Andy Hargreaves

1
Sustainable Leadership
Welcome to

• Andy Hargreaves

2
Sustainable development

• Sustainable development, democracy and peace
  are indivisible as an idea whose time has come.
• Wangari Maathai

3
Development of the term sustainability

• Term first coined by Lester Brown, founder of
  the World
• Watch Institute
• Sustainable development defined by Brundtland
  Report of
• the World Commission on Environment
  and Development
• Agenda 21, United Nations Conference on
  Environment
• and Development, Rio De Janeiro
  systematically
• addressed sustainable development
• United Nations Johannesburg Summit developed
  
• practical goals for sustainable
  development
• Beginning of UN Decade of Education for
  Sustainable
• Development

4
United Nations Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development 2005-2015
5
Sustainability

• Sustainability does not simply mean whether
  something can last. It addresses how particular
  initiatives can be developed without compromising
  the development of others in the surrounding
  environment, now and in the future.
• Hargreaves Fink 2000

6
Sustainable leadership

• Sustainable leadership matters, spreads and
  lasts. It is a shared responsibility that does
  not unduly deplete human or financial resources,
  and that cares for and avoids exerting damage on
  the surrounding educational and community
  environment.
• Hargreaves Fink 2003

7
Sustainability

• Sustainability is the capacity of a system to
  engage in the complexities of continuous
  improvement consistent with deep values of human
  purpose.
• Fullan 2004

8
Educational Lessons of Environmental
Sustainability

• Rich diversity, not soulless standardization
• Taking the long view
• Act urgently for change, wait patiently for
  results
• Prudence about conserving and renewing human and
  financial resources
• Examine the impact of our improvement efforts on
  others
• All of us can be activists and make a difference
• Hargreaves Fink 2006

9
Built to Last Companies

• Put purpose before profit
• Preserve long-standing purposes amid the pursuit
  of change
• Start slowly, advance persistently
• Do not depend on a single, visionary leader
• Grow their own leadership, instead of importing
  others
• Learn from diverse experimentation
• Collins Porras 1994

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Seven principles of sustainable leadership

• Depth
• Endurance
• Breadth
• Justice

• It matters
• It lasts
• It spreads
• It does not harm the surrounding environment

Continued
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Seven principles of sustainable leadership

• Diversity
• Resourcefulness
• Conservation

• It promotes diversity cohesion
• It conserves expenditure
• It honours the past in creating the future

12
Unsustainability

• Repetitive change syndrome is
• Initiative overload
• Change-related chaos
• Abrahamson 2004

13
Initiative Overload

• The tendency of organizations to launch more
  change initiatives than anyone could ever
  reasonably handle
• Abrahamson 2004

14
Change-related Chaos

• The continuous state of upheaval that results
  when so many waves of initiatives have worked
  through at the organization that hardly anyone
  knows which change theyre implementing or why
• Abrahamson 2004

15
Unsustainability

• Imposed, short-term targets (or adequate
  yearly progress) transgress every principle of
  sustainable leadership and learning
• Hargreaves Fink 2006

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Principle 1 Depth

• Sustainable leadership matters. It preserves,
  protects, and promotes deep and broad learning
  for all in relationships of care for others.

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Nelson Mandela

• The human body has an enormous capacity for
  adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found
  that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep
  ones spirits strong even when ones body is
  being tested. Strong convictions are the secret
  of surviving deprivation your spirit can be full
  even when your stomach is empty.

1. Depth
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The Two Hungers

• In Africa, they say there are two hungers,
  the lesser hunger and the greater hunger.
• The lesser hunger is for the things that sustain
  life, the goods, and services, and the money to
  pay for them, which we all need.
• The greater hunger is for the answer to the
  question why, for some understanding of what
  life is for.
• Handy 1997

1. Depth
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Product IntegrityClif Bars Philosophy of
Sustainability

• Sustaining
• our brands
• our company
• our people
• our community
• our planet

1. Depth
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Standards and Sustainability

• Learning ? Achievement ? Testing
• NOT
• Testing ? Achievement ? Learning
• Hargreaves Fink, 2006

