Sustainable Leadership

Andy Hargreaves, Dean Fink

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118429211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Leadership in der Bildung

In Sustainable Leadership, Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink address one of the most important and often neglected aspects of leadership: sustainability. The authors set out a compelling and original framework of seven principles for sustainable leadership characterized by Depth of learning and real achievement rather than superficially tested performance; Length of impact over the long haul, beyond individual leaders, through effectively managed succession; Breadth of influence, where leadership becomes a distributed responsibility; Justice in ensuring that leadership actions do no harm to and actively benefit students in other schools; Diversity that replaces standardization and alignment with diversity and cohesion; Resourcefulness that conserves and renews leaders' energy and doesn't burn them out; and Conservation that builds on the best of the past to create an even better future.

This book is a volume in the Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in Education—a series designed to meet the demand for new ideas and insights about leadership in schools.

Chapter 1

Depth

Learning and Integrity

Seek truth, create, and live up to the title of teacher.

Motto of East China Normal University, Shanghai

PRINCIPLE 1

Sustainable leadership matters. It preserves, protects, and promotes deep and broad learning for all in relationships of care for others.

A Sense of Purpose

For Winston Churchill, it was the defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany; for Emmeline Pankhurst and Susan B. Anthony, it was votes for women; for Nelson Mandela, it was ending apartheid in South Africa; and for Martin Luther King, Jr., it was civil rights for all. Throughout history, leaders who made worthwhile and lasting contributions to society have been passionately, persistently, and courageously committed to compelling ideals and just causes that were meaningful in their time.

Sustainable leadership, like sustainable improvement, begins with a strong and unswerving sense of moral purpose. The core meaning of sustain is “to hold up; bear the weight of; be able to bear (strain, suffering, and the like) without collapse.” Inner conviction, unshakable faith, and a driving, hopeful sense of purpose that stretches far beyond the self—these are the inalienable elements of moral character that truly sustain people during times of overwhelming difficulty and almost unbearable suffering. Reflecting on his long imprisonment on Robben Island, where he was deprived of company, exercise, and even food during long periods of solitary confinement, Nelson Mandela put it like this: “The human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one’s spirits strong even when one’s body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation: your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.”1

In the corporate world, a strong and shared sense of purpose also sustains businesses, holds them together, and enables them to persist even in the face of apparently insurmountable odds. The most long-lasting and successful businesses are driven and defined by enduring purposes and timeless values, not quarterly profits.2 In Built to Last, Collins and Porras reported that when they studied companies that had maintained profitability over long periods of time, they “saw a core ideology that transcended pure economic considerations.”3 Jackson and Nelson’s research in Profits with Principles confirms this finding: Explicitly linking profits with principles is a prerequisite for helping to restore trust and confidence while delivering long-term value to shareholders.”4

Developing and renewing a compelling sense of purpose is central to sustainable leadership. Yet a disturbing finding of Collins and Porras’s foundational study of companies that are built to last was that the nature of that purpose didn’t always matter! “The critical issue is not whether a company has the “right” core ideology or a “likable” core ideology but whether it has a core ideology—likable or not—that gives guidance and inspiration to people inside that company.”5 It makes no difference whether you produce titanium parts that give people new knees or tobacco products that corrupt their lungs; any purpose that motivates people internally seems to be enough to keep companies going. However, in the aftermath of widespread corporate scandals, more businesses are now pushing for a sense of purpose that is bigger and better than this, a moral purpose that is embedded in the essence of their products and that extends into the community and society beyond.

A growing number of companies are addressing the deeper purposes of sustainable corporate development by attending to the human value of what they produce, not just how they produce it. Product integrity matters; it is a qualifying criterion for companies included in responsible corporate development investment portfolios, for example.6

Gary Erickson is the founder and creator of the Clif Bar, a widely sold energy bar that began in his mother’s kitchen and now has annual sales of $40 million. In Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business, Erickson describes his quest to create a nutritious bar that would be more tasty and satisfying than existing alternatives, to defend and renew his private company in the face of tempting and lucrative buyout offers, and to extend his vision of sustainability in his personal life to sustainability in his business.

Clif Bar’s philosophy of sustainability has five interconnected elements: “sustaining our brands, our company, our people, our community and our planet.”7 For Erickson, taking sustainability seriously means that “we want to be environmentally responsible and continually assess our business’s impact on the environment . . . to minimize our ecological footprint on the earth.”8 Sustainability at Clif Bar also means wanting “to create and sustain a business where people can experience life, not just where they go to make a living.”9

At the heart of Clif Bar’s philosophy of sustainability is product integrity. Shareholder value isn’t about getting the biggest possible quarterly returns. It is about “believing in the integrity of our products” and making a “tasty, healthy product.” “That is our return, not increasing the profit margin at the expense of the ingredients.”10

This purpose, embedded in the bar he named after his father, came from Erickson’s own passions: his connection to and caring about the natural environment and the joys of baking in his mother’s kitchen. Disappointed and disgusted by the tasteless, highly processed, and standardized ingredients of the only energy bar then available for his long cycle rides, Erickson set about creating a product whose brand vision would ultimately become “sustaining people in motion.”11

Erickson discusses how the vision permeates the company: “At Clif Bar Inc., we delight in creating and savoring wholesome, delicious food. As bakers by trade and gourmet cooks on the side, we’re energized by the joy people experience when they savor great food made with care. As athletes, we’re committed to creating foods that sustain, nourish and support people through any endeavor. As concerned individuals, we want our business to contribute to a healthier, more sustainable planet. These ideals inspire and motivate our work.”12

Product integrity is the core of sustainability. Sustenance is nourishment. And if our souls sustain our bodies, then learning sustains our souls. Nelson Mandela and his fellow political prisoners—the future leaders of South Africa—understood this very well in their darkest days on Robben Island when they agitated for the right to study, stole forbidden newspaper fragments from the sandwich wrappings discarded by their jailers, and conducted secret classes among the urine and feces of the Africans’ toilets, where the white guards were too repelled to tread.13

If the moral purpose of what we produce is important for corporate sustainability, it is even more important in education and public life. Schools, school systems, and educational change advocates cannot be indifferent to or evasive about just what the moral purpose of education should be. From the standpoint of sustainability, the heart of that purpose ought to be learning—something that is itself sustaining—and not just any learning, but learning that matters, spreads, and lasts a lifetime.

Like an excellent meal, deep, sustaining learning requires wholesome ingredients, a rich and varied menu, caring preparation, and pleasing presentation. The primary responsibility of all educational leaders is to sustain this kind of learning. It is this, not delivering the curriculum, implementing the government’s or district’s mandates, or giving a gloss to how the institution appears, that is at the center of sustainable leadership.

Not anything or everything needs sustaining or maintaining. There is no point in sustaining learning that is trivial or that disappears once it has been tested. Sustainable leadership fully understands the nature and process of student learning, engages directly and regularly with learning and teaching in classrooms, and promotes learning among other adults in order to find continuing ways to improve and expand the learning of students.14

Sustainable leadership doesn’t equivocate. It puts learning at the center of everything leaders do. Students’ learning comes first, then everyone else’s in support of it.15 Michael Knapp and his associates explain that leadership for learning means “creating powerful, equitable learning opportunities for students, professionals and the system,” in which leaders “persistently and publicly focus . . . their own attention and that of...