Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a study of a 3-year leadership development initiative designed to enhance the leadership capacities of 10 school leaders from a consortium of rural, high-poverty school districts. The initiative provided cross-district, job-embedded, and personalized leadership development through leadership coaching in a professional community. The findings highlight what the leaders learned about involving and interacting differently with others for shared effort and ownership; enabling distributed leadership for increased capacity; using a systematic process for school improvement; and approaching school improvement with a new mindset. We conclude the article with implications for further research and practice.