• 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.14 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.15 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.16 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.