The Noble School Leader. Matthew Taylor

1 Seven Invisible Obstacles to Strong School Leadership

      Every school and educational organization is led by leaders who are seeking to develop and get better. All are learning skills and knowledge that will make them stronger, but few of them are able to focus on what is truly holding them back from succeeding, or from reaching their next level of personal growth.

      The most significant obstacles to growth are “below the surface” of skills and knowledge. This book will refer to what lies below the surface as mindsets. Mindsets are made up of the elements that dictate our habits of human interaction: values, beliefs, motives, traits, and other personal attributes.

      Every leader arrives in their role with mindsets that serve them and mindsets that get in their way, or self‐limiting mindsets. Leaders will work through some of these self‐limiting mindsets on their own, but with others they will hit a brick wall. These more elusive, deep‐seated habits of mind and behavior have been with leaders most of their lives. They tend to be so deeply engrained that leaders—and people in general—think of them as “just the way I am.” When we step into the role of leadership for the first time or are promoted to a new level, these self‐limiting mindsets often become more pronounced or take on new significance.

      Over the last decade I have been immersed in the coaching and training of adaptive leadership—the human, emotions‐driven side of leadership where there are no right or wrong answers and decisions come down to choosing between competing values. Developing leaders through this adaptive lens, my colleagues and I have noticed several archetypes emerging in the kinds of self‐limiting mindsets that are common to school leaders at all levels. While these archetypes aren't new (most are leadership types that have been widely studied in the fields of social psychology and business), we are bringing them together in a new way and applying a new lens to addressing them. We have identified a group of seven self‐limiting mindsets that we see in various combinations across leaders, roles, and schools.

They are:

      The Transactional Manager

There is much written about the transactional manager management approach (McClesky 2014; Spahr 2014; and Hargis et al. 2011).¹ My use of this term emphasizes its technical, compliance‐driven aspects that can demotivate stakeholders when the approach is overused.

Transactional managers assume that the world is a mostly rational place, that adult human beings are rational creatures that receive clear (to me) information, process it (like I do), and then behave according to the expectations I have communicated: a simple transaction. They under‐prioritize understanding other people's needs, and inevitably tell too much and listen too little. When these leaders do not know where their people are and what they need, they are likely to misdiagnose the problem and choose the wrong leadership action to accomplish their objectives. These errors can lead the transactional manager to make the fundamental attribution error—the assumption that people themselves are the reason for their lack of growth and not the conditions in which they are working, which the leader is largely responsible for creating (Heath and Heath 2010).²

      The Unintended Enabler

The concepts of unintended enabler and negative controller (the next self‐limiting mindset) have been applied effectively to the education sector in the last decade by the CT3 professional development group (CT3 2018).³

Unintended enablers are uncomfortable with conflict and are afraid of damaging relationships. These leaders often hold a negative view of positional power. When acting from an unintended enabler mindset, leaders default to attempting to build or preserve positive relationship and inspire stakeholders, even when those approaches will not achieve the outcomes they desire. Enablers “let things go this time” and retreat to silence when observing behavior that doesn't meet their standards.

      When leaders enable, what they allow becomes the unwritten rule. When their teams and students know that they are not going to be held accountable, leaders lose credibility, and inadvertently communicate that they don't believe in their people. Schools led by unintended enablers may be positive on the surface but lack real investment in learning, and they are marked by underperformance in all substantive areas.

      The Negative Controller

Negative controllers assume that, when people struggle, there is something wrong with them (CT3 2018).⁴ When driven by the negative controller mindset, a leader who sees a teacher struggling thinks, “This teacher is struggling because he/she is not committed, or not willing to work hard enough, or blames kids, or is an excuse maker, or a racist.” Like the transactional manager, the negative controller misdiagnoses leadership challenges by making the fundamental attribution error—the assumption that people themselves are the reason for their lack of growth, rather than the conditions in which they are working. This assumption lets the negative controller off the hook. It also leads to negative relationships, insecure learners, and an emotionally toxic organizational culture.

      The Pacesetter

The pacesetter is one of Daniel Goleman's six leadership styles (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 2002).⁵ Pacesetters are driven by an admirable desire to reach and exemplify excellence. In schools, excellence is often equated with the social justice–related drive to close the opportunity gap for students, as measured by outcomes on achievement tests. This is mission‐driven work that attracts mission‐driven people. Leaders create organizational cultures around this goal that both deeply resonate with educators and create intense urgency. School leaders often assume that embodying this ideal means sacrificing themselves for the mission. This is an emotionally contagious phenomenon. When school leaders lead this way, their teams respond in kind.

While this approach may work for short periods of time, such as during start‐up or turnaround, it is not sustainable. Staff perceive their pacesetter leader as not caring about them as people. Schools and leaders who attempt to maintain the pacesetter approach to teaching and learning experience chronic stress. Teachers pass on their stress to students, who respond in kind. Performance of both adults and students decreases. Over time, there is significant teacher and leader attrition. The constant turnover of staff leads to even more urgency to develop new people quickly, which intensifies the pacesetter