Coaching through role dialogue: action research with same-school pairs of principals and deputy principals

 

Mr Vincent Carr & Ms Susan Long Catholic Education Office ( Sale ) & RMIT University Sale & Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

 

Introduction

In the action research reported here, we set out to:

• utilise a coaching method that helps teachers and school managers to understand and develop the way they personally take up the role, its authority, responsibilities, accountabilities and relationships;
• learn about how, in the primary school setting, the principal and deputy principal each manage their engagement with the primary task of the school and how their different role perspectives are understood and experienced by the other.

The role dialogue method used (Long et al., 2006) involved each pair (of principal and deputy) conversing from the perspective of his or her own role and task while taking in, and working with, the perspective of the other. This was done in the presence of a collaborative action researcher (author, VC) who facilitated the process. The other author (SL) acted as the research supervisor.

The method is adapted from Organisational Role Analysis (ORA) ( Newton, et al., 2006), which examines role rather than personality, by construing role as part of the wider organisational system. How the role and person are related to the system, and how role development influences the system, is part of the analysis. Hence, the dynamics of the school are seen as interdependent with the ways that the principals and deputies take up their roles. The collaborative action learner role is the role of the coach in the ORA method. Rather than act as an expert conferring knowledge, the ORA coach works alongside the client to reflect and explore, using abductive methods. That is, the coach and client, in exploring the role, develop working hypotheses about how the system interacts with the role, how the role is operating in relation to other roles in the system and how the role incumbent takes up the role. This, in turn, allows the role holder to become more insightful and effective.

The project was conducted over a 10-week period. Two introductory workshops, one for the principals and the second for deputy principals, preceded the role dialogue sessions. These were concerned with exploring and applying concepts pertinent to the project, such as ‘primary task' (Rice, 1965), ‘institution or organisation-in-the-mind'(Armstrong, 1997), ‘role and role relatedness' and ‘unconscious processes in systems' (Hirschhorn, 1988; Obholtzer & Roberts,1994). The workshops were held separately, in order that the two roles might first be explored independently.

Following this, three sessions of role dialogue in pairs (of principals and deputies from the same school) were conducted for each pair, a fortnight apart, for a six-week period. In these sessions, the role holders explored their thoughts and feelings about their roles and the relationships between them. Drawings sketched during the introductory workshops were used to bring out the central metaphors of the roles (the role idea) and how they related to the school system. A concluding workshop was conducted for the entire group following the final role dialogue episodes. The concluding workshop reviewed and evaluated what had been learnt about the roles studied and the relatedness between these roles.

Project findings

Three major findings are noted. First, in the systems studied, the transition from teacher role to principal role is poorly managed. Second, the leadership partnership of principal and deputy is poorly developed. Third, the role dialogue was able to support the mutual role development and effective leadership of principals and deputies in most cases.

1. Role transition from teacher to principal

The principal and deputy principal bring to the roles the experience of being a teacher,which includes a particular way of relating with the members of the organisation and with the organisation itself. The teacher's primary relationship is with the students and the teacher's relationship with the organisation is primarily from the perspective of the classroom. Normally, as a teacher of students, the teacher is highly autonomous and independent; is endowed with considerable personal authority and exercises considerable power over others; is able to go about his or her daily work with little need to cooperate with other non-students, except for the occasional project; has little need to consider the needs of the entire organisation; works within a 12-month time frame with regard to relationships and responsibilities; and is required to be operationally task-focused. Whereas it is beneficial when classroom teachers become involved more broadly in strategic issues for the school, this is usually on a basis of 'over and above' normal duties.

The principal's role is to lead the school, to interact with external stakeholders and to ensure strategic future directions are appropriate. When a teacher wins a promotion to principal or deputy principal, an extensive role transition is required. The external transition normally proceeds smoothly and is necessarily public and explicit. Changes involve, for example, having an office that is clearly labelled, having a range of public duties to perform where one is exposed as a senior manager, having clerical staff to assist with one's work, being given a particular parking bay, going off to meetings and conferences outside of the school, having many people seeking appointments and no longer having regular classroom duties. All these environmental and behavioural changes assist with the external transition.

