Photo by Justin Leibow

“Leaders ‘define reality’” (De Pree, 2004, p. 11). That idea, offered by Max De Pree in Leadership Is an Art, is as good a place as any to begin to think about leadership, online and off. It implies both thinking and doing, both strategy and tactics. A leader defining reality must establish the ways in which people interact; the attitudes and approaches an organizational culture will or will not tolerate; the ground rules and guidelines from which activity springs.

THE CASE FOR BLENDED LEADERSHIP

Anyone who works in schools knows that, increasingly, educational activity is shaped and sifted and moderated and facilitated as much online as it is offline. We post resources in online spaces like Canvas or Moodle or Blackboard, and then use those resources to support face-to-face discussions; students email us with questions (and excuses); classroom discussions unfold and are archived for further use in spaces like Edmodo or Schoology; colleagues problem-solve and collaborate in person and then via Google Drive (and Edmodo and email and Blackboard and Moodle and so on). These spaces are all part of our educational reality.

So let's take a step back and think about this new (if you want to call it that) reality. Do you remember the first time you used Google Docs to collaborate? Have you ever taken a moment to study the class webpage where you post your assignments online? Like the food in your mom's proverbial refrigerator, these spaces didn't just appear. Someone outside your school decided to make them happen, and someone inside your school decided to make use of them. Someone made a decision to structure collaboration or instruction or information in a certain way, for a certain reason. The intentionality behind such decisions, we're positing, is a form of leadership.

Under-recognized and increasingly important, this kind of leadership has been quietly evolving and thoughtfully chronicled for at least two decades. Back in 1998, before Reshan or Steve had even entered the educational workforce, Pearl Rock Kane, director of the Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership, described leadership-via-network in her influential article, “Farewell, Lone Warrior.”

Even in corporate America, the John Wayne school of management has given way to an approach that is less hierarchical and more collaborative. In all forms of American organizations there is a desire for participation and teamwork and strong evidence that such participation leads to greater effectiveness. Besides, in a rapidly changing world, even supremely gifted individuals can't handle the amount of work alone or know all they need to know. (Kane, 1998)

Seventeen years ago, Dr. Kane articulated a vision for leadership—less hierarchical and more collaborative—that would help leaders, both new and seasoned, gain a foothold in increasingly complex schools. Imagine trying to lead a school or department today without collecting multiple viewpoints when facing a problem; imagine trying to lead without delegating or sharing the burden of delivering on your school's mission. The distributed leadership model, described by Dr. Kane, has made school as we know it possible.

And, it can be argued, such distributed leadership began to reach its apex once people in schools were connected by computers and Web servers. Think about how naturally we now join our thoughts via email or a Google Doc or a Padlet wall. Think about the possibilities inherent in designing presentations, or building databases, via shared document workspaces. Think about the data you can examine, and the things you can see in the data you examine, if you have even a rudimentary understanding of Excel. Technology has made possible a new fluidity in leadership thinking, a new fluidity in leadership itself.

Bob Johansen goes a step further in Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World. In Johansen's lexicon, Kane's nonhierarchical collaborators become transformed, but recognizably so. He urges us to “Think of a leader not just as an individual but as a node on many different networks” (Johansen, 2012, p. 19). The best leaders, accordingly, will be “ravenous networkers with active links all over the world [or, for our purposes, all over the school or schools].”

These quotations tell a story about how leadership has been moving online. But it would be foolish to suggest that online leadership will become the only way to lead in schools. Though folks like Salman Khan have supercharged the possibilities for self-guided study; educational journalists are, almost weekly, proclaiming the death of school as we know it; and LinkedIn has shelled out more than a billion dollars for an online portal (Lynda.com) to help people build skills, most schooling, for better or worse, still unfolds in brick-and-mortar school buildings. Students still attend classes and faculty members still attend faculty meetings. We don't think that you can or should lead schools solely from behind screens.

A recent interview with Henry Mintzberg on the Thinkers 50 website drives home the point, though from a grouchier angle than we'd ever take. Mintzberg accepts the fact that the Internet—via email—has changed the way we manage people, and he's not too happy about the shift:

[Managers] who rely on email to communicate with their people are in deep trouble. It is a narrow form of communication that's wonderful for getting a lot of data moved around quickly, and for short things (that's why Twitter is its most appropriate form), but it's not the way to communicate fully, richly.

