The Courage to Lead through Values

How Management by Values Supports Transformational Leadership, Culture, and Success

Liza-Maria Norlin

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000092899
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Estrategia empresarial

As society rapidly increases in complexity, we are in great need of sustainable leadership in accord with beliefs and values as we experience continuous changes. The Courage to Lead through Values: How Management by Values Supports Transformational Leadership, Culture, and Success is about having the courage to lead through the implementation of agreed-upon values. In addition, it's about the courage it takes to never cease doing this. However, it's not enough to simply be aware of the importance of constantly working with values and ethics — effective leadership based on values and ethics means taking the time to actually do it. This book tackles this issue by providing you with clear examples of how to implement incorporating values and ethics in your everyday leadership.

In business, you face challenges when you must choose between efficiency, analysis of results, and goals versus actively working on values and ethics. This book will argue that one doesn't need to compete with the other and it posits that one supports the other.

As the world is rapidly growing in complexity and we are facing new challenges and expectations, we must find ways to achieve sustainable lives, businesses, and societies. The author strongly believes that values are the key. By using the methodology Management by Values (MBV), under the mentorship of its founder, Professor Simon L. Dolan, the book is well-anchored in research.

Ten years ago, a new school was founded in a medium-sized town in Sweden -- Internationella Engelska Skolan Sundsvall. It started with a staff of 20 and 250 students. Today the staff has grown to 120 members with nearly 1100 students attending. In 2019, it was considered one of the best schools in Sweden. The principal, Pascal Brisson, in many ways epitomizes the school and its success. Through in-depth interviews with the principal and colleagues, previous staff, executives within the organization and students, the author amassed information to provide a factual and engaging story of the school's journey from a leadership perspective. It becomes clear how implementing shared values and the principal's courage to never stop actively working with values as a management tool is a recipe for the success of an organization.

The book invites you into a conversation about leadership. It includes the author's personal reflections on historical management methodology and on challenges of today. As you follow the ten-year journey of a successful leader in one of our society's most complex organizations, a school, you do this in the light of Management by Values.

Essentially, this book gives the reader concrete tools and examples of how to use values as a management tool. This is told through several different themes relevant to all organizations -- organizational culture, creating teams, inspiring motivation, and handling stress.

1

Everything Has a Beginning

In the beginning, you act like a leader — until one day you realise that you have become one.

Pascal Brisson

Pascal Brisson, high school teacher, sees the advertisement in the paper “Internationella Engelska Skolan wants to open in Sundsvall, Sweden”. Something in the advertisement piques his interest, it stimulates his personal drive, creativity and willingness to take risks for the potential of fixing something that isn’t working. In December 2008, he emails the CEO of Internationella Engelska Skolan and says he is interested in the job as principal of a new school in Sundsvall. “It was clear that I would get the job when during an interview I said: ‘One thing I guarantee you, I can really say to all parents and staff that I stand for your values.’”

Today, a little more than 11 years later, I am sitting in front of a principal and leader who feels confident and sure in his role. In Sundsvall, his is a well-known name and within the school group Internationella Engelska Skolan he is a very appreciated leader. In ten years the school in Sundsvall has gone from zero students and no staff to 1100 students and 125 staff. If you read Pascal’s welcome on the website, it’s there in the first sentence: “Internationella Engelska Skolan Sundsvall is in constant evolution”.¹ It is physically clear when you visit the school—a new parkour park is in place while at the same time expansion and rebuilding continue. It is a result of how the school has constantly grown and continues to grow. I still get the feeling that this constant evolution is more than just the physical environment and that the school grows in numbers. What does this constant evolution mean for Pascal?

A drive that never stands still, it is a part of my personality, constantly in motion, I constantly look at our organisation, what works, what isn’t working so well? But at the same time as we grow and constantly develop our routines, the foundation has never changed.

Into the room walks Pieter Strijdom, the school’s Head of Student Development Team (responsible for helping students to feel safe). He is one of the people who has been there since the beginning and it is clear that he and Pascal are close. I take the opportunity of course to ask if it is true that the school is in some state of constant evolution, where the answer with a big smile and perhaps a little sigh is: “Oooo yes!”

