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- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
In Imperfect Leadership: A book for leaders who know they don't know it all, Steve Munby eloquently reflects upon and describes a leadership approach that is strong on self-awareness and positive about the importance of asking for help. Foreword by Michael Fullan. When asked to describe his own leadership style, Steve uses the word 'imperfect' . This is not something he apologises for; he feels imperfect leadership should be celebrated. Too often we are given examples of leaders who are put on some kind of pedestal, lauded as superheroes who have it all worked out and are so good at what they do that nobody else can come close. This book is the antidote to that flawed perception. Imperfect Leadership is an honest reflection upon leadership. It is about Steve's journey, covering his highs and lows and, ultimately, how he learned to refine and improve his leadership. It is about messy, trial-and-error, butterflies-in-the-stomach leadership and about thoughtful and invitational leadership - and the positive impact it can have. At the heart of the book are edited highlights of the 12 keynote speeches delivered to increasingly large audiences of school leaders between 2005 and 2017. These speeches, delivered at the Seizing Success and Inspiring Leadership conferences, form the structure around which Steve's story and insights are wrapped. Steve's account covers some fundamental shifts in the English education system over this 12-year period and describes how school leaders altered their leadership as this context changed. Furthermore, it delves into how his own leadership developed as his personal context changed, and explores how the notion that a leader needs to be good at all aspects of leadership is not only unrealistic, but is also bad for the mental and physical health of leaders and will do nothing to attract new people into leadership positions. Ultimately, Steve hopes that as you read this book you will see the value of imperfect leadership and of the positive impact it can make. For those reading it who have yet to step up into leadership, his sincere wish is that it will encourage and empower aspirational leaders rather than discourage them. Suitable for all those in or aspiring to leadership positions in education.
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Praise for Imperfect Leadership
This is the most perfectly brilliant book about imperfect leadership that any great leader could possibly write. There is no other book like it. Unlike most political memoirs, it is not a tedious recollection of meetings and events. Unlike corporate leadership texts, it is not a narrative of vainglorious self-congratulation either. Nor is it a self-indulgent confession of failure and wrongdoing. Instead, Steve Munby’s Imperfect Leadership is an honest, open and articulate account of a life of leadership lived as a public servant for the public good in constantly changing times.
If you are or aspire to be a leader in the education or social sector, and if you have even an ounce of integrity, Imperfect Leadership is a must-read.
Andy Hargreaves, Research Professor, Boston College, and Visiting Professor, University of Ottawa
Imperfect Leadership is an important book. It’s important in its subject matter, in its point of focus, and most of all in its unblinking honesty.
Like Steve Munby, I’ve led organisations and teams with mixed results, and during the journey I’ve discovered one great truth: you learn far more from your failures than your successes. Through a rigorous and sometimes painful process of self-questioning, Steve offers all of us the opportunity to reflect, to improve, and to possibly even inspire those around us.
Lord David Puttnam, Chair, Atticus Education
From small groups to large countries, it’s hard to overestimate the impact of leadership on the culture and effectiveness of organisations. For that reason, there’s a burgeoning library of scholarly research and popular books on leadership. Imperfect Leadership is something different, however. Part memoir, part social history and part practical handbook, this book gives us a deeply human, close-grained account of Steve Munby’s evolution as a leader as he steered a key national organisation through the white waters of educational change in England. Resoundingly honest and soul-searching, Imperfect Leadership is also an inspirational and practical guide to handling the complex challenges – and navigating the steep learning curves – that caring leaders face.
Sir Ken Robinson, PhD, educator andNew York Times bestselling author
It’s rare to come across a book as wise about leadership as this one. Beginning with the title itself, this is no sentimental, misty-eyed account of a hero leader; instead, it’s about authentic, resilient leadership that acknowledges our own imperfections, recognises the anxieties that gnaw away at all true leaders, and goes on to inspire others to give their best.
With an extraordinary mix of personal insights and his insider’s knowledge of recent education policy – plus a range of perspectives from various international experts – Steve Munby deepens our thinking, nudges us to be more ambitious in our aspirations, and inspires us to understand and then enact all that great leadership can achieve.
Imperfect Leadership is a book of breathtaking wisdom. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Geoff Barton, General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders
As the world changed around us, Steve’s integrity was always a fixed point, to be relied on completely – and in Imperfect Leadership he provides deep insights into two decades of education reform and improvement in England. The book is a guide to personal leadership in education and how it can make a difference, and Steve brings to its pages – as he brings to everything – wisdom, self-knowledge and wit.
Anyone interested in learning what it takes to bring about a school system that delivers both equity and high standards will benefit from reading Imperfect Leadership.
Sir Michael Barber, author of How to Run a Government and founder of Delivery Associates
Imperfect Leadership is an extraordinary book. It is a story of highly successful adaptive leadership, of a quest for personal and professional growth and the exercise of principled influence – both with and through others – and above all it communicates the power of imperfect leadership.
At once disarmingly honest and penetratingly insightful, it will inspire all educators, particularly school and system leaders.
Anthony Mackay, President and CEO, National Center on Education and the Economy
Imperfect Leadership is an inspiring, globally resonant leadership tour de force that outlines the experiences and challenges that Steve Munby has faced as a leader over more than three decades.
It is a self-reflective study of the qualities needed to be a successful leader in the education sector, and is a revealing and fascinating look behind the scenes of the contexts and structures where Steve has been a leader – tracing the humanity and humility that he has brought to every organisation he has led.
