Leadership Starts With Thinking
Leadership Thinking was created around a simple belief: people do their best thinking when they have the space to reflect, question, and grow.
Leadership can be rewarding, but it can also be isolating. Leaders get stuck. Confidence fades. Time gets consumed by what feels urgent rather than what matters most. Organizations can experience the same challenges as priorities compete, initiatives lose focus, and the day-to-day demands of the work make it difficult to step back and think strategically.
Leadership Thinking creates that space.
Through individual coaching, focused Leadership Boosts, interview and career preparation, professional learning, organizational consulting, and keynote speaking, Leadership Thinking helps educational leaders and organizations slow down, examine where they are, clarify where they want to go, and move forward more intentionally.
The work is grounded in current educational leadership practice, research, professional training, and more than two decades of experience leading, teaching, mentoring, writing, and learning alongside other educational leaders. Whether the work involves one leader navigating a difficult decision or a district developing strategic priorities and measurable goals, the approach remains thoughtful, personalized, and connected to the realities of educational leadership today.
Leadership Thinking can support individuals and organizations with leadership development, intentional use of time and attention, strategic planning, SMART goal development and monitoring, observation and feedback practices, instructional walkthroughs, difficult conversations, professional transitions, team development, and other challenges facing today's educational leaders.
The goal is not to provide another formula for leadership. It is to create an intentional process that helps people and organizations think better about the work that matters most.
Reflect. Grow. Lead.
Meet Dr. Spike Cook
II have spent more than 25 years in education as a teacher, school counselor, administrator, principal, university faculty member, author, presenter, and mentor to aspiring leaders. I continue to serve as a practicing school principal, which keeps my work grounded in the realities educational leaders are navigating today.
I believe that matters.
Leadership has changed. Today's educational leaders are navigating increasingly complex expectations around student achievement, staff development, school culture, family engagement, accountability, technology, time, and the human side of leading organizations. My work with leaders is informed not only by what I have studied or experienced in the past, but by the work I continue to do every day.
For more than a decade, I have also taught and mentored graduate students preparing to become school administrators. I have written books about leadership, presented across the country, led elementary and middle schools, and worked alongside educators navigating the complex realities of leadership.
My approach to coaching reflects that intersection of practice, research, training, reflection, and experience. It has been shaped by graduate study and research in educational leadership, professional coaching and leadership training, my experiences working with coaches throughout my own career, and more than two decades of studying and applying leadership theory in real organizations.
I am continuing to develop the Leadership Thinking framework, an intentional, research-informed approach to helping leaders examine their practice, challenge assumptions, identify patterns, consider new perspectives, and turn reflection into action. The framework is not intended to give leaders someone else's formula. It provides structure and purpose to a process that remains deeply personalized to the individual leader.
Leadership Thinking did not grow simply from the successes.
It also grew from the difficult seasons.
I have experienced periods in my own leadership journey when circumstances affected my confidence, my momentum, and even how I saw myself as a leader. For a time, some of the thinking, writing, creating, and connecting that had once energized me became quieter.
Eventually, I began picking it back up.
That experience changed the way I think about leadership development. Sometimes leaders do not need another book, workshop, or leadership model. Sometimes they need someone who will listen, ask thoughtful questions, challenge their thinking, and help them reconnect with what made them want to lead in the first place.
That is why I created Leadership Thinking.
Ready to Think About What Comes Next?
Whether you are looking for ongoing coaching, focused support through a Leadership Boost, or help preparing for your next professional opportunity, the first step is a conversation. Share a little about where you are and what you are hoping to work through, and I will follow up personally.