1. Depth
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The four pillars of learning

• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to be
• Learning to live together
• UNESCO 1996

1. Depth
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The four pillars of learning

• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to be
• Learning to live together
• UNESCO 1996
• Learning to live sustainably
• Hargreaves Fink, 2006

1. Depth
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Basics

• Old basics
• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Obedience
• Punctuality

• New basics
• Multiliteracy
• Creativity
• Communication
• IT
• Teamwork
• Lifelong Learning
• Adaptation Change
• Environmental Responsibility

1. Depth
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Slow Knowing

• The unconscious realms of the human mind will
  successfully accomplish a number of important
  tasks if they are given the time. They will learn
  patterns of a degree of subtlety which normal
  consciousness cannot even see make sense out of
  situations that are too complex to analyze and
  get to the bottom of certain difficult issues
  much more successfully than the questing
  intellect.
• Claxton 1997

1. Depth
25
What does the doctor reply?
1. Depth
26
Activity
1. Depth
27
Slow forms of knowing

• are tolerant of the faint, fleeting, marginal and
  ambiguous
• like to dwell on details that do not fit or
  immediately make sense
• are relaxed, leisurely and playful
• are willing to explore without knowing what they
  are looking for
• see ignorance and confusion as the ground from
  which understanding may spring
• are receptive rather than proactive
• are happy to relinquish the sense of control over
  the directions the mind spontaneously takes
• treat seriously ideas that come out of the blue
• Claxton, 1997

1. Depth
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Slow schooling

• starts formal learning later
• reduces testing
• increases curriculum flexibility
• emphasizes enjoyment
• doesnt hurry the child
• rehabilitates play alongside purpose
• Honore, 2004

1. Depth
29
Leaders of Sustaining Learning

• Passionately advocate and defend deep learning
  for all students
• Combine and commit to old and new basics
• Put learning, before achievement, before testing
• Make learning the paramount priority
• Become more knowledgeable about learning
• Make learning transparent
• Be omnipresent witnesses to learning
• Practise evidence-informed, inquiry-based
  leadership
• Promote assessment for learning
• Engage students in decisions about their learning
• Involve parents in their childrens learning
• Model effective adult learning
• Create the emotional conditions for learning
• Hargreaves Fink, 2006

1. Depth
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Principle 2 Endurance

• Sustainable leadership lasts. It preserves and
  advances the most valuable aspects of learning
  and life over time, year upon year, from one
  leader to the next.

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Endurance

• It is a common defect in men not to consider in
  good weather the possibility of a tempest
• Machiavelli, 1532
• All leaders, no matter how charismatic or
  visionary, eventually die
• Collins Porras, 1994
• Few things succeed less than leadership
  succession
• Hargreaves Fink, 2006

2. Endurance
32
Approaches to succession

• The public sector
• Passively lets candidates emerge
• Focuses on the short term
• Handles succession informally

• The private sector
• Actively recruits and encourages potential
  leaders
• Takes the long view
• Manages succession more formally

Continued
2. Endurance
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Approaches to succession

• The public sector
• Seeks replacement for existing roles
• Selects in relation to current competencies
• Views succession planning as a cost

• The private sector
• Defines future leadership skills and aptitudes
• Emphasises flexibility and lifelong learning in
  the face of changing needs
• Views succession planning as an asset

2. Endurance
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Four Issues in Succession

• Succession Planning
• Succession Management
• Succession Duration Frequency
• Succession and the Self

2. Endurance
35
Succession Planning Patterns

• Planned
• (purposeful)
• Unplanned
• (accidental/
• unintentional)
• Hargreaves Fink
• 2006

• Continuity Discontinuity
• Planned Planned
• Continuity Discontinuity
• Unplanned Unplanned
• Continuity Discontinuity

2. Endurance
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Good succession plans

• Are prepared long before the leaders anticipated
  departure or even from the outset of their
  appointment
• Give other people proper time to prepare
• Are incorporated in all school improvement plans
• Are the responsibility of many, rather than the
  prerogative of lone leaders who tend to want to
  clone themselves
• Are based on a clear diagnosis of the schools
  existing stage of development and future needs
  for improvement
• Are transparently linked to clearly defined
  leadership standards and competencies that are
  needed for the next phase of improvement

