Claim 2: Almost all successful leaders draw on the same repertoire ofbasic leadership practices.
This claim emerges from recent research initiatives, and we believe that its implications for leadership development have not yet been fully grasped. The basic assumptions underlying the claim are that (a) the central task for leadership is to help improve employee performance; and (b) such performance is a function of employees’ beliefs, values, motivations, skills and knowledge and the conditions in which they work. Successful school leadership, therefore, will include practices helpful in addressing each of these inner and observable dimensions of performance – particularly in relation to teachers, whose performance is central to what pupils learn.
Recent syntheses of evidence collected in both school and non-school contexts provide considerable evidence about four sets of leadership qualities and practices in different contexts that accomplish this goal. We have organised these core practices into four categories: building vision and setting directions; understanding and developing people; redesigning the organisation; and managing the teaching and learning programme. Each includes more specific sub-sets of practices: 14 in total. To illustrate how widespread is the evidence in their support, we have compared each set of practices to a widely known taxonomy of managerial behaviours developed by Yukl through a comprehensivesynthesis of research conducted in non-school contexts.
Building vision and setting directions. This category of practices carries the bulk of the effort to motivate leaders’ colleagues. It is about the establishment of shared purpose as a basic stimulant for one’s work. The more specific practices in this category are building a shared vision, fostering the acceptance of group goals and demonstrating high-performance expectations. These specific practices reflect, but also add to, three functions in Yukl’s managerial taxonomy: motivating and inspiring, clarifying roles and objectives, and planning and organising.
Understanding and developing people. While practices in this category make a significant contribution to motivation, their primary aim is building not only the knowledge and skills that teachers and other staff need in order to accomplish organisational goals but also the dispositions (commitment, capacity and resilience) to persist in applying the knowledge and skills. The more specific practices in this category are providing individualised support and consideration, fostering intellectual stimulation, and modelling appropriate values and behaviours. These specific practices not only reflect managerial behaviours in Yukl’s taxonomy (supporting, developing and mentoring, recognising, and rewarding) but, as more recent research has demonstrated, are central to the ways in which successful leaders integrate the functional and the personal.
Redesigning the organisation. The specific practices included in this category are concerned with establishing work conditions which, for example, allow teachers to make the most of their motivations, commitments and capacities. School leadership practices explain significant variations in teachers’ beliefs about and responses to their working conditions. Specific practices are building collaborative cultures, restructuring [and reculturing] … the organisation, building productive relations with parents and the community, and connecting the school to its wider environment. Comparable practices in Yukl’s managerial taxonomy include managing conflict and team building, delegating, consulting, and networking.
Managing the teaching and learning programme. As with Redesigning the organisation, the specific practices included in this category aim to create productive working conditions for teachers, in this case by fostering organisational stability and strengthening the school’s infrastructure. Specific practices are staffing the teaching programme, providing teaching support, monitoring school activity and buffering staff against distractions from their work. Yukl’s taxonomy includes monitoring as a key part of successful leaders’ behaviours.
These four categories of leadership practices, and the 14 more specific sets of behaviours they encompass, capture the results of a large and robust body of evidence about what successful leaders do. Leaders do not do all of these things all of the time, of course (you don’t have to create a shared vision every day), and the way they go about each set of practices will certainly vary by context, as we discuss in the next section. That said, the core practices provide a powerful new source of guidance for practising leaders,as well as a framework for initial and continuing leadership development.