A range of leadership processes, practices, and capacities find their roots in imagination. Among these, we might include:
- understanding of what is, in terms of the self, others, and the complex systems we live in today;
- exploration of the possible—of what could be and, also, the practical and actionable ways to bridge what is and what is not yet;
- creation and flourishing of inclusive, ethical communities by enabling and enriching relationships;
- communication, engagement and meaning-making through the power of story and varied tools of story-telling.
What tools and processes are available to cultivate leadership imagination? One approach can be found in Imaginative Education. By using cognitive tools in practice, effective leaders may enrich their own imaginative capacities and the imaginative capacities of others.
Using Cognitive Tools to Understand What Is
- Envision (vivid mental imagery): What vivid mental images express what you know and feel about an existing school policy or a new school policy?
- Excavate (binary oppositions): What tensions do you feel as a school leader? What biases, perspectives, and/or values does your understanding reflect? What is missing from your understanding of leadership and yourself as a school leader?
- Identify patterns/rhythms/processes (identifying patterns): What patterns contribute to the meaning of the school experience for different stakeholders in the school community?What are the general causal chains, networks or systems that can be seen within the school community? How does everything work together? What or who is left out?
- Engage differently (change of context/perspective): How might someone else understand X school process? How could the context of your investigation or approach to the topic be changed to reflect a radically different point of view? What do you learn by engaging from this perspective?
Using Cognitive Tools to Understand What Could Be
- Seek the story (the story-form): What is the typical narrative or “story” about teaching and learning in your school? How does this story serve all learners? Reframe: What other (possibly unusual but effective) narratives for teaching might support all learners’ success?What if we change the story?
- Make meaningful metaphors (metaphor): What metaphors will help engage emotions and reveal the meaning of the vision for your school? What do you/we want the culture to resemble? What has never been done? Complete the phrase: Our school is ____. We want it to be ____.
- Play: Practice “What If-ing” (sense of wonder/playfulness): What do you wonder about in education? What do you wonder if for your professional practice? Use your sense of wonder to create a new ideational space. Set practicalities aside—engage in some extreme “what if-ing” about ways to better meet all learners’ emotional and intellectual needs. What does success for all learners look like? Which of your questions can you explore in more detail?
- Engage your inner rebel (revolt and idealism): What limitations do you face when dealing with X process/policy/issue in your school? Which rules are “breakable”? How does “breaking the rules” support student learning? How can the “rules” be re-imagined to enrich the school community?
Using Cognitive Tools to to Create Ethical and Inclusive Communities
- Humanize Equity/Diversity/Inclusion Work (humanization of meaning): What stories of equity and inclusion can guide your work as a school community? What decisions and policies support the creation of an ethical and inclusive school in which all members feel recognized, valued and empowered?
- Flip It (change of context/perspective): Start from a position of equity for all. How different would your school look/feel/sound if people who have been marginalized held a central position? What policies or practices prevent or challenge this perspective?
- Transcendent Qualities (transcendent qualities): What transcendent qualities currently define your school community? What qualities do you want to see enacted in everyday action? (e.g. community, respect, curiosity) What is heroic about the learners in your school?
- Agency (sense of agency): How does forming an inclusive school impact every school stakeholder’s life every day? What does it feel like to be empowered in your school? How is each and every person in your school not only be an ally, but also an accomplice in the fight for equity, diversity and inclusion for all? That is, how can all stakeholders in your school move beyond the low (or no) risk stance of standing in support of marginalized people as allies, to becoming accomplices? As accomplices, or as scholar and Abolitionist educator Love (2019) calls co-conspirators, how can (your) power and privilege be employed to challenge injustices of marginalized people?
Using cognitive tools in leadership education grows imagination, cultivating leaders’ abilities to use an array of cognitive tools available to them so they may flexibly and routinely envision the possible in their leadership.
Learn more
Judson, G. (2021). Cultivating Leadership Imagination with Cognitive Tools: An Imagination-Focused Approach to Leadership Education (Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 2021). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/19427751211022028
Also visit imaginED’s Leadership & Imagination page to explore blogs and podcasts on imaginative leadership practices and to read leaders’ stories of imagination in action.