2. Endurance
37
Successful Succession Management

• Distributes leadership effectively
• Builds strong professional communities
• Deepens and broadens the pools of leadership
  talent
• Establishes leadership development schools
• Stresses future leadership competencies
• Supports and sponsors aspiring school leaders
• Replaces charismatic leadership with
  inspirational leadership
• Plans early for the incumbent leaders exit
• Moderates and monitors leadership succession
  frequency

2. Endurance
38
Three Cultures of Teaching

• Veteran dominated
• serves experienced teacher interests
• feels exclusionary
• offers few leadership opportunities
• Novice orientated
• surrounded by fellow novices
• feels inclusive
• driven by enthusiasm rather than expertise
• Blended
• provides mentoring
• offers leadership
• reciprocal learning
• Johnson et al, 2004

2. Endurance
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Sound succession, strong selves, through

• Availability of counselling and coaching for
  exiting leaders
• Quick, clear and open communication of reasons
  for departure
• Acceptance of emotional confusion and
  vulnerability
• Celebration of the leaders contributions
• Recognition that succession is subject to the
  four stages of grief denial, awakening,
  reflection and execution
• Confrontation of the Messiah and Rebecca myths
• Prepares oneself and others early for the
  possibility of succession
• Hargreaves Fink, 2006

2. Endurance
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Principle 3 Breadth

• Sustainable leadership spreads. It sustains
  as well as depends on the leadership of others

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Culture and Contract Regimes
C O N T R A C T

-

• Permissive
• Individualism
• Collaborative
• Cultures
• Contrived
• Collegiality

• Corrosive
• Individualism
• Professional
• Learning
• Communities
• Performance
• Training Sects

-
C U L T U R E


3. Breadth
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Professional learning community
Learning teaching focus

Collaboration
Achievement and Engagement
Learning, reflection review
Use of evidence
3. Breadth
43

3. Breadth
44
Professional learning communities arent

• X Merely convivial and congenial they are
  demanding and critical
• X Just a collection of stilted teams looking at
  data together
• X Obsessed with scores and results, instead of
• depth of learning
• X Forced and imposed, they are facilitated and
• supported
• X Ways to hijack teachers to carry out
• administrative agendas

3. Breadth
45
Communities and Sects

• Professional learning
• communities
• Transform knowledge
• Shared enquiry
• Evidence informed
• Situated certainty

• Performance training
• sects
• Transfer knowledge
• Imposed requirements
• Results driven
• False certainty

Continued
3. Breadth
46
Communities and Sects

• Professional learning
• communities
• Local solutions
• Joint responsibility
• Continuous learning
• Communities of practice

• Performance training
• sects
• Standardised scripts
• Deference to authority
• Intensive training
• Sects of performance

3. Breadth
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Relationships

• Its hard to eat something youve had a
  relationship with
• Hargreaves Fullan, 1998

3. Breadth
48
Distributed leadership

• sees leadership practice as a product of the
• interaction of school leaders, followers and
  their
• situation.
• Leadership practice involves multiple individuals
  within and outside formal leadership positions
• Leadership practice is not done to followers.
  Followers are themselves part of leadership
  practice.
• It is not the actions of individuals, but the
  interactions among them that matter most in
  leadership practice.

Spillane, 2005
3. Breadth
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Raising the temperature of distributed leadership

• Anarchy
• Assertive distribution
• Emergent distribution
• Guided distribution
• Progressive delegation
• Traditional delegation
• Autocracy

Too hot
Too cold
3. Breadth
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Principle 4 Justice

• Sustainable leadership does no harm to and
  actively improves the surrounding environment by
  finding ways to share knowledge and resources
  with neighboring schools and the local
  communities.

