Starting Point
Scholarly Work Made Relevant
School Administrator, December 2020

RICHARD BOYATZIS is the sort of thinker you’d expect to find in the professional literature about organizational behavior and management. In fact, that’s where I most recently encountered the longtime scholar who had contributed a piece to Harvard Business Review last summer titled “Helping People Change.”

That was enough to lead me back to Boyatzis, who teaches at Case Western Reserve. We asked him to draw on his newest book to share applications of research about modifying behavior for the greater good of the organization’s mission. Find his co-authored article, “From Core to Core: Coaching With Compassion for Professional Growth."

By training a clinical psychologist, Boyatzis has spent time working with K-12 educators. Over the years, his published work on training and coaching has drawn on examples of teachers and principals, and a recent project on organizational development led to his observations involving superintendents in his writing for us this month.

He believes education leaders can benefit from the broader organizational leadership literature, even if the works aren’t usually pitched their way. “The only reason books are not focused on this audience,” Boyatzis says, “is that they don’t spend money on training at the same level as industry so it is really a marketing issue, not relevance.”
Editor, School Administrator
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E-mail: jgoldman@aasa.org
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