STRATEGY II A Personal Plan for Professional Improvement “Effective leaders strive to be better at their jobs tomorrow than they are today. They are lifelong learners. To succeed, one should engage in an overt plan of personal improvement.” Alton Crews      The SREB Leadership Academy encourages each participant to develop a personal plan for professional improvement. Each team member undergoes an analysis of his or her leadership style using a computerized assessment. The participant answers a self-evaluation questionnaire that is compared to evaluations prepared by peers and colleagues at different levels.      “Most leaders have a dominant style and tend to use it in all settings,” Crews says. “Researchers tell us that leadership style must vary with circumstances. The wise leader alters style to fit conditions.”       The results from the analysis are compared to a benchmark profile of a highly effective leader. Each team member uses this information to develop a personal plan of improvement. Participants then assess their improvement when the questionnaire is used a second time at the end of the program.      “This assessment is wonderful,” says Symmonds. “It gives you so much insight into yourself and your leadership style. Ours were amazingly accurate—they hit the nail on the head—it was uncanny. It makes you think about how you deal with people. When I approach people now, I think about different ways of looking at things. I know where my strengths are and where my weaknesses are.”       The assessment also provides necessary feedback. “It allows you to see how others perceive your performance,” Coble says, “and really paves the road for goal setting for professional development.”      A peer coach is assigned to each team and plays a key role in the development of each participant’s personal plan of improvement. When the coach visits the team’s district, he or she spends a day meeting individually with team members, reviewing the written plans of improvement the participants have developed using the results of the leadership profiles.       “Evidence shows people do not change unless they have someone with whom they can share what they’re doing,” Crews says. “Most people don’t feel comfortable sharing with the person who evaluates their performance. The presence of a peer coach as a mentor—and a reliable, trustworthy mentor—is very important in the process of developing a personal plan of improvement.”       To many participants, undergoing the assessment is a startling experience. “I took the leadership assessment, and I’m still trying to recover,” says Dailey of Spartanburg. “It told me what I didn’t want to know, but what I probably already knew. As we’ve been told, we have to deal with the perceptions people have of us more than the perceptions we have of ourselves. That’s been an eye-opener.”      Lane, of Columbia County, Florida, says the assessment profile keeps her aware of how she handles situations. “I’ve used the information to more actively try to force myself out of my comfort zone and put myself in different kinds of experiences or in the same experiences in a different way”       The profile is not a prescription for success, but it does offer participants an insight into their typical strategies for responding to people and situations. That insight can pave the way for personal transformation. “Seeing how others view me was interesting,” says Lee of Richland County, South Carolina. “I do think it made me change.” “Leaders who refuse to carefully examine their underlying assumptions are doomed to repeat past failures and get the results they have always gotten. Reflection on one’s decisions, successes, failures and interactions with significant others is a powerful learning tool that shapes values, beliefs and behavior.” Alton Crews Keeping a Reflective Learning Journal Using the leadership profile as a guide, participants keep a diary, or reflective learning journal, as part of their self-assessment, and make regular entries in it. Entries focus on a situation or event, the people involved, the action taken and the writer’s reflections about the entire process. The journal’s purpose is to prompt reflection so participants can recognize discrepancies between their intent and their actions and modify their behavior and practice over time.       “The journal is the most powerful thing I’ve done,&8221; says Jim Wilhelm, division director for high schools in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina. “The more you get into it, the deeper you get into yourself. It connects you with your inner self. It’s very powerful. The writing has been the most valuable part of my experience with the Leadership Academy.”       Wilhelm says the reflective learning journal forced him to think about every issue. “It puts you in a much more reflective mode. As a high school principal, I just said ‘full steam ahead, ready, aim, fire. Don’t think about it. If you mess up, worry about it the next day.’ There is power in writing. I didn’t realize how much power there is until I got into the Leadership Academy.”       Davis says the journal writing helped him avoid unpleasant or unproductive situations. “I think anybody who’s not willing to go back and look at themselves and ask why they do certain things is going to have serious problems down the road.”       The process of keeping a journal is a self-development tool. By recording reflections and reviewing them with the peer coach, participants in the Academy can come to see themselves and others more objectively, and learn to communicate more clearly.       “In the final analysis, virtually all learning comes from personal experience and subsequent reflection on the experience,” Crews says. Journals—A Key to Insight StrategyIII: Coaching and Mentoring: Help Along The Way