Education Leadership

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch, Uncategorized August 19, 2016

34 Points on Strategic Leadership in Schools

Modern educational leadership is complex and demanding. Challenges include reestablishing novel national visions, crafting new educational aims for schools, restructuring education systems at different levels, privatization, and diversifying school education, all at the macro-level, and being proactive in facing up to these contextual challenges using various strategies. Strategic leadership is strongly linked to the organization’s vision. Here are 34 points about strategic leadership in the school environment to prompt school administrators to action.

Vision is an essential part of strategic leadership. Without it, school staff and personnel aren’t working towards the same goal and therefore will find themselves at odds, slowing progress and impeding success. The following four points are essential for incorporating leadership vision in the school environment.

Outstanding leaders must have a vision for their organizations.
A school’s vision should be communicated in a way that secures commitment from other members of the organization.
Communication of the vision requires communication of its meaning.
Focus should be given to the institutionalizing of the vision if leadership is to be successful.

The development of strategic direction involves a process in which we don’t just look forward from the present, but we also establish a picture of what we want the school to look like in the future and set guidelines and frameworks on how to move forward to that position. As we have seen above, from the conversations with strategic leaders, there must a clear understanding of the direction the school is headed in. What strategic leaders need to do can be summarized by the strategic leadership points 5-8.

Strategic leaders set the direction of the school.
Strategic leaders challenge and question – they are dissatisfied with the present.
Strategic leaders translate strategy into action.
Strategic leaders prioritize their own strategic thinking and learning by building new mental models to frame their understanding and that of others.

One key characteristic of strategic leaders is their ability to envision the different ways their organization might perform in future. They always have a desire to challenge the status quo and improve for the future. This means that strategic leaders have to deal constantly with their dissatisfaction with present arrangements, while facing the challenge that they are not able to change things as quickly as they might want. Leaders, as change agents in their organizations, constantly ask questions such as:

What are the things taught that have been clearly successful or unsuccessful in the past?
What accounted for the success or failure?
What do we need to do differently in the future?
Which relationships between the school and students, parents, or the wider community have been successful or unsuccessful, and why?
What can be done to change things for the better?
How can we assess what we do to challenge the current understanding and operations?
As a school, are we cruising and strolling or are we challenging and creating?

Wisdom in the context of strategic leadership is defined as the ability to take the right action at the right time. Strategic leaders need this kind of wisdom to successful foster school growth. Here are ten abilities that are central to using wisdom in strategic leadership.

Creative ability to come up with ideas
Analytical ability to decide whether the ideas are good.
Practical ability to make their ideas functional and convince their followers that their ideas are valuable.
To balance the impact of the ideas on themselves, others, and their institutions in the short and long run.
Successful intelligence to adapt to varying situations and challenges.
To balance the interests of various stakeholders in the school setting.
To balance timeframes in a way that allows for optimal work to get done.
To infuse values in a mindful way throughout the school environment.
To align responses to the environment appropriately.
To apply knowledge for the common good.

Strategic leadership is a powerful tool for school reform. These final nine points regarding strategic leadership deal with school reform, and specifically how administrators can create meaningful change within their school environment.

Strategic leaders have a vision of the reformed system and how to achieve it.
Strategic leaders create a broad understanding and support for the reform vision at the highest levels.
Strategic leaders bring commitment of school and district leadership to the reform vision and its implementation.
Strategic leaders rely on the use of interventions to translate the reform vision into practice.
Strategic leaders recognize that, for reform to be achieved, one has to start small, refine activities as needed, and provide evidence that interventions lead to desired outcomes.
Strategic leaders develop system capability and capacity to scale up reform with quality.
Strategic leaders enhance and facilitate development of formal policies that provide guidance and incentives for reform.
Strategic leaders avoid controversy.
Strategic leaders develop capabilities for the next generation of reform leaders.

Strategic leadership consists not only of the vision element in leadership ability, but also encompasses other wide-ranging factors. The question thus remains how we can develop a coherent model that informs us about what strategic leadership truly entails. These 34 points offer administrators a powerful place to start exploring strategic leadership, or to deepen their practice of it in an effort to continue to improve their school’s ability to success.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch June 10, 2016

The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership

The main responsibility that all education leaders have created a learning system that engages students intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Sustainable leadership therefore goes beyond the temporary gains in achievement scores to create long-lasting, meaningful improvements in learning processes. Let us look at the particular principles that define sustainable leadership:

1. Sustainable Leadership Lasts

One of the major characteristics of sustainable leadership is that it involves planning and preparing for succession – not just as an afterthought, but from the first day of the school leader’s appointment. Sustainable leadership requires that leaders pay serious attention to leadership succession. This can be achieved through grooming successors for them to continue with reforms, and keeping successful leaders in schools much longer, especially if they are making great strides in promoting learning. It also involves resisting the urge to search for “irreplaceable charismatic heroes” to become the saviors of schools, including succession in all district and school improvement plans, and slowing the rate of principal turnover.

