What Adult Development Asks of Leaders

In the conversation below, I take up a question that has shaped much of my thinking: what changes when school leaders understand adult development not as an ancillary leadership skill, but as a central mechanism of school improvement.

The answer, I have come to believe, is that nearly everything changes. It changes how we design professional learning, how we conduct supervision, how we read a struggling teacher, and how we understand our own growth as leaders.

Developmental supervision asks us to meet people where they are, not as a concession but as a starting point. It asks us to read the meaning a colleague is making of their work, and to respond to that meaning rather than to the behavior it produces. This is harder than correction, and it is far more generative.

I offer these reflections as part of an ongoing inquiry into the relationship between how leaders develop and how schools improve. The video that follows extends the conversation.

References

1. 1.Drago-Severson, E. (2009). Leading adult learning: Supporting adult development in your school. Corwin Press.
2. 2.Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Harvard University Press.

Written by

Dr. Rhema Stradford Dai, Ed.D.

Experienced Elementary School Leader · Scholar-Practitioner · Author · Speaker. Her work explores the development of people as the central work of educational leadership.

© 2025 Dr. Rhema Stradford Dai. This article is an original work and is protected by copyright.

Brief quotations may be used with appropriate attribution and a link to the original article. For permission to reproduce, republish, distribute, or use a substantial portion of this work in publications, courses, presentations, organizational materials, or other contexts, please contact Dr. Dai through the website.