SCHOOL LEADERS’
CONFERENCE
15 AUGUST 2013
GOLD COAST
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ARE YOU GETTING YOUR LEADERSHIP APPROACH RIGHT?
Times have changed, has your leadership?
Evidence suggests that principals’ attitudes and behaviours play a large role in shaping how schools create a context in which students can effectively learn.
Osborne and Cochran (1992) recognize that educational organizations are complex and multifaceted , citing Leon
Lessinger's metaphor of "messes." Lessinger explains that because organizations' programs are complex and interdependent, they cannot be addressed independently.
Leaders, then, are no longer problem solvers; instead, they can only "manage messes," a term given to the current state of school change and reform efforts (Lessinger, cited by
Osborne & Cochran, p.15).
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DEVELOPING SUCCESSFUL PRINCIPALS
More than ever, in today’s climate of heightened expectations, principals are in the hot seat to improve teaching and learning.
They need to be educational visionaries, instructional and curriculum leaders, assessment experts, disciplinarians, community builders, public relations experts, budget analysts, facility managers, special programs administrators, and expert overseers of legal, contractual, and policy mandates and initiatives.
They are expected to broker the often-conflicting interests of parents, teachers, students, district office officials, unions, and state and federal agencies, and they need to be sensitive to the widening range of student needs.
While that job description sounds overwhelming, at least it signals that the field has begun to give overdue recognition to the critical role and mounting demands on school principals. But are present and future principals getting the professional preparation they need to meet them?
Stanford Educational Leadership Institute
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LEADERS ARE STRUGGLING
Forty to fifty years ago, industry and business leaders wanted employees with socialized minds. They wanted people who were good team players, pulled their weight, were loyal to the company, and could be counted on to conscientiously follow the directions or instructions given to them by their bosses.
Today, organisations want employees with higher levels of knowledge, people who are able to act responsibly, take initiatives, and work independently. Business and industry needs confident self starters, people with self-authoring minds.
Two large studies of middle-class, college-educated professionals in the United States show that 58 percent of them had not yet reached the level of the self-authoring mind and only about 6 percent of them had moved beyond the self-authoring mind to develop a selftransforming mind!
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LEADERS ARE STRUGGLING
The Edelman 2013 Trust Barometer survey reveals that fewer than one in five people trust business or government leaders to tell the truth when confronted with a difficult issue.
Edelman also sliced data showing which industries people trust the most and the least. The technology, automotive and food and beverage businesses fared best, with trust ratings between 66% (food and beverage) and 77% (technology).
Not surprisingly, after a year of financial sector scandals, banks and financial services were at the bottom of the trust pile, with only 50% of respondents rating them well on
Edelman’s nine-point scale.
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CURRENT LEADERSHIP APPROACHES ARE NOT WORKING
One of the issues called out comes from Kupers & Weibler
(2006) who note that the prevailing leadership approaches seem to manifest fragmented or mutually exclusive paradigm parameters, missing a more inclusive orientation and enfoldment of leadership. This does not bode well for an environment of increased complexity.
Bennis (2007) calls for the urgent need for collaboration among social- neuro-cognitive scientists in order to achieve an integrated theory of leadership , and points to promising leads for accomplishing this. He states that after studying leadership for six decades, he is struck by how small the body of knowledge of which he is sure.
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SOME NEW APPROACHES: UNDERSTAND THE TRENDS
Hernez-Broome and Hughes (2009) of the Centre for Creative
Leadership found that some of the most noteworthy issues and trends in the field of leadership development in the past 20 years fall under these two general headings:
1. The proliferation of leadership development methods; and
2. The importance of a leader’s emotional resonance with and impact on others.
They found that several trends will have a major role in the future understanding and practice of leadership and leadership development. They represent, in different ways, the critical role changing contexts will play in leadership development namely:
1. Leadership competencies will still matter;
2. Globalization/internationalization of leadership concepts, constructs, and development methods;
3. The role of technology;
4. Increasing interest in the integrity and character of leaders;
5. Pressure to demonstrate return on investment; and
6. New ways of thinking about the nature of leadership and leadership development.
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DEVELOPING LEADER MATURITY - TORBERT
There are seven developmental action logics
—
Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, Achiever, Individualist,
Strategist, or Alchemist
- tendency to focus on personal wins and see the world and other people as opportunities to be exploited.
Their approach to the outside world is largely determined by their perception of control —in other words, how they will react to an event depends primarily on whether or not they think they can direct the outcome.
They treat other people as objects or as competitors who are also out for themselves. Few Opportunists remain managers for long, unless they transform to more effective action logics.
Their constant firefighting, their style of self-aggrandizement, and their frequent rule breaking is the antithesis of the kind of leader people want to work with for the long term.
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DEVELOPING LEADER MATURITY - TORBERT
- makes sense of the world in a more benign way than the Opportunist does, but this action logic can also have extremely negative repercussions if the leader is a senior manager.
Loyally serving the group, the Diplomat seeks to please higherstatus colleagues while avoiding conflict.
This action logic is focused on gaining control of one’s own behavior —more than on gaining control of external events or other people. According to the Diplomat’s action logic, a leader gains more enduring acceptance and influence by cooperating with group norms and by performing his daily roles well.
Indeed, research into 497 managers in different industries showed that 80% of all Diplomats were at junior levels. By contrast,
80% of all Strategists were at senior levels, suggesting that managers who grow into more effective action logics
—like that of the
Strategist
—have a greater chance of being promoted.
Diplomats are much more problematic in top leadership roles because they try to ignore conflict.
