Transformational Leadership
The difference between having capability to lead as opposed to having capability to lead effectively can be massive. It is this effective leadership that can effect positive change in a culture to produce greater outcomes rather than one which dictates the change.
The idea of transformational leadership has its origins in Max Weber’s concept of charismatic authority, in which leaders receive legitimacy from the mystical, ineffable properties of their individual personality and their ability to motivate others to follow them (M. Weber, 1978, Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology, Berkeley: University of California Press).
Transformational leadership achieves these ends through the pursuit of common goals, empowerment of people in the organization, development and maintenance of a collaborative culture, promoting processes of teacher development, and engaging people in collaborative problem-solving strategies (Andy Hargraves & Dean Fink; Sustainable Leadership, 2006, p99).
Kenneth Leithwood and his associates have undertaken more than a decade of quantitative and qualitative research on the nature and effects of transformational leadership in schools. From their research they argued that “transformational leadership moves schools beyond first-order, surface changes to second-order, deeper transformations that alter the ‘core technologies’ of schooling, such as pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. (K. Leithwood, D. Jantzi & R. Steinbach, 1999, Changing leadership for changing times, Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press).
It is important that leadership is tailored to the context in which the school leader is situated as Transformational Leadership “depends on recognizing and responding to the unique challenges and features presented by particular types of organizational contexts.” (Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinback, 1999).
The Six Secrets of Change
Secret One - Love your Employees
Secret Two - Connect Peers with Purpose
Secret Three - Capacity Building Prevails
Secret Four - Learning Is the Work
Secret Five - Transparency Rules
Secret Six - Systems Learn
5 Leadership Principles
Inspire a Shared Vision
Model the Way
Challenge the Process
Enable Others to Act
Encourage the Heart
“The Leadership Challenge” (Kouzes and Posner) - 5 Leadership Principles
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the End in Mind
- Put First Things First
- Think Win/Win
- Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the Saw
Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs..."
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in 1989, is a self-help book written by Stephen R. Covey
Leading Change
In “Change Leader” Michael Fullan identifies seven elements of change leadership: be resolute, do deliberately, sustain simplexity, motivate the masses, collaborate to compete, learn confidently and know your impact.
Be Resolute: Act with Purpose and Empathy
Effective change leaders combine resolute moral purpose with impressive empathy. Effective leaders are driven by resolute purpose with respect to deep human values. They do not give up. However, leaders must also pos-sess empathy that enables them to understand where people who disagree are coming from to then figure out how to relate to them. Resolute leaders cannot afford to be blind to the human dynamics that stand in their way.
Motivate the Masses: Experiencing Is Believing
People need to be given new experiences that they find intrinsically fulfilling because realised effectiveness is what motivates people to do more. Rather than inspiring visions, moral exhortation or mounds of irrefutable evidence, it is the experience of being more effective that spurs people on to repeat and build on the behaviour.
Collaborate to Compete: Multiply Capacity and Win
One of Fullan’s key insights in this book is “collaborative competition is the yin and yang of successful change”. Elements of a collaborative culture include: focus (through setting a small number of core goals), form a guiding coalition, aim for collective capacity building, work on individual capacity building and reap the benefits of col-laborative competition.
Learn Confidently: Change Requires Confidence (but True Confidence Requires Humility)
“Change leaders are more confident than the situation warrants but more humble than they look”. As a learner, the change leader must do four things in combination: use your brain, cultivate a growth mindset in self and others, be indispensable in the right way, and maintain a high level of confidence.
Know Your Impact: Drowning in Data, Thirsty for Knowledge
Effective change leaders integrate and use data about practice and outcomes to cause and mark progress. The focus needs to be on a small number of quantitative and qualitative measures of impact which then become the core part of the strategy of moving further forward. Good data must be treated as central to strategy and not just seen as an accountability measure.
Sustain Simplexity: Just Right Simple
Sustaining simplexity and doing deliberately provide a foundation for the above core elements of Fullan’s change framework. Practice needs to drive theory and leaders need to learn ‘in situ’. Testing what you are learning against research and theories can occur along the journey. Keeping it simple allows the leader to tackle complex problems without feeling overwhelmed.
Fullan, M. (2011). Change Leader: Learning To Do What Matters Most. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.
Collated by Jason Meijboom