Thinking about Leadership

This is not a blog post, it is an incomplete work in progress, a personal collection of notes from some of my readings, things I want to remember and occasionally re-visit or add to.

Dinham, Stephen, et al. Leading Learning and Teaching

“It is unusual for one person to have the skills to serve as both an inspiring leader and a professional manager. In large, complex organisations, these two distinct roles are even more difficult to assimilate in one person, and the tendency is to set leadership skills aside in favour of managing the workplace. Too often, senior managers believe they are leading when in fact they are managing … This does not mean that managers cannot demonstrate leadership qualities. Managers may lead by example or lead a project or team, but they still end up performing the functions of management. Successful management is a really tough, challenging, and very important job. It should be given its due respect. Real leadership is tough, too, but it should not be confused with management.” ^a It is unusual for one person to have the skills to serve as both an inspiring leader and a professional manager. In large, complex organisations, these two distinct roles are even more difficult to assimilate in one person, and the tendency is to set leadership skills aside in favour of managing the workplace. Too often, senior managers believe they are leading when in fact they are managing … This does not mean that managers cannot demonstrate leadership qualities. Managers may lead by example or lead a project or team, but they still end up performing the functions of management. Successful management is a really tough, challenging, and very important job. It should be given its due respect. Real leadership is tough, too, but it should not be confused with management. ^b Dinham, Stephen, et al. Leading Learning and Teaching, Australian Council for Educational Research, 2016. P129. 

Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders Book by L. David Marquet:

I read this one quickly on Scribd, skim read it. It was not that interesting, but there were a few nice ideas none the less. Here are some highlights anyway:

• Empower employees through extra responsibility
• Briefings: you can only be sure of  the competence of the person giving the brief; because they’re engaged  in the act of giving directions, they have reason to be more alert. Whether  that’s because it’s boring to listen to, or because they’ve heard this stuff  before, the people being briefed may often “zone out” in the middle of  the meeting and stop paying attention entirely.
• Marquet posits that the crisis of leadership stems from our pre-existing methods of  leadership and argues that we can trace this flaw back to Ancient Egypt  and the Industrial Revolution. Marquet calls this style of leadership the  “leader-follower approach,” and it functions exactly like how it sounds.  Under this model, decisions are made by one person—the boss—and  expected to be carried out by the followers (or employees). This style of  leadership leaves no room for democracy or individual freedom of expression, and although it can be well-suited to jobs requiring physical  labor, it’s not a good model for all types of work across the board. The leader-follower mentality is ineffective. A leader-leader approach might sound counterproductive, as if you’re  inviting too many cooks into the kitchen, but it can actually be more beneficial than you think. However, a leader-leader model invites us to recognize the unique leadership qualities that are present in each of us!
• Turning your ship around isn’t something that can be achieved in one step, if your core values  don’t center around making your employees feel valued and empowered,  you’re not going to go very far in your success. If people aren’t clear about the common goal they’re working towards, it makes sense that they’d struggle to achieve it. The best way to start is by defining your core  values. No matter what they are in your business, it’s important that this  is clear to everyone right from the start.
• “taking deliberate action”, when  you open your decision-making process to incorporate everyone’s  strengths and talents, the right person has the opportunity to solve a  problem safely and in the most beneficial way.

Margaret J. Wheatley: Goodbye, Command and Control. (1997)

• Employees report deep cynicism at the endless programs and fads
• There is a clear correlation between participation and productivity
• over the years, leaders consistently have chosen control rather than productivity
• People organize together to accomplish more, not less
• How much trust do I have in the people who work here?
• the primary task of being a leader is to make sure that the organization knows itself. That is, we must realize that the leader’s task is to call people together often, so that everyone gains clarity about what we’re doing, who we’ve become and how we’ve changed as we do our work, who we still want to be. Organizations that are clear at their core hold themselves together because of their deep congruence. As a leader supports the processes that help the organization know itself, the organization flourishes.
• Leaders put a premium on action. People are constantly taking initiative and making changes, often without asking or telling.
• Self-organization is a long-term exploration requiring enormous self-awareness and support.
• Leaders managing difficult personal transitions are also doing many other things to the organization. They are supporting team structures, more collaboration, using more participative processes, introducing new ways of thinking. They are setting a great many things in motion simultaneously within the organization. These move through the system; some work, some don’t. ^c

Leithwood: Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited.

by Kenneth Leithwood, Christopher Day, Pam Sammons, Alma Harris, and David Hopkins

In 2006, the authors reviewed literature about successful school leadership. They summarised the key findings as seven strong claims.  

In 2019, three of the authors revisited the original review, testing the validity of the claims using strong empirical evidence from the intervening years. They found that the claims held true to a great extent. They revised claims 1, 4 and 7.

The revised seven claims are:

1. revised: School leadership has a significant effect on features of the school organisation which positively influences the quality of teaching and learning. While moderate in size, this leadership effect is vital to the success of most school improvement efforts.
2. Almost all successful leaders draw on the same repertoire of basic leadership practices.
3. The ways in which leaders apply these basic leadership practices – not the practices themselves – demonstrate responsiveness to, rather than dictation by, the contexts in which they work.
4. revised: School leadership improves teaching and learning, indirectly and most powerfully, by improving the status of significant key classroom and school conditions and by encouraging parent-child interactions in the home that further enhance student success at school. 
5. School leadership has a greater influence on schools and students when it is widely distributed.
6. Some patterns of distribution are more effective than others.
7. revised: While further research is required, a well-defined set of cognitive, social and psychological “personal leadership resources” show promise of explaining a high proportion of variation in the practices enacted by school leaders. ^{d e}

1. Dinham, Stephen, et al. Leading Learning and Teaching, Australian Council for Educational Research, 2016. P129.  (back)
2. Dinham, Stephen, et al. Leading Learning and Teaching, Australian Council for Educational Research, 2016. P129.  (back)
3. Margaret J. Wheatley: Goodbye, Command and Control. (1997). Retrieved 24 July 2021, from https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/goodbyecommand.html  (back)
4. Source: https://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Sharing-leadership/Seven-strong-claims-about-successful-school-leadership  (back)
5. Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2019). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited. http://ubir.bolton.ac.uk/2216/  (back)