Leading With Intention: How School Leaders Can Unlock Deeper Collaboration and Drive Results

Deepen your connections with students, staff, and your larger community.

Behind every thriving school or district are deeply interconnected teams that consistently engage in a reciprocal transfer of learning. Leading With Intention aims to make this process visible by helping leaders and teachers understand how their thinking impacts their decision-making and the overall well-being of their learning communities. Through five highly practical chapters, authors DeWitt and Nelson explore self-awareness, nurturing human interconnectedness, collective inquiry, establishing a learning network, and crafting a personal learning environment.

Filled with research, stories, and places to process information, this timely book is focused on how educators think, the choices they make, and how they develop deeper academic and social-emotional connections. Other features include:

• Success criteria to help readers identify personal goals
• Suggested activities to apply knowledge
• Reflection sheets with guiding questions
• In-depth examples to illustrate content

School-leaders will come away with a deeper understanding of the importance of self-awareness in leadership and the pedagogical knowledge required to focus initiatives on student learning. Leading with Intention helps education leaders go from being merely on task to deeply engaged and reconnected with why they entered the education profession in the first place.

Peter DeWitt, Ed.D., is the founder and CEO of the Instructional Leadership Collective. A former K–5 teacher for 11 years and principal for eight years, Peter has spent more than 12 years supporting educators and leadership teams across the United States and internationally. He provides keynotes, workshops, and long-term hybrid professional learning that combines in-person facilitation, virtual coaching, and sustained collaborative inquiry. His work focuses on instructional leadership, collective leader efficacy, and helping leadership teams turn professional learning into meaningful action.

Peter’s work has been adopted by state and provincial agencies, universities, school districts, school boards, regional networks, and ministries of education across North America, Australia, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom. He is the author, co-author, or contributor to numerous bestselling books, many of which have been translated into multiple languages. Peter co-authors Education Week’s Finding Common Ground column with Michael Nelson, co-hosts Corwin’s Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast, and co-created Education Week’s A Seat at the Table.

Michael Nelson has been an educator for nearly 40 years and continues to consider “teacher” his most important professional title. Throughout his career, he has served as a classroom teacher, principal, district instructional leader, superintendent, and assistant executive director responsible for developing professional learning across the state of Washington. He currently serves as Thought Partner for the Instructional Leadership Collective, where he supports educational leaders through keynotes, workshops, coaching, and long-term hybrid partnerships.

Michael has received numerous state and national honors for his leadership. As a principal, his school received the National Blue Ribbon Award from the United States Department of Education. As a superintendent, he was named Washington State’s 2019 Superintendent of the Year and was elected by his peers to serve as president of the Washington Association of School Administrators. Across every role, Michael’s work has remained grounded in listening, empathy, collaborative leadership, and an unwavering commitment to keeping students at the center of educational decision-making.