The email that Pascal sent to the CEO resulted in an interview opportunity, the possibility to meet other principals from other parts of Sweden and some visits to other schools within the school group Internationella Engelska Skolan. When Pascal met the founder of Internationella Engelska Skolan, Barbara Bergström, and even the principal in Enskede, Robert Clark, there was a feeling that gave the strongest of impressions. A feeling of being at home. This feeling arose both because of shared values and small details. One thing that really irritated Pascal in his time as a high school teacher was that students didn’t come on time to lessons. He considers not coming on time to be a practical detail that has practical consequences (disturbs others, causes explanations to be missed, etc.) and a result of poor values; a lack of respect.

I liked that IES had high expectations on students and they both pushed and supported them. The school’s leadership also explained why they worked in the way they did and do. I felt that out of that foundation that was already there in values and behaviour, I could build a school I could believe in

says Pascal.

Pascal describes himself as a confident person who loves to take risks and likes challenges but at the same time is very paranoid. I understand through our conversations that Pascal really analyses his personal characteristics and sees both the positive and negative consequences in these. To dare to take the step of building a school from the ground up requires courage to take risks, therefore, he saw this as a perfect challenge. In the beginning the paranoia led to the motivation to read everything he could about the school. It wasn’t all the lovely formulations on websites or the excellent results that you could read on Skolverket’s (Swedish National Agency for Education) website that convinced him. An important reason was the founder herself, Barbara, and her values. There was a clear picture of what she wanted to create.

Barbara Bergström has from the beginning had a clear picture of what she wants, she knew what she wanted to create when she began. She has met a lot of resistance and has never given up. For us principals and for leaders, many trends come and go, it is important to keep to what you believe in, regardless of being pushed in different directions. This is a very important part of how to succeed and Barbara has really shown that it works and is a role model. You have to keep focus in spite of pressure from outside

says Pascal in a way that clearly shows his respect and admiration for Barbara.

In addition to the personal characteristics he names in describing himself I would add humour and self awareness that has come through in our conversations, an example being from Pascal’s first job interview for the position of principal.

I sat and waited before my interview when a man came and sat next to me. I later found out it was Barbara’s husband. We sat and talked for nearly 45 minutes. Then I went in. The interview went on with the CEO and vice CEO. At one point Barbara comes into the room and says hi and talks briefly. Then she asked what job I was there for: ‘Principal or vice principal?’ I smiled and pointed to the CEO and said ‘I’m here for his job.’ Everyone laughed (except for the CEO who is no longer a part of the company anymore). Yes, I’m that kind of person and I think Barbara liked that

Pascal says and laughs.

I ask Barbara Bergström if she remembers the first time she met Pascal, and she does, very well.

The first time I met Pascal was the 27th of November 2008. I remember exactly where in the audience he sat, and he surely does too. He looked at me hard the whole time. When we later spoke with each other we both realised that we had a lot in common.

Pascal Brisson was born and raised in Embrun, Ontario which is a small town in Canada. He grew up in what he himself calls a school environment. His father was chairman of the school board, his mother was a teacher and in his family there were many teachers and principals. This has made him feel at home in the school environment and consequently be attracted to it. One of his dreams has always been to build and start his own school. One day he got the chance and of course took it.

“How many teachers get the chance to start a completely new school?” was the answer when I wondered why he chose to take on the great responsibility of being a principal in a new school.

My question in response was if it was still an obvious choice to become principal. I describe the principal’s job as tough in many ways, as principal, you are liable. There are many principals who can’t handle the workload, the pay isn’t especially good and there is a lot of pressure from different directions, so why would he want to be a principal?

I didn’t really think of it that way. I saw the creativity in building something, it’s the creating part and starting something new that inspires me. In my case it is about a really good school. An opportunity to meet my need to fix things I think are wrong. This is something I get to work with every day and it makes me feel good. Then of course when I did stand there—a principal, that was me—nothing was yet in place and at the same time I could see that schooling is the most regulated area in Sweden, I could feel the panic.

The time between the email and interviews until Pascal became principal was quite a quick process. In the beginning it was mostly interest and curiosity around applying for the job and it wasn’t an instant “Yes!” when Barbara called some days before Christmas and said: “Mr Brisson I have the pleasure of offering you the job”.

“It wasn’t appreciated when I said: ‘I will think about it’, I heard.

“Why didn’t you say yes? Weren’t you quite convinced?”

Have to ask my wife first so I don’t say yes to something completely crazy! I had a job anyway. Later during Christmas break I said yes to the job. In two weeks I went from a teacher in a large high school to the Principal of nothing.

