Busy school leaders who are looking for ways to enhance the effectiveness of their schools can find guidance from a variety of authors who have compiled lists of tasks successful leaders must address and traits they must emulate. School leaders have been offered the 21 responsibilities they must fulfill (Marzano, 2005) and the 21 “indispensable qualities” of a leader (Maxwell, 1999). The number of these recommendations, however, is daunting to educators who find it difficult to address even the most modest “to do” lists as they struggle with the demands of their daily routine and the frequent “crises” that pop up on a regular basis. Doug Reeves (2006) offers school administrators the seven dimensions of leadership. Seven is more reasonable, but can we do better? Indeed, we can! It seems there are five actions leaders can take to transform their organizations (Jennings and Stahl-Wert, 2003). But those who have been holding out for the most succinct statement of the true secret of leadership need wait no longer. We have now been told there is only “the one thing” we must know to lead (Buckingham, 2005).
Americans are fascinated with lists, and leaders are in constant search of the concise list that will provide the specific things they must do to lead successfully. We concur with Buckingham that “one” is the number leaders must keep in mind as they attempt to improve their schools. However, whereas Buckingham concludes there is a single thing leaders must know, we defer to the wisdom of Three Dog Night and urge leaders to recognize that, “one is the loneliest number.”
The image of the heroic individual who swoops in to save the day is burned into our national psyche. But all evidence suggests that the substantive and sustained improvement of any organization is a collective rather than a solitary endeavor. In studying thousands of cases of effective leadership, James Kouzes and Barry Posner (2003) could not find a single example of extraordinary achievement that occurred without the active involvement and support of many people. As they wrote:
We’ve yet to find a single instance in which one talented person—leader or individual contributor—accounted for most, let alone 100 percent, of the success. You can’t do it alone. Leadership . . . is a team performance. Collaboration is a social imperative. Without it, people can’t get extraordinary things done in organizations (p. 20).
Jim Collins (2001) concurred. In his study differentiating great organizations from their less effective counterparts, Collins found that unsuccessful organizations pursued a structure of one charismatic visionary leader with lots of helpers, while “great” organizations purposefully dispersed leadership throughout the organization.
The importance of widely dispersed leadership is repeatedly cited in educational research as well. Milbry McLaughlin and Joan Talbert (2001) could find “no instances to support the ‘great leader’ theory, charismatic people who create extraordinary contexts for teaching by virtue of their unique vision” (p.117). The most successful principals in the schools they studied “empower and support teacher leadership.” Michael Fullan (2005), who has studied the change process in schools as much as anyone in North America, has concluded that distributed leadership is essential if improvement efforts are to be sustained. Doug Reeves also urges leaders to disperse leadership throughout their districts and schools because “no single person can achieve the essential demands of leadership alone” (p.28).
But while it would be difficult to find researchers opposed to the concept of widely distributed leadership, specifics regarding how to promote leadership throughout a school have been lacking. We offer the following suggestions for those interested in exploring strategies to build the capacity for leadership within a staff.
1. Create a guiding coalition
No one individual could possibly have the skills, wisdom, and stamina to be the sole source of leadership in a school. Furthermore, no individual can launch and sustain an improvement initiative until it becomes part of the school culture. Therefore, the creation of a guiding coalition should always be a part of the early stages of any change effort (Kotter, 1996). The structure of the coalition can take many forms—a school improvement committee, department chairs, grade-level team leaders, etc. The coalition should be expected to find common ground and speak with one voice on such matters as the fundamental purpose of the school, the future it is creating, the collective commitments that must be made to fulfill the school’s purpose, the indicators of progress the coalition will track, and the specific actions that must be taken to move forward. Principals who fail to build a coalition of supporters and collaborators will be unlikely to transform their schools, and any improvement efforts they initiate will almost certainly be abandoned upon their departure.
