In 1976 the rock group Queen released a little known* but beautiful song, much of it sung in Japanese, entitled Teo Torriatte which loosely translated means ‘Let us cling together’. Apart from the intrinsic beauty of the song, it’s the chorus that has always stayed with me and from which I believe there is great wisdom for all leaders. In English, the key part of the chorus is as follows:
‘In the quiet of the night Let our candle always burn Let us never lose the lessons we have learned.’
The central point of this article is that the best school leaders, those with the greatest levels of resilience, have a sound balance between their technical skills and their sense of individual purpose. They are keenly aware of what drives them, they are passionate about their beliefs and they draw upon these two things in a very conscious way as a source of strength when they need to access the courage to confront the ongoing challenges of educational leadership.
Some time ago I saw a European TV advertisement for IKEA furniture. There was a disheveled young man recently having stumbled out of bed, still naked, drowsily eating a slice of toast. Just as he was about to bite into it, it sagged in his hand and fell apart. A split second later he looks up and notices the milk boiling over on the stove. As he jumps up to get that, he drops the toast and simultaneously kicks the table leg, which becomes detached and the table starts to fall. He grabs the table with one hand to stabilize it and as he does so the cupboard door at head height opens. He bangs this shut with his head and as a result it becomes detached from the wall. With his free hand he grabs the cupboard, the other hand still supporting the table, still naked of course, and realizes that he has dislodged a tea towel which has landed on the stove and starts to burn. Because his hands are full he uses his mouth to pick up a carton of milk in an attempt to pour it over the fire. Just as he is about to achieve this goal he looks out the window and sees his VW car being hauled on to a tow truck. The scene cuts to him running down the road, still naked, after the tow truck, looking back towards the window of his flat with smoke streaming from there, in two minds as to what to do next. The advertisement ends at that point with an IKEA logo and some reference to buying new furniture. The link isn’t clear to me as it’s in another language, but interestingly enough I do see some extraordinary parallels between this and the joys of school leadership.
Not so long ago, my own school community experienced an even more intense rollercoaster ride than usual. The stabbing murder of a female student, the associated media focus on this, followed by the unrelated shooting of a male student on the night before the funeral of the murdered girl. This second victim, a popular year 11 boy, was shot doing a ‘good Samaritan’ act trying to protect someone in a wheelchair being accosted by another adult. The student wore the full brunt of a shotgun in his abdomen, lost both legs, and to this day is still fighting to rebuild his life. At the time I was getting around on crutches with one leg in plaster after snapping my Achilles tendon, and by the way throughout all of this our school had no counselor, so the bulk of the ongoing support for students, staff and families fell heavily upon the wonderful teaching and ancillary staff at Airds High. Not long after this settled down we won a series of awards for school improvement, including recognition in the inaugural National Awards for Quality Schooling, and beyond all of that our school data (both cognitive and non-cognitive) started showing significant improvement despite the associated challenges of an extremely low socio economic environment. Now that’s what I mean by an emotional rollercoaster and for many school leaders, one way or another that rollercoaster never stops!
There are some fundamental questions which I believe need answering in order to uncover what it is that drives us. I use the term ‘uncover’ quite deliberately. Our sense of self and our personal belief structures are already there, the question is whether or not we are sufficiently aware of them and are able to bubble them to the surface when the going gets tough. The questions are seemingly simple, but it’s surprising how many people struggle to answer them succinctly, and how little time we afford ourselves to become sufficiently absorbed in self reflection and analysis of who we are as professionals. The link back to Teo Torriatte seems clear. How do we ensure we ‘never lose the lessons we have learned’ unless we take the time to reflect upon, analyse and internalize those lessons?
