A Matter Of Principals
Today I was partaking of a leisurely rite of caffeination with a friend. Most unfortunately, that friend managed to press the 'Autobiography' button and I found myself rather impolitely dominating the conversation. Fortunately, I have very tolerant friends. Some thoughts, however, carried over into well after I had come home. And here they are...
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It was in May 2004 that I was required to take a course on Principalship and Teacher Performance – an odd-sounding course, to be sure, but I've endured stranger than that. There were two assignments and three presentations to do, all before a class comprised mostly of senior educational officers and principals; the point of the course was to examine the link between what a principal did and how this affected the qualitative development of the teachers serving with that principal.
There was a certain quality of desperation to my efforts. I was scheduled to go on research leave to Columbia University, New York, just days before the course officially ended. The kind course managers said they would allow me to submit the unfinished business by email, as long as it was before the deadline – but it was rushed, rushed, very rushed.
It has been three years now. I survived, and I note with a slightly bemused air that I actually aced all my courses that year. It leaves me with an odd feeling; that year was, apart from Columbia and a few other things, quite a dead loss. Yet, when I look at what I wrote, I realise that I still stand by it to a large extent. Some of my coursemates might have submitted assignments just for the sake of earning their qualifications; I am certain only of my own motive, and that motive was that I believed sincerely in what I thought and wrote about educational leadership.
What follows is part of an essay I wrote in partial fulfilment of the course. It has been edited very slightly to protect the innocent, as well as the guilty.
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Reflection On Educational Leadership
This module is about being an educator. Looking through my notes, it is only too easy to say that it boils down to ‘Know thyself’. If you were more sophisticated, perhaps, you might say, “Know thyself, know thine enemy; fight a thousand battles, win a thousand victories.”
But if you were to take this easy way out, you would probably not get the point. The role of educational leader is a lonely, exclusive, powerful, humbling, paradoxical role. It was never easy, and it was always sure to be double-edged.
Why?
The leader has to see further than those he leads. He is the man on the mountain, the Moses, the Mohammed, the Messiah. He has to be closest to the truth, most certain of the revelation, most daring of vision. Yet, because leadership is a double-edged role, he must be most honest of himself, most analytical of what he sees, most willing to gaze into the abyss. Tolkien writes in his fantasy masterpiece, The Lord of The Rings, ‘Hope I gave… I kept no hope for myself.’ And this is sometimes the whole raison d’etre of the leader.
Leadership begins small. The seed comes from within, the faint spark of inspiration with which one realises a sense of mission. Some are thrust into the role by circumstance, some by ‘accident of birth’. I believe in all three – in my personal context, I am defined by what I believe, what the world believes of me, and what my empirical experience has been.
Mini case study (very much shortened):
For example, I am the eldest of three siblings in an obviously hierarchical family – this is the ‘accident of birth’. It is supposed to predispose one towards leadership. (It seems not to be always a necessity – my principal is not the eldest in his family.) I became faculty dean four years into my teaching career, by sudden act of appointment; it was not obvious to many that I should be so honoured, and I myself felt rushed into it – this is circumstance. And yet, being made a leader by appointment, I had to do my best. I turned out to have some talent for this ‘visionary leadership’ thing that departments of education seem to love. Quote from one of my fellow heads: “I think you should be an administrator, you have the gift for it.”
The point is, you develop confidence as a leader when you realise that these factors can conspire to guarantee your effectiveness if you see them in a positive light. Yes, there are what appear to be accidents, sudden upheavals, sudden changes in direction (like my friend G who switched subjects overnight). But it is the way that people cope with the realisation that determines if they will make the best of their leadership or not. After all, the more the upheaval, the less likely it is that anyone will be in position to know what to do next, and the more likely it is that the one who becomes leader is the one who can do something about it.
So, there are three things the aspiring educational leader (or any other type of leader) must do: 1) assess the state of reality – what the current environment is like in terms of people and things and relationships; 2) assess the things you can do, or that you have done – you like encouraging others, people will do things for you when you ask them; 3) assess the ‘spark’ – do you feel the urge to do your best in the role, will people be inspired to do things because of you?
This sounds rather abstract still. Is it possible to define the three areas further?
The first area is reality in the external sense – what is the physical and political environment you will be exercising leadership in? You need to ask how many people will respond to your leadership, how many people will oppose it, what your tacit authority will be, what your appointed authority will be, what kind of well-defined material and environmental resources are available. This is the kind of environment all kinds of business and management books talk about when they discuss structural features of organizations. It really corresponds to the Greek word kratos – the authority which comes with circumstance.