However, it is the transition from the inner role idea of teacher to the inner role idea of a principal or deputy principal that seems to be left under-developed, if not neglected. Principals and deputy principals take into the principalship or deputy principalship ideas about the role, especially with regard to the nature of his or her relatedness with the other members of the organisation, which are from the experience and reality of the teacher.

A new role idea must be developed. But how? A successful role transition includes the taking on of the role idea of a senior manager and leader, whose job it is to lead a complex human organisation where one's primary relationships are with colleagues, stakeholders and clients. Such a role idea may be forged through some extra training or discussions with other principals, but a lot has to be learned on the spot, through experience. None of the people in our study had an adequate formal process to aid their role transition.

In the school setting, the transition to a senior role is so dominated by extrinsic changes that the principal and deputy principal may not be conscious of the need to work on the inner role transition. This predicament is exacerbated when the school environment neither encourages, nor affords much value to, the activity of conscious self-reflection. Whilst it is well understood in the teaching profession that one's success as a learner is highly dependent on one's capacity to reflect, self-reflective practice is rarely seen in classrooms. The school organisation predominately perceives learning as the outcome of activity, of ‘doing'. Reflection may be regarded as worthless day-dreaming. The principal and deputy principal are often tied up in such a culture of ‘doing' (Bain, Long and Ross, 1992).

2. Lack of partnership skills

It seems that all principals and deputy principals aspire to building up an effective partnership with regard to management and leadership of the school. On the whole, in our study, these leaders mostly cooperated with each other and respected the other's role. There were, however, few signs of mutual dependency, to the extent that the relatedness between the roles had developed into a partnership. The leadership was not so much a shared experience of leadership as shared-out leadership. Roles appeared to be compartmentalised, that is, separated and relatively isolated from each other. When principals and deputy principals talk of their respective roles, the processes of being in partnership with each other seem to be lacking. One gets the impression that, regardless of the setting, a universal formula has been applied to the roles: the formula being that the deputy principal's job comprises those operational tasks that the principal would prefer not to do. The compartmentalisation of the roles in this way seemed to work against the leaders forming a partnership. It became clear during the course of the research that there is little, if any, conscious working on the development of the partnership itself, in particular, the building of a sophisticated differentiation of the roles and an understanding of their necessary interdependence.

We can illustrate this briefly through reference to the drawings produced. One role drawing was of flying geese in the skein formation that is natural to them. This drawing could be interpreted as being symbolic of interdependence, where each goose takes its turn to do the difficult work out front for the good of the group. The illustration suggested mutual dependence and a reciprocal arrangement. However, when talking about the drawing, the drawer quipped in his closing remarks that he ‘liked being the head goose'. This possible ‘slip of the tongue' might be revealing the drawer's real but unconscious idea about the role, an idea that is at odds with the fundamental theme of the metaphor. (Much as experience is sometimes at odds with the stated, consciously formed 'vision statement').

Many principals see themselves as the head goose, and possibly it is quite intolerable being one of the flock. The latter perspective would require a different attitude towards leadership, an attitude that can appreciate and value all roles, right down to the last in line and an attitude that could recognise and understand how each role contributes. Each and every goose in the skein needs to understand how, if one was to stay in the role of lead goose too long, then ultimately the entire flock would fail to progress. And neglecting to do one's time farther down in the flock lessens one's awareness of who else constitutes the team. At its worst, the leader may think that he or she alone is the flock and that no other exists!

