Through
our study of the everyday practice of leadership we have found that the
traditional notion of leadership as ‘leading from the front’ is rarely as
important to educational leaders in the learning and skills sector as gaining
the trust of organizational members and, in a sense, gaining the permission
of followers to be lead. In other words, leadership in this sector is less
about the work of a few talented individuals and more about the successful
organization of a complex network of distributed leadership practices
involving staff from across the organization.
As our
research paper on 'Leadership as Mundane Work' suggests, this understanding
of distributed leadership also requires one to study leadership as a set
of ordinary or 'mundane' practices. This doesn't mean, however, that
leadership is somehow dull or boring. Quite the opposite, we are suggesting
that there is much more to understand about actually doing leadership than is currently
included in most theoretical and prescriptive approaches to the subject.
Slide presentation: Leadership as Mundane Work
Research
paper: Leadership as Mundane Work
Another example of ordinary leadership work we have observed in our ethnographic
studies is the importance of arranging and attending meetings. Indeed,
meetings form the majority of the observable work carried out by senior
leaders in the learning and skills sector - particularly the work of FE
college principals. In the paper and supporting presentation below we have documented and analysed
one such meeting observed at an FE college. In this case it is a meeting of
senior managers and the Learning and Skills Council to discuss the acquisition of
funding for a new building.
Our detailed description and analysis suggests that
such meetings provide 'structured occasions' in which certain kinds of
observable leadership work is accomplished. Work that involves the exercise
of specific skills and knowledge that is easily missed by researchers and
taken-for-granted by participants for whom such work is merely part of their
everyday routine.
Slide
presentation: Meetings and the practical accomplishment of educational
leadership.
Research paper:
Meetings and the practical accomplishment of educational leadership.
Back
