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In this chapter we used a content analysis process (Sanzo, 2012) on select 2010 and 2013 funded grant projects that focus specifically on leadership preparation and development in small and mid-sized urban school districts. The purpose of this analysis was to better understand how School Leadership Program (SLP) grant projects approach leadership preparation and development in small to medium-sized districts. Specifically, we explored how and in what ways did these grant-funded partnerships propose to recruit, structure partnerships, and mentor/coach participants. We discovered that SLP projects in this analysis utilize innovative means of recruiting and selecting program participants in a variety of ways, do not utilize a “one-size-fits” all model in their approach to preparing and developing school leaders, and employ authentic partnerships utilize a variety of collaborative mechanisms.

Many researchers, educational practitioners, business leaders, and schools of education have weighed in on the essential attributes or characteristics of “good” leaders. Two characteristics that are often assumed to exist in good leaders are that: (1) they are reflective practitioners and (2) they have the skills to create change in others. Educational leadership programs of all types, including teaching master's and doctoral programs, often embed reflective activities into their coursework and offer courses that are intended to teach future leaders the concepts related to “change management.” Yet at the same time we claim to be building reflective practitioners who can enact change, we fail to create programs that are likely to produce these reflective practitioners who have the skills and content knowledge to create that change we seek in the public K-12 educational arena. This chapter argues for creating leadership development programs that are more intentional about creating practitioners who have the skills necessary to cause other adults to change their practices and improve instruction. It also outline the elements that are essential for any leadership program to create leaders who will be able to profoundly change public K-12 education from the classroom to the principalship to the district level administration.

This paper adds depth to our understanding of how coaching works by exploring the experiences of 14 aspiring school principals who received one-to-one leadership coaching as part of a leadership development programme.

This study adopts a phenomenological approach. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. Thematic analysis was used to code the data and identify themes.

This paper reports on four themes based on the experiences of the participants: having time to reflect, feeling safe to explore, focussing on what's important for me and experiencing positive emotions.

The findings are unique to the participants who volunteered to take part in this study and therefore not representative of a general population of aspiring educational leaders. Further research is needed into the possible benefits of coaching to support educators undergoing leadership training.

The findings raise a potential dilemma within the teaching profession about the use of educators' time; while they need to give time and attention to multiple stakeholders, they also need to protect time for their own development and self-reflection. Based on the reported experiences of the participants in this study, it is recommended that coaching be considered a component of professional development for educational leaders.

This paper adds to the growing research base for coaching in education, providing a unique insight into the experiences of aspiring school principals who received one-to-one leadership coaching as part of a leadership development programme.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to explain how leaders emerge in teams that lack a hierarchical structure. This framework emphasizes the perceptual processes through which team members determine whether or not an individual fits with the task, the group, and the situational context.

This paper builds on prior leadership research to develop a theoretical framework of emergent leadership, a testable model, and research propositions.

The authors suggest that team members’ perceptions of leadership fit depend on the potential leader's domain competence, fluid intelligence, willingness to serve, credibility, and goal attainment. A conceptual framework is developed to suggest these attributes combine to create perceptions of leadership fit that must correspond to the degree of stress in the situational context, which varies according to task criticality and time compression. The framework suggests that an individual perceived by team members to exhibit characteristics that fit with the situation will likely emerge as the leader.

This paper focusses on emergent leadership, but does not address which path to leadership may be best. Future research may also address group dynamics (i.e. cohesion or group potency) and the implications for leader emergence.

This research contributes to the discipline by suggesting a potential path of leader emergence in multiple contexts of situational stress and leader behaviors.

In this chapter we discuss the content and process of the Learning-Centered Leadership Development Program for Practicing and Aspiring Principals. In terms of the content, based on extensive literature review the program focuses on seven dimensions of principal leadership associated with student achievement. In terms of process, one pair of practicing and aspiring principals from each school engage in five levels of learning – moving from (a) experiential, to (b) declarative, to (c) procedural, to (d) contextual, and to (e) evidential. The pair of practicing and aspiring principals works with two additional teacher leaders to develop sufficient leadership density in the school to plan and implement renewal activities along the seven dimensions to improve student achievement. We also reflect upon the lessons learned from implementing the program.

The purpose of this paper is to examine principal mentoring, a process that is significant in principal identification, socialization, development, and retention.

The study was framed within the social constructivism paradigm and thematically examined individual perspectives to develop the thematic constructs relevant to the participants’ experiences of and perceptions about principal mentoring.

Thematic analysis of the interview data from 16 principals from the state of Georgia, USA, revealed five major themes related to leaders’ experiences of and perceptions about principal mentoring: mentoring as recruitment; mentoring as socialization; mentoring as support; mentoring as professional development; and mentoring as reciprocal learning.

These findings were limited to the sample of principals used for this analysis. Researchers are encouraged to examine principal mentoring in other contexts.

The results of this inquiry suggest the need for formal and informal mentoring opportunities for new and experienced principals and call for further research on comparing mentoring practices between the large and small schools systems.

The paper identifies mentoring as an important path to principal effectiveness and contributes to the corpus of literature on educational mentoring by examining the perceptions and experiences of new and experienced principals about the mentoring they received and provided.

Across companies, and even the public sector, there is a looming challenge as baby boomers and many current leaders retire. This is the challenge of developing the next generation of leadership ‐ not just at the CEO level, but in the various functions of the organization.

For this study, fifteen leading CFOs were interviewed, asking them to describe their journeys to leadership.

While the research was based on interviews of CFOs, the findings could pertain to many leadership roles in companies.

The research found there were five key traits to leaders: curiosity, courage, perseverance, personal ethics, and confidence. Of these five traits, what was surprising was the consistent importance of curiosity as a valued trait among nearly all the CFO participants.