Steps in Leadership

Huw Thomas

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135898151
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book covers the most important aspects of becoming a school leader including:

• What leadership actually is
• Different styles of leadership – identifying your current leadership; standard styles; what is likely to work best for you
• "Strategic Vision" and how to do it without losing your grip on reality
• Teams and how they work, structures and delegation
• Coaching, leading by moving your team with you.

This will be of great help to anyone wanting to be a more effective leader or taking on a primary school leadership role for the first time.

Don’t get me wrong. Picking up a book on leadership and opening it -I’m impressed. But there’s one problem.

You might want to read a book by someone else.

See, this one isn’t one of those books written by a dynamic leader who single-handedly swept into a failing school, tackled the duff staff, inspired the no-hoper kids and transformed it into a success story with an orchestra playing a weepy finale.

It is written by a head teacher, after a chunk of years as a head and deputy. But I’m no superhead. I’m still stepping into the job, sometimes striding, sometimes toddling with a bit of faltering and the occasional mad dash!

It’s called "Steps in leadership’ because I’ve just found a few stepping stones that matter a lot. And they work for me.

If you’re still with me, the next few pages give six thoughts about leadership that inform the whole of this book. They’re possibly the closest the book gets to a theory of leadership.

If you’ve gone for the other book I hope its worth it (though it probably cost more than this one - we’re very reasonable!).

  Leadership is like being up a tree

I still love to climb trees, so maybe that’s why I’m indebted to Stephen R. Covey for a dear image of the difference between leadership and management (Covey 1989: 101). He asks us to imagine a jungle scene.

The managers have organised the task of hacking a path through these trees, using machetes. There is a good system in place that includes procedures for sharpening machetes and keeping machete wielders hacking away. He writes: ‘The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells “Wrong jungle!” '

He also notes that the hackers and their managers will often respond ‘Shut up! We’re making progress’.

And that’s the main ingredient of leadership. It’s the ability to ascend to that perspective and, from there, communicate with those engaged in a task It does sometimes involve tough messages and having to talk from a viewpoint you feel no-one else shares.

It also involves the hard work of getting that perspective - taking time to climb the tree’. But the view is fascinating. Step 2 will look at how we handle that perspective without ending up sounding like a prat.

  Leadership is like pushing a blob

Another image: Thomas Sergiovanni says we should 'Think amoeba and describes school leadership as being like pushing a giant amoeba across a road (Sergiovanni 200İ: 7). It slips off the curb and we know where we want to get it, but something blobs out in one direction, in another place its looking a bit thin, it starts blobbing off at an angle: ‘Mind, heart and hand become one as the leader “plays” the glob, relying on her or his nose for globbiness, and ability to discern and anticipate patterns of movement that emerge’ (p.7).

I've read that description to a number of school leaders and İt always meets with a ‘Yes!’.

I think it’s one reason why we end up frustrated. The job has a constant, nagging undercurrent of feeling we haven’t achieved what we would have wished or expected by now. Blobs are odd things to move.

However, Sergiovanni mentions that ‘nose for globbiness’. We get to know our schools and our staff. The chapters on coaching and teamwork that follow will delve into that area with a realism that we’re into amoeba thinking.

  Leadership involves hiding under the duvet

Fairly often, on Monday mornings I curl up under the duvet and say ‘I don’t want to come out’. Inadequacy and anxiety wash over me and I am genuinely too scared of my job to do it.

By 9.30 the feeling has often gone. It certainly diminishes as the day wears on.

But, at times, the job looks too big and I just get scared!

"When I’m into the practicalities I can do it. It’s worth keeping a clear link between the big job and its basic steps. In the chapters ahead the emphasis will be on practical application. We’re ‘theory light’ here.

What I’d ask you to do is apply the stuff in these chapters to real situations. Think of some forthcoming staff meetings as you read the chapter on vision. Read the one on teamwork with your crowd in mind. It’s written with them in mind.

