The expectation that schools should work in partnership to improve outcomes for children has arguably been the defining feature of school policy over the last decade.
Under the previous, Labour administration, a key driver of this centred on a desire to address disadvantage and promote the needs of the ‘whole child’, most notably through the pursuit of the “Every Child Matters” agenda (DfES, 2003). This included:
 a greater focus on the role of schools as part of a broader multi-agency approach to early intervention,
 an emphasis on schools working together and with other services to address the ‘core offer’ and to provide universal services to promote children’s well-being the establishment of Sure Start children’s centres, many within schools 
 the merger of education and social care at the Authority level
While schools continue to play a major role in safeguarding children’s wellbeing, the first white paper on education (Department for Education, 2010) produced following last year’s change in government highlights a far greater emphasis on schools working together to improve the quality of teaching and learning and levels of achievement for children. Perhaps most notably, this has seen a commitment to extend the practice of ‘system leadership’ (Hargreaves, 2010, Hopkins, 2009), the process through which leaders work with colleagues in other schools to build capacity and improve levels of school effectiveness, for instance, through existing initiatives such as National Leaders of Education and National Support Schools, or the newly established role of Specialist Leaders of Education. Elsewhere the government’s flagship academies programme, together with the associated rise in federations and chains of schools, further emphasizes the need for leaders to work collaboratively across organizational boundaries, to promote school improvement.
This shift in emphasis has also seen additional efforts to promote more systematic and effective approaches for sharing good and excellent teaching practice, and developing leadership capacity in schools. Most notably this has resulted in the introduction of Teaching Schools, partnerships between schools, Higher
Education Institutions and other organizations, responsible for the initial training and ongoing development of teachers. As part of this work, these partnerships will have a responsibility for identifying and developing the next generation of school leaders, thereby helping to promote improved outcomes for children in years to come.
Collectively these changes have seen the emergence of a new form of school leadership, which simultaneously seeks to reconcile the pressures of cross-organisational partnership working with the demands of effectively leading a single institution. Most accurately described as collaborative leadership , this approach is best conceived as a composite and blended form of leadership (Collinson and Collinson,
2006), which draws together a number of distinct leadership themes to form a coherent model for partnership working. These themes are neither mutually exclusive or sequential. Furthermore, from a broader view, each is a potentially important element of leadership in any organizational context. However this study found that effective leadership within collaborative contexts is dependent upon a skilled and contextually sensitive blending of these aspects, undertaken to address the needs of individual followers while simultaneously promoting a clear focus on the overarching goal. As such these themes are better viewed as the ‘big ideas’ which support the practicalities of collaboration. They can be summarized as:
1.
Authentic leadership – the values based performance of leadership
2.
Relational leadership – the connection between leader and follower
3.
4.
Distributed leadership – leadership as a pluralistic endeavor
Political leadership – utilizing the macro, mezzo and micro political climate
5.
Constitutive leadership – constructing contextualised meaning for followers
The remainder of this paper provides further detail on each of these elements.
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1. Authentic leadership
Authentic leadership connects leaders’ values and behaviours and highlights how the effective performance of the leadership role creates a context for joint working.
Authentic leadership focuses on self awareness and promoting understanding amongst leaders of who they are and what they believe in (Gardner et al., 2005). It emphasises the need for leaders to consistently demonstrate transparency between their values and actions (Avolio et al., 2005), such that followers come to see the two as indistinguishable. Such authentic leadership practice promotes a range of positive emotions amongst followers, including respect, empowerment, mutual identification and trust (Fry and
Whittington, 2005), each of which is critical within the context of collaborative working (Coleman, 2008).
Thus authentic leadership connects strongly with notions of transformational leadership (Bass, 1998,
MacGregor Burns, 2003), as it promotes commitment amongst followers and a willingness to offer discretionary effort in pursuit of the partnership’s goals.
2. Relational leadership
By definition, all leadership is inescapably relational for as Grint (2005) notes:
“the individual 'leader' without followers is demonstrably not a leader at all." (Grint, 2005:2)
However relational leadership is particularly important in collaborative contexts, as the development of effective relationships is fundamental to their establishment, their move into delivery and their longer term sustainability (Hudson, 1987, Hudson et al., 1999, Kanter, 1994). More broadly, relational leadership supports moves away from hierarchical, autocratic organisational structures towards more democratic, inclusive and open ones, a trend highlighted by writers such as Forde et al (2008) as a feature of modern times and synonymous with both partnership working and schools in particular. It is also key to models of post-heroic leadership (Luke, 1997) as important in leading such collaborative organisations.
