SY27 Summer Leadership Development: Lead & Learn Forum

Are you spending too much time managing low performance and not enough time growing your future leaders? It’s time to refine your talent strategy. This session breaks down the critical skills of Coaching Up—developing teachers and school staff by empowering Assistant Principals, instructional coaches, team leads, and department chairs—and Coaching Out—recognizing the precise moment it’s time to let staff go. Learn how to scale your leadership through others and confidently navigate the tough decisions required to keep your school moving forward.

One of the most profound challenges school leaders face is managing staff underperformance. Left unaddressed, chronic underperformance drains high-performing teachers, fractures school culture, and directly compromises student achievement. This session equips elementary and high school principals with a rigorous, compassionate framework to distinguish between Coaching Up (investing in capacity building) and Coaching Out (transitioning a staff member out of a role with dignity).

Grounded in the "No Surprises" rule of leadership, participants will learn how to normalize daily and weekly micro-feedback loops to completely eliminate end-of-year evaluation anxiety. Leaders will move away from subjective, "feelings-based" notes and master the art of legally sound, objective documentation. Finally, this session provides turnkey scripts to navigate difficult "Crossroads" conversations and neutralize common defensive avoidance tactics (such as deflection and strategic absenteeism), ensuring that the burden of professional growth shifts back to the staff member while keeping student needs at the center of every decision.