Leadership
Photo: Gino Santa Maria via Shutterstock
How can a school be unequivocal about nurturing leaders, when it requires students to follow cultural norms, obey rules and achieve goals set by others? It may strive to do so with clubs, student governance and sports, but risks modelling a heroic style of leadership that makes most of the participants into passive followers. Without painstaking care, it trains followers and soldiers, not risk takers or status-quo breakers.
“We are immunizing a high proportion of our most gifted young people against any tendencies to leadership.”
If we are invested in creating leaders, then we need to demolish the image of a heroic leader and give all students leadership experiences. Henry Mintzberg (2008), a leading authority on leadership, felt that managers and leaders could not be created in the classroom, and that managing was learned on the job, strengthened by varied work experiences. Leadership develops in attempting to lead, in other words, and not in learning about it theoretically. Still, the following understanding of leadership can set the stage for successfully trying it out:
1. Understanding the difference between a manager and a leader:
Students can understand a bit about management: they are asked to manage their responsibilities every day. While they may not have had the experience of managing others, comparing management to leadership might nonetheless hit home. Warren Bennis (2009, p. 42) at University of Southern California, an accomplished student of leadership, articulated it like this:
The manager administers;
the leader innovates.
The manager is a copy;
the leader is an original.
The manager maintains;
the leader develops.
The manager focuses on systems and structure;
the leader focuses on people.
The manager relies on control;
the leader inspires trust.
The manager has a short-range view;
the leader has a long-range perspective.
The manager asks how and when;
the leader asks what and why.
The manager has their eye on the bottom line;
the leader’s eye is on the horizon.
The manager imitates;
the leader originates.
The manager accepts the status quo;
the leader challenges it.
The manager is the classic good soldier;
the leader is his or her own person.
The manager does things right;
the leader does the right thing.
It is a motivating list for self-reflection, even if it doesn’t teach leadership.
Consider:
How might you infuse your curriculum with opportunities to contrast management and leadership?
How might you help your students to distinguish “getting As” from “demonstrating leadership”?
2. Understanding how to develop leadership skills:
Mintzberg felt that leadership could not be taught in the classroom, but are there educational programs that nurture leadership and teach leadership skills? The CivicQuest project, in Learning Leadership: A Curriculum Guide for a New Generation Grades K-12 (Kretzman, ed., 1996, p. 10), lays out a comprehensive K-12 approach to building a leadership mindset. It focuses on:
1. Understanding Self and Individuals
2. Motivating Individuals
3. Leading and Developing Groups
4. Critical and Creative Thinking
5. Decision Making
6. Visioning and Problem Solving
7. Conflict Resolution
8. Leading Change
9. Communication
The curriculum guide is organized around a set of questions about leadership:
1. What is leadership and why do we need it?
2. How do people lead?
3. What are the different types and styles of leadership and what needs do they meet?
4. How do the decisions that leaders make confirm their personal and ethical values?
5. In what ways can a group be more productive than an individual?
6. What types of leaders do groups need?
7. How can I be an effective group leader or follower?
8. What are the connections among conflict resolution, leadership, and curriculum?
9. How can we be citizen leaders in our own communities?
Consider:
How might you use your curriculum to teach leadership skills?
How might you give all of your students opportunities to lead?
By starting in Kindergarten, the program normalizes leader behavior and mindset. Lessons use role-playing, projects, critical reading and discussions to position leadership as the responsibility of every member of a collaborative group.
Leadership as a communal responsibility and a collaborative practice will be a transformative idea to many. Students too often feel leadership skills are bestowed only on supermen. Stripping it of these charismatic connotations makes it a more accessible practice.
“A leader is not necessarily a person who holds some formal position or is perceived as a leader by others. Instead, a leader is one who is able to affect change which helps others, the community and society. Any individual is a potential leader. The process of leadership involves collaborative relationships that lead to collective action, affecting change.”
Leadership as building and maintaining a community: migrating geese understand it intuitively, switching leaders regularly as they fly. The internet generation understands this intuitively as well. My daughter developed a social media empire in high school of several thousand connections based on her interest in food. By any definition of the word, she has made herself a leader, though she is loath to accept the characterization. She is a “thought leader”. She researched and developed a principled and clearly articulated position on food production, human health, animal welfare and climate change, she translated it into a lifestyle, she enrolled her parents and her tribe in her beliefs, and she formulated a detailed curriculum for her undergraduate degree.
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.”
My daughter has cultivated a passion. Everything else has followed naturally, with no thought whatsoever to “leadership”. She may exert influence, but has no authority or mandate. She is hesitant in a crowd, but inspires a tribe of followers. She is a reluctant risk-taker, yet takes bold, original actions. My daughter is proof that leadership need not be heroic. Leadership, understood as community-ship, is a natural consequence of critical, creative thinking, communication, and a powerful and engaging passion. My daughter did this outside of school, but it should have been supported from within.
Consider:
How might you offer your students the time and resources to savor and cultivate passions?
Do you believe this is a legitimate function for school?
If you do, are there administrative or cultural impediments that stand in the way?
What might you do to eliminate those impediments?
My daughter’s example suggests school must not ask “are you leadership material”, but might ask instead “what kind of leadership suits you best”. The sheer volume of leadership prescriptions, quotes on leadership, and research on leadership fuels this hypothesis. There is no “leader” typology according to this line of thought: only people vested in making a difference with unique attributes that thrive in different situations. If this is true, then our educational system should be identifying character traits of students, to match them with compatible leadership styles. They should not be culling a certain type of student for enhanced leadership training, but instead should be tuning the leadership training to the student: all of our students.
