Claim 3: The ways in which leaders apply these leadership practices– not the practices themselves – demonstrate responsiveness to, ratherthan dictation by, the contexts in which they work
Much has been written about the high degree of sensitivity successful leaders bring to the contexts in which they work. Some would go so far as to claim that ‘context is everything’. However, based on our review of the evidence, this reflects a superficial view of what successful leaders do.Without doubt, successful leaders are sensitive to context, but this does not mean they use qualitatively different practices in every different context. It means, rather, that they apply contextually sensitive combinations of the basic leadership practices described above. By way of example, consider the leadership of schools in special measures during each stage of being turned around. Beginning at the end of a period of declining performance, these stages are typically characterised, in both corporateand school literature, as early turnaround (or crisis stabilisation) and late turnaround (or achievingand sustaining success). Evidence suggests differences in the application of each of our four core sets of successful leadership practices.
Building vision and setting directions. This category is particularly important for turnaround school leaders at the early crisis stabilisation stage, but the context requires enactment of these practices with a sense of urgency, quickly developing clear, short-term priorities. At the late turnaround stage, much more involvement of staff is necessary in crafting and revising the school’s direction, so that ownership of the direction becomes widespread, deeply held and relatively resistant to the vagaries of future leadership succession.
Understanding and developing people. This category of practices is essential in all stages ofschool turnarounds, according to evidence from both US and UK contexts. Although this evidence is not yet sufficiently fine-grained to inform us about how these practices are enacted, it is consistent in highlighting its importance in all contexts.
Redesigning the organisation. These practices are quite central to the work of turnaround leaders. For example, transition from early to later turnaround stages depends on organisational reculturing. However, much of what leaders do in the early stage of the turnaround process entails restructuring to improve the quality of communication throughout the organisation and setting the stage for the development of new cultural norms related to performance and the more distributed forms of leadership required to achieve and sustain high levels of performance.
Managing the teaching and learning programme. All the practices within this category have been associated with successful turnaround leadership but their enactments change over time. For example, the flexibility leaders need in order to recruit staff with the dispositions and capacities required to begin the turnaround process often means negotiating for special circumstances with ocal authorities and unions. Ongoing staffing of the school at the later turnaround stage, however, cannot be sustained outside the framework of established policies and regulations.
Additional evidence for the enactment of these basic successful leadership practices in contextually sensitive forms can now be found in relation both to highly accountable policy contexts and to the contexts found in schools serving highly diverse student populations.