[People] have been managing too superficially. The occupational hazard of managing is superficiality, and these things [that is, email and Twitter] could make it worse. (Mintzberg, 2011)

We concede that any technology, poorly handled, can nullify the personal touch that drives effective communication, teaching, management, and leadership (the list could go on). Indeed, in a 2007 white paper from the Center for Creative Leadership, when asked to choose one skill that is “central to effective virtual leadership,” 10 percent of the senior executives surveyed selected “Relationship Building/Face-to-Face Contact” (Criswell & Martin, 2007). Online leadership will never (or probably never) replace the one-on-one, in-person exchange, and we're absolutely not advocating for that. But we want to be clear that, moving forward, the one-on-one, in-person exchange will not be able to replace online leadership either. We don't believe that anyone running a school can suggest that leading online is not a veritable way, that it does not exist, or that it should not persist.

So we've come to a fork in the road, and as Yogi Berra advised, we're going to take it. Should you lead online or should you lead offline? Both. And gracefully, if possible. To lead well today, you have to blend the two approaches. You have to do both well to lead well. Offline leadership and online leadership can complement one another, indeed must complement one another. That complementarity, that blended state, is the story of school leadership today.

Blending your leadership is partially about convenience and scale. The complexity of today's schools was, no doubt, partially caused by technology. And the only way to survive in such schools, the only way to amplify your presence enough to lead in such schools, is to blend online tools into a more traditional leadership approach.

In a day, you couldn't possibly talk to everyone you needed to without emailing or texting some of them. And you couldn't possibly manage all the projects for which you are responsible if you needed to be physically present to connect all the dots.

At the same time, blending your leadership is partially justified by Hersey and Blanchard's concept of situational leadership (1969). According to the model, leaders can lead in one of four ways: by telling, selling, participating, or delegating. Telling or selling occurs when the leader assigns a task to a follower, either directly or via nudges. When participating and delegating, in contrast, leaders develop their colleagues; they help them grow into independent agents or leverage the fact that they are both independent and skilled. Hersey and Blanchard advise leaders to choose a style based on their assessment of the “maturity level” of the colleague with whom they are working. Colleagues who lack skills or confidence need to be assigned tasks; colleagues who demonstrate initiative and skills can receive handoffs and be left alone to carry the ball to the goal line. The jump from situational leadership to blended leadership is, at least on the surface, a small one.

Along Hersey and Blanchard's lines, we might characterize some colleagues as more or less technologically mature than others. Leading them, we have to decide whether we want to work with them in person, via email, or via something more complicated such as nested, shared Google Documents and Folders that require self-direction to access, self-discipline to remember to access, and some skill to operate.

Example #1: One day a senior leader at his school approached Steve about a member of one of his teams. She didn't know this person well and came to Steve's office partially to vent and partially to work toward a solution—she was up against a strict deadline. “I asked him to go online and log into a microsite,” she said. “I need him to edit the content. He's the only one who knows [the content] well enough to do so. And he's been unresponsive, at best, and uncooperative, at worst.”

Steve knew right away what was going on. The person who was asked to do the editing was very uncomfortable with technology and didn't have a strong enough relationship with the person asking the question to admit that. So he was most certainly avoiding her. If approached directly by her, he would cannily find a way to stall—probably dragging his feet right through and past the deadline.

Steve said, “You've got the right person, but you've assigned him the wrong task. If you want what's in his head, print the website for him and ask him to edit it by hand. You'll get exactly what you need.” (Truth be told, the task was poorly constructed and therefore confusing. It's not technically possible to “edit” a website unless you go into the back end. So the leader hadn't blended her leadership very well.) Sure enough, the adjustment of the task—meeting the teacher closer to where he was—made all the difference. He was able to contribute; she hit her deadline; the school profited.

Counterexample #1: On the flipside, one of the complaints that Steve increasingly hears in his role as a school administrator who works closely with teachers is that some leaders are overly reliant on low-tech, or no-tech, approaches. Steve often hears, “We didn't need to do that face to face” or “Why doesn't this team leader use the digital tools available to him through our 1:1 program?” or even, from some design savvy folks, “This leader isn't tending to the user experience very well. If he just took more time to set the task, he would save everyone time and energy.” (The last comment is particularly damning; it signals a leader who may be using technology to make his own life easier, rather than the lives of his colleagues.) Some of these “complaining” colleagues would prefer to work in a more distributed manner rather than being asked to convene in rooms according to meeting schedules arranged without their input. Some of them are rising stars in the organization, and they could work in a distributed way and still produce great work. Interestingly, this fact might even reveal the secret to their success. That they are mature in Hersey and Blanchard's sense, and mature in a technological sense, allows them to thrive in the complex, online-again/offline-again kinds of organizations we have today (more on that later).

