The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership

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According to a study of three decades of change in eight U.S. and Canadian schools, one of the key forces leading to meaningful, long-term change is leadership sustainability. The authors assert that most school leadership practices create temporary, localized flurries of change but little lasting or widespread improvement. Leaders develop sustainability, they write by committing to and protecting deep learning in their schools; by trying to ensure that improvements last over time, especially after they have gone, by distributing leadership and responsibility to others; by considering the impact of their leadership on the schools and communities around them; by sustaining themselves so that they can persist with their vision and avoid burning out; by promoting and perpetuating diverse approaches to reform rather than standardized prescriptions for teaching and learning, and by engaging actively with their environments. The authors give examples of sustainable and unsustainable leadership in the eight schools they studied.