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PO Box 3160 Mentone East, Victoria 3194, Australia
Phone: (03) 8686 9077
Website: www.grifteducation.com
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Code: GE1426
ISBN: 9780645931426 (Print)
ISBN: 9781923198029 (eBook)
Printed in Australia
About the authors
Jane Danvers
Jane Danvers is currently the principal of Kambala in Sydney Australia. Previously the principal of South Australia’s renowned Wilderness School and was the inaugural principal of University Senior College.
Jane’s leadership extends beyond the school gates. As the Presiding Member of the South Australian Certificate of Education board (SACE) and Chair of JamFactory, she has a deep understanding of the intricacies and challenges of leading others. Jane plays an active role in shaping policy and driving positive change across education sectors and in the broader community. She sits on numerous industry-related committees including the Committee for Economic Development of Australia's (CEDA) SA/NT State Advisory Council board, the Duke of Edinburgh Award South Australia Friends Committee and the Premier’s Council for Women.
Throughout her professional life, Jane has contributed to the wider educational debate and championed pedagogical advancement in schools. Over her career, she has been a continuous learner, completing a Master in Education at the University of South Australia, Oxford University’s High Performance Leadership Programme and Harvard University’s Leading Learning that Matters Project.
Jane has presented at numerous national and international education conferences, including the Global Forum on Girls’ Education, uLead and the International Conference on Thinking. She has mentored new leaders at the Association Heads of Independent Schools of Australia New Members Conference, and the Association of Independent Schools South Australia Leading Learning Program. An advocate for gender equality and diversity, Jane was recently quoted in Madonna King’s new book Being 14. She is proud to have overseen the development of academic scholarships for adolescent girls in rural Nepal.
In 2013, Jane was awarded the AISSA Noel Volk Excellence Award and the Principals Australia Institute’s John Laing Award.
Heather De Blasio
An author, speaker, learning designer, facilitator and coach Heather De Blasio specialises in growing great leaders and teams. With thirty years’ experience of leadership at senior and executive levels, Heather works closely with leaders and teams, both internationally and nationally. Her work centres on supporting leaders to prioritise the growth of self and others in the ongoing pursuit of human fulfilment and high levels of learning for all. In her highly sought after keynotes, workshops and masterclasses, she creates a climate of high challenge and high support, whereby leaders at all levels and stages of their careers are empowered to find and connect with their purpose, and help others to find significance in their work and contribution.
Heather is the co-author of Mastering Meetings That Matter (2023), Five Ways of Being (2020) and Assessment for Teaching (2nd ed. 2017). A former Director of Learning and Teaching, Heather is currently a Training Associate & Programs and Learning Advisor at Grift Education and the Director of Leadership and Human Potential at Wilderness School. She is Australia’s first Accredited Consultant for the UK-based Resilient Leaders Elements™ program and a member of the Resilient Leaders Elements Centre of Excellence.
Gavin Grift
Gavin Grift is the founder and CEO of Grift Education. Gavin’s passion, commitment, humour and highly engaging style have made him one of Australia’s most in-demand presenters. Through his keynotes, seminars and coaching services, Gavin connects with national and international audiences on how to cultivate authentic collaboration, build success in others and genuinely commit to reflective practice. His belief in the development of defined professional autonomy for educators both challenges and connects the heads and hearts of his audiences.
Gavin has held numerous educational leadership positions during his professional career, working as a cluster educator, leading teacher, assistant principal and director of professional learning. He also served as the executive director of Hawker Brownlow Professional Learning Solutions and the managing director of Solution Tree Australia.
He has led the development of professional learning communities (PLC) networks across Australia, culminating in the establishment of the Centre for Professional Learning Communities. He is committed to growing the legacy of Richard and Rebecca DuFour’s work through the Professional Learning Communities at Work® process, which has been transforming schools in Australia since its pilot program launched in Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra in 2010.