The structure of the book enables us to remind ourselves of the passionate and thoughtful speeches Steve has made throughout his career. Each provides a different building block to help him construct a leadership framework that we can all follow and can become part of his legacy for system-wide improvement. The opening chapter shows us that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness – and the chapter on power and love is drawn from a speech I remember well, having been in the audience on the day he presented it. In this Steve speaks about the morality of leadership: describing the need to go beyond having good intentions and wanting the best for children, to having the single-minded determination to make a real difference. As an MAT CEO at the time, I needed to hear that message, and I drew on it on multiple occasions to reassure myself that the changes I was leading were changes that would have long-term benefits for the children I was accountable for.
We live in an era where the understanding of leadership is expanding quicker than at any time I can remember. If there is one book that describes how we lead in complex times, that reveals the development of an education system over 30 years, and that reminds us about the heart and soul of leadership, then this is it. Imperfect Leadership is the story of our lives as school leaders.
Steve Munby is a man of his word who set out to make a difference. He delivered!
Sir David Carter, Executive Director of System Leadership, Ambition Institute
Steve Munby’s Imperfect Leadership is a fitting tribute to his leadership journey, his moral compass, his fierce devotion to sustainable principles, and his adherence to values-informed leadership. It transports us to the pinnacle of what world-class leadership looks like, and, delivered in Steve’s own inimitable way, provides honest, soul-searching insights into what leading-edge leadership looks like.
Guided by his core, sustaining values, Steve deftly untangles the complexities of leadership and illuminates various leadership types, styles and possibilities. He dispels myths and false dichotomies, identifies his own highs and lows and moments of exhilaration, and subtly flexes his muscles by deconstructing leadership and its potential impact.
At a time in our history when leaders must address issues such as rising nationalism and generational shifts in visions, values, mandates and expectations, the takeaway for me from Imperfect Leadership is the need to pay attention to the ‘sleeping’, ‘newspaper’, ‘mirror’ and ‘teenager’ leadership tests that he discusses: to focus on the inner voice and to exercise moral purpose as a tribute to the moral compass that Steve himself has exercised over a lifetime of exemplary leadership in education. For all the hurdles we face as leaders across the globe, we all want to share his humility, quiet confidence, fidelity to moral purpose, and the legacy of his ability to influence the educational outcomes and life chances of the students he has advocated for throughout his illustrious career. I offer rapturous applause to Steve, who we have grown to rely on to take us to places that we would not have gone without him.
Offering oases of hope, tranquillity and optimism, Imperfect Leadership provides both challenges and validation for those who aspire to or are currently wearing the mantle of leadership that Steve so aptly constructs and articulates for us.
Dr Avis Glaze, international education adviser and former Ontario education commissioner
Are good leaders born or made? In Imperfect Leadership Steve Munby argues that good leaders recognise they are imperfect, and that it’s through this recognition and consequent openness to learning that good leadership is built. Steve is reflective and honest throughout, providing a compendium of tried-and-tested ideas and tips on how to maintain clear-headed, context-aware, ethical leadership. And as he shares eye-opening stories and incisive analysis of education policy, we are treated to a wealth of long-developed expertise and a robust evaluation of the English school system.
Ultimately, Steve exemplifies and charts how to accomplish what we all want – to thrive as successful, judicious leaders, while remaining decent people.
Imperfect Leadership is a book for those considering, or already involved in, the hard and challenging task of leading organisations. Emerging leaders will gain wisdom, advice, encouragement; more experienced leaders will find sustenance and reinvigoration.
Professor Becky Francis, Director, UCL Institute of Education
Steve Munby won’t thank me for saying this, but he is a hero to many of us who have worked with him. In my time as a head teacher, he was always there with gentle advice, a challenge or an insight.
Steve’s humility, humanity and intellect – and ability to make the complex simple – shine through in this remarkable and deeply insightful book. Imperfect Leadership is perhaps the most honest and, ironically, perfectly formed text on leadership I have ever read.
Richard Gerver, educator, speaker and author
Imperfect Leadership is full of wisdom on how to lead educational organisations with passion and integrity in the face of relentless challenge and political pressure. Its compelling cases and reflections will inspire school and system leaders to pursue their vision and ideals through the toughest of times.
Viviane Robinson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland
In compiling this honest, authentic and remarkable account of his own leadership journey, Steve Munby has written a book which I found just impossible to put down. As well as giving a fascinating insight into the inner workings of government and large organisations, he weaves into the narrative powerful leadership messages that will both inspire and challenge the leaders of today.
In his characteristically optimistic, pragmatic and thought-provoking way, Steve takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride that’s full of ups and downs – and reminds us that leadership is, in the end, about our passion and belief in what we do and why it matters.
I challenge any reader not to be absolutely enthralled by this tour de force of a book.
Andy Buck, CEO, Leadership Matters
Steve Munby’s Imperfect Leadership is a heartfelt account of what it means to be at the helm of a national organisation and of what it takes to make a difference to both people and outcomes. Moral purpose, networks, capacity for decision-making, care and – above all – tenacity and attention to detail are the key messages that flow from this book, which also offers a frank and insightful set of reflections that get to the crux of educational leadership.
A must-read for anyone who seeks to better understand the art of successful leadership.
