Knoster: Managing Complex Change Leadership

Leadership is a process of influence leading to the achievement of desired purposes. Successful leaders develop a vision for their schools based on their personal and professional values. 

They articulate this vision at every opportunity and influence their staff and other stakeholders to share the vision. The philosophy, structures and activities of the school are geared towards the achievement of this shared vision.’ Bush and Glover 2002 ‘Leaders are people who shape the goals, motivation and actions of other.’ Cuban 1988 ‘While managing well often exhibits leadership skills, the overall function is toward maintenance rather than change.’ Cuban 1988 Vision 

• ‘A shape of the future that an individual or group desires, a set of ambitions.’ Rhinesmith

• ‘An expression of a desirable direction and future challenging state for the school.’ 

• ‘Vision constitutes partly the sensing by an individual of what the organisation should look like, how it should work, how it should be taken into the future – based on a web of beliefs, supported and mediated by each individual’s values and beliefs.’ Sowell 

• ‘Vision is useless if it is merely straplines and catchphrases which have no foundation.’ Hamel 

• ‘Vision must generate action, must involve change.’ 

• ‘An effective vision provides a perspective, an ambition of how the people in the organisation will operate, in philosophical terms, in terms of decision making, in terms of serving others, in adding value to society.’ 

• Building a shared vision is a critical factor in managing change. 

• The vision process, creating the vision, can be more important that the vision itself allowing stakeholders to join in, feel strong ownership in order to buy into it and promote it as their own. 

• Vision creates the big picture – needed by everyone if they are to have a sense of where change is leading them. 

• Without the big picture the staff do not have a sense of direction. Absence – confusion – created by a lack of vision and therefore lack of direction. Consensus 

• Co-operation – agreement on ideas, valued, purposes, shared understanding. 

• Collaboration – working together in an atmosphere of support and encouragement. 

• Collegiality – development of a learning community gaining skills and expertise together. Absence – sabotage – where the unwilling or unconvinced can actively work against the willing; – negativity of counter arguments drags everyone down and prevents action. Skills • Identify of whatever knowledge or expertise is required to move forward. 

• The capabilities to implement new plans. 

• The means to act in new ways, explore different ways of working, negotiating, collaborating. • The abilities to try out different strategies, developing skills as teachers and within pupils. Absence – anxiety – in those who feel they do not have the necessary knowledge or expertise to cope with or to implement new situations; – have little faith in training to provide them with knowledge / skills. Incentives 

• Intrinsic or extrinsic. 

• What is in it for me, additional payments, self-esteem, sense of achievement. 

• Reasons to change, intellectual excitement, opportunities for collaboration in planning and delivery, to try new things. Absence – resistance – from those who see nothing in the changes for them, no moral meaning, no personal meaning, no benefit; – conviction that things are all right as they are, no need to change. Resources 

• Physical resources. 

• Any items which people feel are necessary to enable them to make the required changes. • Use of existing knowledge or expertise within the organisation or outside it. 

• Existing staff used as a resource including management team members, collegiality. 

• Emotional or social support / collegiality. 

• Development of knowledge, expertise, skills through effective training programmes. 

• Extra staffing. 

• New equipment. 

• Time given to development, planning, reflection. Absence – frustration – if resources are not supplied to adequately implement the changes – to ensure success. Action Plan 

• Steps worked out to direct actions towards future goals. 

• Process shared by participants, understanding what needs to be done and how. 

• Identified leadership, timescale, resources, monitoring processes. 

• Committed leadership. Absence – treadmill – doing what we have always done in the way we have always done it and therefore not succeeding in working in new ways, not achieving new goals. 

Culture 

• Our way of life. 

• The way in which we do things. 

• Cultural change required by new curriculum proposals: – focusing on the learner rather than on the syllabus; – using collaborative approaches in curriculum development and teacher planning; – building in different focuses.