Chapter 12: Positive Leadership for Flourishing Learning Communities

This chapter is a compilation and synthesis of writing from our previously published body of articles, chapters, and books that share what we have learned from our participants and the research literature. We offer a conceptual model of positive leadership, grounded within the values of purpose, passion, play, and presence in the belief that these value have been and are useful for school leaders as they continue to create conditions for flourishing in their schools. We suggest that these values animate the work of those formal leaders who make space for and facilitate conditions for themselves and others to flourish in their work. The model is built on the extant literature and our research findings that illustrate what it means to work from the standpoint of those values that prompt, animate, or bring to life the work of leading and learning such as encourage flourishing for all in the learning community. The model emphasizes the embeddedness of these concepts and their potential for all in the flourishing of school cultures and especially for school leaders who wish to pay attention to the vitality, goodness, and possibilities that are latent but inherent in our school systems. As a way of bringing to life the model and the various components within it, we offer a series of reflective questions that leaders may use to adapt and animate these four values within their particular contexts.