Professor Christopher Chapman, Director, Policy Scotland, University of Glasgow
Imperfect Leadership is Steve’s reflection on his professional life and work, and it contains the insights of someone who has experienced the thick and thin of the changes in the education sector – offering not only a glimpse into his inner world in leading change, but also a commentary on the shifts that have taken place in the English education system over a period spanning 2004–2017. From the book, one can sense the joys and frustrations of leaders in education, as well as their dedication and sacrifice. Readers will also gain much from the episodes that Steve shares about his leadership journey, as he eloquently argues that the best leaders are those who are aware of their strengths and weaknesses – and who do not try to be perfect at everything, but rather look for people who will make a complete team.
This book could be the perfect gift to encourage those who are humbly striving to improve their leadership – not for perfection, but rather for their service to education.
Dr Pak Tee Ng, Associate Professor, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
To my wife, Jacqui, whose love and wise counsel have helped me to be a better leader and a better person.
Foreword by Michael Fullan
My colleagues and I have a fantastic conclusion about educational change. Whether we are considering the school, the local authority or the system as a whole, one change fact stands out: about 80% of the best ideas come from leading practitioners. Steve Munby has embodied this truth over three decades of being the CEO of three complex organisations, operating in volatile, sometimes roller-coaster, circumstances. Fortunately for us, he kept track of what was happening, reflected on it in real time, made corrections, and made himself vulnerable to his own inner self and to those he led. At the end of this chapter of his life, at age 61, he is still an imperfect leader, but he now knows what this means and he shares the lessons with us.
The core of these lessons in some ways centres on the eight years he spent as CEO of England’s National College for School Leadership. Each year in June he gave an inspirational speech at an event entitled Seizing Success. Each year the crowds got bigger, from 400 in year one to a door-busting 2,000 leaders in the final years. They did not come just to see Steve, although that was part of it. They came because this was the place to be with colleagues if you wanted to know about and be at the forefront of leading ideas for changing England’s schools and your own, whatever country you lived in.
By 2012, Steve had left the college to become CEO of CfBT, a trust organisation doing international work in developing countries. The annual event, Seizing Success, became Inspiring Leadership and Steve continued to give his annual speeches.
The themes of his 12 annual speeches reflect the roiling and rolling circumstances he contended with and helped to improve. Whether they represented gut-wrenching setbacks – like having to cut 40% of the college’s budget or seeing his beloved National College whittled into extinction by an unfriendly government – or soaring success – like when schools across the country achieved better and better student results because of improved school leadership – Steve epitomised the meaning of a lead learner.
The evolution of the titles of his speeches capture the essence of the imperfect leader in action: ‘Enthusiastic and Invitational Leadership’ (2005), ‘Authentic System Leadership’ (2006), ‘Imperfect and Courageous Leadership’ (2007), ‘Power and Love in Leadership’ (2012), ‘Grown-up and Restless Leadership’ (2016) and ‘Principled Leadership in Challenging Times’ (2017).
Because I was attuned to learning from lead practitioners, I found Steve early – just after he took his first CEO job in 2000, as director of education in Knowsley, a small local authority in north-west England which had scored second-last in GCSE performance in the country. After one year of Steve’s leadership, Knowsley had become the worst performer in England! Imperfect became one step backward, before Steve and his team led a remarkable turnaround at Knowsley. The so-called worst local authority became a success story – one of the first in the country to demonstrate that you can turn around an entire education authority from terrible to great.
Like many other what I call ‘nuance leaders’, Steve combines empathy, closeness and toughness, mobilising the commitment of scores of people to do what seems impossible. The National College was founded in 2000. Its first few years were characterised by a diffuse agenda and it was hard to locate its centre of gravity. Steve took over in 2005 and one of the first things he did was to take a cue from the leadership of his mentor, Tim Brighouse, the former Birmingham chief education officer. He decided to personally call every leader of every local leadership group and association. There were about 500 of them across the country. He said publicly in his first speech that this was exactly what he was going to do. And he did it, asking each one how the college was serving their needs and how it might change for the better. He launched a new era for the National College.
In my book, Nuance, I delved into how some leaders are effective, while others using many of the same strategies fail. Now that I review my extended definition, I see much of Steve in it:
Nuance leaders have a curiosity about what is possible, openness to other people, sensitivity to context, and loyalty to a better future. They see below the surface enabling them to detect patterns and their consequences for the system. They connect people to their own and each other’s humanity. They don’t lead, they teach. They change people’s emotions, not just their minds. They have an instinct for orchestration. They foster sinews of success. They are humble in the face of challenges, determined for the group to be successful, and proud to celebrate success. They end up developing incredibly accountable organizations because the accountability gets built into the culture. Above all they are courageously and relentlessly committed to changing the system for the better of humanity.1
Read Imperfect Leadership to see how Steve fits the definition of nuance. He has written an honest, fascinating and engrossing book. Afterwards, ask yourself what a perfect leader would do in this or that situation. The answer will almost always be that there is no such thing because the world is imperfect and always will be. We need people like Steve to take the job anyway.
Notes
1 M. Fullan, Nuance: Why Some Leaders Succeed and Others Fail (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2019), p. 12.
Acknowledgements
There are a great number of people I would like to thank for their help not only in the production of this book but also in helping to shape my leadership over many years.
Sir Tim Brighouse, Sir Michael Barber and Baroness Estelle Morris have had a profoundly positive impact on me and on my leadership and I am hugely grateful to them for that. I have tried to follow in their footsteps.
