “understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others.” They may not know all the facts themselves but do know how to bring the right people together to assemble the facts and derive solutions. They are those who have empathy skills and can leverage people’s opinions and talents. In other words, they not only have the ability to work with knowledge, they also have—surprise, surprise!—good people skills.

Pink is by no means singing solo. As we will see in Chapter 2, other experts have been signaling the same new reality for some time. They are not referring to a futuristic world, they are speaking of now! What they are calling for is for educators to take a hard, fresh look at how they approach three rapidly evolving challenges in the new reality:

Academics. In today’s world, students must learn how to not just memorize and regurgitate academic facts but also apply them to authentic situations. They must have stronger analytical, critical-thinking, problem-solving, and creativity skills to succeed in the years ahead. For this to happen, educators must reexamine and adjust their teaching styles and curriculums to accommodate this way of learning and applying.

School culture. What school in today’s reality is not scrambling to deal with disengaged students, bullying, discipline issues, low attendance, or student loneliness? What school does not face pockets of poor staff collaboration, low teacher engagement, a lack of common vision, resistance to change, poisonous gossip, or apathetic parents? Whereas in the past, schools could allow their culture to grow naturally, today’s schools cannot afford to make culture building a passive endeavor. A more proactive approach is needed.

Life skills. There is an increasingly urgent call for more personal and interpersonal skills to be taught in schools. Sometimes they are called workforce-, career-, or college-readiness skills, or social-emotional learning skills, or simply life skills. Regardless of name, many students are showing up to college, work, parenthood, and life without them. This deficit explains in part why more than 30 percent of students are dropping out of college in the first year. They lack skills for leading their lives, being on their own, or interfacing with others. It used to be assumed that they would learn such skills at home, but that no longer is a sound assumption.


Three Evolving Challenges.

Of course, none of these three challenges is entirely new. Schools have been dealing with all three for years. What is new is the seismic pressure being heaved upon educators to raise the bar in all three areas. It is all part of the new reality.

So how are today’s schools responding to the new reality? According to the legendary Howard Gardner the answer is, not well. In his book Five Minds for the Future he asserts that “current formal education still prepares students primarily for the world of the past, rather than for the possible worlds of the future.” Similarly, in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough insists that “the conventional wisdom about child development over the past few decades has been misguided. We have been focusing on the wrong skills and abilities in our children, and we have been using the wrong strategies to help nurture and teach these skills.”

But one does not need to be a guru to make such observations. How often do we hear today’s business leaders groan about the new employee they hired who is very bright yet has no clue how to work in teams, to prioritize time, or to present ideas clearly? How many parents complain that their newly crowned high school graduate excelled on all the college entrance exams but does not know how to pursue a goal, to resolve conflicts maturely, or to socialize with anything other than a digital screen? Ask these leaders and parents if they feel students are being adequately prepared for today’s world, and chances are their responses will be a united and anguished “NO!”

More will be said about the three evolving challenges as the book progresses. Suffice it here to say that one reason people comment that The Leader in Me is perfectly matched to today’s realities is that it is helping many schools to more effectively address all three challenges. And perhaps the best news is that many educators are saying, “This is not one more thing we have to do, but a better way of doing what we are already doing.”


The new reality demands a new way of educating students the world over.

A New Level of Thinking?

A question always on our minds is if the field of education as a whole is approaching the three challenges at the right levels of thinking. Albert Einstein warned, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created those problems.” In other words, before attempting to address the three challenges, we may need to step back and challenge our ways of thinking—to reexamine our paradigms.

For years, Dr. Martin Seligman has been one of the world’s foremost psychologists. More recently he has become known as the father of positive psychology, a relatively new branch of study. It came about while he was president of the American Psychological Association (APA), but more specifically while he was in his garden. In his insightful book Authentic Happiness, he describes how he was tidying his garden one day while his five-year-old daughter, Nikki, was nearby and engaged in happy mischief. At some point Nikki’s bouncing and ramblings became too much and he yelled at her, causing her to go away.

Before long, however, Nikki was back, saying, “Daddy, I want to talk to you.” She said, “Daddy, do you remember before my fifth birthday? From when I was three until when I was five, I was a whiner. I whined every day. On my fifth birthday, I decided I wasn’t going to whine anymore. That was the hardest thing I have ever done. And if I can stop whining you can stop being such a grouch.”

To Seligman’s credit, he listened. And after some soul-searching and marveling at his daughter’s positive nature, he declared, “In that moment, I resolved to change.”

That brief exchange not only inspired Dr. Seligman to change his disposition at home; it redirected his career. He realized that the field of psychology had for the better part of a century been focused on “fixing people.” It was centered on identifying what was wrong and on relieving suffering. He began to wonder if there could be a field of psycho...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Simon & Schuster
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1476772185
• ISBN 13: 9781476772189
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 2
• Numero di pagine: 320