FEATURE STORY

Trump-style or more Ardern?

Biologists identify just two styles of leadership – the dominator and the influencer. As current world events have shown, these styles have different levels of effectiveness. So how do they play out in schools?

IT is the first day back at work after a long northern hemisphere summer holiday and it is fair to assembly hall is flat. Very flat. Everyone is wishing they were anywhere but here as their body clocks try to adjust to the earliest rise they have had in weeks and their minds slip forw ard to envisaging the coming problematic months. After a few minutes delay, the head of school confidently strides up to the podium to deliver his welcome address to the throng, who are willing him to set the tone and deliver inspiration to take on the challenges of the upcoming year. He begins well enough, by enthusiastically describing his joy this morning at the return to school; literally jumping out of bed at the first ring of his alarm as he couldn’t wait to get back to work supporting and developing the young people who w ould be coming to school in the year ahead. In his next breath, he tells us that, of course, if his lottery numbers had come up over the summer, he would not have been here, instead enjoying his new found wealth in more salubrious surroundings.

For me, this vignette typifies the ‘dominator’ style of school leader. This head teacher attempted to coerce a positive energy in the room through an exaggerated enthusiasm that quickly gave way to reveal the underlying self-centred nature of his

BY GORDON CAIRNS

sa y the general mood of the teaching staff in the

personality. He could not hide for more than a few

minutes how he actually felt about the return to work, believing his own personal agenda was more important than any vision he might share with his staff.

Of course, he is not alone in this style of leader ship. The world’s response to both COVID-19 and the upcoming US elections has brought into sharp focus the different natures of the people we

choose to be our leaders, creating an opportune moment to reflect on our own leadership styles and how our schools are led. And while there

“... unfortunately today we seem to have a plethora of dominating leaders from across the world’s continents...”

may be myriad different types of people who bec ome leaders, whether on the world stage or more locally in a school, it seems there are just a few categories of governance that these individu als fall into.

While some schools of business psychology see leadership splitting into four styles: dominator, influencer, manipulator or persuader; evolutionary biologists actuall y identify only the first two categories, where the influencer leads through their personal prestige. The more moderate political world of the past would have made finding well known current examples of each leadership style a difficult task, but unfortu nately today we seem to have a plethora of dominating leaders from across the world’s continents; Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Jair Bolsinaro spring easily to mind.

On the other hand, the influencer style of Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland has per suaded the population of their respective countries to follow the guidelines on tackling the pandemic, no easy task. While the attributes of the dominating leader may be easy to spot, I’m sure we have all had first-hand experience of this type of boss: the kind of person who demands support, but also creates fear and delivers retribution in the form of being over looked for promotion or getting the most difficult c lasses for those individuals in the staffroom who don’t fall into line.

The prestige leader’s skill-set is more subtle. They are not only knowledgeable, but have wisdom and that rare skill in the field of education: vision. They are proactive rather than the reactive, domi nator style of their peers. These soft, sometimes imper ceptible, skills make it harder to give a concrete example of a good influencer in practice, w hile I can easily recall the dominators who would manipulate exam result statistics to create a positive trend, or would demand only good news about the post school destinations of students, regardless of the reality. On the other hand, the well-constructed argument, the smile of encour agement, the open body language which welcomes input, or the sense of your ideas being ac knowledged, don’t readily lend themselves to anecdote.

School leaders who remember their headship training courses might tag these opposing types of direction as either ‘Leadership’ or ‘Managing’, where the former offers staff a vision to follow, whereas the latter is merely about maintaining the hierarchy of control. Unfortunately studying suc cessful managing styles does not necessarily make senior members of staff successful managers, as, according to evolutionary biology, these radically different approaches to being in charge have been hardwired within us, and are mirrored in our closest ape cousins; bonobos and chimpanzees.

In social groups the bonobos, who live in the humid forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, look to their influencer leaders to end dis putes. “The style of leadership by females within these groups results in social lives with very little conflict,” behavioural ecologist Professor Jenn Smith said in a recent interview in the New Scientist magazine. On the other hand, gangs of chimpanzees, led by alpha males who adopt a dominant leadership style, quite often literally just fight it out. One way in which we have progressed from our hairier relatives is that dominator leaders can appear to be influencer leaders until they reach the top of the hierarchy.

Just like the female-led bonobos and the chimps with a man in charge, it seems that it is not coinci dental that in the leadership styles of those on the w orld stage, those in charge seem to split on gender grounds. The evolutionary biologists who last y ear published a scientific paper on this dichotomy of leadership, Professor Smith from Mills Colleg e, Oakland, California, and Mark van Vugt

“... it is not coincidental that in the leadership styles of those on the world stage, those in charge seem to split on gender grounds.”

at Vrije University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, believe this is because female leaders are more likely to behave in the prestige style of leadership due to their traditional childcare and food gather ing responsibilities.

This gender split would have until recently led to a female heavy workforce in teaching being led by male bosses more likely to behave in the dominant style. Only four years ago in England, almost two thirds of teaching staff were female but just over one third were head teachers. However, as the gender imbalance in education slowly rights itself,

“In NSW, the representation of female primary school principals has increased from a third in 1998 to two thirds 20 years later...”

perhaps more influencers will become school leaders. In New South Wales, the representation of female primary school principals has increased from a third in 1998 to two thirds 20 years later, while female secondary school principals have similarly increased from 22 per cent to 48 per cent across the same time span.

Although, of course, simply being a woman is not enough protection from being a dominating boss. I know of one person who would get regular phone calls while they were teaching from their female school leader asking them to phone an outside agency and then report back, when it would have been far simpler for the school leader to phone directly.

Perhaps the best way for a school to reduce the power of dominating leaders is to develop a hol acracy, a devolved system of management where pow er and decision making are distributed throughout the organisation; not a comfortable position for those who want complete control of their school. The only risk would be a dominator masking their true nature then staging a coup to grasp the reins of school power!