Other drawings more clearly depicted the isolation of the role-holder. Whether it is the principal or deputy principal, the individual did not seem to be dependent on others and yet they seemed to be entirely at the service of others. There was little that was connecting them meaningfully and in a human way to others. Others seemed to be objects of, and for, their administration and management. This was especially so in the deputy principal illustrations: nothing seemed to connect all of the different and differing tasks illustrated. In fact, four of the five deputy principal role drawings were similar in that the illustrations produced could be described as a composite of discrete images (15 or more) crowded onto the page; reminiscent of work by young students under instruction from their teacher to: ‘Fill all of the page; right to the edges'. One typical drawing included all of the following figures; a smiley sun with penetrating sunbeams, a pair of helping hands, a selection of three different styled hats, a whip, a stack of school books, a blackboard bearing the ‘ABC', a church, a teacher leading a group of students, an overloaded wheelbarrow, two apples with a ‘well done' message, a large question mark, a large circle filled with dots, a crowded timetable, a pile of mail and a black walking stick. It was as if there was nothing holding all of the diverse and distinct activities together, other than for the idea that they all belonged to the same role. There seemed to be little coherence to the role at all; everything could be taken in isolation. The deputy principal illustrations were in stark contrast to the illustrations from the principals, which tended to present a single, coherent theme and comprised just a few images.

Progress of the dialogues

The role dialogue sessions differed markedly from pair to pair in terms of the progress made on the task. For example, with a few pairs a great deal of progress was made in developing the idea of the interdependence of the roles, reflected in the development of a shared metaphor. For example, one pair developed the metaphor of overlapping circles and the notion of ‘our job' as leaders. Others made far less progress towards this understanding and continued to see their role relationship as between two distinct and independent roles.

Among the deputy principals there was some resistance to building a mutually dependent role with the principal. We explored this resistance in order to develop working hypotheses. We found that many of the deputy principals have the idea that his or her role is about sitting in the middle. That is, being positioned between the general staff and principal: as if a mediator and a medium. The deputy principal seemed to fear that associating too strongly with the principal might be seen to jeopardise his or her relationship with the general staff. Now, on taking on this function, the deputy principal creates something distinctive about the role, a way of differentiating from the principalship. We hypothesise, that this distinctiveness may act psychologically to give a sense of meaning for the role that was otherwise experienced as fragmented, as described above. In this way, the political role so enacted becomes a defence against the anxiety in the fragmented and isolated nature of the role. The position of the deputy is much like the position of the second officer on a ship, as described by Jaques (1955). In Jaques's example, such a role - structurally and dynamically - may come to 'hold' the least liked aspects of leadership and is least liked by the crew. To defend against this, the role-holder may over-identify with the 'crew' (staff) in order to gain credibility, or alternatively, if fearing the consequences, may over-identify with an authoritarian leadership model.

The mid-way position, then, may undermine the authority of the principal and the notion of a leadership team. A deputy principal must be very skilful and sensitive in the way he or she negotiates such a position. Where the principal and deputy principal are not in partnership and where this is not explicitly seen to exist, then it may be reasonable for staff to suspect a lack of partnership, which could, in part, be interpreted as disloyalty. Similarly, the principal must be aware of the dynamics surrounding both roles, lest the two work against, rather than with each other.

Lessons from the dialogues

The transition to the principal or deputy principal inner role idea is more likely to proceed if one is actively working on developing a better understanding of how one's role engages with the primary task of the organisation. Critical self-reflection on one's experience in the role is one of the most important means of learning about the role and of nurturing personal growth in the role. The successful transition to a principalship or deputy principalship requires that the individual give attention to the external behaviours and matters, such as installing oneself in an office, taking appointments, attending board meetings and attending activities sponsored by the administering authorities. However, the transition will remain incomplete until such time as the inner role idea has been reshaped to one that is suited to the role, appropriate to the primary task and aspirations of the organisation and accommodating of the personal values and aspirations of the role-holder. Role dialogue, using an experienced ORA coach, can aid this process. In particular, the coach can help the coachees to discover ‘the factors in the organizational system in which the client is working that are eliciting particular experiences and patterns' (Pooley, 2004, p. 184), as well as the factors in his or her role biography that influence the working in role (Long, 2006).