2. Sustainable Leadership Spreads

A suitable way for leaders to leave a lasting legacy in their schools is to ensure that they share and help develop their vision with other school actors. Leadership succession in this sense therefore means more than grooming one’s successor. It actually means distributing leadership throughout the school through its professional community so that others can carry the torch of school improvement after the current principal is gone.
Sustainable leadership cannot just be the responsibility of one person. The school is a highly complex institution, and no one leader can control everything without assistance. In summary, sustainable leadership is and must be a shared responsibility, if it is to be carried out with success.

3. Sustainable Leadership Is Socially Just

Another aspect of sustainable leadership is that it aims to benefit all students and schools. Sustainable leadership is conscious of the fact that the magnet, lighthouse, and charter schools and their leaders effect surrounding schools. It is also sensitive to privileged communities “poaching” from the local leadership pool. Sustainable leadership recognizes and takes full responsibility for the fact that schools affect each other in interlinked webs of mutual influence. In this aspect, and in knowing the above facts, sustainability is tied to social justice.

Sustainable leadership is not just about maintaining improvement in one’s own school,. School leaders who truly care about sustainability should accept responsibility for the schools and students and be aware that their actions have an effect on the wider environment.

4. Sustainable Leadership Is Resourceful

The systems of sustainable leadership provide certain intrinsic rewards while at the same time offering external incentives that attract, motivate, and retain the best and brightest in the leadership pool. These systems provide time and opportunity for school leaders to network, support, and learn from one another, while at the same time coaching and mentoring their successors. Sustainable leadership carefully utilizes its resources to develop the talents of its educators, instead of lavishing rewards on selected proven leaders. The systems of sustainable leadership take care of leaders while encouraging them to take care of themselves. Eventually, leadership is only sustainable when it sustains the leaders themselves.

5. Sustainable Leadership Promotes Diversity

Leaders who promote sustainability prepare and recreate environments that stimulate continuous improvement on a broad level. They enable people to adapt and prosper in increasingly complex environments by learning from each other’s diverse practices. Most innovative schools create and promote this diversity.
Sustainable leadership does not impose standardized templates on entire communities.

6. Sustainable Leadership Is Activist

Standardization has increased the problems that traditional schools had. Moreover, formerly innovative schools have lost their edge. In an unhelpful environment, sustainable leadership must include some sort of activism. Leaders must be willing to pursue improvement for their schools, even if it means being labeled as difficult.

7. Systems Must Support Sustainable Leadership

Most inspiring school leaders do more than manage change – they actively pursue and model a form of sustainable leadership. The measure of developing sustainability is the commitment to and protection of deep learning in schools by attempting to ensure that school improvements last over time, especially after the charismatic leaders have left. by distributing leadership and responsibility, considering the impact of their leadership on schools and communities in their neighborhood, avoiding stress and burnout, promoting and bringing about diverse approaches to school reform , and activism, leaders develop sustainability.

While most school leaders want to achieve the goals that matter and inspire others so as to leave a lasting legacy, they are often not responsible for their school’s failure. Most of the blame rests with the systems in which they lead. To institute change that matters, spreads, and lasts, we must ensure that the systems in which leaders work make sustainability a priority.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch April 3, 2016

An Ethical Framework for Leadership Practice

The ethical framework referred to in the title of this column was developed by Shapiro and Stefkovich is based on ethical reasoning in educational leadership. It is aimed at guiding the decision-making of principals, as they confront unfamiliar, complex situations in their schools. They suggest four approaches to the understanding of ethics, which are known to influence school leaders. These include the perspectives of justice, care, critique, and the ethics of the profession. These four aspects reflect the focus of administrators as they make decisions. In order to illustrate them, we will describe each ethical stance, and the problems related to the delivery of education by administrators in public schools.

The first ethic, justice, concerns issues related to individual rights and laws. In decision-making based on this perspective, administrators should pose the following questions: Does a law, right, or a policy that relates to this particular case exist? If it does exist, should it be enforced? And finally, if there is no law, right, or policy, should there be one?

The critique ethic is responsible for keeping educators sensitive to the inequities of social class, race, disability, gender, and other differences that occur in the school community. When making decisions based on this perspective, school administrators should consider the following: Who makes the rules, laws or policies? Who benefits from them? Who has the power to enforce? Lastly, he or she should find out whose voices are silenced in the debate.

