Loneliness of leadership (Part 6): Final post in the series
/7 minute read
In this series of Blog Posts I have been sharing my thoughts about the “professional efforts” leaders can make to alleviate the loneliness of leadership which, as I said in my first post, is not a pathology – it is not a “neediness”. It is certainly not something that the school leader should be ashamed of or see as a weakness. But rather is a normal state of being for leaders, and most particularly for new leaders, that professional efforts or strategies can assist with (Part 1 and Part 2). Some of those professional efforts or strategies that I have mentioned to date include the importance of confidantes, coaches and mentors (Part 3); networking, putting the urgent on hold and regularly reminding yourself about your moral purpose, keeping your shape as a leader and letting the world speak to you (Part 4); and, maintaining contacts and interests outside of work, making deep connections through coaching others and removing personas of perfectionism which get in the way of connecting deeply with people, and colleagues, in particular (Part 5).
In this, the final post in this series, I wish to stress how important it is for leaders to be their authentic selves, and as a part of that, ensure that leaders do what they love – do what brings them joy; and, perhaps, the most important strategy of all, ensure they are involved in continual cycles of growth and development. This will be a slightly longer post than usual – for that I apologise.
Being your authentic self - doing what you love, what brings you joy, your best contribution
If I am honest, while I love my job as school leader, there is lots that I do that is not particularly engaging for me. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because often the more menial, procedural tasks provide much needed relief from the brain-straining, emotional, complex problem-solving that is a significant aspect of a principal’s job. Everyone’s problems become your problems. It is good to have a day when you can focus on the procedural and zoom through the jobs on your to-do list and actually feel like you have been productive at the end of it. However, I know that I need more; and the demands of principalship, but also the expectations of what a principal’s job should comprise, often make it very difficult for me to get to do what I love. I love working at the nexus of theory and practice – where education theory informs our practice and what we are discovering about effective practice informs our theory. I love to write because that is the space where I make sense of our experiences at the crossroads. I love to lose myself deep in thinking, using the full range of thinking – analytical and conceptual, but also sense-thinking, revelation and imagination - to come to new understandings; and then I love to create new tools, systems and processes to bring the new understandings to life. All of this requires considerable space and focus.
If you are a school leader, you will know how difficult, even, impossible, it is to find this kind of time and space. I am incredibly grateful to have a Board of Trustees and senior leadership team that values what I bring, recognises my needs and desires, and has given me permission to create the space I need to engage in what I love. However, if you are a school leader, you will also understand the guilt that I constantly experience. Guilt that I am not doing all the things that other principals do – such as attending all the sporting events; because it is simply not possible to do everything. Guilt that when I am deeply engaged in doing the things that I love, and that I believe may have the potential to move education forward both in our school and more broadly, there are systems, processes and people that are experiencing the loss of my attention. Anxiety that I am being self-indulgent and that I have made it about me, instead of about others. Worried that I am creating the space to engage in what brings me joy; and wondering whether others feel able to do the same. And then there is the guilt that I work too hard. People sometimes say that I am a workaholic and maybe I am. But in all my years of principalship, I haven’t really worked out how to get past what has to be done as a school leader, to get to what brings me joy in my role, without working long hours.
So much guilt and anxiety! And it all contributes to the loneliness of leadership.
I want to share with you one really important idea that has helped me with this – that of being “subject”. Being subject is one of those ideas that is hard to grasp – you have to intuit it because when you try to hold its meaning, it slips through your fingers. I first came across it in a meaningful way in Gert Biesta’s writing (2013, 2017) where he argued that being “subject” is not about our unique identity, or the unfettered freedom to do as one wants, but is about each individual’s contribution - where, “I encounter freedom as the very thing that only I can do … and no-one can do in my place” (Biesta, 2017, chapter 1). I realised that doing what I love, doing what brings me joy in education, is not self-indulgence, but rather a responsibility to bring my unique, my best contribution to the world - the contribution that only I can bring and that no-one can bring in my stead. This means that if I am not “subject”, and I comply with traditional expectations of a principal, for example, then I won’t experience freedom, and the world will be poorer. It will miss out. This changed everything and has left me with no choice but to continue to seek space and opportunities to bring my unique contribution to the world… without guilt. Actually, in relation to the guilt, I am, perhaps, halfway there!
