Mayerson Academy is issuing a challenge to education leaders to dedicate five minutes each day over the next month to engage in simple activities that will reframe their thinking and improve the culture in their school. In this new blog post by Jillian Darwish and Tom Vander Ark, 5 Minutes to Change Culture: The 5 to Thrive Challenge, share why education leaders should take the challenge:
1. Self-Awareness: Leaders (formal and informal) with high self-awareness typically know their strengths and limitations.
- Do you know your strengths, or just your weaknesses?
- Are you aware of your impact on others’ performance and well-being?
2. Self-Management: Success requires that leaders expertly manage their time, beliefs, thoughts, emotions and their capacity in service to their goals.
- Do you know what your body language does to your emotions?
- How are you managing your personal “network effect”?
3. Social Awareness: Social awareness is the ability to understand different situations and how you react in those situations.
- What is the difference between what I can do and what we can do?
- What is your listening to talking ratio?
4. Relationships: Strong relationships are an essential component to a thriving organizational culture and effective leadership.
- When a visitor comes to your school, will they immediately know that you value relationships?
- How many times did you laugh with your team this week?
5. Strengths. Mayerson Academy focuses on strengths. While there are no silver bullets for SEL success, using the lens of strengths is a powerful tool to improve culture, performance and motivation. The toolkit provided by the challenge also includes additional tools such as an opportunity to take the VIA Character Survey, and receive a personalized strengths profile valued at $20.
Designed especially for principals, guidance counselors and school leaders who want to expand engagement, motivation, learning and performance through the lens of character strengths and the development of social and emotional learning competencies the free toolkit is adapted from the Thriving Learning Communities (TLC) program. Learn more about the program – including links to research and resources – here or simply download the free toolkit to get started today!
