The Power of Conversation Transforming Principals into Great Leaders

Powerful conversations facilitate powerful thinking. In The Power of Conversation, seasoned educator Barbara Kohm provides principals and mentors with a roadmap for growing into great leaders and transforming ordinary schools into great ones. Designed to harness the power of focused professional conversation, this book uses dialogues between a principal and a mentor or colleague to explore everyday school dilemmas, such as scheduling, discipline, budgeting, and instructional challenges. Each chapter explores transformational themes, provides strategies and guidelines for leaders to apply in their own schools, and includes reflective exercises. This book engages an accessible and thoughtful way for principals to talk about complicated issues, deepen thinking, develop skills, and fuel transformational leadership.

Meet the Author Preface Acknowledgements Chapter 1. Building Trust: Honesty and clarity are more important than perfection Chapter 2. Establishing and maintaining focus: Knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do Chapter 3. Developing a learning culture: From fixing people to building capacity Chapter 4. Building a competent, cohesive faculty: The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts Chapter 5. Building a collegial culture: No more insiders and outsiders Chapter 6. Making purposeful decisions: The building blocks of a cohesive culture Chapter 7. Resolving conflicts: Avoiding winners and losers Chapter 8. Planning meetings: Learning and leading together Chapter 9. Collecting and using data: What story does your data tell? Chapter 10. Improving Curriculum and Instruction: From Creating Orthodoxies to Continual Change

Barbara Kohm is a veteran principal, teacher, consultant, and mentor. She is the co-founder of the Clayton Family Center in Missouri.