The second area is reality in the way your internal set-up interacts with the external set-up. Do you have the strength to lead, the guts to make difficult decisions, and the instincts to make them wisely? You need to know what your capacity to move things is, how hard you can work and how much effort you are willing to pour into the environment. You need to know if you can apply leverage and shift people. This is the kind of authority that people talk about when they say, “She is a mover and shaker.” It corresponds to the Greek word bia – the authority which comes with employment of force.
The third area is reality in the way your internal set-up reacts with other people’s internal set-ups. Do people see what you do and feel driven to follow your example? Do you inspire, do you encourage, do you make people feel good when they do what is according to your vision? When they hear you coming by, do they think of the Angel of Death, or do they think of you as a source of light in a dark world? Or do they just think, “Let’s be compliant and he will leave us alone”? This area is the hardest to assess. It is the area of authority that corresponds with the Greek word dünamis – the authority that comes from personality projection.
The bottom line therefore must be that exploration of context is the necessary preamble to effective leadership. As Sunzi said, “Know thyself, know thine enemy; fight a thousand battles, win a thousand victories.” I quoted that at the very beginning, and I said it was too easy a statement to make.
Yes, it is too easy. It is a statement which cannot stand alone. Sunzi also describes appraisal of terrain, appraisal of resources and appraisal of men. To him, knowledge meant a pragmatic, practical grasp of every real factor in the environment, and the ability to find out more and see more than the other person.
This is why leaders are what they are. They have a job which never ends, a job which never gets easier. Yet, it is a job that they can grow into; it is like a burden that one learns to lift, and that one will eventually develop the muscles for.
Like any other burden, sometimes it may be too heavy, and you will need help; sometimes just watching another person with a heavier load may be good enough. And at the end of your days, like all good leaders, you must know when to lay your burden down and rejoice in a job well done.
=====
The last paragraph proved prophetic; five months later, I would lay down that burden in (some say) dramatic fashion. There are days that I wish I had never sipped from the oft-poisoned chalice of positional leadership. There are days I wish I had drunk more from that spring. But most days, I know who I am and I see it all for what it truly is: one of the many games which God gives to people to occupy their lives and allow them to grow whichever way they can.
=====
It was in May 2004 that I was required to take a course on Principalship and Teacher Performance – an odd-sounding course, to be sure, but I've endured stranger than that. There were two assignments and three presentations to do, all before a class comprised mostly of senior educational officers and principals; the point of the course was to examine the link between what a principal did and how this affected the qualitative development of the teachers serving with that principal.
There was a certain quality of desperation to my efforts. I was scheduled to go on research leave to Columbia University, New York, just days before the course officially ended. The kind course managers said they would allow me to submit the unfinished business by email, as long as it was before the deadline – but it was rushed, rushed, very rushed.
It has been three years now. I survived, and I note with a slightly bemused air that I actually aced all my courses that year. It leaves me with an odd feeling; that year was, apart from Columbia and a few other things, quite a dead loss. Yet, when I look at what I wrote, I realise that I still stand by it to a large extent. Some of my coursemates might have submitted assignments just for the sake of earning their qualifications; I am certain only of my own motive, and that motive was that I believed sincerely in what I thought and wrote about educational leadership.
What follows is part of an essay I wrote in partial fulfilment of the course. It has been edited very slightly to protect the innocent, as well as the guilty.
=====
Reflection On Educational Leadership
This module is about being an educator. Looking through my notes, it is only too easy to say that it boils down to ‘Know thyself’. If you were more sophisticated, perhaps, you might say, “Know thyself, know thine enemy; fight a thousand battles, win a thousand victories.”
But if you were to take this easy way out, you would probably not get the point. The role of educational leader is a lonely, exclusive, powerful, humbling, paradoxical role. It was never easy, and it was always sure to be double-edged.
Why?
The leader has to see further than those he leads. He is the man on the mountain, the Moses, the Mohammed, the Messiah. He has to be closest to the truth, most certain of the revelation, most daring of vision. Yet, because leadership is a double-edged role, he must be most honest of himself, most analytical of what he sees, most willing to gaze into the abyss. Tolkien writes in his fantasy masterpiece, The Lord of The Rings, ‘Hope I gave… I kept no hope for myself.’ And this is sometimes the whole raison d’etre of the leader.
