For the last eight years I’ve have been investigating and analyzing strong competency-based models for learning. Most of this inquiry launched in service of building a framework for ReSchool Colorado and the drive for labeling and building on learning in an expanded ecosystem of experience. Not too long ago it struck me that my gaps in my thinking exist because of my own lack of experience within such a system.
I’ve been fascinated with leadership development and organizational change for the last decade. I have been inspired by and pulled from the work of so many. Peter Block, Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Robert Greenleaf, Meg Wheatly, Peter Senge, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi head the list of thought leaders I return to again and again to guide my own work and support of others. This list of giants serves as the foundation to a leadership competency framework that cultivates a model of leadership that drives a new paradigm of change. This, I believe, is what education needs. Until leaders derivate from standards created for schooling as it currently exists, I believe we will continue to perpetuate an outdated model of learning.
I have chosen the Universal Model of Leadership as my competency-based development framework. It is a model that is both complex and elegant enough to take on the bold task of developing leaders for the future and the complexities of the work before us. Interestingly enough, it is the only model that I found that addresses both the creative and reactive domains. This site is designed to share my learning.
Although I will take the time and space to unpack each of these, here is a preview of my focus for the creative domains:
Relating: capability to relate to others in a way
that brings out the best in people, groups, and organizations
• Caring Connection
• Fosters Team Play
• Collaborator
• Mentoring & Developing
• Interpersonal Intelligence
Self-Awareness: orientation to ongoing professional
and personal development, as well as the degree to which inner
self-awareness is expressed through high-integrity leadership
• Selfless Leader
• Balance
• Composure
• Personal Learner
Authenticity: capability to relate to others in an
authentic, courageous, and high-integrity manner
• Integrity
• Courageous Authenticity
Systems Awareness: degree to which your awareness
is focused on whole system improvement and on community welfare
(the symbiotic relationship between the long-term welfare of the
community and the interests of the organization)
• Community Concern
• Sustainable Productivity
• Systems Thinker
Achieving: extent to which you offer visionary, authentic,
and high-achievement leadership
• Strategic Focus
• Purposeful & Visionary
• Achieves Results
• Decisiveness
A Satisfying Narrative 