There are few more overused—although actually useful—lines in education than “meet the students where they are.” The same can be said for each of us. Leaders using a blended approach are willing to meet people where they are in order to move their work forward, to move the organization forward, regardless of their feelings about where their colleagues should be on any given spectrum, technological or otherwise. But a blended model of leadership is more than just a convenience—sending effective emails—and more than just a version of situational leadership—knowing when to walk down the hall instead of firing off an email. We can extrapolate from blended learning models to see why, done well and done intentionally, blending technology into leadership practices can add deep and lasting value to a school.

In a book chapter from 2004, Professor Charles R. Graham from Brigham Young University establishes a clear definition of blended learning—one that endures for teaching and learning today and maps easily onto the currently unfolding story of school leadership. According to Graham, the most important component of blended learning is “the combination of instruction from two historically separate models of teaching and learning: traditional F2F [face-to-face] learning systems and distributed learning systems” (Bonk & Graham, 2005, p. 2). He adds that computers are central to blended instruction. According to this definition, school leadership has been blended for years, though for many, in completely unintentional ways. As we move information online, Skype with prospective employees, occasionally replace a faculty meeting with an emailed memo, or pull together a group to participate in a webinar, we are leading in a blended way.

More potent for leaders is the quick Graham statement that follows his definition: “how [learning systems] blend” will be their distinguishing factor. By choosing deliberately the ways in which we engage, or disengage, online tools, we will become effective, even graceful, blended leaders. We will learn to avoid asking each other to complete tasks of which we are not capable, which results in getting frustrated when we can't or won't deliver. Likewise, we will streamline systems using technologies so as to make life easier for each other, to save more of our learning, and to process more quickly those things that can be processed quickly. We believe that leaders need to stand firmly with Graham—how leadership systems blend will be the distinguishing factor for how it feels to work in our schools.

Eliminating frustration in the workplace is important, but that shouldn't be the sole reason to invest in a new method or model. Fortunately, there's more value to be squeezed out of approaching schooling, and the leadership of schooling, in a blended way. Citing the work of several researchers, Graham points out some of the benefits of blended learning, including increases in active learning, peer-to-peer learning, and learner-centered approaches.

No school leader that we know would argue against an approach that will promote active learning, or more peer-to-peer learning, for his or her faculty. In the past five years alone, many teachers, in addition to adding to their content knowledge, have needed to learn (for example) how to use Google Apps, how to use an LMS (learning management system) like Moodle or Blackboard, how to shift to paperless teaching environments, or how to shift from individual paper calendars to shared electronic calendars. If a faculty is not actively learning, and if they are not learning from each other, then that faculty won't grow and progress as it should.

As a leader, if you are responsible for maintaining the quality of a program while ensuring that it advances into the future, you have to ask yourself: Can you afford to lead by “talking at” your faculty, or would you gain more ground by giving your faculty a voice? Can your professional development coordinator teach your faculty everything they need to know, as quickly as they need to know it, or would you be better off if your faculty learned through robust peer-to-peer connections? Can you afford to manage a faculty that is content to slot itself into traditional systems, to fly under the radar, or do you want (need!) a faculty that pushes against systems, that innovates, that co-creates with you and with one another?

Another, simpler way to put it is, do you think of your faculty members as learners? If so, then blended leadership, leadership that carefully and deliberately uses technology to engage and inspire communities of teachers, is worth exploring in more detail. Truth be told, your faculty might even thank you for it.