Gavin currently also serves as a training associate for Thinking Collaborative’s Cognitive Coaching® and Teacher Leadership seminars and for Professional Learning Communities at Work®. He is also the co-founder of the Centre of Learning Architects, which supports both teachers and leaders in becoming students of their own professional practice.
Gavin is co-author of numerous acticles and bestselling books, including Emerge (2023), Mastering Meetings That Matter (2023), Collaborative Teams That Work (2020), Teachers as Architects of Learning (2018), Transformative Collaboration (2016) and the revised Australian edition of Learning by Doing: A handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work (2018).
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we are indebted to our colleagues: those who we have worked with, led and have had the privilege to learn from over the years.
Many individuals have been instrumental to both our development as leaders and in the way we view education and leadership, including David Perkins, Flossie Chua, Art Costa, Bob Garmston, Bruce Wellman, Richard and Rebecca DuFour, Patrick Griffin and Robert Marzano. To all of you, we say thank you.
We also want to thank the wonderful and insightful individuals and teams at Thinking Collaborative and Project Zero for the countless things we have learned through our individual and collective journeys alongside them.
We are grateful to our partners, Tony, Robert and Ryan, for their love and support.
Ultimately, we acknowledge and are thankful for our own collaboration. It would not have been possible to create this resource without the open-hearted honesty and collective wisdom that we developed through our work together.
Introduction
Who are we?
We bring three diverse backgrounds to this body of work. From the lens of a principal, professional learning provider, staff leader, curriculum director, coach and classroom teacher, the ideas outlined in this book come from rich insights developed through working in schools with leaders, teachers and students. Our leadership diversity is the strength of what we offer.
We have been privileged and fortunate to have had many opportunities to work with and learn from a multitude of systems, schools, educators, leading thinkers, researchers and exceptional practitioners, and then apply these lessons to our own schools and contexts.
We are authors of books, papers, blogs and newsletters, as well as the self-authors of our own leadership stories. We have been inspired by our own leadership journeys, both in our search to make meaning of that learning and in the pursuit of our own growth.
In our leadership roles, each of us has committed to both our own learning and the growth of those that we lead. We are drawn together by our faith in the humanity of leadership – how you work with people and how you grow yourself and others.
We are friends and colleagues who have been drawn together by a deep commitment to and passion for influencing the thinking about education and, in particular, leadership.
What led to this work?
In our work with leaders in Australia and internationally, we have witnessed a common desire to find meaningful ways to build capability in those who lead schools and, by extension, everyone who is instrumental in supporting student growth. As educators, we share a common commitment to the learning entitlement of young people. Yet there appears to be a mismatch between this commitment and the effort devoted to the learning entitlement of our leaders.
It is problematic to have one culture of learning expected in the classroom when the same principles do not apply to the wider school community. What message are we sending to students about learning when we do not apply this to ourselves? If schools are focusing their efforts on classroom cultures that develop thinkers and learners, can we say the same thing about our work with teachers and, importantly, those who lead our teachers?
Driven to find out what it truly means to build capacity in those who we work with, we found the literature on educational leadership limiting. Much of what we have come across is centred on a competency-based approach, through which leaders are encouraged to learn and apply skills without necessarily considering how they need to embody the personhood of leadership. We have seen the need for a different way of talking about leadership identity from both a research and a practical perspective. Over time it has become apparent to us that work on self must precede work with others.
We have become increasingly certain that the cultural change required of schools today can only eventuate in sustainable ways when each layer of the organisation has a focus on learning that affects individuals, collaborative teams, leadership personnel and the wider school community – in short, the whole organisation. We have come to understand that schools must have a shared belief about leadership and invest the time and resources to grow the capacity of all who lead. In this way, we can ignite the learning opportunities for everyone.
We believe that for student learning to flourish, we must also commit to the learning entitlement of every leader in our schools.
What is our aim?
