Balancing freedom and control

I was talking with a new senior leader in a small school in another part of the world recently. She was coming into role after a very long tenure from the original founding Head, who had set things up and established the school as a highly successful enterprise, with extremely stable staff and low turnover over the recent decades. You can imagine the concerns that any new leader would have, especially one who was stepping up from an internal role.

As we discussed her thinking and her identification of issues, what emerged was one of the central dilemmas of leadership – how to provide guidance and direction to colleagues while at the same time developing self-direction and autonomy in those same colleagues who will take matters into their own hands and drive things themselves.

The first of these – providing direction and guidance – is the traditional role of the leader; setting strategy, ensuring it’s implemented, evaluating fidelity and picking people up whenever they stray from the path. There’s a place for that aspect for sure – but in any organisation of any complexity it places an intolerable and unsustainable burden of control on the leaders, and more importantly, is a terrible use of the organisation’s most important asset – the people who actually get the work done.

So the second of these – developing self-direction and autonomy in colleagues – is actually more important; it’s less visible and less linear; but there are two advantages. Firstly, it will mean we can be flexible and respond rapidly to changing circumstance. Secondly, it treats colleagues with the respect and dignity they deserve, and will make us a great place to work and flourish.

In schools, getting this right with colleagues is a first step in getting this right with students. It’s a fundamental belief of mine that the way teachers deal with each other is how they will deal with students. Of course we need structures and aligned approaches but top-down, highly directive leadership will push teachers and students toward either quiet compliance or angry rebellion. Neither are good outcomes.