2. Create collaborative teams and designate team leaders
When schools organize teachers into collaborative teams, they create a structure conducive to widely dispersed leadership. Teams can be organized by course, by grade level, by program, or as interdisciplinary groups. Regardless of the format, each team can and should have the benefit of a member who has been designated as the leader. Teachers should be given incentives to serve as leaders—release from a supervisory assignment, release from committee assignments, or a small stipend—and should be provided with the training and support to lead their team effectively. Imagine, for example, an elementary school in which the guiding coalition has called upon each grade-level team to create a series of common math assessments for all students. Team leaders could work together to develop the skills necessary to lead that task at their grade level and could continue to meet to help each other discover ways to address the inevitable obstacles that arise. Instead of a single principal or a small guiding coalition assuming responsibility for common assessments, team leaders would take the responsibility, and taking responsibility is at the very heart of leadership.
3. Promote situational leadership
The collaborative team process also creates a rich opportunity for situational leadership in a school, leadership based upon expertise in the task at hand rather than position. For example, a collaborative team could assign leadership responsibility for developing different units in the curriculum on the basis of who is most knowledgeable regarding the content, or members could revise their instructional strategies based upon the ideas of the person achieving the best results. Effective team leaders will not hoard authority but will identify ways to give every member of the team the opportunity to lead from time to time, based upon individual interest and expertise.
4. Utilize task forces
Task forces differ from committees in that they are provided with a charge to address a specific issue, research best practices, develop recommendations for improvement, and build consensus to support their recommendations. Unlike committees, task forces are not ongoing, but rather are operational only until their task has been accomplished. For example, imagine a school that confronts a brutal fact: the response to students who are experiencing academic difficulty varies widely from teacher to teacher. A task force could be created to consider ways the school might respond to these students in a more timely, direct, equitable, and strategic way. Once its recommendations were implemented, the task force would be disbanded, but its members would feel the pride that comes with ownership and authorship. Over time, a school that creates one or two task forces each year to address different issues will dramatically expand the number of staff members who will have played a leadership role in improving some aspect of the school.
5. Make developing leaders an explicit expectation and requirement for every formal leader in the district
Fostering self-efficacy—that is, helping people to believe in their own capabilities—is one of a leader’s highest duties. All leaders should be expected to develop the leadership potential of those with whom they work. For example, the job description of those in a formal leadership position in Brevard County, Florida, stipulates they are responsible for developing the leadership capacity of those they oversee. The superintendent, central office staff, principals, and managers of every department at both the district and site levels are evaluated, in part, on their attention to and effectiveness in developing others.
So, what is the best way to develop a leader? The Center for Creative Leadership (Van Vesor & McCauley 2004) was specifically created to answer that question, and for 35 years it has worked to increase the leadership capacity of individuals and organizations. It concluded: The best strategy for developing leaders is placing people in the midst of the challenge of leadership work. Leadership capacity grows when people are put in positions that call upon them to lead because leading is, in and of itself, learning by doing.
In every district and in every school, key leaders will inevitably come and go. If we continue to associate improvement initiatives with the individual leader who launched them, sustained school improvement will always be elusive. There is, however, an alternative. As Fullan writes, “the main mark of an effective principal is not just his or her impact on the bottom line of student achievement, but also on how many leaders he or she leaves behind who can go even further” (p. 31).
We must let go of the myth of the principal as superman or the superintendent as savior. We must abandon the idea that the capacity to lead is reserved for the elite few. We must understand that developing internal capacity for leadership is essential to the continuous improvement of any school or district. We must recognize that collective leadership is not just a “feel good” philosophy: it is the best way to achieve results and is consistent with our moral purpose of helping all students learn at high levels. We will increase the likelihood of fulfilling that purpose when we recognize that school administrators must be leaders of leaders. No one person can meet the challenge. When it comes to improving schools, one is still the loneliest number.
Rick and Becky DuFour are educational authors and consultants. Rick can be reached at rdufour@district125.k12.il.us; Becky at mzprinci@charter.net.
Bibliography
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Kouzes, J. and Posner, B. (Spring 2003). “Challenge is the Opportunity for Greatness.” Leader to Leader. 28, 16–23.
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