The care ethic challenges school decision-makers to address certain values such as loyalty and trust. It calls for school leaders to show care, concern, and connection with stakeholders in solving moral dilemmas. The questions to be asked in this perspective are: Who is likely to benefit from what I decide? Who will I hurt by my actions? What are the overall long-term effects of the decision I make today? Finally, if someone helps me now, what should I do in the future to give back to this person, or to society in general?

Shapiro and Stefkovich state that the ethic of the profession considers “the moral aspects unique to a profession and the questions thereof that arise from educational leaders becoming more aware of their own personal and professional codes of ethics.” In decision-making by school leaders from this perspective, they should ask the following questions: What does the profession expect me to do? What would my community expect me to do? And what should I do that serves the best interests of the students, who are diverse in their composition and needs?

Utilizing this professional ethics perspective enables school leaders to become critical, logical thinkers, who consider practical outcomes and the effects of their decisions before they are made. The questions posed above are relevant to school leaders in addressing issues related to social justice, education of students with special needs, and to performance and resource inequities in their schools. Working within this ethical framework leads to more effective leadership, and in turn, a better overall school environment.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch March 24, 2016

The Urgency of Resolve for Low Performing Districts

In order to close the achievement gap, school districts need to participate as key players in reform. There are many questions and critical issues facing schools as districts evolve from their bureaucratic roots. These questions include the roles that should be kept at the district level, those that should be eliminated, or those that should be passed on to others. Districts also have to look at new functions they may wish to take on and the capabilities needed to assume these functions. At least initially, they will need to determine whether decisions should be made at district level, school level, or elsewhere.

There is also support for districts to take action to discover common interests between schools and the community, through ongoing outreach. Districts need to find ways for people to meet and discuss how to further common interests and work on them cooperatively in order to break down barriers. This type of outreach empowers families and communities, making them useful assets to school systems. Building relationships within the education system and holding open conversations are excellent ways to foster engagement.

Our political leaders have finally begun to recognize the importance of education to the survival of individuals and societies in the 21st century. The other aspect of this conversation is all too familiar: while our children do learn, not all of them are learning as much or as well as they should to meet the demands of the new century.

In the United States, there are low levels of achievement among students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. This is in contrast to the fact that students in educationally supportive states and those from advantaged backgrounds easily rival students from across the world. To put this into context, nine year-olds from White, advantaged backgrounds read as well as thirteen-year-old Black and Hispanic students. In addition, even though funding has increased, it has done so unequally and the achievement gap has grown.

Typically, schools that serve a large number of “minority” students face big issues, which put them at a disadvantage when compared to other schools. They have to deal with lower budgets, larger classes, and often less qualified teachers and school leaders. The effect of this has been to create an “educational debt” that negatively affects the students in these communities. Major efforts are needed to address this issue. Recruiting great teachers is important, but it is not the whole answer. Systemic elements are needed to support the work of talented educators. It is not the people who are at fault: it is the system that needs an overhaul.

As Ted Sizer once put it, “The people are better than the system.” We have come a long way in understanding how to create more effective school leaders and build a national commitment to educational leadership. However, we are not there yet. We need leadership to forge all of the various elements of school reform today into well-functioning systems that make sense for those working hard to achieve results for students.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch December 6, 2015

Adopting a Transformational Leadership Style

Transformational leadership is all about perception. It only works if it is able to influence the core—the follower’s feelings. Charismatic and inspiring, transformational leaders are well versed the power of language and imagery. “Transformational characteristics” are included in training courses, but the personal effort of the leader determines whether transformational leadership is achievable.

The positive connection between transformational leadership and job characteristics is so strong, we should almost expect an opposite result in organizations that do not employ it. When switching to a transformational style of leadership, a principal or dean must understand how he or she is to influence task perception. The shaping of daily tasks in a transformational manner helps foster positive perceptions among followers.

Transformational behaviors are a continuous process. A school intending to convert to this style should assess the departments where it is needed. The organization should include transformational components in their yearly assessments, such as 360-degree feedback and managerial surveys. These could replace needs assessments.

Transformation doesn’t happen overnight, but it is worthwhile for any school to build on these principles, since the long-term effects enrich the entire institution. Students learn leadership from the school. Transformational leadership in student affairs would help ensure that students initiate this leadership later in life.

Combating Negativity Through Transformational Leadership

Meta-analytic research has produced evidence of a positive relationship between transformational leadership and work-related results. These findings demonstrate that transformational leaders make work meaningful by providing autonomy. Followers of transformational leaders feel strongly that their work is esteemed and self-congruent.