Michael Fullan, more than anyone else, has helped me – through his writings – to articulate the leadership that I have attempted to demonstrate. Andy Hargreaves, Tony Mackay, David Albury and Vanni Treves have shared their wisdom, their support and their friendship with me in equal measure, for which I am deeply grateful. In my early career, Kevyn Smith, Mark Pattison and Steve Gallagher, in their own individual ways, showed me what leadership could be and modelled it for me. I will never forget what they did for me.
I am greatly in the debt of Maggie Farrar and Geoff Southworth, not only for their significant contribution to improving the manuscript for this book but also for demonstrating on a daily basis the power of leadership that is principled and full of integrity.
I would like to publicly acknowledge the fantastic support (and challenge) provided by my senior colleagues at the National College (especially Toby Salt and Caroline Maley) and at CfBT/Education Development Trust (especially Patrick Brazier, Tony McAleavy, Bob Miles, Chris Tweedale and Philip Graf). I would also like to acknowledge my fabulous executive assistants over the years – Lynn Morley, Chloe Smith and Alison Millar.
I am greatly indebted to the people who have helped me to craft the speeches in this book, especially Michael Pain, Tony McAleavy and Matt Davis, but also Patrick Scott, Christine Gilbert, John Dunford, Marie-Claire Bretherton, Jane Creasy and Lucy Crehan.
I would like to extend a huge thank you to the exceptional Laura McInerney for her wise advice on the manuscript and also to Toby Greany for giving me such expert, helpful and constructive feedback.
Finally, I would like to thank my dear friends, Peter Batty and John Turner, not only for reading and commenting on the manuscript but also for helping to influence my leadership for the better over many years.
Contents
Introduction
Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken.
And many times confused.
Paul Simon, ‘American Tune’
I am in a meeting of my leadership team and we are about to receive the financial figures for our annual budget. I am very nervous. The figures show yet another huge deficit of more than £4 million – putting the organisation under great strain and my leadership under considerable pressure. I have been in the CEO role for 18 months and there is still no turnaround as far as the bottom line is concerned. Should I resign? Will the board still have confidence in me? How much time will I be given? Have I got the strategy wrong?
This was not the first time I had experienced these feelings of self-doubt and potential failure. In 2000, I had taken up the role of director of education in Knowsley Council. Knowsley was a small local education authority (LEA) with about 80 schools, including 11 secondary schools. When I was appointed in October, we had the second worst GCSE results out of all the secondary schools in the country. After nearly a year of my leadership, we had the worst GCSE results in the country. I went live on Radio Merseyside on results day and the broadcaster said to me, ‘With respect, why don’t you just give up? It’s hopeless.’ Later that week I received a telephone call from the Daily Mail saying that they wanted to do a story on the worst LEA in the country and asking would I do an interview. Within a few days, there was a call for my resignation in the Liverpool Echo, suggesting I had brought disgrace to the borough of Knowsley. If it hadn’t been for a wise mentor at that time, who helped me to see that I was doing the right things but just needed more time for them to make an impact, I might have walked away and given up.
Five years later, in 2005, after some success in Knowsley, I took up a national role as CEO of the National College for School Leadership, feeling well out of my depth. By 2010, having made some progress, the context changed completely and we had a new right-of-centre coalition government with a radical secretary of state for education – Michael Gove. I wondered whether I should continue to try to lead the National College under these completely new circumstances. Should I resign, or should I try to make it work positively for school leaders? And if the latter, what should my new strategy be? Much later, in 2014, I found myself – as chair of the CST multi-academy trust (MAT) – being challenged by a minister of the Crown and by a board member of the Department for Education, who were pushing for my resignation.
As this book outlines, there have been many times in my leadership when I have doubted whether I was the right person for the role. Many leaders will have been in situations in which they have asked themselves similar questions. There have been several mistakes and some pretty fundamental errors in my leadership, but there has also been some success and, overall, a legacy of which I am proud.
This is, I hope, an honest book about leadership. It is about my leadership journey – some of the highs and lows, and, most of all, how I learned to improve my leadership. It is about messy leadership, trial and error leadership and butterflies in the stomach leadership. It is also about thoughtful leadership, invitational leadership and, most of all, imperfect leadership.
‘Imperfect leadership’ is one of the best terms I can think of to describe my own leadership. This is not something I am ashamed about; imperfect leadership should be celebrated. Too often we are given examples of leaders who are put on some kind of pedestal – superhero leaders, leaders who have it all worked out, who are hugely successful and so good at what they do that nobody else can come close. This book is, I hope, the antidote to that concept. I have yet to meet a perfect leader, even if they might be portrayed by others as such. The notion that a leader needs to be good at all aspects of leadership is not only unrealistic, it is also bad for the mental and physical health of leaders and will do nothing to attract new people into leadership.
As you read this book I hope that the value of imperfect leadership and the positive impact it can make will shine through. For those reading it who have yet to step up into leadership, my sincere hope is that it will encourage and empower you rather than put you off.
What also makes this book different is the fact that between 2005 and 2017 I made an annual keynote speech to a large audience of school leaders. These speeches are at the heart of the book. In them I attempted to map the educational landscape for school leaders in England at the time – to help them understand their own shifting context and their role as leaders within it. The speeches attempted to describe, to analyse, to challenge and to inspire. In some cases, the speeches became very personal and, on several occasions, I was speaking to myself as a leader as much as I was speaking to the audience. They are, in part, a commentary on the changes in the education system in England over a 12-year period; but they are more than that, and I hope also that they will be of interest to those who are not familiar with the English system. In these speeches, I increasingly tried to describe for school leaders the kind of leadership that I believed was necessary at that moment in time. This is a question that every leader, in whatever context and in whatever country, should be asking of themselves on a fairly regular basis.
