Recently, I had an opportunity to chat with a district leader whose district had just received state recognition for implementing research-based literacy interventions. Test scores were up. The board was celebrating. Teachers felt supported. And yet, when I asked her to describe which students were thriving, she paused. “The usual ones,” she said quietly. “It’s always the usual ones - you know how that goes.”
This leader, whom I know to be a dedicated, passionate and effective educational professional, wasn’t failing - she was succeeding brilliantly at managing a system that maintained the very patterns she was working so ardently to change. The truth is the most dangerous leaders in education aren’t the obviously failing ones; they’re the highly competent ones who can make broken systems run efficiently. Real transformation requires leaders who can see how their best practices might be their biggest barriers and who understand that dismantling systems that don’t serve every student demands distributed leadership at every level with the vision to identify what’s not working, the courage to confront what causes harm, and the wisdom to build what truly serves all students.
I recognize that moment of realization because I lived it. For years I was excellent at doing - implementing guided reading with fidelity, developing teachers’ capacity, analyzing student progress. I operated from a core belief that my work was to help students master literacy through evidence-based instruction. The teachers implemented practices perfectly, students worked hard, and everyone leaned in. We still had marginal results and I needed to know why.
What I discovered changed everything about my leadership approach. The balanced literacy model we were implementing, rooted in Fountas and Pinnell’s system, was considered best practice of the time - yet it lacked concrete evidence for effectiveness particularly for my student population. But here’s the crucial insight: I had been so focused on how to implement practices that I never examined what those practices were actually doing to students. It was a terrible moment when I realized I was an excellent manager maintaining a system that marginalized the very students I meant to serve.
That's when I learned the difference between leaders who can do things effectively and leaders who can see what their effectiveness might be hiding. Most of us are trained to be excellent doers. This article is about becoming leaders who can see.
This distinction cuts to the core of what’s missing in most school reform efforts: the ability to recognize when success is selective. Consider the district that implements “data-driven” student placement. Advanced classes fill with predictable demographics. “Support” classes become permanent homes for others. Three years later, the same students who needed “remediation” still need it, but leaders celebrate their evidence-based approach to “meeting students where they are.”
The shift from developing leaders who can do to leaders who can see changes everything. Leaders who can do effectively execute strategies within existing frameworks. Leaders who can see recognize when those frameworks themselves need transformation.
This deeper level of leadership - of seeing - demands leaders who can examine their own assumptions and see beyond current success metrics to understand who thrives under existing approaches and who is left behind.
Most importantly, it requires confronting that sometimes the most sophisticated form of maintaining harmful systems is implementing “best practices” that improve outcomes for some while preserving predictable patterns of who succeeds and who struggles.
Real transformation begins when leaders develop the courage to see these patterns and the wisdom to disrupt them, even when those patterns are embedded in their most celebrated successes.
From technical competence to transformational vision:
This shift isn’t about abandoning proven approaches. It’s about using competence as a foundation for deeper inquiry. When leaders feel confident in their abilities, they become capable of examining uncomfortable truths: Which students consistently thrive under our systems? Which consistently struggle? What if our most successful practices are maintaining the negative outcomes we are working diligently to improve?
Coaching for human potential - From technical feedback and instructional improvement to seeing and developing the unique strengths every person brings.
In Kent, Washington, Etio’s work helped shift leadership conversations from focusing on what teachers needed to fix to recognizing what they were already doing well. As one district leader noted, this created "collaborative and trusting working relationships” where developments happened “with, and not to, staff.” Instead of deficit-based coaching conversations, leaders learned to start with strengths and build from there.
Etio’s approach has always focused on helping leaders master precise observation and actionable feedback through transformative coaching conversations. But here’s where transformation happens: when leaders coach from curiosity rather than compliance, they unlock capabilities they never knew existed. Instead of starting with “What needs fixing?” transformational coaching begins with “What’s working? What strengths is this person bringing that I might not be recognizing?” This single shift changes everything - how leaders see struggling teachers, how they view students who don’t respond to traditional approaches, how they build capacity across their organization. They stop looking for what’s wrong and start discovering what they’ve been missing.
Evidence-informed wisdom - From data analysis and protocols to asking questions that reveal possibilities, not just problems.