Five Ways of Being is a new way of thinking about our impact as leaders. Traditionally, leaders in schools have focused on curriculum, resources, strategy and structure, but we believe their primary purpose should be the business of developing people – particularly those who influence the learning and growth of others. We want to give people authentic tools that lead to real change.
We are committed to researching theories of thinking and learning to assist in our development as leaders. We are steadfast in our commitment to becoming leaders who enable.
The core purpose of leadership in schools is to lead learning. That is what leaders of learning commit to. It is what defines them as a leader of learning and is the key ingredient for ensuring better outcomes for students and educators. In our profession, a great deal of time, thinking, research, prioritisation, system and strategy is centred on enabling schools to be more learning focused. Yet, the language we use is problematic. Terms like ‘professional learning teams’ and ‘leaders of learning’ are often used indiscriminately. Just labelling something does not give it meaning.
The challenge is that there has to be clarity around the terminology and actualisation of what it truly means to lead in schools. The conceptualisation and enactment of leading learning requires clear exposition if we are to fully realise the potential that lies within each school community. Our premise is that every academic leader in the school is a Learning Leader.
We are very clear on our use of the term. We define Learning Leaders as those who gain the self-knowledge and skills to support and guide their colleagues’ acquisition of the selfknowledge and skills required for educators and students to learn successfully as part of the broader mission of becoming a truly learning-focused organisation.
The core mission of Learning Leaders is to enable learning and growth in others. We propose that Learning Leaders:
• are students of their own leadership
• are intentional about their own leadership practice
• facilitate their colleagues’ and students’ self-work
• connect mind and heart with action
• reflect on their impact in supporting the learning of everyone else
• are learning all the time
• are willing to examine the way they think, in order to say and do things differently
• understand that self-knowledge comes before knowledge of others and commitments to action
• prioritise being before doing in both themselves and those they serve in education.
How to use this book
This book addresses three key questions:
1. How do we genuinely lead learning in others?
2. How do we create an environment for our colleagues to become Learning Leaders?
3. Who do we need to become to make this happen?
From the outset of this book, we are more interested in who we become and what we discover as we work on the work of leading rather than simply accomplishing the task of leadership. This is what Learning Leaders do. We unpack why the success of school communities is intrinsically bound to the deep work of leadership. We stake our claim that leadership is not about doing but about being and explain who effective leaders should be.
A Way of Being is the nature or essence of leadership. It is about who you are becoming in your ongoing pursuit to learn about yourself and those you work with. In this book, we outline the Five Ways of Being that encourage Learning Leaders to look internally for the answers to the challenges they face:
• being trusting
• being brave
• being a storyteller
• being purposeful
• being growth focused.
These Five Ways of Being are underpinned by fundamental beliefs about learning. To what degree you connect with these Ways of Being and seek to understand them further will, in some ways, depend upon how you feel about and connect to these beliefs.
Underpinning beliefs for the Five Ways of Being
Being trusting
Learning Leaders believe that people are inherently good. They understand that highquality relationships are critical to the work they do. They know that trust is foundational to success.
Being brave
Learning Leaders believe that true learning comes from living with discomfort. They see challenge as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Being a storyteller
Learning Leaders believe that we make meaning through story. They communicate a compelling narrative to bring the learning vision of their school to life.
Being purposeful
Learning Leaders believe that intentionality shapes our reality. They are thoughtful and deliberate in what they think, say and do every day.
Being growth focused
Learning Leaders believe that everyone can learn. They are committed to practising their leadership and making the growth of those they lead their primary purpose.
Schools who embrace the Five Ways of Being accept that what we expect of and for our students is what we expect of and for our teachers and leaders as well.
Ultimately, the Five Ways of Being outlined in this book are the key levers to genuinely move the emphasis from what we do as leaders to who we need to become and can become. It promotes the search for leaders to address the following questions: who have I been, who am I now and who must I become to enable the learning and growth of others? We contend that who Learning Leaders are is made manifest in what they think, do and say every day.
