Paper Title
Design Thinking as a Competency for Educational Leadership Performance in a New Normal World

Abstract
COVID-19 offers a great opportunity to rethink the most important elements of education. The post-pandemic universe offers two possibilities: a return to traditional education as usual or a change to new education. When we emerge, we need not go as usual, but to think carefully about what we've experienced and to turn sharply towards better education and society. Design Thinking has received increasing attention from practitioners and academics from many sectors and disciplines over the past decade for its capacity to promote innovation and address complex challenges. However, there is little evidence that schools have adopted the approach to the same extent as many other organizations in the public, private and third sectors. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify the relationship between design thinking and the performance of educational leaders. The importance of design thinking as a capacity in the context of the leadership in education in the new, normal world has been shown. This paper aims to answer the question as to how conceptual principles help leaders achieve better quality in their activities and find new ways and means of managing their organization effectively. This study is therefore structured. In the first part, this paper provided extensive insights into the conceptual approach and the importance of design thinking competency in platform development. In the second part, a conceptual model was developed to link design thinking to the performance of education management. Keywords - Design Thinking; Educational Leadership; Design Thinking Competency; Leadership Performance; Covid 19; New Normal