Suddenly Pascal had the task of recruiting staff from abroad and Sweden to a school that didn’t exist yet. Something that stands out in the school in Sundsvall, is that many of the staff are from Canada, a choice Pascal has made. This is why he goes there to recruit the right people and convince them to move to Sweden and Sundsvall. He was at home in Sundsvall again after Christmas break and it was time to organise an open house in Tonhallen (a concert theatre) to attract students and parents to a school that didn’t have any teachers or other staff.

“A school can’t exist without students!” said Pascal.

Up until the month of June, there were two people who would organise everything that was needed for school start in August. One challenge in this situation was just to “sell” something that you couldn’t touch or visit. Pascal chose, together with one of the first recruits, Jens Hall, to call around to parents in Sundsvall and tell them about the school.

“I’m not at all a salesman so this wasn’t an easy task, but in some way we needed to reach out and talk about what our future school could offer parents and their children. It was just to do it”.

When everything goes very quickly and there is a lot of practical things that must be organised, it’s easy to focus on the practical, and difficult to find time to engage in the question of why one does something. To be able to anchor the values or principles behind everything that has to be done can feel burdensome. When you visit Internationella Engelska Skolan Sundsvall (IESS) today, you get the understanding that nothing is random, it seems as if thought has gone into everything.

One evening before the school started, Petra Håkansson (Vice Principal today) and Jens Hall (Head of Swedish as a second language and teacher) met at my place. We conversed and discussed what would be important starting points for the school. The group, Internationella Engelska Skolan, already has clear principles, but we still wanted to think about what they mean for us and formulate our own interpretations. What does it mean to feel safe, to have an international stamp and to see students as individuals? That evening we wrote a mission statement. We had a huge mission for our school in Sundsvall. What we wanted to deliver was: 1. A safe and orderly work environment with “tough love”, and poor conduct has consequences and not punishment; 2. High expectations both socially and academically; and 3. That students have command of the English language. Then there are values behind this that help us to reach these three expectations, such as to celebrate success, have fun together, happiness, dare to be “crazy”, try to see things from the child’s perspective. This is what we want to deliver together with our values and to create in turn the culture we have at school

Pascal says.

During that evening, one of the conclusions drawn was that at the school in Sundsvall, every individual will be seen. It sounds like something one has heard before and is understood in many situations as obvious. But what makes it actually happen is that it isn’t just something described as important but it is also connected to actions. For the staff it is about the leaders constantly working so that the right person is in the right place and does the right thing based on who that person is. This of course creates the best possible result for the school and also the work situation for employees where they feel seen and where they can do their best no matter who they are. To see every person can also imply that they come to the conclusion that the right place for the person is not this workplace.

We leaders coach staff at the school to work from our concept so they can participate and help to deliver what we have promised our students and parents. It sometimes happens, after a time of coaching, that the teacher or we leaders feel that it doesn’t work and then we have a conversation about that. We usually come to an agreement that we will go our separate ways. This is a way to see the importance of the individual in a larger system. So that every student can be seen as an individual at IESS, the leadership works with teachers to give them the knowledge, tools and conditions that are needed to be able to see the student.

For me, who has followed the school debate for many years, where amongst other things the size of the class has regularly come into the discussion, I can feel some doubt about whether it is possible to see every student, particularly in a school with classes that have 32 students. In the conversation with Pascal, I have understood that this is one of the questions and reflections he often gets from different places. This subject requires almost a whole chapter and of course discussion with both students and teachers; that is why I will come to this question later on. In short, it depends on how a system is in lin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Forewords
• Preface: Frustration Makes It Happen
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Chapter 1 Everything Has a Beginning
• Chapter 2 A Story That Needed to Be Told
• Chapter 3 Crash Course MBV
• Chapter 4 What Are Those Values?
• Chapter 5 Culture Is No Copycat
• Chapter 6 A True Leader?
• Chapter 7 Creating the Team
• 8 Do We Need Visions and Missions When We Have Values?
• 9 The Importance of the Right Conditions
• Chapter 10 Control, Trust and Meatballs
• Chapter 11 Yet Another Reorganisation!
• Chapter 12 Motivation and Sustainable Drives
• Chapter 13 Stress and Belonging!
• Chapter 14 Steps to Make Management by Values (MBV) Happen
• Chapter 15 Success Is Knowing What You Stand For!
• Chapter 16 Let’s Round off This Conversation
• Definitions and Abbreviations
• Index