Keywords: shared leadership; distributed leadership


There is a clear role for principals in supporting and encouraging shared leadership.  This is about leaders stimulating and supporting opportunities for colleagues to demonstrate initiative, play a full part in a team, take responsibility for projects and developments and so on.

There are many reasons for leaders to  support a shared leadership culuture, not least that the pace of change is too great and complex for a few leaders in school on their own to cope. There is a huge untapped resource within each school and this offers opportunities for busy leaders to interact with the ideas, opinions and talents of a range of colleagues.  This is not just about the needs of the leader.  If  schools are to become innovative and creative in order to meet the needs of 21st century learning, then leaders  need to be sensitive as to how they can support opportunities for all staff to develop and grow in areas within and beyond their specific responsibilities, to lead in a shared endeavour of improving the learning and well-being of all children.

Principals can support this process in a number of ways:

  • use collaborative problem solving techniques with colleagues around what the next steps should be in response to a particular issue they face
  • encourage lead roles - one leader encourages everyone in her school to play lead roles on developments; she ensures effective support, especially in the early days of the work
  • try to get everyone involved in some shape or form - one principal worked with fellow colleagues to develop an in-house CPD programme, where training and development was delivered mainly by staff themselves
  • use conversations with colleagues and teams, whether formal or informal, to listen to their ideas and encourage their thinking around taking forward new ideas in their class or in other areas - these conversations can be powerful platforms for enabling colleagues to explore new possibilities.  To find out more about the leader's role in this area click on Stimulating Discussion at Meetings
  • support professional learning networks and teacher learning communities to allow colleagues to exercise initiative and take things forward
  • help colleagues to explore and develop opportunities within and beyond their immediate teams

The question for each leader is simple: What are you doing in your leadership role to support opportunities for individual leadership development so that each teacher can grow his or her leadership talents?

This might involve supporting opportunities for colleagues to lead and be accountable on specific issues. However, supporting opportunities for others to lead is not necessarily easy, and some leaders will be concerned at the loss of control it entails, or having to face what they perceive might be the fallout if things do not go well [students may wish to access an optional activity on this isse as Option: Barriers Exercise]. It always involves a bit of a risk, but this can be reduced by effective planning and support such as:

  • a clear brief worked out with the colleague at the beginning of developments
  • mentoring and coaching support, and sometimes just being there for colleagues
  • effective development and training

There is no doubt that in the short-term leaders may find that this approach leads to an increased workload, as supporting colleagues and teams takes time and effort. But in the long-term there are huge benefits for everyone involved.

The bottom line is that a major part of any leader's remit, whether explicitly stated or not, is to develop capacity of the colleagues for whom they have responsibility. This is a moral endeavour that has major benefits for all involved. As Linda Hill [2007,p.54] states:

 

'Most new managers, in part because of insecurity in an unfamiliar role, yearn for compliance from their subordinates. They fear that if they don’t establish this early on, their [colleagues] will walk all over them.  As a means of gaining this control, they often rely too much on their formal authority - a technique whose effectiveness is, as we have seen, questionable at best. But even if they are able to achieve some measure of control, whether through formal authority or authority earned over time, they have achieved a false victory.  Compliance does not equal commitment. If people aren’t committed, they won’t take initiative. And if subordinates aren’t taking the initiative, the manager can’t delegate effectively. The [colleagues] won’t take the calculated risks that lead to the continuous change and improvement required by today’s turbulent … environment.

...The more power managers are willing to share with subordinates in this way, the more influence they tend to command. When they lead in a manner that allows their people to take the initiative, they build their own credibility as managers.'     Hill, L. [2007[Becoming the Boss.Harvard Business Review, 85 [1], p48-56.

Activity: Sharing the Load


Teacher Leadership

On completion of the Sharing the Load activities students should move onto the there related Shared Leadership concept of Teacher Leadership.

Last modified: Wednesday, 13 February 2013, 6:13 PM