Quote-A-Day: Day 346

True #leaders worry less about how they can lead others and more about how they can help others lead themselves. #QuoteADay #Day346 #edchat

I walked into my office this morning to this:

And that was all I needed today to feel like I was on top of the world.

What’s so great about these types of small moments, is that they only require time, and aside from an investment of time, as long as you know those you serve, it doesn’t take much to turn a post-it note into a powerful sentiment.

Leadership is always more than actually leading.  In fact, throughout history, the best leaders have often been better at helping others to lead themselves than they are in actually leading others.

Cultivating leaders requires a tremendous investment in capacity-building.  And this capacity-building can take many different forms.  In some cases, it might involve in-depth professional learning, in other cases, it might require reading, writing, and reflecting.  In still other cases, it can be two sentences, handwritten, on a yellow post-it.

In all cases, the end result is the same.

Learners and leaders are provided with the support needed to encourage more risk taking, more trial and error, more failure, and possibly, somewhere down the line, future success.

And if our goal remains to take education to the next level, and to model for our youngest learners today, the type of leaders they can become tomorrow, then putting these small moments into practice is necessary if we’re to truly lead others to lead themselves.