Transformational leaders motivate by increasing self-efficacy in followers, by facilitating social identification within a group, and by linking organizational values to follower values. This allows followers to feel more determined in their work and augments their perceived empowerment.

While cynicism and intentions to quit are widely considered symptoms of employee negativity, initial research in organizational behaviors has considered them to be generalized traits. Recent studies found cynicism to be a specific construct; a reflection of the followers’ perception of the leader. Cynicism is a product of ineffective leadership and lack of participation and consultation in decision making.

Transformational leadership encourages a feeling of empowerment in all followers. There is an inverse relationship between cynicism and transformational leadership, because persons under a highly transformational leader are usually intellectually stimulated and constantly challenged to be open-minded. Various studies have demonstrated relationships between follower empowerment and job satisfaction, decreased anger and frustration, and a sense of organizational attachment.

Intention to quit (ITQ) is another form of employee’s negative reaction to poor leadership. Factors that have been linked to ITQ include poor pay, and lack of job satisfaction and goal commitment. Employees are unlikely to have ITQ toward an organization where their need for efficacy is met in their respective job responsibilities. Highly resilient followers are more likely to adapt after setbacks at work, rather than leave the organization.

Universality of Transformational Leadership

Is transformational leadership a universal style of leadership, or is it regional or culturally limited? Many sources have attempted to carry out cross-national studies to establish this.

A study by Boehnke, Bontis, Distefano, and Distefano investigated the existence of universally consistent behaviors. They sampled 145 senior executives in two divisions of a global petroleum company and its subsidiaries around the world. One of the major findings of the study was that the basic dimensions of leadership that produce extraordinary performance are universal, with little variation in the six different parts of the world sampled. However, some leadership differences were attributed to the different corporate cultures in the two company divisions.

In the final result, transformational leadership is identified as consistent with a clear majority of sampled behaviors, as provided in the executives’ descriptions of their version of exceptional organizational performance. Terms such as visioning, intellectual stimulation, team building, coaching, and inspiring behavior appeared in 68% or more of the responses. All those attributes refer to a transformational style of leadership.

It is intriguing to note that the only non-transformational characteristic in more than half of the reports was “recognizing and rewarding,” at 62%, which is an element of the transactional style of leadership. It is apparent that transformational leadership is widely accepted as an exceptional leadership technique. It is applicable in all kinds of organizations, including the school setting. Whether you are a practicing leader or someone who aspires to become one, you would be well advised to add transformational leadership to your repertoire.

References

Transformational leadership is a theory of leadership that was developed by James Burns (1978), and has been written about by many other scholars since then. To read more of James Burns’ work on transformational leadership and other topics, click here to visit his Amazon.com page.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch November 13, 2015

Beyond Principals: Leadership Assessment Tools for All Educators

As the end of the school year approaches, plans are already being made for the fall in schools throughout the nation. Much-needed summer improvements will take place, along with retiring teachers cleaning out their classrooms and new ones coming in. For areas that observe the traditional “summers off” school calendar, those months are still busy ones on schools grounds. Along with the physical maintenance of schools during the time when students aren’t on the premises, what if schools did some non-physical improvements too?

Two education college professors from The University of Wisconsin-Madison and a consultant from the Wisconsin Center for Educational Products and Services have developed a survey-based system that calculates areas of strengths and weaknesses in schools, and creates an action plan for improvement. The Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning, or CALL, does not single any particular educators but rather takes a snapshot of what is happening as a whole entity. It is a smart assessment tool to implement at the end of the year and then brainstorm actionable steps on improvement when school is back in session.

The survey and results-delivery system were born of necessity. More than ever, schools are in need of transformational leadership that creates learning opportunities for students but also prepares them for the real-world economy. The pressure has never been greater, particularly as Common Core Standards and other state-based ones heighten accountability for teachers, administrators and other instructional staff. The belief used to be that principals were responsible for all the leadership roles within a particular school but that theory is starting to fade. While principals certainly need solid leadership traits, distributing those responsibilities can actually lead to stronger school systems that are able to better support student bodies.

