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Abstract
Leaders and managers experience many changes, providing many opportunities for transition throughout their careers. The purpose of this autoethnographic case study included providing a highly personalized account of constructing the understanding as a school principal during a professional transition. While previous researchers have mostly concentrated on the experiences of school principals within the school, the researcher’s autoethnography focused on her experiences in the “Third Space,” a period wherein one questions existing assumptions and beliefs in order to experience reflective and experiential learning. The current researcher existed in the Third Space upon taking a hiatus from principalship to pursue other professional goals. The data collected for the ethnographic analysis included journals, social media, calendars, notes, and organizational emails; the researcher herself was the primary data source. The results of this study are important to organizational practice, in that helping leaders survive such professional transitions can be essential to growing and maintaining organizational talent.
