My mentor, Leonard F. Littwin, once told me, "Lorraine, you're really good, but sometimes you're just not the one. You're not always the one for every situation." It's true. Sometimes, I fail. Sometimes, leadership is about knowing when to let go.

Of course, you can't run an organization without compromise. There has to be a reasonable give-and-take, and you're not going to have your way 100% of the time. But there's a difference between compromising and selling your soul. Selling out -- selling your soul -- means giving up power and control. And I won't do that.

Reinvent Your Inventions

I set out to stun people. Surprising the hell out of everybody has always been good fun for me. And once you put your openness to change in the air, once you indicate your desire to do something different, then something different starts wanting you. I've found that I really like leading. I love seeing things happen as a result of what I think and believe.

As you get better at your work, your organization gets better at its work: The people who do the frontline work improve. And as you transform your company, you transform yourself. As I understand more about what I do, I get better, stronger, more electric.

I'm always inventing. I like to invent the future, to dream the next thing. My father said, "Lorraine, you always go at things." He was right: I never want not to go at things. I never do the same thing in the same way twice. That's the juice. And organizations suffer when a leader's juice is gone. When it's hard to get the second leg out of bed, you should put the first leg back in and call it a day.

When the juice is there, when everything is clicking, there's such a thing as an organizational hum -- that thing you sense when you walk into an organization and you can say, "Yes, it's happening here!" You can feel the drive of the place. I love that feeling. As a leader, you have to be able to feel in your bones that it's working or that it's not -- and to feel that way before anyone else does.

Keith H. Hammonds (khammonds@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor. You can learn more about the School Leadership Academy on the Web site of the Center for Educational Innovation (www.ceiintl.org). Lorraine Monroe's book "Nothing's Impossible" was recently reprinted in paperback by Public Affairs.

Sidebar: Learning to Lead

Here, adapted from the book "Nothing's Impossible," are musings on leadership from Lorraine Monroe.

Becoming a leader is an act of self-invention. Imagine yourself as a leader: Act as if you were a leader until you actually become one.

In the third grade, a teacher asked me to run for student-council secretary. I asked my father, "Should I?" He said, "What's the question? Run!" That was the beginning of my leadership training.

Don't be afraid to break rules -- but only for the sake of your mission.

I cultivated the ability to ignore bureaucratic edicts. I practiced delaying implementation of contrived and mandated "solutions" -- solutions that invariably missed the mark.

A cadre of concerned, creatively crazy people can carry almost any organization.

Organizations die when they move away from the core principles of their mission, or when they fail to come up with new ways to make their mission happen.

Stroking must accompany poking.

I learned that if I let people who were angry talk or yell themselves into a calm state, they would often reveal to me how I could help them -- even if only by providing an ear or a shoulder.

As you rise in any walk of life, never forget the nervousness that you felt on your first day of work. Never forget how much you had to learn -- or how much you still have to learn!

As a 21-year-old novice, I knew nothing about teaching, despite the education courses that I'd taken. But little by little, over those first few days, I discovered ways of taking control in the classroom.