Quite often I am asked about how to handle resistance from staff, leaders, and school board members when as superintendent or school principal you decide to inplement a strategic direction such as Baldrige, quality, continuous improvement, process management or whatever systemic approach to improving results you have decided to implement.

I would suggest reading Michael Fullan's most recent work - Six Secrets to Change. Of course there are many sources for this type of work, however, I find Fullan's work to be very insightful since he is actually engaged in the change management work in Canada and throughout the world. However, until you have a chance to read and formalize your own approach, I have a couple of suggestions.

Build relationships - as leader, you need to know your people and what drives them. Be visible an dopen up multiple methods of communication. When you ask someone to change the way they work, you will need to fall back on these relationships.

Establish clear expectations - start with asking people to act before inundating them with theory. In my experience the axiom that you get people to act their way into a new way of thinking much faster than you get them to think their way into a new way of acting.

Make certain to provide support and resources - nothing worse than to ask people to change the ways in which they work without support, coaching, and resources needed to do the work.

Track results as compared against fidelity of deployment - you need to know if people actually make changes you are asking them to make in the way that you are asking them to change. Also, you need to know if the change actually impacts student learning or operational results.

Be transparent about the results - If you get good results from good fidelity of deployment - great!! If you do not get good results then that is a great learning process. Transparency will ensure your relationships stay strong.

Good leaders today need to not only know what strategies will help improve results, they also must know how to manage change. You cannot do one without the other!!! Good luck!!!