Horn and Staker published their magisterial Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools in 2014, refining the decade (or more) of blended theory and practice that came before it. In it, they write:

Blended learning is not the same as technology-rich instruction. It goes beyond one-to-one computers and high-tech gadgets. Blended learning involves leveraging the Internet to afford each student a more personalized learning experience, meaning increased student control over the time, place, path, and/or pace of his or her learning. (Horn & Staker, 2014, p. 289)

We don't know of a single adult who wouldn't prefer, as Horn and Staker present it, a blended environment that would give them back some control over their time, the place in which they complete some of their work, and the pace of their work. (Interestingly, this was considered a next frontier in the 2007 Center for Creative Leadership report cited earlier: “Executives See Flex Time as a Concept to Be Taken Seriously” [Criswell & Martin, 2007]). Though we explore work management systems later, looking at the way things like the Agile phenomenon and team management software like Slack might lead to breakthroughs in how we work in schools, even a simple move like allowing a working parent to occasionally phone into an after-school standing meeting—and doing that really, really well—is a huge perk and motivator. Blending technology into daily practice enables you to make such affordances.

As a quick aside, it makes evolutionary sense that thinking about blended leadership would begin to cohere now that blended learning has permeated our schools. After all, our students increasingly come from a “screened-in” environment, cradling iPads while they themselves are still being cradled by parents. Teachers, more and more, come from a similar environment, but there are enough of us who grew up with limited—or no—access to connected screens that covering the range—meeting people where they are, blending when it's going to add deep value—seems to be the best way to lead.

Which leads back to Graham and forward to the central challenge of this book. The challenge is not to add the most technological bells and whistles to your leadership toolbox; nor is it to help teachers add the most bells and whistles to their teaching toolboxes. It is “to try and best understand the strengths and weaknesses of both F2F and CM [computer mediated] environments so that when we are faced with tradeoffs, we can make appropriate decisions” (Bonk & Graham, 2005, p. 17).

Making decisions is indeed crucial, perhaps the most crucial action performed by leaders on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. Regardless of the decision-making process you choose (pros and cons, heuristics, gut level, and so on), weighing tradeoffs is something that all leaders can practice and that will improve. And that will improve their decision-making prowess. The good news is that you don't have to practice on your own school. In an educational climate in which so many practitioners share so much—through blogs and conferences and tweets—and when transparency is such a common value, you can watch others while you are calibrating your own scale of costs and benefits, of trades worth making, hedging, or holding.

LEADERSHIP ANTHROPOLOGY AND LEARNING: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AROUND, LOOKING FORWARD

In this book we aim to share with you proofs of concept that you can put to use right away. They won't all be easy fits, but if you are willing to tinker with them, willing to take them into your school's proverbial garage and play with them, you will learn a lot in the process and we hope enhance your leadership capacities.

Our examples come from a watchful mode we refer to as leadership anthropology. It's simpler, and ideally less pretentious, than it sounds:

• We look around.
  • What is happening at other schools?
  • What is happening at our own school?
  • What is visible via online networks?
  • What—of what's visible—makes solid sense in terms of leadership practice?
• We think about what has worked in our own working lives.
  • How have we successfully mobilized people around common purposes? How have we organized and completed projects? What has worked, or not worked, for us as followers?
  • How have we learned and what did we do with that learning?

Our approach allows us to write about leadership in a slightly different way than the way others sometimes do. Unlike other leadership books, we try to avoid theories or formulas (though some would argue that the lack of a theory is a theory). Instead, we describe and try to make sense of how people are already leading with technology. This is an important distinction because it recognizes the need to avoid assuming anything about various educational and leadership contexts.

It turns out, the US military, as described in the book Little Bets, serves as a useful precursor to this kind of thinking. Peter Sims, cofounder and president of the Silicon Guild, details the shift toward a more context-driven approach:

During the Cold War era, the army focused so much on training highly specific, repeatable tasks and eliminating potential errors, that when it faced the new style of insurgent warfare in the Middle East, many soldiers were utterly unprepared. Systems and approved solutions had become too much of a substitute for moment-to-moment, creative problem-solving. To effectively confront the insurgent enemies of today and the future, soldiers must be able to identify and solve unfamiliar problems, rapidly adapting to the circumstances unfolding on the ground. They work from the ground up and must learn from the environment—the people and the situation in each village and town—then craft new tactics that will address the problems they discover. They must be willing and able to adapt to those tactics and keep developing new ones as they go. (Sims, 2011, p. 26)

A mistake or misinformed effort we often see in the world of educational technology—which is one of the places we often go to find analogies for leadership in this book—is the generalization of problems and “approved solutions” for schools—masking an unwillingness to address the needs of each “village and town,” each school. There are so many nuanced layers to what schools can mean, and be, and each layer is dependent on context—locations, demographics, institutional histories, philosophies, and so on. Still, many software providers want to claim to have “the answer” or “something everyone can use.” Some even use research from small populations or cases to make broad, sweeping conclusions based on causality that is faulty at best.