Schools are aware of the need to attend to the external matters and mostly this will proceed swiftly and smoothly. The scaffolding required for the emergence and evolution of the inner role idea, however, appears to be missing and schools need to give more attention to putting this in place. A first step could be for the school to firmly align itself at all levels with a belief in the educative potential of self-reflection. If all staff, through to the principal, were more convinced of the value of self-reflection and of its potential to improve and enhance learning, then we believe that not only would the scaffolding be put in place for the students but it would be accessible to the adults in the organisation, as well. It is under these circumstances that school leaders will themselves more seriously engage in activities and processes whereby they are reflecting on their own experience in the role and searching for what can be learnt.

In addition, principals and deputy principals will only develop a genuine professional partnership when interdependence is valued and when the partnership is actively worked on. Unfortunately, teachers and leaders are not expected, nor need, to work as a group of interacting individuals. Thinking about one's own role as if the other role/s didn't exist remains the predominant attitude. It is difficult to form partnerships and encourage interdependence in such an environment. What is missing are the formal structural links between roles, so that the way people work means that they naturally connect. This is better than relying on informal or personal links. For example, even if the principal and deputy regularly talk informally, if they do not systematically work on organisational issues, how then, could one expect a healthy partnership to be formed and to operate? Again, role dialogue can aid in this process. Although not all our pairs developed a stronger interdependent leadership team following the role dialogue sessions, the number of sessions was limited to three. In some cases, more time was required. In fact, all pairs arranged for at least one, and up to three, further role dialogue sessions. For those pairs who took more 'naturally' to this form of coaching, the results led to a new way of seeing their work together. This, we hypothesise, will lead to a more effective leadership team and provide a model for leadership in a distributed form.

References

Armstrong, D (1997). 'The Institution-in-the-mind: Reflections on the relation of psychoanalysis to work with organizations'. In Free Associations (7) 4: 1-14.

Bain, A, Long, S and Ross, S (1992). Paper Houses: The authority vacuum in a government secondary school Collins Dove, Melbourne.

Hirschhorn, L (1988). The Workplace Within: Psychodynamics of organisational life, MIT Press, USA.

Jaques, E. (1955). ‘ Social Systems as a Defence Against Persecutory and Depressive Anxiety' in M Klein, P Heimann and RE Money-Kyrle (eds) New Directions in Psychoanalysis. Tavistock Publications. London. pp. 478-498.

Long, S (2006). ‘Drawing from Role Biography in Organisation Role Analysis', in J Newton, S Long and B Sievers (eds) Coaching in Depth: The organizational role analysis method Karnac. London.

Long, S, Newton, J and Chapman (2006). ‘Working Across the Tensions: Role dialogue with pairs from the same organisation'. In J Newton; S Long, and B Sievers (eds.) (2006) Coaching in Depth: The organisational role analysis method, Karnac, London.

Newton, J, Long, S and Sievers, B (Eds.) (2006). Coaching in Depth: The organisational role analysis method, Karnac, London.

Obholzer, A and Zagier Roberts, V (Eds.) (1994). The Unconscious at Work: Individual and organizational stress in the human services. Routledge, London.

Pooley, J (2004). 'Layers of Meaning: A coaching journey'. In Huffington, C., Armstrong, D, Halton, W, Hoyle, L and Pooley, J (Eds.) (2004). Working Below the Surface: The emotional life of contemporary organizations. Karnac, London.

Rice, AK (1965). Learning for Leadership: Interpersonal and intergroup relations. Tavistock Publications, London.

 

Mr Vincent Carr is an education consultant with the Diocese of Sale Catholic Education Office, in Victoria, Australia. He has 16 years experience as an education consultant in New South Wales and Victoria, and was formerly a primary school principal. Dr Susan Long is Professor of Creative and Sustainable Organisations at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is a researcher and organisational consultant and is currently President of Group Relations Australia.

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