This book begins with my appointment as CEO of the National College, so it might be helpful for readers to know a little bit about my career background. After completing a degree in philosophy and a postgraduate certificate in education, I started work as a secondary school history teacher in Birmingham and, later, in Gateshead. After seven years, I became an advisory teacher in Sunderland, working for the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative. This was followed by a short period as a lecturer at Sunderland Polytechnic and two years employed by the North East Local Education Authorities as an expert consultant on assessment and records of achievement for students. I spent eight years at Oldham LEA as a school adviser and inspector, and then I made a big step up to become assistant director for school improvement and lifelong learning in the new unitary LEA of Blackburn with Darwen. After quite a bit of success, including the local authority being awarded Beacon Status for school improvement, I was appointed as director of education and lifelong learning in Knowsley in 2000.
One of the overall messages in this book is that context matters. What works well in one context may be unsuccessful in another. As Dylan Wiliam has written, ‘In education, “what works?” is not the right question because everything works somewhere and nothing works everywhere, so what’s interesting, what’s important in education is: “Under what circumstances does this work?”’2 We should never think that a leadership approach or strategy which was a great success in our previous organisation can just be transplanted into our new organisation. As Michael Fullan argues, if strategies are to travel well, we need to show nuance in our leadership.3
Context is subtle; it doesn’t just apply when we change roles or move schools, and there is no place for standing still. What worked for us as leaders last year, even within the same organisation, won’t necessarily work for us this year. Moreover, a tough year can be followed by another tough year, or by a year of success, and sometimes these things are not entirely within our control. At times, the context changes and requires a new approach from us as leaders, but we can be so close to things that we don’t see it until it is too late. That has certainly happened to me on more than one occasion.
Leaders need to develop their own leadership style based on their beliefs and values, their expertise and skills, their personality and their context. Much of this is fixed but some of it changes, so we need to change with it.
This book describes some fundamental changes in the English education system over a 12-year period and how school leaders altered their leadership as this context changed. It also describes how my own leadership developed as my personal context changed.
But there are also some fundamental aspects of leadership that never change, in spite of the context: the need for us to be self-aware, to be learners, to be enthusiastic, to be authentic, to be invitational and to be principled.
In the final chapter, I try to bring all this together – summarising my views on the current educational landscape in England and the lessons I have learned about leadership, including the power of imperfect leadership.
Notes
2 D. Wiliam, Assessment for Learning: Why, What and How (2006). Available at: https://www.dylanwiliam.org/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Papers.html, p. 11.
3 M. Fullan, Nuance: Why Some Leaders Succeed and Others Fail (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2019).
Chapter One
Asking for Help
I’m on my way,
I don’t know where I’m going.
Paul Simon, ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard’
In December 2004, I was interviewed for the role of CEO of the National College for School Leadership. I was excited about the role and did my very best at the interview, preparing thoroughly, but I didn’t really expect to be offered the job. Surely others with more experience of working at the national level than I had would apply and be appointed? Anyway, why would they appoint someone who had never been a head teacher to be the CEO of the National College – wouldn’t that be like appointing someone who had never been a police superintendent to lead the College of Policing or someone who had never been an officer in the army to lead Sandhurst?
And yet I did get the job. I found out later that this was only after the interview panel (who had recommended me for appointment) had been asked by the Prime Minister’s Office to reconsider because I had not been a head teacher. They did reconsider and they still recommended me for the role. So, several weeks after I had been interviewed, the then secretary of state for education, Charles Clarke, signed off my appointment and I suddenly found myself thrust into the public eye as a national figure in the education world.
The National College for School Leadership was set up in 2000. The first CEO, Heather Du Quesnay, oversaw the creation of the college – its brand, its staffing and, of course, its new building: a residential conference centre with a high-class restaurant, 100 en-suite bedrooms, a moat and a lake. It was very plush – it even had Molton Brown shampoo and soap in the bedrooms.
I started the new role in March 2005 and I immediately felt out of my depth. I had moved from being director of education in Knowsley (a deprived and challenging part of Merseyside), where the view from my office window had been a car park and a McDonald’s, to an office in Nottingham where the view was of a lake with swans and the occasional heron. When I arrived for the first time late one afternoon – to have a briefing with the outgoing CEO – the head waiter asked me if I would like a glass of wine. It was a completely new world to me.
The National College had been set up as a body that was at arm’s length from government, with its own board, but the chair of the board and the CEO were both appointed by the education secretary. Each year a ‘remit letter’ was sent to the National College by the education secretary, allocating a budget and outlining what the government expected to be delivered in return for that budget. The CEO of the National College also had a formal role to advise the education secretary on matters relating to school leadership. I had never worked with a board before. I had never even met a secretary of state, let alone had responsibility for advising one (by this time the education secretary was Ruth Kelly) and I had no real idea how the national political process worked.