Continual cycles of growth and development
In my last post I spoke of how creating deep connections with others through coaching and mentoring them can help to alleviate the feelings of loneliness as a leader while also contributing incredibly positively to the organisation. Research also shows that leaders who nurture their own professional growth and development are better equipped to cope with the isolation of leadership (Howard & Mallory, 2008). This is not surprising when you see that leadership growth and development enables the individual to develop the capabilities needed to utilise all the strategies and professional efforts mentioned throughout this series of posts. It takes growth and development to discover yourself as “subject”, which enables you to understand what your unique contribution is and gives you strength to bring it to the world. It takes growth and development to enable you to connect with a growing range of people and to be able to access their support for different purposes when you need it. It takes growth and development to accept that you are not perfect and that your propensity to be otherwise (other than what you would want to be) is a part of the human condition and will always be a struggle. It takes growth and develop to put aside defensiveness and value diverse voices and in particular those that are very different from your own. It takes growth and development to deepen your resolve and your moral purpose and to empower others while also ensuring your own empowerment.
Hence, in spite of the busyness, the pressures, the expectations, a priority for leaders must be to continually nurture their own growth and development. This could be a professional learning course such as post-graduate studies; or coaching and mentoring; or through wide ranging and eclectic reading and writing as I do – asking the world to speak to me; or taking on a new project that takes you right out of your comfort zone, where you have to seek help, support and new learning to achieve it. There are many ways to be involved in continual cycles of growth and development and it will look different at different times and it can often be just a part of your work. This will assist with the loneliness of leadership, but of course it will do so much more. You will be a better leader and person as a result.
Leadership style – teacher-leader relationships
Finally, I want to refer to a comment made in response to one of my posts on Facebook. The school leader said, “I like our school's collaborative model of leadership. We are part of a team.” I could also quote Dr Ashley Bloomfield (New Zealand’s Director General of Health) who said in a daily press briefing, “Leadership is an invitation to collective action.” The level of loneliness experienced by a leader will be exacerbated or alleviated by their leadership style. A collaborative, coaching leadership style where the leader seeks the assistance of colleagues, where the leader is open with staff and takes a distributed leadership approach, will alleviate feelings of isolation. However, a more autocratic leadership style with a closed communication approach will exacerbate it.
Conclusion – towards shared leadership models
There is a great deal more still to be said about the loneliness of leadership, but it is time for me to move on to explore other things. I have shown that loneliness and isolation is something that even experienced leaders with a collaborative, team approach will experience; but it is most likely to be experienced by new leaders. I have shared a range of professional efforts and strategies that will assist. However, this issue does raise the question about the efficacy of the one-principal-one school leadership model that is still the norm in 21st century schools. The principal as solitary leader at the top seems out of step with what we now espouse is important in education.
Perhaps at a time when we are thinking about what education can look like beyond lockdown, we should also be thinking about leadership models that are more appropriate for the times in which we live and that will enable all the expectations currently placed on a single principal to meet (the impossibility of which reinforces the loneliness of leadership) to be shared. Of course there are examples of where this has been done. I have personally worked in a shared principalship. But the system does not make it easy, and it is certainly not the norm. Perhaps it should be.
Something to ponder….
Arohanui
Lesley
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References
Biesta, G. (2013). The beautiful risk of education. [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com.
Biesta, G. (2017). The rediscovery of teaching. [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com.
Howard, M. & Mallory, B. (2008). Perceptions of isolation among high school principals. Journal of Women in Educational Leadership, 1-2008
Tahir, L., Thakib, M., Hamzah, M. & Musah, M. (2015). Novice head teachers’ isolation and loneliness experiences: A mixed-methods study. @SAGE.