One of the books I shared at the retreat was Change Leadership by Wagner and Kegan. Today, as I was reviewing Education Week and one of my RSS feeds, Leader Talk, I found reference to an article by Wagner. In the article he identifies five “Habits of Mind” for change leadership that are essentially five questions that when pursued can lead to more effective methods for dealing with critical issues. It forced me to stop and think again about change and about how we work through those critical issues that surface in our work. Do we start by having common understanding of the issues and the resolution that we seek? Hmm?

The five questions are sequential as identified below.

· What is the problem we are trying to solve, or the obstacle we are trying to overcome, and what does it have to do with improving teaching and learning?
· What are our strategies for solving this problem, and how and why do we think implementation of these strategies will cause the change that’s needed—what’s our “theory of action”?
· Who (teachers, parents, students, community) needs to understand what, in order to “own the problem” and support the strategies we’re implementing?
· Who is accountable for what for implementation of this strategy to be successful, and what do they need to be effective?
· What evidence (observable changes in short-term outcomes or behaviors) will we track that will tell us whether our strategies are working?

As we enter into what some of us see as a minor shift and others of us see as a major change thinking about these questions takes on greater significance for me. Should this difference be creating more dissonance for me? I know I tend to cringe when we have this conversation and body language in the room does not make me feel more comfortable. So many things to consider on this journey.