The National College had got off to a good start under its previous leadership. The impressive building had been put up and several high-quality leadership programmes had been developed, but certain things were beginning to go wrong. Overall, the government was not happy and had commissioned an end-to-end review of the organisation, led by David Albury.4 The review praised the innovation and energy of the college but also expressed a number of concerns. It was criticised for taking on too many initiatives (usually at the request of government!) which were not always directly about school leadership, and, as a result, the college had begun to lose its focus and identity. Moreover, many of the most highly regarded and high-profile school principals had formed the view that it had nothing to offer them and was not listening to their views. In addition, there was a feeling that too much of the content and design of the various leadership programmes was being done by a small number of experts at the centre and that the organisation was not making enough use of the widespread expertise that was out there. It said that the college needed to become a commissioner instead of designing its own programmes. In short, the government was starting to wonder if the National College was becoming a problem. In the wake of the report, the chair of the board had resigned and a new chair, Vanni Treves, was appointed. Soon after that, Heather Du Quesnay left to take up a role in Hong Kong and, as the new CEO, it was my remit to implement the recommendations of the review.
After speaking with the author of the review, as well as with officials at the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), I soon realised that the National College was actually in trouble – more trouble than I had realised when applying for the job.
My first decision, before I even started in the role, was to seek out some mentors. Imperfect leaders know that they don’t have all the answers – they ask for help. It has always slightly bewildered me that so many people take up leadership roles without thinking that they need a mentor. I find it equally bewildering that others seem to understand the need to have a mentor but then agree to have one allocated who doesn’t have the expertise they need. Others seem to think that there is a kind of rule that you are only supposed to have one mentor. I knew that I needed people to help me who had the expertise that I lacked.
I chose four mentors and, to my delight, each one of them said yes.
Estelle Morris was a former secretary of state for education and now sat in the House of Lords. She was herself a former teacher and someone I admired greatly, though I had never met her. I emailed her and we met for coffee at Waterstones in Charing Cross. She agreed to be one of my mentors, and immediately I had access to someone who understood how the national system worked in Whitehall, who could advise me on how to get things done, who to talk to and how to conduct myself. This proved to be a huge help to me over the next few years.
My second mentor was Tim Brighouse. Tim had been an informal mentor to me when I had been director of education in Knowsley. He was already one of my heroes. I remember the honour I felt when he agreed to speak at our first Visioning Conference in Knowsley. I introduced him by saying: ‘I have five heroes: Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Kevin Keegan and Tim Brighouse – and Tim isn’t even at the bottom of that list!’ I needed Tim to help me focus on my moral purpose and to make sure that I did the right things for children and for schools. I also needed him to help me connect with school leaders. Tim gave me two pieces of advice straight away:
Go and see Ted Wragg and get him onside – then he won’t write negative things about the National College in the back of the Times Educational Supplement (a national weekly publication about education issues).Find a way of writing personal cards to head teachers. Even though there are 22,000 schools in England, you can get a lot of powerful messages across through personal contact and it will mean a great deal to them.I took Tim’s advice. I went to see Ted Wragg and asked for his advice on what to do. He was delightful and helpful, though he tragically died less than a year later. With regard to the personal cards, this was already something I had been doing a lot of in Knowsley, but Tim gave me the confidence that it would work at a national level, in spite of the numbers. He could not have been more right about this. Over the next eight years, I wrote personal handwritten cards to hundreds of school leaders – probably more than a thousand – and even today, many years later, I meet people who tell me how much it meant to them. Being a school principal can be such a lonely job, so being thanked or congratulated in a personal way really matters. Tim is not only an authentic leader, he is also a genius.
My third mentor was Tony Mackay. Tony actually had a home in Australia but appeared to spend most of his time on an aeroplane travelling the world. He never seemed to get jet lag because he rarely stayed long enough in one place for his body to know what time it was supposed to be. Tony is the best networker I have ever met and also a world-class facilitator. He was doing lots of work at the time for the DfES and he was also a member of the governing council of the National College. Tony helped me to get in touch with the right people and made sure that I never neglected the importance of forming positive relationships with the key influencers in the system – those who could help me and those who could potentially do me harm.
My final mentor was David Albury. I chose David because he was the author of the fairly critical end-to-end review of the college. I figured that if he knew what was wrong with the place then he could help me to fix it too. This proved to be an excellent move, especially in my first couple of years as CEO.
In my interview for the role, Sir Michael Barber had asked me if I was up to organising a national conference that would inspire and motivate school leaders. I replied that if appointed I had every intention of doing so. Fortunately for me the National College, with support from Sir Iain Hall, who was then on the governing body, had already begun to organise its first ever national conference. It was called Seizing Success and it took place in Birmingham at the International Convention Centre in early March 2005, a few weeks before I commenced my role as CEO. Geoff Southworth was acting CEO and we agreed that he would do the first half of the speech and then hand over to me as ‘CEO designate’. This was my first ever Seizing Success speech. To be honest, I still didn’t know that much about the National College, and I hadn’t spent very long thinking about leadership, for that matter. My theme was how the emerging new challenges of school leadership were mirrored by my new challenges as CEO of the National College.
This theme of talking ‘leader to leader’ proved to be a very powerful one for me over the next 12 years, as I began to develop my own views on leadership at a school level and at a national level. I have always had the utmost respect for school leaders and could never understand the mentality of some of my colleagues in LEAs who were disparaging or dismissive. For me, school leaders have an extraordinarily demanding job, and I can honestly say that I never thought that my job as a director of education in an LEA or as CEO of the National College was harder or easier than theirs – just different. Having a wife who was a secondary head teacher probably helped!
