Preparing Principals to Lead

Principals are critical to school success, but the demands on schools have proliferated, making the role increasingly complex. As a result, principals often struggle to make a significant impact on teaching and learning.

This executive briefing highlights four best practices for effective professional development for principals. It’s intended for district leaders and principal supervisors who want to gain quick understanding of the best ways to support their principals’ leadership success.

Maximizing principal impact in schools

There is a growing need to equip principals with essential leadership skills as they are key to significantly improving teaching and learning outcomes. However, principals rarely achieve the desired improvements in these outcomes. Meta-analyses reveal the core leadership competencies that have the greatest impact on student achievement, and district leaders can play a key role in developing these competencies in all school leaders.

Root cause and data analysis training

To ensure principals develop the necessary strategic and analytical thinking skills, district leaders should provide explicit training in root cause problem-solving and data analysis during onboarding and professional development for principals. Principals should be expected to demonstrate their mastery of these skills to district leadership and use root cause analysis to inform school improvement plans.

Interpersonal demonstration exercises

District leaders can screen for core interpersonal competencies in interviews by evaluating and observing principal candidates’ interpersonal strengths through their interactions, language, and demeanor in the context of a (simulated) difficult situation. Prospective candidates participate in role play activities during the interview process to demonstrate how they would handle some common challenges.

Business executive peer mentorships

For districts looking to provide personalized guidance and professional development for principals, leaders can pair principals with chief executive officers and other high-level executives from local corporations to create one-on-one leadership mentorships. Participants use a shared leadership framework and terminology to ensure that conversations are grounded in practice, more than theory. These mentorships provide principals the opportunity to learn cross-sector leadership skills from business executives.

Principal time audit and prioritization support

To refocus principals’ invaluable time on high-impact leadership activities, district administrators should implement a system in which principals audit and reflect upon their weekly time use, identifying gaps between their actual time use and their supervisors’ expectations. This system aims to help principals maximize the use of their calendars to preserve time for the activities that are higher priority and have a higher impact on school success.