“Let’s destroy the idea of one leadership type and help students find the styles for which they have the greatest affinity.”
3. Understanding the process of becoming a leader:
Dan McCarthy (2012), Executive Development Programs Director at Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) identifies the process as six “passages” between management and leadership:
Passage #1: Managing Yourself: be organized, punctual, emotionally mature, and decisive
Passage #2: Leading Yourself: develop purpose and passion, values and goals
Passage #3: Managing Others: communicate intent, meet schedules, and achieve objectives
Passage #4: Leading Others: empathize, inspire commitment, energize, and harness passion
Passage #5: Managing Organizations: master systems, optimize procedures, manage people
Passage #6: Leading Organizations: develop a compelling vision, inspire the culture, develop leaders
With a clearly delineated process, and with a trusted guide by their side, students can place their skills in context, understand the goal, and plot and pilot a strategy to proceed and succeed.
Consider:
How might you help students to situate themselves within this cascade of passages?
How might you use your curriculum to help students advance through these passages?
How might you effectively coach your students through these passages?
4. Understanding how to be a leader:
Leadership style is catalogued in a blog from Harvard University professor Murray Johannsen (n.d.), who identifies no less than 20 approaches:
01. The Autocratic Leadership Style
(My way or the highway)
02. Bureaucratic Leadership
(Authority from position, not personality)
03. The Coaching Style
(Leader as teacher)
04. Cross-Cultural Leadership
(Leader as cross-cultural translator/navigator)
05. Emergent Leadership
(Showing leadership before taking formal role)
06. The Leader Exchange Style
(Leadership as a transaction between leader and followers)
07. The Laissez Faire Leadership Style
(Ceding autonomy to skilled subordinates)
08. Situational Leadership
(Adjust focus on tasks or relationships depending on situation)
09. Strategic Leadership
(Leadership as a game of chess)
10. Team Leadership
(Leadership as team-building and inspiration)
11. Facilitative Leadership
(Leader as consensus builder or facilitator)
12. Influence Leadership Styles
(Nine strategies to lead by exerting influence)
13. The Participative Leadership Style
(Engaging rather than directing from afar)
14. The Servant Leadership Style
(Engage socially to support needs of the team)
15. The Transformational Leadership Style
(Compelling vision inspires dramatic change)
16. The Charismatic Style
(Project competence, raise aspirations through inspiring style)
17. The Visionary Leadership Style
(Effectively make aspirations come true)
18. Transactional Leadership
(Play it by the rules, useful in a bureaucracy)
19. Level 5 Leadership
(Fierce resolve, realistic outlook, modest demeanor)
20. Primal Leadership Style
(Drive team emotions through emotional intelligence)
Consider:
Which of these leadership styles do you exhibit as a teacher?
Which of these leadership styles do you find nurture student followers, and which nurture student leaders?
Too many kids see one type of leader, feel cut from a different cloth, and thus illogically conclude that they are not made of the right stuff for any leadership. The greatest favor school can do is destroy the idea of one leadership type and help kids find the styles for which they have the greatest affinity. Students will expand their repertoire of styles as their mastery of the different situations that require leadership develops.
We will have nurtured leadership when our students can identify a passion and couple it to one or more leadership styles. Self-confidence, self-reliance, initiative, and motivation will resolve themselves in the face of passion. We will have nurtured leadership at the point a student can state: “This I believe, this I can do, and this is how I intend to make a difference”.
When in 2006, the Project Management Institute asked Human Resources professionals to rate high school graduates, 72.5% stated that they lack leadership skills (Byrne, Snyder, Seward, 2008). Students are not learning to lead.
What then is a Leadership experience? Helen and Alexander Astin (1996, p. 4-6) describe it as music. A musical ensemble relies on the unique expression of the members, their technical expertise, their ability to listen to each other, respect each other, and offer feedback to each other, a sense of common purpose and the ability to appreciate the whole. At its most fundamental then, leadership can simply be taking the initiative in a collaborative context. As a student comes to define their values and goals, leadership becomes an experience drawn from passion, and enrolling others in pursuing a defined goal. Ultimately, courage, empathy, and intuition will make keeping people enrolled and achieving those goals easier. It is all process without poetry though, until you know: “Where do my passions lie”?
What do I care about?
Consider:
Do you ever ask your students to articulate their values and their interests?
How might you coach your students to help them transform their values into goals?
How might you coach them to reach their goals, and hold them accountable for trying?
References
Astin, H. S. & Astin, A.W. (1996). A Social Change Model of Leadership Development Guidebook: Version III. Higher Education Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles.
Bennis, W. (2009). On Becoming a Leader. Basic Books.
Byrne, J. J., Snyder, J. R., & Seward, D. (2008). Project management's future: teaching project management to high school students. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2008—North America, Denver, CO. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Johannsen, M. (n.d.). 12 Types of Leadership Styles. www.legacee.com/types-of-leadership-styles/
Kretman, K. P., editor (1996). Learning Leadership: A Curriculum Guide for a New Generation. CIVICQUEST. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED444877.pdf
McCarthy, D. (2012, May 14). The 6 Passages of Leadership and Management.
www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2012/05/6-passages-of-leadership-and-management.html
Mintzberg, H. (2008). Managers, not MBAs. Berrett-Koehler.
Your thoughts on this journal post are highly valued, as I continue to build and refine my perspective on schools and the school environment. Please share your own experiences and perceptions of the school environment below!