In this speech I made a very important public commitment: I declared that I would personally telephone the chair of each secondary head teachers’ group, each primary head teachers’ group and each special head teachers’ group in each LEA, along with other key stakeholders, and that I would invite them all to attend one of nine regional conferences to discuss the future of the National College. As there were 150 LEAs, I was publicly committing myself to making about 500 telephone calls to school principals within the first few months of being in the role.
This notion of making public commitments and then implementing that commitment became part of my leadership style.
Imperfect leaders make public promises because they are acutely aware of their own weaknesses, and they know that without making public promises they might fail to deliver on something that is really important. It was my way of making sure that I made myself do things that were hard but extremely important. In fact, I had a very tough time trying to make those 500 phone calls. I needed to do them in the space of 10 weeks, which meant that on average I needed to make 10 phone calls per day for 50 consecutive working days. If I hadn’t made a public commitment to do this, I probably would have given up. I had no idea how hard it was going to be.
As the director of education in Knowsley, if I telephoned a school in Knowsley then the school principal invariably took the call. But now that I was telephoning schools from all over the country, often the school office thought that I was trying to sell something and refused to put me through. I often had to call back two or three times to actually get to speak to the principal. But I made all those calls myself – every single one – without going through my PA, and it turned out to be one of the most effective things I did as CEO of the National College. Some principals never forgot that I had called them personally to listen to their views, and the message soon spread in every LEA that the new CEO of the National College wanted to listen to the voice of school leaders.
It also meant that after conducting 500 phone calls with head teachers, and asking them what advice they would give me to improve the National College, I knew more than anyone else in the country what school leaders wanted from the college, which gave me a strong hand when discussing the way forward for the National College with ministers and officials. I learned from this, and from my experiences later, that making public commitments can sometimes be risky, but it can also keep you on track and help to make sure that you do the right thing when you are under pressure.
The speech reproduced below was written at a time when the Every Child Matters agenda was really beginning to take off. This was partly as a result of the tragic death of Victoria Climbié, which could have been prevented if various agencies had shared the information they knew about the child. The Children Act 2004 was passed and schools were now encouraged – and, indeed, required – to work jointly with other agencies in the interests of children. The idea of ‘extended schools’ was also being promoted by the government, with more and more multi-agency services located on school sites and with school buildings open for much longer than the school day.
At the same time, the Building Schools for the Future initiative – led by Schools Minister David Miliband – had started to pour significant additional capital resources for new schools into the system, but only in certain areas. Also, the Tomlinson Report had led to the publication of a white paper on 14–19 education.5 This proposed creating a single unified qualification for academic and vocational studies for students aged 14–19 and, at the time of my speech, this seemed likely to happen. In the end, Prime Minister Tony Blair backed away from the idea, concerned that the ‘gold standard’ of A levels would be damaged. Incidentally, this resulted in the education secretary getting heckled at the annual conference of the Secondary Heads Association (SHA) later that year.
In 2005, the government was also pushing what David Miliband called ‘a new relationship with schools’ which was less ‘top-down’ and suggested that school leaders should be trusted more to get on with things and to make a difference.6 Sir Michael Barber was at this time suggesting that strategies that will take a system from awful to adequate are different from strategies that will move a system from good to great.7 As part of this reduced top-down approach, schools would receive support and challenge not from an inspector or adviser from an LEA, but instead from something new called a school improvement partner (SIP). A SIP would likely be a successful serving head teacher. Now it was all going to be about head teachers helping each other – lateral leadership rather than top-down leadership; school leaders themselves leading the system.
Finally, this speech was delivered at a time when the government was pushing workforce reform. A workforce agreement had been signed with all the teacher and head teacher unions. The agreement stated that teacher workload would be addressed by limiting the number of hours they could be required to work and by adding a greater number of teaching assistants and support staff to the school workforce, thus enabling teachers to focus less on administration and more on actual teaching.
It was against this policy background that, in February 2005, I rather nervously got onto the stage, shook Geoff Southworth’s hand and, looking out at the 400 or so school leaders huddled in the centre of the large and mainly empty auditorium, made the following speech.
Enthusiastic and Invitational Leadership
Seizing Success Conference 2005
I am proud and honoured to be taking up the role as chief executive of the National College. My mum and dad are proud too – not because they understand much about the National College or even because there was an article about me in the Times Educational Supplement, but because I made it into a small column in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. My dad says that if I ever make it into the North Shields Gazette then I will really have made it.
It is, I believe, a very challenging time to be a school leader. And I say ‘school leader’ rather than ‘head teacher’ because I believe in leadership teams and distributive leadership. There is no evidence of an improving work–life balance for school leaders – if anything it is getting worse. Vacancies for head teachers are up 50 per cent since 2000, throwing up challenges about how we develop and attract future school leaders. I say ‘challenges’ but these are also opportunities to think again about succession planning and how we grow tomorrow’s school leaders – research that I know the National College has commenced. The workforce reform agenda is challenging, especially with limited funds, but it also provides great opportunities to rethink the way we do things in schools and how we maximise the expertise of staff.
There also is the need to respond to the demands of the Children Act and the Every Child Matters agenda, with its focus on the extended school, multi-agency working, children’s centres and schools at the heart of their local communities. This poses real issues regarding the changing role of leadership and governance – especially if, in some cases, there is a campus approach, with more than just learning going on. In addition, there are the changes being introduced through the ‘new relationships with schools’, a different Ofsted framework and inspection system, Building Schools for the Future and the white paper on 14–19 education. In fact, we are in a time of more radical change than we have been, in my view, for many years. This is a time of change and uncertainty.