  Leadership is like Gene Hackman in an upside down boat

We’re reflecting on leadership. One of the healthiest exercises at the outset of such a process is to list and think about the leaders we would and wouldn’t follow. I can think of heads of department, head teachers, team leaders who have inspired me, and I need those images in my mind. I need to be asking: ‘When they lead why would I follow?’

Personally, I go for Gene Hackman in that classic disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure. There came a moment when, after the boat had turned over, the passengers had to decide whether to stay put in the ballroom or follow the mad preacher through this dangerous wreck, A few followed, and I just love that scene where he persuades them that ‘life’ lies in the direction he is going.

In the section on leadership styles we will tease out the ways people lead and take some rime looking at vital characteristics. Might come in useful on an upturned cruise ship, if nowhere else.

  Leadership is like telling stories

How do you tell them it’s the wrong jungle? How do you present a vision of the right one? How do you map out the journey?

Leaders provide their staff with ways of understanding and perceiving, whether it be the stories we tell about the school or the images we use, we need to find ways of symbolising the school and its task.

So this book does take time to look at ideas. When we look at vision we will look at the thinking behind its presentation. When we look at teams we will look at some of the thinking that’s gone into understanding the process by which they operate. We’ll keep coming back to practicalities, but without that sort of thinking you will use the ideas and then dry up. Where it is included this more theoretical stuff is designed to kit you out with ways of shaping your own thinking.

  Leadership is great... just great!

Maybe I shouldn’t say that. I mean, we’re supposed to pull faces and look hassled. But the fact is, I get to shape the place that will shape the minds of thousands of people in their most formative years. I do it through working with a group of interesting, vibrant and fun people. And the best part is I’m still learning the job. Each year passes and it feels like I’ve gathered a bit more of the job to myself, taken a few more steps. Maybe we should allow ourselves to feel great about this job a bit more often.

OK, that’s the closest you’ll get to some grand theory. There might be one in one of the other books - but if you’re still here, lets get on with the job.

Feeling like a suit

Standing up and giving the Vision thing, that leaves me feeling a bit unsure of myself. The vision ain’t the problem! I’ve got the ideas, I know what I’m wanting for the school.

It’s trying to stand there and present it without feeling ridiculous. It’s the anxiety that they are going to nod while thinking ‘What the...?’ Its the sense I might start sounding like a suit training sales reps. It’s feeling like it’s all a bit too flip charts and power pointed for me.

But the vision thing matters. The Ofsted findings concerning successful leadership and management took the results of inspections under the previous framework and turned them into the new framework. Top of the list came the need for: a clear vision, with a sense of purpose and high aspirations for the school, combined with a relentless focus on pupils’ achievement’ (Ofeted 2003: 7).

When teachers were surveyed to find out which image of leadership they considered effective, the highest scoring description was: ‘Leadership means having a dear, personal vision of what you want to achieve’ (Moos, Mahony and Reeves 1998: 63).

The vision thing matters became it makes the crucial difference between leading and managing. Remember Covey’s jungle image in Chapter 1. The managers organise the hacking through the jungle - but to be a leader you need to be up the tree. Someone needs to have a sense of direction and bring that to the workplace. When it comes to moving in a direction, there are three vital elements to the journey.

Activity

Look at a staff list and ask;

• What is the significance of vision for this group at present?
• What experience have they had of this sort of thinking in the past?
• If I were to get them on board with my vision, what difference would that mate to my school?

1 Where are we going?

A leader is like a bus driver. If you jump on a bus you’ll be asking this question. You want to know if its taking you to Manchester Airport, and then on to Ibiza, or if it’s headed for Cleethorpes.

But in a school we all know what direction we’re going in, right? In general most of us will be able to trot out similar things we would like for our school: happy environment, achievement, discipline. Yet, if staff are to follow a lead it needs to offer something more specific in its design. Vision inv...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Other forthcoming titles in the No Nonsense series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Gerald Haigh
• Acknowledgements
• Step 1: Are you sure you've got the right book?
• Step 2: How can I do the 'vision' thing without sounding like a prat?
• Step 3: Different styles of leadership
• Step 4: Coaching
• Step 5: Leading the team
• Bibliography
• Index