Chapter 1 contextualises our sense of urgency for a different way of thinking about leadership – how it might be conceived, enacted and developed. We position our thinking about leadership through the research that informs and influences us and the broader educational leadership space. We provide a rationale as to why this way of leading is important for the future of our schools and our students.
Chapters 2 to 6 unpack each way of being and provide a series of practical strategies for building each leadership capacity.
Our index of strategies (see page 123) makes it easy to dip in and out of the text. We understand how difficult it is in the daily rhythm of schools to take time to stop and reflect, to challenge old habits and invite new ways of thinking and acting. We have found having easily accessible prompts reminds us how to be intentional Learning Leaders, even when times are tough, and we are short on time.
Who is this book for?
This book provides a road map of strategies to build the capacity of every leader in every school. It is for principals, deputies, senior leaders and middle leaders. It is for anyone who is responsible for others’ learning.
Finally ...
This book shifts the balance from a more formulaic and competency-based view of leadership to one that truly captures the spirit of human endeavour that is so critical to the work of education and educators.
It is our firm belief that helplessness and hopelessness must be extinguished in our schools, because the facts are that these things do exist. We have seen it, researched it, felt it and lived it.
Five Ways of Being helps to douse the flames of disillusionment by providing leaders with an avenue for hope, permission to be hopeful and a blueprint to instil in others the possibilities that hope brings.
Changing times and the need for a new paradigm Chapter 1
There are thousands of books on leadership and no shortage of theories and models evangelising best practice. Each of these is shaped by and, in some ways, shapes the times from which it emerges. This book stands on the shoulders of the thinkers and writers who have gone before it.
We wish to acknowledge these traditions because examination of the evolution of leadership theories and models helps to contextualise our sense of urgency for a different way of thinking about leadership – how it might be conceived, enacted and developed and how it might be a way of being and becoming.
In these ways, Five Ways of Being is positioned both within and without: within the tradition of leadership thinking and yet without as it suggests a new way forward.
Theories of leadership
We have all lived through a time when it was assumed that you were born with certain traits, including those that predestined you for leadership. We can recall educators who walked among us and through our classrooms and schools confidently naming those who would become future leaders. They were seen as natural or born leaders. Often, such paragons were the most talkative and extroverted individuals with the biggest personalities.
There were also certain traits that leaders were meant to have: a natural way of putting people at ease, charisma and the ability to instil confidence in both others and themselves.
Over time, and especially in the last twenty years, a more humanistic view of leadership has emerged. The dialogue has centred more on what it means to be emotionally intelligent and people oriented. Most recently there has been an emphasis on transformational leadership, where leaders are seen as those individuals who transform organisations and whose actions are authentic at the same time.
Table 1.1 highlights how the most prominent models of leadership have evolved over the past century and a half in Western society. It includes the characteristics of each leadership model and the assumptions that underpin the theory. Each model gives us an insight into traditional views of leadership, how they have changed and what they have emphasised.
Table 1.1 A summary of the prominent models of leadership
Models of leadership Characteristics
Great Man and Trait Theory
(See Bass & Bass, 2008; Carlyle, 1841)
Great Leaders:
• are born not made
• are intrinsically exceptional
• inherit key personality, social, physical or intellectual traits that differentiate them from non-leaders
• have a natural desire to lead.
Assumptions Leadership is dependent on genetics and cannot be learned or developed.
Autocratic Leadership (Authoritarian)
(See Cherry, 2019a)
Assumptions
Participative Leadership (Democratic)
(See Somech, 2005)
Autocratic Leaders:
• are hierarchical
• hold all authority and responsibility
• make decisions independently
• rarely consider employee’s suggestions
• have significant control over staff.
Autocratic Leaders maintain control by providing clear expectations for what needs to be done, when it should be done and how it should be done. There is little ownership or buy-in by staff, which potentially stifles creativity and innovation.
Participative Leaders:
• believe in collaboration and teamwork
• encourage group participation in decision-making
• believe people are more committed to actions when they are involved
