Change the World by Changing Yourself: Why Great Leaders Grow First

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world” - Mahatma Gandhi

We All Want Better Schools—But Where Should Change Begin?

Most of us enter education because we want to make things better—for students, for teachers, and for entire school communities. We imagine higher achievement, stronger instruction, and more equitable outcomes.

When those goals feel out of reach, our instinct is often to look outward. We start searching for the right program, policy, or personnel change to spark improvement.

But what if the most powerful place to begin isn’t out there, but in here?

What if the first—and most lasting—change comes when we grow as leaders?

This is the uncomfortable, liberating truth: real school improvement starts with personal leadership development. It starts with you.

What You Do Depends on Who You Are

In earlier posts, we explored the WHAT of leadership (choosing a clear focus) and the HOW (aligning strong practices to enact that focus). But there’s a third, often-overlooked layer that determines whether either of those will actually work:

Who you are when you lead.

If you’re not getting the results you want, it may not be the practice that’s failing. It may be your capacity to execute that practice well.

This is what Ken Leithwood (2012) calls Personal Leadership Resources (PLRs)—the internal strengths leaders rely on to drive external results. These include:

• Cognitive PLRs: problem-solving skills, knowledge of effective school and classroom conditions, and systems thinking

• Social resources: optimism, self-efficacy, resilience, and emotional regulation

• Psychological resources: personal values, moral purpose, and identity as a leader

Among these, cognitive PLRs (CPLRs) are especially powerful drivers of instructional improvement.

The Research Is Clear: PLRs Predict Leadership Impact

Leithwood, Fullan, and many other researchers have emphasized that sustainable leadership depends on personal development. Leithwood posits that as much as 40% of the variance between effective and ineffective leaders can be explained by their PLRs.

In other words: two principals can use the same practices—but one gets better results because they apply those practices with stronger judgment, deeper understanding, and clearer systems thinking.

A Key Finding from My Dissertation: Thinking Drives Leading

This pattern also emerged in my own research.

I studied how principals effectively enact school change. What I found was striking:

• Most of a principal’s time is spent solving problems.

• The effectiveness of their leadership hinges on how they think through those problems.

• Leaders with the greatest impact didn’t just use best practices—they decided which practices to use, when, and how.

Critically, the strongest leaders didn’t rely solely on past experience. They showed:

• Flexible thinking (adapting practices to fit unique contexts)

• Contextual judgment (understanding what would work here and now)

• Deep instructional knowledge (a mental picture of what great teaching actually looks like)

These are the hallmarks of robust cognitive PLRs. And here’s the encouraging part: unlike fixed personality traits, CPLRs are malleable. They can be grown—intentionally.

You Can’t Model Change Without Doing It Yourself

We often ask our teachers to grow. We expect our teams to adapt, stretch, and innovate.

But here’s the hard truth: if we aren’t modeling growth ourselves, our words ring hollow.

Growth can’t just be an organizational value—it must be a personal practice.

• Want to improve classroom walkthroughs? Grow your observation and feedback skills.

• Want stronger shared leadership? Improve your meeting facilitation and team-building skills.

• Want deeper PLCs? Sharpen your coaching, questioning, and adult-learning skills.

When we model learning, reflection, and self-development, we give permission for others to do the same.This is how cultural transformation begins—not with a memo, but with a mirror.

How to Grow Your Personal Leadership Resources

So what does it look like to actually grow your PLRs?This isn’t abstract—it’s practical and actionable. Here are three high-leverage strategies:

1. Build Your Cognitive Muscles

• Study high-performing schools and classrooms. Build a mental model of what excellence looks like.

• Engage with research on instructional leadership, systems change, and school improvement.

• Practice structured problem-solving: define the root problem, explore multiple solutions, weigh trade-offs, and monitor outcomes.

Over time, this builds pattern recognition and judgment, two hallmarks of expert leadership thinking.

2. Cultivate Reflective Practice

• Keep a leadership journal. After key decisions, reflect on what you noticed, how you reasoned, and what you might do differently.

• Ask for feedback from trusted colleagues—not just on what you did, but on how you approached the work.

• Use coaching protocols to surface your thinking processes, not just your actions.

Reflection turns experience into expertise. It accelerates growth by helping you see your own mental models more clearly.

3. Strengthen Your Emotional and Social Resources

• Build self-awareness and emotional regulation skills—because stress hijacks cognitive capacity.

• Develop your resilience by reframing challenges as opportunities to grow.

• Strengthen your relationships and trust-building skills, which amplify every practice you lead.

Emotions are contagious. A leader’s optimism or cynicism ripples outward. Strengthening your emotional resources multiplies your instructional impact.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

Education today is more complex and demanding than ever. Leaders face constant pressure to produce rapid results, often with limited resources.It’s tempting to look for quick external fixes. But the most sustainable improvement won’t come from the next program or initiative. It will come from leaders who can think clearly, act strategically, and model growth under pressure.

That requires ongoing personal development—not as an add-on, but as core leadership work.

This isn’t self-indulgent. It’s self-responsible. Our schools can only rise as high as our leadership allows them to.

Your Leadership Practice Reflects Your Leadership Development

Everything happening in your school is, in some way, shaped by your leadership. That’s not blame—it’s empowerment. When you believe you can shift outcomes by shifting your own approach, you unlock the most powerful improvement lever available.

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being intentional. It’s about committing to grow—not just as a manager of tasks, but as a leader of people and learning. This is the heart of transformational leadership:

Becoming the kind of person who can lead the change you want to see.

Discussion Question

What is one area of your own leadership practice that you need to grow in order to support the change you want to see in your school?