A starting point for self analysis
In many of the workshops I deliver on leadership development I ask participants to focus upon the following questions as a starting point. It never ceases to surprise me that for many people this is the first time they have ever tried to articulate such things for themselves. It reminds me that amongst the plethora of leadership training programs on offer there are many technical skills we can develop in people, but self awareness, wisdom and resilience, which are always present in the best of leaders, are not things for which people can be trained. The questions I begin with are:
By way of example, a personal perspective
It may seem odd, but the types of events described above in relation to the rollercoaster are not the sorts of things which have shaped my thinking. They are challenging in many ways, and difficult to work through at a personal and team level, but the sorts of things I am trying to bring to the surface run deeper than this. By way of an example I will outline two of the things which have been significant to me. Neither have anything to do with education per se, but both reveal significant lessons to me about what effective leaders do relentlessly.
The first is the amazing life of Farookh Bulsara, born in Zanzibar in September 1946. Farookh was something of a loner for much of his early adult life, but he dreamt of big things. He wanted to be a rock star but was the source of much derision because of his alleged lack of potential and talent. He was certainly different. Nevertheless he set out to be not just an ordinary star, but one of the greatest. Even a cursory read of one of his biographies reveals someone incredibly passionate about his dream. He had a very clear vision of what he wanted to achieve. He knew what he could do and knew what he couldn’t do, and by implication, who he needed to work with in order to achieve his dreams. He worked tirelessly on his technical skills both as a singer and as a musician. He was clever in his manipulation of other people, not in a destructive way, but he knew how to get the best out of others. He understood the delicate balance necessary between pressure and support. He was ahead of his time and scorned conformity. If he was going to be great, then almost by definition conformity would be his enemy. He listened to criticism and learned from it, but had a healthy disregard for criticism which had no validity or was simply based on prejudice or fear. The links between this and what quality leaders do in schools seems pretty clear. So how did he go? Initially he and his band were scorned by the establishment and the media over and over again and in fact at the infamous Sunbury pop festival in Victoria in the early 1970s they were booed off the stage after a very short session. In an era when the commercial managers were churning out ‘what the public wanted’ in the form of formula music by the likes of Status Quo, Deep Purple, the Sweet and on the local scene Sherbet and the Ted Mulrey Gang, Farookh and his band were trying to get airplay for something totally different. For a long time they failed. In the words of one of the managers at Phonogram Records “it just wasn’t what was going on at the time.” In spite of all of this, Farookh was relentless. So did he succeed? You be the judge. He is better known to the world now as Freddie Mercury, the band was Queen, and the song was Bohemian Rhapsody.
The second thing to have a great influence upon my thinking is a book by Bolman and Deal entitled ‘Leading with Soul’ . It’s a short, simple fable about a corporate high flyer who learns about his inner self from a mysterious mentor. During the fable the authors basically explore why some leaders are more effective than others. They break it down into four main areas and they talk about a leader’s capacity to provide these four things for their team. They refer firstly to love, which requires listening, understanding, acceptance, appreciation and respect on the part of the leader and a capacity to develop these things in others. Secondly, authorship, where individuals regard their work as meaningful and worthwhile, and accept accountability for what happens in their domain. Thirdly, power, which relates to the capacity of individuals to get things done on a broader scale and to do so whilst using power and influence ethically. Finally, they refer to significance, and the capacity of the leader to create a sense of unity and belonging and of contributing something of value to the wider organisation.
On the one hand the lessons described above can be written off as statements of the obvious when applied to theories of quality leadership, but in my view to consistently deliver on these things in practice, in spite of the rollercoaster ride, is the true mark of greatness in an educational sense.
So, what of a great system?
There are great school leaders. Some principals are better than others in specific contexts. There are great schools, and generally a great school has a great leader as well as a lot of other talented people. However, if any system is to achieve greatness then we must move beyond pockets of excellence and establish means by which we can identify, benchmark and share quality practice. It is not uncommon in this age of the resurgence of economic rationalism that we frequently hear calls for ‘strengthened accountability’ at all levels. Whilst this has some palatable political gains there is little empirical evidence to show that strengthened accountability can ever result without strengthened commitment. Strengthened commitment comes from high levels of collaboration, communication and genuine involvement in a developmental process. There is an abundance of research to show that highly effective schools are likely to have highly effective school leaders. There is a shortage of evidence to show that accountability processes which have no developmental basis will lead to highly effective school leaders. The key question therefore for a system becomes, how do we identify quality accountability processes and once identified, how do we share that quality practice?