Likewise we cannot make the same mistake of prescribing a set of leadership rules that will make someone a better leader. Yes, by reading about and thinking about interesting stories around education, technology, and leadership one can become a more informed leader, but the decision about what is done with that information is what defines “betterness” or “worseness” in any space. Our book shows how successful leaders, online or off, filter and apply those elements that are most valuable and relevant to emergent challenges. Successful leaders reject the idea that leaders have to figure out all the answers—and even ask all the questions—up front. Instead, they learn, and apply their learning, continuously.

That last bit about learning is vitally important and acts as a golden thread for this book. All the examples of blended, and blending, leadership that we found and describe are related in some way to the learning process. If you think of blended leadership in no other way, think of it this way: Blended leaders lead the learning and lead by learning. Blended leaders alternate seamlessly between those two modes, either helping others learn or learning themselves so as to bring that learning back to the groups they lead. Such practices are sewn into every example in this book.

It doesn't take a brain researcher to know that “learning” has been geolocated to schools and other academic institutions, so much so that some people think that learning can take place only in these places. Additionally, others think that, in order to learn, people have to actively know that they are trying to learn something (for example, by reading this book or searching for articles online).

Our concept of learning is broader than either imposed artificial limitation. Though we are both teachers, we subscribe to the idea (or, rather, fact) that, at its most biological level, learning is the neurological process of the brain evolving (and in some cases devolving) and changing its state to accommodate and then interpret the billions of signals it receives from senses. From this broad perspective, learning starts at gestation and ends only at death. It is not something that starts and stops depending on context. It does not start and stop when one enters or leaves a school. We would not want it, or our leaders, any other way.

Leaders make the learning process transparent and help guide learning toward understood personal and/or shared objectives. Blending leadership just means using some sort of machine-based mediation to drive similar results.

We know from our own experience as leaders and learners that having access to multiple perspectives and being connected to multiple channels of feedback and inspiration, both online and off, provides opportunities for the most informed, empathetic, and efficient response to leadership challenges.

AHMAD'S MAGIC CARD CASE

An email exchange between Reshan and a student (Ahmad) shows the ways in which online interactions can meld with offline interactions and leadership intentions. It would not have happened easily without technology, and the outcome was enhanced by its usage.

Some background: Reshan's desk had been at our middle school campus and Ahmad is a high school student who spends his days on a completely different campus, one mile away. Reshan has never taught Ahmad, and in fact, they do not share a typical student–teacher relationship. Ahmad is a member of our school's laptop leadership team, which means he staffs our tech help desk and is generally charged with helping our 1:1 laptop program to thrive. Reshan coordinates this team, making him a leader of the laptop leaders. He has to help them acquire the necessary skills (or familiarize themselves with the ever-changing world of technology) in order to fulfill their roles appropriately. Like all leaders, Reshan's performance as a leader is only as good as the output of his team.

The exchange begins with the curiosity of the student-leader. Ahmad has a personal interest in our school's 3D printer, and he wants to use it for something fun and test its capacity. “Hello,” writes Ahmad; “I want to use the 3D printer at the Middle School and was wondering how I would go about doing so. Could you please get to me on Moodle or e-mail me?”

Upon receiving this email, Reshan has a few choices as a leader. He can (a) call a face-to-face meeting (which, for many leaders, let's admit, is the default mode) or (b) keep the correspondence going via email. He can (c) move through the exchange quickly (to check it off his to-do list) or (d) work through it more slowly so that the student-leader learns more in the process.

Reshan, being a canny blended leader, chooses options b and d. He will keep the conversation online (for reasons that will soon become apparent) and try to enable the maximum conditions for learning. He knows the student-leader is interested and that interest is a powerful component in skill building and knowledge acquisition. He also knows that the more Ahmad learns, the better he will be as a laptop leader. Helping him become as good as he can become in this area will take more time up front, but it will save Reshan time later because Ahmad is a freshman and will most likely be with the program for the next four years. If Ahmad becomes a true computer ace, he will be able to train other students, seek out better resources, offer enhanced technical support to the community, and free up Reshan to do other things.