Relational leadership focuses on developing strong links between leader and followers throughout the school. In collaborative contexts, leaders need to extended such links to other organizations, and encourage others to follow suit, thereby ensuring the partnership is supported by a dense web of interpersonal connections (Hill, 2007).
3. Distributed leadership
Distributed leadership is central to collaborative leadership because of its practical focus on sharing power and responsibility, and encouraging leadership in a shared and collaborative way.
Distributed leadership conceives leadership as a functional rather than positional phenomenon (Southworth,
2004), driven by professional capacity rather than hierarchical position (Gastil, 1997). Some form of leadership distribution is unavoidable within collaborative settings, as authority for action is shared across professional groups and organisational boundaries (Coleman, 2006b, 2006a). However in practice, the notion of distributed leadership is often used to cover a range of shared leadership approaches, ranging from relatively bounded forms of delegation to more wholesale commitment to subsidiarity (West-Burnham,
2004). This study found that the extent to which leaders distributed leadership varied depending upon their context and were likely to be more successful in instances when they involved a careful consideration of the relative risks and benefits associated with this approach.
4. Political leadership
While a number of writers have made reference to the need for leaders in collaborations to be able to resolve potential conflicts between partners (e.g. Amistead, 2007, Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002), the more thorny issues of how leaders proactively use politics as a means for pursuing their aims has received little attention. One exception is a recent study for the National College (Canwell et al., 2011) which highlights the attention that resourceful directors of children’s services give to building alliances which potentially help them to deliver their agendas. This focus on alliance building draws heavily on leaders’ interpersonal skills, and may be seen as a form of
Vangen’s (2005) concept of nodal leadership (Hunt et al., 2008, Hargreaves, 2010), concerned with developing rich and meaningful networks which may be potentially utilized to get things done. Huxham and collaborative thuggery also highlights the need for effective transactional leadership (Bass, 1998) in the two distinctly political areas of relationship management and agenda setting.
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Three distinct political levels can be identified in school based partnership working, these being:
 Macro – i.e. the broader national policy agenda
 Mezzo – i.e. operational and strategic relationships between local partners
 Micro – i.e. the minutiae of operational working at the individual, interpersonal level.
Political leadership demands a detailed understanding of each of these political levels and the practical demonstration of political savvy to promote the interests of the collaboration.
5. Constitutive leadership
Constitutive leadership focuses on how leaders create the climate for collaboration and expectations as to the behaviour of those involved in it. It therefore highlights the importance of power and authority in establishing notions of organizational reality. For instance, policymakers play a critical role in defining the national context for partnerships within schools by enshrining expectations of it within legislation and policy, while locally, an individual headteacher may justify the need for partnership working by promoting its overarching moral purpose.
Constitutive leadership involves ‘giving a clear message’ to staff, students, parents and others as to the mutual rights and responsibilities within the school, effectively determining the rules of engagement in this context (Kelly et al., 2004). The notion of professionalism (Evetts, 2003, MacDonald, 2005) is particularly important in this process, as it effectively articulate the values, principles and behaviours associated with the performance of a specific role within any given context. Social learning based approaches such as modeling (Bandura, 1977) are often important ways in which leaders personally demonstrate what these elements entail. Constitutive leadership demands strong communication skills and a willingness to listen and absorb the views of partners, which is especially important in shaping the collaboration’s agenda and developing trust with the other parties involved (Connolly and James, 2006, Gillinson et al., 2007).
Conclusion
Collaborative leadership is best conceived as comprising a number of complementary elements which collectively offer a model for leadership across organizational boundaries. It demands a strong focus on interpersonal relationships based on moral purpose, personal integrity and trust, and a high emphasis on the leader’s role as meaning maker At the same time it also calls for a highly sophisticated approach to navigating the politics of partnership at a range of levels.
The ALE conference therefore provides an important opportunity to hear research and the views of leading thinkers on these issues and to discuss with practitioners the implications of these trends for leadership practice. To support this process, delegates are encouraged to reflect on the following questions:
 What are your core values, the beliefs you would live and die for? What more could you do to embody these - day in, day out, in your interactions at school and with other organisations?
 What are the things that encourage you to trust colleagues you work with, in your school and beyond? How can you as a leader be more proactive in creating a climate in which trust will grow between professionals?
 What do you think is the ‘direction of travel’ for schools, nationally and locally? To what extent does this reflect your own sense of priorities? How can you utilize this momentum to promote the things you believe are important for education, now and in the future?
Andrew Coleman
25 May 2011
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