2010 Council Meeting Updated 29 July 2010

John MacBeath - Leadership: Paradoxes of Leadership in an Age of Accountability:

Click here to download a copy of the complete paper in PDF format (900Kb file).

Click here to download a copy of his PowerPoint presentation in PDF format (885Kb file).

• In contrast to England, Scotland has no national testing and no national targets. There are 5 priority study areas, all with the same weighting.

• There is a new theology of leadership (e.g. as espoused by Daniel Goleman). The business model of leadership seems to be taking over in the literature. There has been a move from logic to intuition in leadership. Also from consensus to paradox, high reliability to fallibility, heroic to shared leadership, authoritative certainty to confident uncertainty. All these moves are part of the new theology of leadership. Model needs to be tested in different countries. Book: Images of Organisation - Gareth Morgan.

• What are the new leaders? - they do not lead by charisma, but by humility; they are plough horses, not show horses.

• Found that organisations that survive are led by people with a passion for their mission.

• We are only in the foothills of understanding learning.

• Cheng Kai Ming - writes about 'smart organisations' in which decisions are made at the front line, knowledge is created there. They have just-in-time on demand learning, integration of knowledge, versatility not specialist, ...

• School leadership - education in school is an finished business, a custodial function, an inclusive remit (strive for it even if we do not achieve it), a multiplicity of accountabilities, a moral purpose, a subversive intent.

• "If there's one rule in life it's the need to accessorise" - BA shopping magazine. This rich complacent sex-crazy first world in which we live has more and more info and less and less wisdom.

• In a global context there is a manufactured crisis (sputnik - schools failing, MACOS) Then the next manufactured crisis, then another panacea, and so on - annually we have crises from the press and from politicians, the 'magnificent myth' (e.g. the problem lies within the classrooms, the strategy is to visit other classrooms, the solution is to transfer practice - problem and solution not as simple as in these statements - e.g. Whole class teaching from Taiwan because of their results on the PISA results - very good at sitting for tests - need to tackle whole society issues - so we should watch, learn, don't copy - have to pay attention to the social capital outside the school as well as inside - e.g. High in families in Soweto. Plato's writing about three types of people), the improvement illusion (individual (assessment for learning) to class - summative to school - testing for accountability to national - data for parental choice to international - data for benchmarking. The further from the source of the data, the less reliable the data becomes.)

• Magnificent myth as well: The Barber quartet - uninformed prescription 1980s (top left), uninformed professionalism 1970s (top right), informed prescription 1990s (lower left), informed professionalism 2000s (lower right).

• S.M. Carter - No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools - book.

• "There is no school in England that can show over a period of more than years that they are improving - by using the usual attainment data." (Grey) - so we need to measure different ways of measuring student achievement - e.g. Disposition (motivation, learning to learn)  

• We must get better at managing paradox. E.g. collaborate but in a competitive environment.

• On The Psychology of Military Incompetence - Norman F. Dixon. P. 24 and 265.

• The power - trust equation - do we trust our leaders? Power has an addictive compulsion. "Power without trust eats up its own basis and trust without power can not survive" - Moos. Sources of power - formal, control of resources, use of rules, control of decisions, control of technology, networks, etc. We must push up trust and push down power.

• The responsibility virus - where people assume minimal responsibility for success because they have learned to do that.

• Learning disabilities are tragic in children but fatal in organisations.

• We must reframe power from self as central to self as learning from others - to assess and deploy our collective intelligence ( rather than 'get them to see it my way').

• Distributed leadership - described in the Bible in Exodus Ch 18, Verses 17-22:

• Change often comes from 'butterflies' (a small butterfly flapping its wings in New Delhi will start a tornado in Florida).

• Stuck? Good! Now is your chance to learn something. Find a friend, form an idea, test it out.

• We must also develop greater student leadership.