Without being in the same room with the student, Reshan follows a classic leadership pattern. He offers just enough pressure and just enough support (as leadership guru Michael Fullan [2011] would suggest) to keep Ahmad engaged in the work: “If you … create a file (in Tinkercad or Sketchup), then we can print a mini prototype of it for you.”

The student then sends along a file, and Reshan responds again, and again chooses to take some extra time (his and the student's) to ensure that maximum development occurs. He decides not to limit the learning inherent in this moment:

I could print this for you as is, however I am going to give you a learning challenge. 1) In Self Service -> Applications, download and install Sketchup 2013. 2) Teach yourself how to “close” the spade shapes and then replace it with your initials (either as a cut out or an embossment) or some other interesting thing.

He then links to a how-to video, which is a key reason to keep the conversation online: permanent resources. If Reshan met with this student and showed him a few moves, the student might not have learned. Or he might have learned enough in the moment to complete the task and then forgotten the steps. Instead, Reshan offers him resources that he can return to again and again. If he encounters a similar problem—say, with a student or teacher he is helping in his role as a laptop leader—he will know how to solve it or know where to look for help.

And so it went … until this showed up in Steve's intercampus mail, with a note that said, “Please deliver to Ahmad.”

Photo courtesy of the authors

The story of Ahmad's Magic Card Case brings together many threads of blended leadership. First off, it started way before it started, when Reshan and Ahmad built the kind of relationship that could prosper and thrive in either an offline or online space. Then, because of the relationship, they could work together from different campuses for several days in a row—seamlessly. Throughout, the leader-mentor held his protégé in the zone of proximal development, supporting him and pushing him, providing him the resources he needed when he needed them. And the work took place over email, online video, a 3D printer, and finally, intercampus mail.

Without a firm grounding in leadership principles, how they relate to learning, and the work spaces opened up by technology, Reshan never could have proceeded as effectively as a leader. Ahmad's inquiry, and the residual learning it generated, would have gone to waste. Reshan would have bumped into Ahmad every once in a while at an agenda-driven meeting, and the two might not have collaborated. Ahmad might not have added to his skill set.

The potential of what learning can look like today transforms the potential of what leadership can look like today. Ahmad is a student, but he could just as easily have been a colleague. Reshan is a technologist, but he could just as easily have been you, in whatever roles you fill in your school. When the Ahmads of the world approach you, the key habit to develop is to stop time so as to multiply learning. Don't go into instant fixer mode. Ask a simple question instead: “Do you want me to do _____ for you, or do you want to learn how to do it for yourself?” And, if you don't ask that question out loud, ask a version of it to yourself: “If I keep doing _____ for this person, he won't learn. Can I offer him challenge and support instead? Can I commit to his learning instead?”

Maybe the best part of this story is the way it points forward, truly forward. The last time that Steve asked Ahmad for help with something (building a random name-list generator for one of his classes), Ahmad offered his own kind of challenge to Steve, teaching him about Google Add-ons. Of course, Steve wanted Ahmad to just “do it for him,” but Ahmad slowed down the exchange, giving more than the answer—he gave Steve a whole new set of tools and the confidence that he can solve at least part of his own problem next time.

WHY WE NEED A CORE SET OF BELIEFS, ESPECIALLY IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

For us, beliefs have become essential lifelines, helping us to lead across platforms and in pockets where many people don't even realize (yet) that intentional leadership is possible. It is possible, for example, to exhibit leadership in the way you, or others, compose email (just take a look at David Sparks's Email [2013] from his MacSparky Field Guide series if you don't believe us). It is possible to exhibit leadership by pushing for change in the way your school is represented online via its website or social media accounts. It is possible to lead by collecting and sharing online artifacts.

Our beliefs emerged from many places: from our own practice and observation; from the Ahmads who have entered our lives with curiosity and playfulness, pushing us to turn over our perspectives; from our own leading and teaching; from our own leadership anthropology; from continual conversations with each other and with people at conferences and with authors we have read. As we have tried things or tried them on or looked around or listened or succeeded or failed, belief statements cohered.

And that cohering process has been vitally important—more important, in fact, than the beliefs themselves.

After you have established a set of beliefs about leadership (or teaching and learning, for that matter), other experiences that used to appear random snap into focus. They stick to your beliefs and offer up more meaning. You can understand them, their possibilities, and apprehend them more quickly. Understanding and apprehension lead to meaning—lead to value.

