Humane Leadership in Education
In education we always seem to be behind in innovation. Now that we are firmly within the Fourth Industrial Revolution schools scramble to keep up with the newest ideas for pedagogy and integrate the latest technologies. This is not due to the lack of innovative practitioners or teachers who lack passion for teaching. It is because we operate within a massive industrial machine which is the normative educational institution. School organizations are generally concerned with success, and success is measured by what has come before. Schools are pressured by higher education entrance requirements, job markets and parent’s beliefs about learning. Under this pressure it is easier to mimic the norm than break down institutionalized beliefs and innovate. In order to integrate new technologies and innovative schools must ideate teaching methodology, rapid prototype new ideas for learning, assessment, and reporting, and embrace potential failure with impunity.
Before you go all internet outrage on me, I understand that there are pockets of innovative change happening in schools. Schools we look to as lighthouses. However, even in the world’s most forward-thinking schools there remains a struggle to shift schools’ basic organizational norms. Many teachers around the world are striking, have publicly quit while shaming the profession, complain or satirize through memes and spoof Twitter accounts. Teachers are tired and they are leaving the profession in droves. They cite the expectations placed on them for integration of new pedagogies, tools, and assessments by school leadership – specifically principals, heads, boards, and accrediting bodies as contributing factors to anxiety and depression. What is it then that will help us innovate in schools? It may not be what you think.
Humane leadership
In the Fourth Industrial Revolution we need leaders who rethink entrenched organizational behaviours. We need to look to models of leadership able to disrupt norms. I have been lucky enough to have worked with leaders who do just that. Leaders that allow ideas to flourish that are grounded in start-up culture, rapid prototyping, thinking protocols, and who evidence high levels of trust in the capacity of their staff. Leaders that do not micromanage, are positive but also clear and honest with feedback. These are leaders who offered ideas and couched them in a “yes, and…” rather than a “yes, but…” in order to further conversations and grow the culture of trust and innovation. Although these leaders were technically my superiors they often asked me for insights on presentations, design elements, and more. These were leaders that didn’t engage in petty power dynamics, they listened. They led with the ethos that the team is the organization's greatest asset.
Fortune 500 is not necessarily fortunate
Recently I read an article by Paolo Gallo and Vlatka Hlupic for WEF that examined the claim that Humane leadership must be the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s real innovation. This deeply resonated with me after several years of researching equity within international schools and brought this idea to the forefront of my mind after I read the contributions of amazing leaders around the world in the newly released book that I contributed to, Bringing Innovative Practices to your School. Humane leadership is one of my passions and specifically, its application to educational leadership. As suggested earlier, teachers are some of the most stressed, unhappy workers in the field today, and why? Organizational structures put in place by leadership.
One suggested model we have seen in education is to create organizational structures within schools based on Big Business. Gallo & Vlatka (2019), address this in their article referencing that deaths related to stress, toxic workplaces and bad management practices are on the rise. In China alone, more than 1 million people per year die due to such causes. Gallo and Vlatka indicate that “the average life expectancy of Fortune 500 companies has decreased from 75 to 15 years in the last 50 years. Furthermore, data shows that only 13% of the workforce is passionate about their work, despite the plethora of techniques and resources spent on learning and development (L&D). Global figures show that 80% of employees are less than fully engaged at work”.
In schools, toxic environments and bad management practices become more heightened when school leaders have different approaches and beliefs about leadership. I have written previously about the five fears that kill innovation in schools and how to overcome them, but what I am really interested in is the humanity within innovation. So, if it is not Big Business that will change the educational institution what do educational leaders and organizations need to do to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution?
Let go of notions of power and control
Too often I hear from leaders that they lead through distributed leadership but these are the leaders who I also observe manage every moment of teacher’s school lives, create vertical organizational structures and micromanage minutia such as; furniture placement, wall decorations, unit planners, and resources. This creates a culture of mistrust and produces weary employees who feel they can never win. An important starting point for understanding distributed leadership is to uncouple it from positional authority. As Harris (2004) indicates, “distributed leadership concentrates on engaging expertise wherever it exists within the organization rather than seeking this only through formal position or role”.
Often distributed leadership is incorrectly characterized as a reduction in the scope of the principal’s role. This is not the case. The model works to empower the skills within the network of individuals that make up the organization. It is leaders who identify and provide opportunities for teachers to empower themselves and their students. Did you catch that? Principals do not empower anyone. They provide opportunities for individuals to empower themselves. Simply put, principals and leaders orchestrate and nurture the space for distributed leadership to occur, but it is evident that distribution can work successfully only if formal leaders allow it to take root.
To do this effectively leaders must:
· Have 100% trust in the capacity of their team
· Let go of the power they expect in their role as principal, head or board
· Be vulnerable and still in the space of not knowing
· Listen to the people around them
· Lead with joy and an asset-based mentality
· Stop thinking first about what they gain out of relationships
· Study other leadership and leaders (develop a strong PLN)
· Have the ability to laugh at themselves
As suggested earlier, the existing authority structure in schools provides a potential barrier to the successful introduction and implementation of distributed leadership.
“There are inherent threats to status and the status quo in all that distributed leadership implies” (Harris 2004, p. 20).
Fitzgerald and Gunter (2008) refer to the residual significance of authority and hierarchy, and note the ‘dark side’ of distributed leadership, which is simply managerialism in a new guise. It can be argued that distributed leadership leads to the power relationship between followers and leaders becoming blurred, but that is the very essence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Within the Fourth Industrial Revolution lines are now blurred between:
· Online and Offline
· Internet of Things and the Connectivity of Humans
· Real and Virtual
· Truth and Fiction
· Big Business and State
· AI and Human Intelligence
This brave new world is rapidly changing and in order to create a more humane future educational organizations must lead in a way that provides opportunities for teachers to operate at their highest level of capacity despite the blurry unknowns.
Citations:
Fitzgerald, T., & Gunter, H. (2008). Contesting the orthodoxy of teacher leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 11(4), 331–341.
Harris, A. (2004). Distributed leadership in schools: Leading or misleading? Educational Management, Administration, and Leadership, 32(1), 11–24.
Gallo, P., Vlatka, K. (2019) Humane leadership must be the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s real innovation Retrieved from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/humane-leadership-is-the-4irs-big-management-innovation/