These claims draw great strength from the research and views of Professor David Hargreaves. In his paper ‘Education Epidemic’ he argues that many systems are hampered by a narrow, restrictive concept of measuring school improvement. ‘We need to understand the deeper cultural and structural underpinnings of schools that make them effective … The quality of a school is explained in terms of three concepts – intellectual capital, social capital and organisational capital.’
Intellectual capital refers mainly to the knowledge, skills, capabilities and competencies which are a part of the organisation at all levels. Much school improvement data is generated from this area in a fairly narrow perspective. However, if we can mobilise this form of capital at every level we can generate new ideas, new knowledge and successful innovation.
Social capital refers mainly to the trust and relationships which “govern” the organisation and which form the basis of its “culture”. High levels of social capital are more likely to lead to sharing and networking, and consequently to a more dramatic improvement in organisational effectiveness. A school which is rich in social capital has a strong sense of community and purpose.
Organisational capital refers to the knowledge and skills about how to make better use of both intellectual and social capital. Great schools ensure as many people as possible are given opportunities to have input into leadership and decision making processes in order to increase and mobilise the school’s intellectual and social capital.
It is a very firm belief of mine that if we are ever to see dramatic systemic improvement, beyond pockets of excellence, we must establish structures which can identify, benchmark and share quality practice.
This argument gains further strength from the work of Joyce, Calhoun and Hopkins , in which they write about learning experiences at all levels which are composed of an understanding of content, process and social climate. By understanding these contexts the social climate can be expansive not restrictive and more likely to lead to effective learning and sharing.
A new hope
There are many frameworks that can assist school leaders to analyse their personal strengths and needs. In my view two of these are particularly useful in that they place knowledge of self at the core of the technical skills necessary to fulfill our responsibilities. The Australian Principals’ Association Professional Development Council (APAPDC) has developed a set of five propositions which guide their leadership development programs . Central to the model is the belief that leadership starts from within and that unless we have a clear sense of what guides our own thinking we are unlikely to be able to dramatically influence others. Similarly, the NSW Department of Education (NSW DET) has developed a School Leadership Capability Framework (SLCF) with a focus upon five domains, at the core of which is the relationship between the personal and interpersonal domains. In an even more progressive manner the NSW DET has linked this with its Principal appraisal system. In so doing it acknowledges, rightly so, that the supervisory process of Principals involves high levels of collaboration, but at the same time an acknowledgement that the developmental process is a balance between pressure and support. Where we see pockets of supervisory excellence, within and beyond schools, that balance is in the right mix, with a focus upon the SLCF as an analytical framework leading to more effective leadership development. The connection with Hargreaves concept of social capital and the need for high levels of trust is obvious, and if followed consistently across the state will lead to more powerful growth in leaders at all levels.
So what of greatness and dreams?
Freddie Mercury was a fanatical follower of opera and one of his great heroes was the Spanish diva Montserrat Caballe. Especially given his sensitivity to the constant cries of the British tabloids that he couldn’t sing, one of Freddie’s great ambitions was to sing a duet with his famous opera hero. What a laugh, according to the critics. Funnily enough though, they went very quiet when Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe brought the house down as they sang the duet to launch the program leading up to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Dreams can come true, but rarely without passion and conviction.
Our schools can be great and our systems can be great, but in order to be so the educational leaders amongst us need to stand up and be counted, to be public about what we stand for and to provide our political leaders and bureaucrats with demonstrable proof of the positive things we achieve in schools in Australia every single day. If we understand ourselves well enough, and we understand what we are trying to achieve in our schools, we can draw upon this understanding to inspire others and to sweep away the seemingly ever present storm clouds of pessimism and defeat.
As my wife often reminds me, ‘In the midst of a dark storm, always stand true in the lighthouse of your own integrity’. The challenge for many people, though, is to understand themselves fully in order to use that integrity as a lighthouse.