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Sustainability and Social Justice

• do not steal your neighbours capacity
• use multiple indicators of accountability
• emphasize collective accountability
• coach a less successful partner school
• make a definable contribution to the community
  your school is in
• pair with a school in a different social or
  natural environment
• collaborate with your competitors

4. Justice
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Responsible leadership

• Mutual relationships among the domains
• of ethical responsibility

Starratt, 2005
4. Justice
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Principle 5 Diversity

• Sustainable leadership promotes cohesive
  diversity and avoids aligned standardization of
  policy, curriculum, assessment, and staff
  development and training in teaching and
  learning. It fosters and learns from diversity
  and creates cohesion and networking among its
  richly varying components.

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Differences

• You learn more from people who are different
  from you, than ones who are the same

Hargreaves Fullan, 1998
5. Diversity
55
Effective organizations are characterized by

• A framework of common and enduring values, goals
  and purposes
• Possession and development of variability or
  diversity in skills, talents and identities
• Processes that promote interaction and
  cross-pollination of ideas and influences across
  this variability
• Permeability to outside influences
• Emergence of new ideas, structures, and processes
  as diverse elements interconnect and new ones
  intrude from the outside
• Flexibility and adaptability in response to
  environmental change
• Resilience in the face of and in response to
  threats and adversity

5. Diversity
56
Networked learning communities

• Enable and encourage schools to share and
  transfer the considerable knowledge already in
  existence that can help children learn better.
  Individual schools have limited knowledge, but
  collectively they have almost as much as they
  need.
• Stimulate the professional fulfilment and
  motivation that comes from learning and
  interacting with colleagues in ways that help
  teachers be more effective with their own
  students.

Continued
5. Diversity
57
Networked learning communities

• Capitalize on positive diversity across teachers
  and schools who serve different kinds of
  students, or who vary in how they respond to
  them, rather than maintaining the negative
  diversity of cut-throat competition that prevents
  mutual learning and assistance, or than denying
  diversity altogether through imposition of
  standardized solutions.
• Provide teachers and others with opportunities
  for lateral leadership of people, programs and
  problem-solving beyond ones own school setting.

Continued
5. Diversity
58
Other advantages

• they provide opportunities to draw on and develop
  evidence-informed, research-derived practice
• they promote innovation and its dissemination
  across large groups of interested schools
• they give teachers more of a voice in
  professional and school-based decision-making

Continued
5. Diversity
59
Other advantages

• they help personalize every school as a learning
  community, enabling them to adopt emergent
  solutions to their own needs, that are diffused
  and made available throughout the network,
  instead of being subjected to overly prescribed
  programmes.
• they are flexible and resilient in the face of
  crises or misdirected system initiatives that
  turn out to be unsuccessful allowing new
  learning and fresh solutions to emerge and fill
  the gap that the false starts and failures have
  left behind.
• Jackson, 2006

5. Diversity
60
Network risks

• Restricted to enthusiasts
• Shared delusions
• Self-indulgent
• Limited scale
• Unaccountable
• Over-regulation
• Over-participation

5. Diversity
61
Strong networks have

• Strong branding, definite products
• Clear moral purpose
• Clarity, focus, discipline
• Evidence informed substance
• Accessibility in real and chosen time
• Hacker ethic
• Embedded in altered structures
• Support from lateral leadership
• PLCs as nodes

5. Diversity
62
Networking and interaction

• Paired schools
• University-school partnerships
• Internet communities
• Families of schools
• Collaborative accountability
• Professional networks

5. Diversity
63
Short-term strategies

• Exam strategies
• Revision sessions
• Tutoring
• Recognition of achievements
• Pupil-teacher conferences
• Bananas and water

5. Diversity
64
Medium-term strategies

• Teacher mentor programs
• SAM technology
• Data-driven assessment for targeted instruction
• Training days

5. Diversity
65
Long-term strategies

• Restructuring
• Student voice
• Continuous improvement
• Teaching and learning

5. Diversity
66
Principle 6 Resourcefulness

• Sustainable leadership develops and does not
  deplete material and human resources. It renews
  peoples energy. Sustainable leadership is
  prudent and resourceful leadership that wastes
  neither its money nor its people.

