This is an audiobook version of the paperback title published by Corwin Press.

The research is clear that quality leaders are second only to quality teachers in their impact on student achievement. But, what constitutes quality leadership? Viviane Robinson et al. (2008) concluded, among other things, that “leaders’ impact on student outcomes will depend on the particular leadership practices in which [leaders] engage” (p. 637) rather than on the specific type of leader (e.g., transformative, servant, distributed, etc.) leaders profess to be. Simply put, leadership practice trumps the leadership label. Hattie & Zierer (2018), recently added to this commentary in their book Mindframes for Learning: Teaching for Success by suggesting that the practices of quality leaders spring from “their ways of thinking, their ways of supporting, their ways of challenging, and their ways of passion” (Hattie & Zierer, 2018, p.x). So, while leadership practice trumps the leadership label, it is the ways leaders think about why they do what they do that trumps them all. In other words, the message from these experts is, focus not on the type of leader you are, nor on the specific practices in which leaders engage but rather on the way leaders think about her or his role and why they do what they do.

Toward that end, the aim of this book is to build on the thinking of Hattie and Zierer (2018) and their descriptions of teachers’ mindframes and supporting influences by focusing readers’ attention on the “mindframes” at the heart of successful leadership. Next, with the ways of thinking of successful leaders revealed, we then turn our attention to the high-probability practices successful leaders use, which help them to make her or his beliefs (mindframes) visible to themselves and others that research suggests has the greatest impact on the learning lives of the students and teachers entrusted to their care. In sum, we operationalize Simon Sinek’s (2009) axiom that successful leaders distinguish themselves from their average counterparts by beginning with the inner circle and the question of “why” (the mindframes in which the believe) and then continuing outward from there by asking the questions of “how” (what are the practices leaders use that operationalize these mindframes) and “what” (what is the desired impact of these beliefs and practices on students and teachers)—Mindframes for Leaders: The Why, How, and What of the Visible Learning Leader.