Meeting Highlights –Western CapeSchool Leadership Community of Practice (CoP)
Thursday 19th October 2017
Leap School, St Francis Campus, Langa, Cape Town
We started the conversation by looking at our own specific struggles of leadership which in summary were:
- Keeping an authenticvoice and keeping true to what I really know and believe when there is so much noise and influence of others.
- Leadership feels like a separate thing towhat I am already doing – how do I begin to view it as one and the same?
- Delegation as a leader – knowledge doesn’t reside with one person and leadership is about encouraging everyone to lead. An observation is that we often have an unrealistic expectation that others will lead, and fail to see ourselves as leaders. Need to identify as a leader and begin doing what we are able to do with what we have right now.
- Leading through collaboration involves so many power dynamics and those power dynamics are often hierarchical. Those who can really make change and whose voices are needed to be heard are locked out of the conversation due to their own mindsets of oppression, egos of those in historical positions of authority, and traditional status relationships.
- Leading with information – balancing betweenbeing open to sharing information to address the cause while also needing toprotect your own self-interest e.g. income.
This led to the question:What sort of leaders do we need in our country?
- Transformative leaders who do not look just at the incremental changes but rather identify the levers of change that can bring about much greater change in the long-run.
- There is a tendency to expect and look towards a heroic image of a leader (perhaps this is left over from end of apartheid hopes and the iconic image of a leader as ‘savior’), which can also play out in microcosms of own organisations.
- How should we be supporting others as transformational leaders?
Aspects and thoughts on transformational Leadership:
- Instructional practice is at the heart of school leadership, which broadly refers to thefocus on teaching and learning in the classroom. As a teacher and principal it is easy to be focused on the outcomes of teaching rather than on the process of learning. Transformational leadership in this space requires a shift towards acknowledging how learners actually learn, which will then feed into good teaching that supports such learning.
- The transformative leader must have an incredible adaptive capacity. We can’t solve a problem with old knowledge. To really solve it we must apply new knowledge and ideas, which puts you in a situation of tension and discomfort for a while. Such a situation requires a robust holding environment. The transformational leader is one who is able to hold the situation and the people involved throughout this period of uncertainty, and does so in a way that allows and encourages people to feel safe enough to take risk.
- This balance is a dynamic balance as opposed to a static one. It is in a constant state of flux and requires a constant and active readjustment.
- Active listening is a powerful tool of the transformational leader. The ability to listen actively, be reflective and accept your own vulnerability.
- Rethink our systems so that leadership doesn’t hang on one person. The concept of collective leadership needs to be applied whereby different people step into leadership in different situations depending on their own strengths.
- It is important to choose leaders properly. What are the key factors that make a good leader and what is more important to acknowledge - their qualitative experience or quantitative measures of product/outcomes?
- To support transformational leadership we could develop a question framework that features a set of questions that could be applied to any leadership situation.
Some proposed questions arose from the discussion:
What lens am I looking at this through?
Am I able to hold discomfort?
Who supports me and holds me through this period of discomfort?
Am I listening actively?
Am I listening with empathy?
Are others able to take risk without fear?
What assumptions are being made about me?
How am I living out my stereotypes?
When is it OK to say no? In what contexts/scenarios can I say no? Do I want to say no?
What will replenish and sustain me in this way?
When should I lead alone and when should I lead with others?
Do I make time to reflect – what would I do differently?
Am I excluding people from leadership on the basis of my assumptions?
Am I utilizing people around me to fill the gaps of my weakness and vice versa?
Do the people I lead see things the way I do?
What am I willing to risk/lose to live this truth?
How do I let go of the fear of judgment?
Have I consulted others?
Next steps:
Create a dynamic list of questions that can be provided to school leaders
Test the tool out with principals and those in positions of leadership to identify
Explore different platforms for dissemination - Are there PLCs of principals who can engage and ‘test’ the questions? Contact Haroon from WCED.
List of questions in a situation of discomfort - layering - Am I willing to ask questions of myself?
Send through to Vuyiswa – Melissa etc. Principals Upfront – present in 2018