The story of Ahmad's Magic Card Case continues to serve as an example. To explain why he was sending Steve a red card case via intercampus mail, Reshan forwarded him the email string (unpacked earlier) he had developed with Ahmad. It served as a simple request—“Hey, can you give this kid this package”—but Reshan also knew that he was sending Steve a case study, an artifact of a leadership exchange framed by a growth mindset. Steve delivered the package to Ahmad but also appreciated the value. The beliefs in this book helped Steve to see the value implicit in the exchange between Reshan and his protégé and ultimately extract it. Beliefs aid in pattern recognition, which is critical work for a leader, online or off. Beliefs are tiny systems for helping leaders process, chronicle, use, and reuse the digital artifacts and erratum that fly at them. They are tiny systems, too, for maximizing the residual learning effects of aspects of organizational life that many people take for granted: a great email can become a model for other leaders, a school's website can be a model for another school, a collection of tweets can be a breadcrumb trail to the solving of a technical problem.

In their research paper, “Teacher Technology Change: How Knowledge, Beliefs, and Culture Intersect,” Peg Ertmer from Purdue University, and Anne Ottenbreit-Leftwich from Indiana University, help us understand how beliefs help us to see, and process, new information.

Tilema (1995) suggested that beliefs act as a lens or filter when processing new information, such as that obtained from textbooks, from knowledgeable others, or even from experience. According to Nespor (1987), early events (especially if particularly unique or vivid) can color our perceptions of subsequent events. Thus new information delivered through professional development programs is filtered through teachers' belief systems before being organized into their existing knowledge structures. (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010, p. 7)

According to this research, investing in professional development without first investing in organizational beliefs is putting the cart before the horse. If teachers don't harbor certain beliefs, they will lack the intellectual flypaper to make learning stick. Activating beliefs is therefore crucial—as crucial, we argue, for leaders as it is for teachers.

Further evidence suggests that beliefs can ultimately influence behavior, too, making them even more important. In another paper, “Teacher Professionalism and the Emergence of Constructivist-Compatible Pedagogies” by Henry Jay Becker and Margaret M. Riel at the University of California, Irvine (1999), we see that “how teachers organize their classes to a large extent reflects their beliefs about good teaching” (Becker & Riel, 1999, p. 11). So we act, to some extent, within a range made possible by what we believe, by our beliefs. Also, beliefs influence adult learning and participation in learning communities:

Teachers who place a high value on knowledge construction in classroom learning are more likely to play an active role in understanding teaching and learning at their school. Conversely, teachers who focus on delivery of information or skill practices are more likely to spend their free time in the classroom rather than in discussion with teaching peers at their school. (Becker & Riel, 1999, p. 35)

These granular observations harken back to one of the original, still often quoted leadership thinkers: Peter Drucker. Drucker, in his landmark work The Effective Executive, said, “Knowledge is useless to executives unless it has been translated into deeds” (Drucker, 1967, p. xiv). That statement is particularly important in our digital age. Most people are utterly overwhelmed by the digital detritus in their lives—the emails, the websites, the new apps, the app updates, the tweets, the attachments, the Google Docs, the spreadsheets, the infographics, the photos, the likes, the trolls, the spam, the YouTube videos, and so on. They either ignore these artifacts, swat them down, try desperately to combat them with a system, or allow themselves to be washed away in their current. Blended leaders, because of their beliefs, see these objects as fuel for their work. We can update Drucker's words for a new breed of effective executive: digital artifacts and erratum are, in fact, useless unless they have been translated into deeds … that is, used as spurs to action, as co-constructive spaces, as models, as test cases, as remixable commodities, as learning opportunities.

Our beliefs for leaders whose work unfolds on and off screens, who blend leadership practices in and out of the digital world, are as follows:

• Belief  #1: Blended Leaders engage with thought leaders and engage as thought leaders.
• Belief #2: Blended Leaders design spaces and care for spaces.
• Belief #3: Blended Leaders reject insularity and embrace sharing.
• Belief  #4:  Blended Leaders challenge meeting structures and change meeting structures.
• Belief #5: Blended Leaders articulate a mission and advance a mission.
• Belief #6: Blended Leaders keep the off-ramp open and use it frequently.

The rest of this book offers a guided tour of each belief—why we developed them, where we have seen them in the world, and how they can help you to blend your leadership so as to lead wisely and well in whatever school context you find yourself.