Another great #satchatwc twitter chat yesterday focusing on our roles as leaders in schools, an outpouring of ideas and ideals about the importance of leadership. There was a lot of good advice and many poster quotes. But I left feeling that sometimes we miss one of the main points; there is still an enormous amount of implication that leadership is something we look to others to provide. Even amongst the enlightened chat participants, there still seems to be a strong “us” and “them” boundary between “teachers” and “leaders”. Here are a few of my own tweets that seemed to attract some attention:
- As long as “we” wait for “leaders” to empower us to lead, we are missing the point of leadership.
- Ask teams to understand what they are leading for and towards. Leadership without vision is pointless.
- The more that “staff” are part of “leadership team” thinking, the less we have to communicate from “us” to “them”
- If your community has the idea that some people lead and others follow, you are not even in this game
- IMHO this discussion of leadership in schools is another example of why we need to redesign the “operating system” of education
Here is one of my latest slides, grabbed from a recent article in McKinsey by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini. It speaks to this fundamental change that we need to see in our school systems. I particularly love the “Move from ‘unfreeze-change-refreeze’ to ‘permanent slush'”. Think about the role of all of us as leaders in a permanent slush system.
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