Abstract
Time for Change by Dr. Anthony Muhammad and Dr. Luis Cruz is a book for transformational leaders who are ready to take their staff to the next level during times of change and beyond. Change is a consistent theme of education. As the 21st-century world changes, so must educators and educational leaders. Muhammad and Cruz share practical and applicable tenets to support school leaders as they guide school staff through organizational changes. The main focus of the book is to support leaders to inspire and inform teachers through these often difficult changes. These changes can include the implementation of a new curriculum, staffing restructuring, and most recently the monumental shift to remote learning in a pandemic. The authors state the importance of addressing both technical and cultural dimensions of change.
Dr. Muhammad and Dr. Cruz have years of both practical and research experience in the field of leadership. Each leader has earned awards for their accomplishments and more specifically their work in using Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for school improvement. Dr. Muhammad’s previous works and expertise, including Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division, has given him the recognition as one of the leading experts in school culture and organizational climate. Dr. Cruz has more than 23 years of experience in education at the elementary, middle, and high school as a teacher and principal and is a nationally known public speaker on educational change agency.
During the Summit on PLC at Work in 2017, I had the opportunity to hear both Dr. Muhammad and Dr. Cruz speak. Therefore, I was very excited to see a book authored by both leaders on school culture and organizational climate. As a school principal for the past 10 years, I know how imperative it is to a school community to have strong leadership skills that improve student achievement. “Leadership is not a position; it is a set of actions that positively shape the climate and culture of the working environment” (p. 2). School leadership is a challenging endeavor and retention of quality school leaders continues to decline. However, Muhammad and Cruz have observed that this is not due to a lack of will but rather a lack of skill for principals who wish to be transformational leaders. Their goal is to reinforce the fact that we need to learn how to balance inspiring and INFORMING school staff to promote positive school change.
What I enjoyed about the book was not only the readability but also the practicality that gives readers the opportunity for self-reflection and immediately applicable tenets. The authors state cognitive investment, emotional investment, functional investment, and getting a return on investment as the four investments that a leader must make to create and sustain change. In summary, Muhammad and Cruz call this systems-change model, The why? Who? How? Do! Model. During cognitive investment, school leaders communicate with staff the need for change with data and rationale. This is how school leaders inform staff the reasons behind the needed changes. To help a teacher commit to change, leaders need to communicate the Why with clear evidence. In his book Good to Great (2001), Jim Collins refers to this as confronting the brutal facts.
Leaders establish trust through emotional investment and build capacity through functional investment. When leaders address the need to build trust, they are focusing on the Who. Trust is built through integrity, empathy, transparency, and collaboration. Functional investment builds capacity to close skill gaps that cause teachers to disengage. Building shared knowledge is first and foremost in improving schools (DuFour et al., 2016). This is the How. Finally, if we still have resistors, leaders use accountability to ensure a return on their investment. This is where leaders get results—the Do.
After each of the sections describing how to implement each investment, Muhammad and Cruz share various scenarios that are applicable to school leaders at each level and responsibility. The use of scenarios then offer guidance for self-reflection on how each scenario can be acted upon using the new strategies from the book. At the end of each chapter, leaders have an opportunity to complete a self-assessment. The scenarios are very relatable and useful, with self-reflection sections at the end of each chapter that serve to provide the reader with professional development ideas and action plans to improve their practice. Examples of scenarios included understanding the challenges of change as an elementary principal at a high-performing school that needs to convince teachers to change instructional practices to improve the achievement disparity among some subgroups. This one hit very close to home for me.
The authors share resources from other colleagues in the educational field that offer research-based approaches to tackling confrontational conversations and difficult adult behavior. These include how to share data with teachers from Richard DuFour, Becky DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas Many in Learning by Doing (2010). Patterson et al. share ideas on how to handle crucial confrontations with six key strategies (2002). In School Leadership That Works (2005), Robert Marzano focuses on four responsibilities of school leaders that build knowledge and skill capacity. The research provided by these well-known authors affirms the perspectives and approaches that are provided throughout the book in support of implementation of transformational leadership skills for educational leaders.
In the final chapter of the book, “Tying it All Together,” Muhammad and Cruz acknowledge that leading adults through change to increase student achievement can produce a sense of collective anxiety and ultimately interfere with the effective implementation of important policies, practices, and procedures. Within this book, the authors provide strategies for transformational leaders to effectively change adult behaviors. Transformational leaders are lead learners who continuously hone their craft. They support their teachers with the necessary skills, and create a vision and sense of empowerment. In addition, school leaders focus on utilizing professional monitoring as a means of changing others’ behavior.
As a school leader, I found the book easily readable with opportunities for self-reflection and solid ideas for immediate application. Although I have read other resources on transformational leadership, this particular book offered practical context that will support me in creating systems of support for teachers. In turn, this enhances an environment for change that will improve effectiveness of student achievement efforts. I believe that this book is a solid resource for a school administrator who wishes to tackle the challenges of organizational change by becoming a transformational leader.