67
Two theories of energy

• Energy
• Entropy
• Restraint

• Energy
• Exchange
• Renewal

6. Resourcefulness
68
Four Forms of Energy Renewal

• Physical Renewal
• Emotional Renewal
• Intellectual Renewal
• Spiritual Renewal

Loehr Schwartz
6. Resourcefulness
69
Energy restraint

• No achievement without investment
• Shared targets, not imposed ones
• Slow leading, slow learning
• Time
• Political continuity and stability

6. Resourcefulness
70
Three Sources of Renewal

• Trust
• Confidence Positive emotion

6. Resourcefulness
71
Three forms of trust betrayal

• Communication
• Contract Competence

Hargreaves, 2002
6. Resourcefulness
72
Trust involves

• reliability and predictability
• reaching shared understanding
• assumptions of good faith
• trusting yourself as well as others
• trusting processes as well as people

6. Resourcefulness
73
Betrayal involves

• loss of trust or absence of trust
• spectacular breakdowns of trust
• small, accumulated breaches of trust

6. Resourcefulness
74
Contractual trust
Page 76

• meeting obligations
• completing contracts
• keeping promises

6. Resourcefulness
75
and Betrayal

• X not pulling ones weight
• X poor work-rate or effort
• X teaching the same thing
• X clockwatching
• X complaining without commitment
• X self-servingness

6. Resourcefulness
76
Competence Trust

• trust own others capability
• effective delegation
• providing professional growth development

6. Resourcefulness
77
and Betrayal

• X constant criticism/dissatisfaction
• with others
• X martyrdom/inability to delegate
• X abandon people when faults first
• appear
• X recruitment and retention
• problems
• X micromanagement, scripting,
• standardization

6. Resourcefulness
78
Communication Trust

• clear, high-quality, open and
• frequent communication
• sharing information, admitting
• mistakes
• telling the truth, keeping
• confidences

6. Resourcefulness
79
and Betrayal

• X malicious / mischievous gossiping
• X public shaming / humiliation in front of
• colleagues
• superiors
• students
• X miscommunication/misunderstanding
• X self-servingness

6. Resourcefulness
80
Conclusion

• Many problems that we treat as being a result
  of other peoples contract or competence
  betrayal, are actually a result of their or our
  communication
• problems.
• In other words
• Competence failures or contractual failures
  are often really communication failures.

6. Resourcefulness
81
Principle 7 Conservation
Page 83

• Sustainable leadership respects and builds on
  the past in its quest to create a better future.

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Modes of organisational forgetting

Established Knowledge
New Knowledge
Failure to consolidate DISSIPATION
Failure to maintain DEGRADATION
Accidental
Abandoned innovation SUSPENSION
Managed unlearning PURGING
Purposeful
DeHolan Phillips, 2004
7. Conservation
83
The Past, Present Future of Change

• Acknowledge the past. Preserve the best.
• Learn from the rest.
• Wildness, diversity and disorder have
• value.
• The past is not pure. Do not romanticize it.
• The past has no Golden Age to which
• we should return.
• We view the past differently. We
• must therefore interpret it together.
• When we dismiss or demean the past,
• we fuel defensive nostalgia among its
• bearers.

7. Conservation
84
Creative Recombination for Renewal

• From
• Firing and rehiring
• Developing new
• communications
• Inventing new values
• Re-engineering new
• processes
• Complete restructuring

• To
• Redeploying the talent
• companies already have
• Plugging into reinventing
• existing social networks
• Reviving and renewing
• existing values
• Salvaging existing good
• Processes
• Reworking and rebuilding
• existing structures

Abrahamson, 2004
7. Conservation
85
Stop, Start, Continue

STOP What is less valuable
START What is more valuable
CONTINUE What remains highly valuable
SUBVERT What is formally required but threatens
what is valuable
7. Conservation
86
Conserving the past through

• Retreats that renew the vision
• Audits of the organizations memories of
  analogous change
• Asset inventories of existing experience and
  knowledge
• Organizational abandonment meetings
• Appointments made mid-term to cultivate learning
  of the culture
• Storytelling to pass on wisdom
• Mentoring that runs in both directions
• Good written records
• Creation of blended professional cultures
• Creative recombination, not repetitive change

7. Conservation
87
Thank you