No matter what you think of President Trump, he taught us something long before he became president. Our name is our brand. As a school teacher and leader for more than 20 years, I have had countless discussions and mentoring sessions with young leaders, each of them searching for some morsel of advice on what they can add to their resumes or drop into an interview that gives them a leg up. Through those conversations and through interviews with hundreds of candidates in my career, I have come to find out that most of us have it all wrong when we think about advancing our careers. Becoming an instructional leader: Building your brand We assume that our first priority is building our resumes through better…

Great leaders in schools are not unlike the great leaders of industry, small businesses and non-profits. There have been countless studies and books written about the most successful leadership tactics and tendencies, all of which reach similar conclusions about the best practices in leading and managing that we all know and have studied for decades. Similar studies exist that outline the best practices for teachers, the intricacies of great pedagogy that master teachers drop into their lessons in a seamless array of thises and thats that inspire children to grow at impressive rates. Those instructional best practices for teachers have made their way onto countless checklists and frameworks that principals use to monitor teacher growth. Still, here’s the thing. If we already know what makes…