At Meridian Middle School, leaders had been analyzing test scores, attendance, and suspension data for years without breakthrough insights. Etio helped them expand their data collection to include classroom observations, stakeholder discussions, and focus group input. The question shifted from “Why aren’t our students improving?” to “what’s preventing students from demonstrating their capabilities?” This revealed that learning was “over-scaffolded and under-differentiated” which was a system design issue that data alone had never exposed.
Etio equips leaders with advanced data skills and practical protocols to help teams use data effectively for instructional decision-making. But real power emerges when leaders learn to ask fundamentally different questions. The right questions transform deficit data into asset mapping. Instead of analyzing what students can’t do, leaders examine what barriers might be preventing students from showing what they can do. They move from “Why aren’t these students succeeding?” to “What are we doing that’s making success harder for certain students?” This reframe doesn’t just reveal different solutions - it builds organizational capacity to see patterns that others miss entirely.
Learning that honors the learner - From designing professional development programs to development start with who people are, not what they lack.
Through NYSED’s partnership with Etio, School Support Partners moved away from standardized leadership training to deeply individualized coaching that invites leaders to adopt a learning stance, attend to leaders’ strengths, promote their goals, and speak to the specific context in which they are leading.
Etio develops leaders’ skills to design and deliver professional development that creates impactful learning opportunities aligned with school goals. But transformational development goes deeper. It recognizes that when people feel seen and valued for what they bring, they become capable of extraordinary growth. This approach builds on existing strengths, cultural knowledge, and lived experiences while addressing authentic learning needs. The difference is profound - instead of asking people to become someone else, this development helps them become the fullest, most effective version of themselves. It creates leaders at every level who understand that sustainable change happens when you honor what people already know while expanding what they’re capable of becoming.
Cultivating Collective Genius - Building team effectiveness and building capacity by creating conditions where every voice contributes to better decisions.
Meridian’s Collaborative School Quality Review involved nine staff members who observed every classroom (780 minutes of instructional time) and spoke with every staff member (46 in total). Rather than having decisions made by a small leadership team, this inclusive process revealed insights leadership had been missing. As Principal Darice Johnson reflected, “the buy-in from staff was overwhelmingly positive” because the process was so “inclusive” and helped the team see they had been “rowing in different directions.”
Etio builds leaders’ skills in developing teacher teams and ensuring they’re equipped to drive positive change. But here’s what creates breakthrough results: the best solutions come from including perspectives that have been traditionally excluded. This goes far beyond diverse representation in meetings. It means structuring decision-making processes to actively seek wisdom from those who experience the system differently. It means recognizing that the people closest to the problems often have the clearest insights about the solutions. When leaders build this capacity, they don’t just get better teams; they get access to collective genius that transforms how problems are understood and solved.
Our approach creates leaders who don’t just implement strategies more effectively; they develop the capacity to see what effective strategies might be maintaining broken systems or reinforcing inequitable patterns. More importantly, they learn to build this seeing capacity in others, creating organizations where leaders at every level can recognize when systems need transformation, not just optimization.
Most leadership development focuses on what leaders should do. Transformational leadership development focuses on how leaders should see. When you change how leaders perceive challenges, opportunities, and people, everything else changes naturally.
Which brings us to the question that should be haunting every leader reading this: What “success story” are you celebrating right now that keeps the same students struggling and the same students thriving, year after year?
- This is the moment of truth that separates managers from authentic leaders. Every decision you make either disrupts predictable patterns or reinforces them. There’s no neutral ground. Your data dashboards might show improvement, your board might celebrate progress, your staff might feel supported - and you might still be presiding over a sophisticated system that sorts students by demographics while calling it “meeting them where they are.”
The most dangerous moment in a leaders’ professional career isn't when they’re failing - it's when they’re succeeding at the wrong things. When their competence becomes a shield that protects them from seeing the harm their systems cause. When their expertise becomes the very thing that prevents them from questioning whether their best practices serve all students or just some.
So here's the question that reveals everything: If you eliminated every program, intervention, and initiative that consistently serves the same demographic of students, what would be left? And if the answer makes you uncomfortable, what are you going to do about it?
NB: Places on this session will be limited to 40 leaders.