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DEVELOPING LEADER MATURITY - TORBERT
- The largest category of leader is that of Experts, who account for 38% of all professionals.
In contrast to Opportunists, who focus on trying to control the world around them, and Diplomats, who concentrate on controlling their own behaviour, Experts try to exercise control by perfecting their knowledge, both in their professional and personal lives.
Exercising watertight thinking is extremely important to Experts.
Secure in their expertise, they present hard data and logic in their efforts to gain consensus and buy-in for their proposals.
Experts are great individual contributors because of their pursuit of continuous improvement, efficiency, and perfection. But as managers, they can be problematic because they are so completely sure they are right.
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DEVELOPING LEADER MATURITY - TORBERT
For those who hope someday to work for a manager who both challenges and supports them and creates a positive team and interdepartmental atmosphere, the good news is that a large proportion, 30%, of the managers measure as
Achievers.
While these leaders create a positive work environment and focus their efforts on deliverables, the downside is that their style often inhibits thinking outside the box.
Achievers have a more complex and integrated understanding of the world than do managers who display the three previous action logics we’ve described. They’re open to feedback and realize that many of the ambiguities and conflicts of everyday life are due to differences in interpretation and ways of relating.
Achievers can reliably lead a team to implement new strategies over a one to three-year period, balancing immediate and long-term objectives.
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DEVELOPING LEADER MATURITY - TORBERT
10% of Individualist leaders contribute unique practical value to their organizations; they put personalities and ways of relating into perspective and communicate well with people who have other action logics.
What sets Individualists apart from Achievers is their awareness of a possible conflict between their principles and their actions, or between the organization’s values and its implementation of those values.
Individualists also tend to ignore rules they regard as irrelevant, which often makes them a source of irritation to both colleagues and bosses.
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DEVELOPING LEADER MATURITY - TORBERT
account for just 4% of leaders. What sets them apart from Individualists is their focus on organizational constraints and perceptions, which they treat as discussable and transformable.
The Strategist is also adept at creating shared visions across different action logics —visions that encourage both personal and organizational transformations.
According to the Strategist’s action logic, organizational and social change is an iterative developmental process that requires awareness and close leadership attention.
Strategists deal with conflict more comfortably than do those with other action logics and they’re better at handling people’s instinctive resistance to change. As a result,
Strategists are highly effective change agents.
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DEVELOPING LEADER MATURITY - TORBERT
Our studies of the few leaders we have identified as Alchemists suggest that what sets them apart from Strategists is their ability to renew or even reinvent themselves and their organizations in historically significant ways.
Whereas the Strategist will move from one engagement to another, the Alchemist has an extraordinary capacity to deal simultaneously with many situations at multiple levels.
Alchemists constitute 1% of leaders.
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GREAT LEADERS OF THE 21 ST CENTURY
Carlos Gohn is the CEO and chairman of the
Renault-Nissan Alliance.
“It is a paradox: on the one hand, you have to be more confident and secure, but on the other, you
Have to be a lot more open and empathetic.
You need to listen, but then when you make a decision , that’s it—you must be a very hard driver. Usually, these are not attributes you find in the same person.
Vineet Nayar is CEO of vice chairman and CEO of HCL
Technologies Ltd.
He is hailed as the most modern leader of our times. He is also an acknowledged management visionary and a radical thinker who architected the company’s "Employees First, Customers
Second‟ (EFCS) strategy, which transformed HCL’s business, through its inverted organizational structure which has helped create transparency and accountability within the organization and encourage a value-driven culture since its conception in 2005.
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The
“leadership journey” currently being delivered to members of the
Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) uses a somewhat emergent group learning process to develop and explore leadership capabilities, whereby a group of 12 or so Chief
Executives from different voluntary-sector organisations embark on a one-year learning experience together.
The programme, run by a consultancy organisation (Telos), is based around a series of two-day residential modules and associated action learning sets and individual and group challenges.
Whilst the basic structure of the programme is outlined in advance
(e.g. module dates and generic themes), the emphasis is very much on getting the group to agree on future topics, activities and speakers and thus input and develop the programme as it proceeds.
A further central element of the programme is the “make a difference challenge” which is an active development challenge for participants to complete within their organisation and share with other members of the group. The programme is, therefore, very experiential and depends to a large extent on peer-group interaction, support and development.
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The Lead2Lead programme, managed by Lancaster
University, uses the process of leadership exchange and reflection to help improve leadership awareness.
It involves a process of careful paring of participants, often from different organisations, sectors, and even countries.
Once matched, participants are given training in observation and reflection techniques, followed by a three-day exchange to each others work place (to shadow the other person), and a facilitated debriefing session.
The process of observing and being observed can generate significant insights and awareness that could not be delivered through more formalised training. It gives first-hand experience, stories, and personal insights that can be very important to leadership. Furthermore, the “time-out” and reflection elements give the leader space to think and consider their leadership practices.
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DEVELOPING LEADERS DIFFERENT:Y: TUTU’S CHILDREN
25 exceptional African professionals on an intense journey of discovery to find the answer to that question and, along the way, dig deep into their own motivations and capacities as leaders.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the patron of the leadership scheme, signs them up to his vision to become a new moral task force for the continent.
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INNOVATIVE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
A recent study in the US found that principals who participated in a preparation program that is concept driven, cohort based, and consisting of a yearlong and carefully mentored field-based internship scored higher on the newly developed ISLLC performance assessment test, received higher performance evaluation ratings by supervisors, and were perceived by teachers as being more effective in managing their schools (Valentine, 2001).
Professional development activities should be ongoing, careerstaged, and seamless (Peterson, 2002).
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