During this time of change, what should leaders be doing?
Clarifying the focus and joining the dots
It is tough as a leader in a school. You want to be ahead of the game and make the right decisions for your school and for the children and young people, but there are so many initiatives that you constantly have to make decisions about how you are going to respond. On the one hand, you don’t want to overload your staff; on the other, you don’t want the school to be left behind. Your job is relentless and exhausting and multifaceted.
How should a school respond to all of the initiatives – national and local?
Well, the weak school leader either lets them all in or lets none of them in. Some schools are what Michael Fullan calls ‘Christmas tree schools’.8 They always join new initiatives. They look good from a distance, with lots of awards and coordinators, but in some cases there is not enough implementation. They never go past the initiative stage into the real implementation phase. Other leaders think they are protecting their staff and their workload by keeping all new initiatives out, but in the end most of these schools become too insular and start to coast or go backwards.
The effective leader is the one who decides which initiatives are right for the school and which ones should be given less of an emphasis. Effective heads are good at connecting the dots to create a coherent whole – they know what is best for their own school community, they know the direction they want to go with their school and they use the appropriate initiatives in the right way in order to get there. You need to be an effective gatekeeper of what is right for your school. Obviously, you will take great care if there are statutory requirements, but for most of these initiatives that is not the case.
I don’t care who is making demands or requests of you – the local education authority, the Department for Education and Skills, the National College for School Leadership – you know best what is right for your school and for your community. If you let everything in you would lose focus. It is not that the initiatives are wrong – they are very often good – it is about timing and about coherence. I think extended schools, the primary strategy, children’s centres, specialist schools status, 14–19 collaboration, school self-evaluation and so on are all good things in themselves, but you can’t do everything.
So, my first question is: are you really clear about the direction and focus that you want for your school? Are you then joining the dots in a coherent way to help you achieve that goal? Are things coherent or incoherent for your staff and your school community?
The same question needs to be asked of myself and the governing council and leadership team of the National College. Are we joining the dots about the college? Is it a coherent, united and focused organisation that knows what it stands for and where it is going? Is it clear about its core business and about which initiatives it should be picking up and which ones it should be saying no to? Does it help you, as school leaders, to make sense of the agenda in schools? I think the college may have tried to do too much, to develop too many initiatives, to say ‘yes’ to too many things. In my view, the time is right for the college to take a step back, to be really clear about what its core business is and then to communicate its role effectively so that everyone understands what it is about. It will then also be in a position to advise ministers effectively on leadership issues. Like you in schools, the National College needs to be clear about its focus, take some clear decisions and join the dots.
Looking outward as well as inward – listening to the community
The children’s services agenda and the emphasis on extended schools throws up new challenges for us. There is a greater understanding that schools can’t transform communities on their own, but that they can play a part by working with others. In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam explains that interconnected communities – communities that talk to each other and engage in activities together – have lower crime, better education results and better care of the vulnerable.9 And as Professor Charles Desforges from Exeter University has demonstrated, the impact on attainment by good parenting is stronger than the impact of the school. He concludes that in terms of attainment at school, if a child had a choice between moving from having a bottom quartile parent to having a top quartile parent or moving from a bottom quartile school to a top quartile school, the child should change the parent every time.10 That is why we have to engage with our parents as well as with our children in this grand endeavour, in whatever way we can, even though that can be tough. We need to be outward facing, connecting with parents and the community.
It is also why we need to ensure that we listen to the voice of young people. Not what we think they are saying and feeling, but what they are actually saying and feeling.
The challenge for us is connecting with the individual young person – at their level and with their issues. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but we should take their views seriously. We recently carried out a local survey in Knowsley of young people’s views about what they wanted from school. In the top 12 were, of course, things like doing well in exams, developing skills for a future job or career, but also things like feeling valued and having decent toilets. As a former head teacher friend of mine says, ‘School improvement should always start with the toilets.’
We have come a long way on listening to the voices of young people, and I am pleased to see that school councils are flourishing all over the country. But I think what is still not as common as it should be is young people genuinely involved in their own self-assessment and giving structured feedback on the effectiveness of the school’s policies.
The same challenges apply to the National College. Just as your key clients are children and their parents, our key clients are school leaders and future school leaders. Many of you know about the National College, but how many of you or your colleagues around the country think of it as your college? To what extent is the National College listening to its key clients – leaders in schools?
I like the quote from Heifetz and Linsky which says that effective leaders spend time on the balcony as well as on the dance floor.11 That’s where the National College comes in. The role of the college is to help you spend quality time on the balcony. The National College – your college – therefore needs to ensure that it is flexible and responsive to your development needs. It needs to ensure that schools have a strong voice in its development and ownership of its programmes.
We will be running nine regional conferences in June and July to hear directly from heads and from other key stakeholders on how we can move the college forward together. In the next few months, I will personally be telephoning the chairs of the secondary head teachers, primary head teachers and, where they exist, special head teacher groups in each local authority to invite them to come along to the regional conferences with another primary and secondary head teacher colleague. I will also be telephoning directors of children’s services to ask them to attend too. We need to listen to your voice.
The college also needs to be building on the best national and international research and applying it to its development programmes so that you know that when you participate in a college programme it will be up to date and leading edge.