Leadership begins small. The seed comes from within, the faint spark of inspiration with which one realises a sense of mission. Some are thrust into the role by circumstance, some by ‘accident of birth’. I believe in all three – in my personal context, I am defined by what I believe, what the world believes of me, and what my empirical experience has been.
Mini case study (very much shortened):
For example, I am the eldest of three siblings in an obviously hierarchical family – this is the ‘accident of birth’. It is supposed to predispose one towards leadership. (It seems not to be always a necessity – my principal is not the eldest in his family.) I became faculty dean four years into my teaching career, by sudden act of appointment; it was not obvious to many that I should be so honoured, and I myself felt rushed into it – this is circumstance. And yet, being made a leader by appointment, I had to do my best. I turned out to have some talent for this ‘visionary leadership’ thing that departments of education seem to love. Quote from one of my fellow heads: “I think you should be an administrator, you have the gift for it.”
The point is, you develop confidence as a leader when you realise that these factors can conspire to guarantee your effectiveness if you see them in a positive light. Yes, there are what appear to be accidents, sudden upheavals, sudden changes in direction (like my friend G who switched subjects overnight). But it is the way that people cope with the realisation that determines if they will make the best of their leadership or not. After all, the more the upheaval, the less likely it is that anyone will be in position to know what to do next, and the more likely it is that the one who becomes leader is the one who can do something about it.
So, there are three things the aspiring educational leader (or any other type of leader) must do: 1) assess the state of reality – what the current environment is like in terms of people and things and relationships; 2) assess the things you can do, or that you have done – you like encouraging others, people will do things for you when you ask them; 3) assess the ‘spark’ – do you feel the urge to do your best in the role, will people be inspired to do things because of you?
This sounds rather abstract still. Is it possible to define the three areas further?
The first area is reality in the external sense – what is the physical and political environment you will be exercising leadership in? You need to ask how many people will respond to your leadership, how many people will oppose it, what your tacit authority will be, what your appointed authority will be, what kind of well-defined material and environmental resources are available. This is the kind of environment all kinds of business and management books talk about when they discuss structural features of organizations. It really corresponds to the Greek word kratos – the authority which comes with circumstance.
The second area is reality in the way your internal set-up interacts with the external set-up. Do you have the strength to lead, the guts to make difficult decisions, and the instincts to make them wisely? You need to know what your capacity to move things is, how hard you can work and how much effort you are willing to pour into the environment. You need to know if you can apply leverage and shift people. This is the kind of authority that people talk about when they say, “She is a mover and shaker.” It corresponds to the Greek word bia – the authority which comes with employment of force.
The third area is reality in the way your internal set-up reacts with other people’s internal set-ups. Do people see what you do and feel driven to follow your example? Do you inspire, do you encourage, do you make people feel good when they do what is according to your vision? When they hear you coming by, do they think of the Angel of Death, or do they think of you as a source of light in a dark world? Or do they just think, “Let’s be compliant and he will leave us alone”? This area is the hardest to assess. It is the area of authority that corresponds with the Greek word dünamis – the authority that comes from personality projection.
The bottom line therefore must be that exploration of context is the necessary preamble to effective leadership. As Sunzi said, “Know thyself, know thine enemy; fight a thousand battles, win a thousand victories.” I quoted that at the very beginning, and I said it was too easy a statement to make.
Yes, it is too easy. It is a statement which cannot stand alone. Sunzi also describes appraisal of terrain, appraisal of resources and appraisal of men. To him, knowledge meant a pragmatic, practical grasp of every real factor in the environment, and the ability to find out more and see more than the other person.
This is why leaders are what they are. They have a job which never ends, a job which never gets easier. Yet, it is a job that they can grow into; it is like a burden that one learns to lift, and that one will eventually develop the muscles for.
Like any other burden, sometimes it may be too heavy, and you will need help; sometimes just watching another person with a heavier load may be good enough. And at the end of your days, like all good leaders, you must know when to lay your burden down and rejoice in a job well done.
=====
The last paragraph proved prophetic; five months later, I would lay down that burden in (some say) dramatic fashion. There are days that I wish I had never sipped from the oft-poisoned chalice of positional leadership. There are days I wish I had drunk more from that spring. But most days, I know who I am and I see it all for what it truly is: one of the many games which God gives to people to occupy their lives and allow them to grow whichever way they can.
Labels: Education, Leadership, Remembrance
etched with acid at 7:34:00 pm
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