The Blameless Bureaucrat
The Pondering President Enjoys having robust, communal conversations where everyone’s voice is heard and all options are explored. The flip-side to this is that the PPs fail to actually make a decision or get anything done. A big fan of meetings, committees and sub-committees, PPs probably just love saying the word ‘reconvene’, and fear the possibility of a negative outcome, so prefer to sit on their hands rather than using them to get anything significant accomplished. The legacy of this type of leader is a lack of progress, and a complete failure to keep up with the times. In education, this can mean dwindling academic results, outdated departmental procedures or unimaginative pedagogies.
The Manic Monarch In stark contrast to the Pondering President, the Manic Monarch loves to make a decision, often when there’s not even a decision to be made! Enthusiastic and committed, yet hasty and ill-informed, MMs like to be seen as innovative and visionary, but in reality are merely erratic and illogical. MMs fail to consult those who the decision might affect, and as a result, stability under the MMs rule is not a common theme.
The Fair-Weather Pharaoh FWPs love being the centre of attention when things are going well, but are sure to be missing-in-action when things go a little pear-shaped. FWPs enjoy the accolades of a good idea – even if they’re not the one who came up with it – but are quick to pass the buck when something doesn’t quite go as planned. The rule under FWPs soon becomes characterised by individualism as followers begin to keep their innovations to themselves through a lack of trust. This can result in stale teachings, re-hashed routines and uninspired teachers and students.
70
Whenever you go to the BB with a problem or issue which needs to be addressed, the immediate response you’ll get is, “It wasn’t me.” BBs will blame the students, the parents, another teacher or “someone down in admin” before they take responsibility themselves. What they fail to recognise is that, regardless of who’s at fault, it’s their responsibility to sort out a solution. Sadly, they are too busy shifting blame and looking for scapegoats to get down to doing what they’re being paid to do. Ironically, BBs develop over time because of the fact that what goes wrong usually is their fault, and so they become quite adept at deflecting the blame from their desk. This Art of Deflection is initially effective, but followers soon begin seeing through BBs and their excuses. The upshot of this is that the BB’s followers are forced to develop as leaders themselves, or else risk being a passenger on a rudderless boat.
The Over-Organised Officer If OOOs spent as much time doing their job as they did organising their day, they could not only run their department and their school with their hands tied behind their back, but they could also trot out the National Curriculum seamlessly in the space of 12 short months. OOOs have laptops full of spreadsheets detailing budget expenditure, co-curricular hours and calorie intake-to-burn ratio per hour, and their colour-coded and intimately detailed diary is the centrepiece of an immaculately presented office desk. This systematic order would all be admirable if only it didn’t come at the expense of the job OOOs have been employed to undertake. Their department is in disarray with teachers teaching the wrong content and students five or six weeks behind in their assessments. But at least the OOO will be able to stick to the annual photocopying allocation right down to the last leaf!!
The Stressed Sergeant SSs are always flat out like a lizard drinking. Their desk is a mountainous landscape of papers and files which spill out onto the carpet and their diaries are a mess of notations, meeting times and Post-it notes which are harder to decipher than the Da Vinci Code. SSs like to give off the impression that they have more work to do than any other member on staff, but the reality is that they are quite simply disorganised or
incapable of prioritising. Their way of disguising this fact is to always seem to be in a hurry. As a result, any issue which needs to be addressed at short notice is given precious little attention, if any. Not only does this affect their own job, but also those who depend on the SS getting things done efficiently.
The Contented Colonel CCs feel as though they’ve worked hard all their life to get where they are today, and now deserve to kick back and enjoy the view. Often intelligent and knowledgeable in their field, once at the top, CCs tend to switch into cruise control, abandoning all ambition and vision in exchange for relaxation and mediocrity. They can do their job to a satisfactory level, but all progress will be put on hold as CCs know that they can sit quietly in their position for the rest of their careers before retiring to a life of solitude in the suburbs. Their followers lack guidance and affirmation, and therefore wind up despondent or similarly lazy. Of course, all of this is not to say that there aren’t competent leaders in our schools, but what it does highlight is that those leaders who do their job efficiently and effectively also manage to carry the burden of the bungling, ineffectual pretenders they have around them. And we should thank our lucky stars everyday that we have them there to keep things ticking along!! THE MASKED EDUCATOR
Some of our richest learning occurs when we just don’t get it.