The problem with existing leadership assessment tools is that they only evaluate people on an individual basis, instead of looking at how school personnel can work together to achieve maximum effectiveness. CALL was developed with funds from the U.S. Department of Education and tested in more than 150 schools containing thousands of educators. The survey itself has over 100 questions and takes around 40 minutes to complete and is thorough in its approach, thereby making it more of an “activity” than a “survey.” It has five main areas of concentration, including:

Focus on learning. Essentially, this portion looks at the way school leaders practice what they preach. Do school leaders do classroom visits, and engage with students? Do they participate in the team-building and leadership programs that they design for others? Collaboration and staff buy-in to school learning initiatives is an integral part of this portion of the survey.
Monitoring teaching and learning. School leaders should be able to not only make sense of their student performance, but know how to communicate it to teachers. Monitoring of school successes does not need to mean constant micromanagement; rather, leaders should understand the scope of their students’ strengths and weaknesses and know how to empower improvements.
Building nested learning communities. While educators are ultimately responsible for their own teaching successes, school leaders must provide the support and resources to make effective teaching possible. Leaders should have ways to measure teacher/student performance and be willing to put improvement plans in place.
Acquiring and allocating resources. Time spent on whole-school, grade-level and subject-matter reflection is just one aspect analyzed in this part of the survey. If external leaders are part of a school’s leadership and decision-making process, then they are asked to give input on this section. The school’s communication with its community through things like social media, and email, are also assessed in this portion. How are schools making the best use of their resources?
Maintaining a safe and effective learning environment. Above all, schools must be safe places for students, teachers and administrators. This starts with the basics, like cleanliness, and extends to factors like schools as safe havens for the students who may be struggling. The safety of students and their perception of being in a “safe” place do make a difference in learning effectiveness and this portion of the survey analyzes ways in which schools can maximize that fact.

It really is true that “it takes a village” and understanding how each educator in a school can best contribute to its success leads to stronger student outcomes, and stronger schools. By implementing the in-depth CALL survey, schools can see exactly HOW to get where need to be when it comes to school leaders.

If you are interested in learning more, you can register to join a free webinar on CALL. The webinar will discuss the theory behind CALL as well as provide a demonstration of the CALL automated data feedback report system.

This is a great opportunity for schools to obtain data on leadership effectiveness in order to support school leaders’ professional growth and school improvement.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here.

Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch October 9, 2015

Empowering Leadership Behavior in Schools: Lessons Learned from the Business Sector

Empowering leadership behavior includes encouraging of self-reward systems, self-leadership, opportunity awareness, participation in goal setting, and independent behavior by followers and group members. In other words, it’s all about helping followers take ownership of their positions, toward the greater good of the organization. And, as studies have shown, the effects are often positive and far-reaching

Empowering leaders, through positive emotional support and encouragement, increases motivation and confidence among subordinates as they set out to accomplish their individual and organizational goals. Therefore, empowering leadership can be quite useful, particularly as a behavioral tactic for entrepreneurs, who must gain commitment from those they work with in order to compete against bigger, more established, and resource-rich enterprises.

Additionally, empowering leadership behavior in entrepreneurs is crucial in dynamic environments. Entrepreneurs attempting to lead their ventures toward higher growth while operating in ever-changing conditions can benefit from adopting an empowering leadership style. It is an effective way to distribute leadership throughout the management team. This enhances the shaping of emerging strategy, which harnesses the individual talents of each team member that are most relevant to the current situation.

However, there are some negative effects that come with empowering leadership, which are often left out of leadership literature. One of the disadvantages of empowering diverse teams is that it can be counterproductive. Empowering leadership can cause incompatibility among certain innovative enterprises.

In addition, empowered management teams tend to seek out too much information before making decisions. They may also attempt to follow too many opportunities, without refining a single business concept to establish a solid basis in the market. These challenges more often occur in experienced firms with diverse top management teams.

Diverse teams can be quite effective at considering multiple alternatives and making sense of challenging situations, but they are much slower to reach agreement on decisions. Different perspectives within top management teams can produce conflict, slowing the decision-making process.

We can conclude that empowering management teams can provide greater opportunity for conflicts to emerge. Conflicts among team members are likely to be particularly damaging to ventures operating in dynamic environments, where decision-making must be speedy in order to take advantage of the brief windows of opportunity . Entrepreneurs should be cautious about when and where to empower their management teams.

In fast-changing environments, empowerment reduces the new enterprise’s performance, causing the relationship between the management team’s diversity and the new venture’s performance to become increasingly negative. In more stable industry environments, this kind of empowerment leadership behavior is more likely to have a positive effect on the performance of new ventures with non-uniform top management teams . This is because the information available is clearer and there is more time available for planning.

Stable environments allow the empowered top management teams to spend more time considering what alternative strategies are available, and exploring the potential for various innovative activities, since total agreement is not urgent. As a result, there is generally less conflict within empowered diverse teams operating in stable environments.

School leaders seeking effectiveness should learn from entrepreneurs, and particularly those from start-ups in fast-moving industries, which tend to be highly creative. They should strive to create environments in which positive ideas are encouraged, and in which there is ample opportunity for those ideas to be put in place.