Leadership values, commitment to the community and good intentions

I read an article in The Conversation last week that captured the critical essence of much anti-Boris feeling. There are no two ways about it, whether or not you feel he deserves the brickbats, our PM is taking a pummelling. Leaders, irrespective of setting or scale, cop for it at the best of times. Now, in more testing circumstances when most folk are under the cosh, the first or biggest head above the parapet can become a target, deserving or otherwise, for everything from reasonable complaint, understandable anxiety to conveniently placed angst. It goes with the territory you might think?

School and college leaders are fair game too it would seem as Geoff Barton, General Secretary of ASCL, observed over the weekend in the TES. The leadership of individual schools, colleges and universities is under scrutiny like never before. So, who on earth would choose to stick their head above the parapet in any organisation? But into this febrile world steps our new cohort of student leaders at Bradford Grammar – our School and Pastoral Prefect teams led by the Senior and Head Prefects. Does the complex mood of the moment affect them too? More of that later.

I’m not going to throw stones at Boris or any other government figure for that matter; how could I whilst inhabiting a similar, though much smaller, glass house? Feedback from the BGS community has flowed freely since the pandemic struck, much of it addressed to the office of the Headmaster directly. Some of it, concerning leadership, reads thus:

“I’ve rarely felt as supported, trusted and valued as a professional as I have at BGS. I feel privileged to be a part of the staff, and a huge part of that is down to the leadership provided by the SLT and line managers at the school as well as the atmosphere fostered in the school as a whole for both students and staff.”

“I wanted to thank you for all the hard work you have done since lockdown. I am very proud of how you and your team have continued to provide teaching and support to the students over the past six months. I cannot begin to imagine the logistics of getting the students back on site with all the new infection control measures … please keep up the great work!”

And also, for balance …

“Please wake up Simon, and act; or if the kitchen is too hot for you, please move aside and allow someone with a degree more gravitas, concern and consideration, to do what they can to rectify the current mess.”

Precisely what constitutes wise and effective leadership will always be disputed – nuance matters. Traditional theories of leadership, flowing from the ‘Great Man’ image, are relatively commonplace even now in 2020. The more generic heroic leader figure, a close relative of the aforementioned ‘Great Man’, relying on personal attributes with true leaders ‘born’ not ‘made’, has been a durable notion across generations. However, traditional theories have not remained entirely rigid. More recently, it has been argued that inner heroic character traits can give expression to outward, varied and more flexible leadership behaviours, expressed differently across settings, although the role of the leader is seen to remain essentially unchanged, a fixed point in the melee.

Since the mid-1960s a different school of thought, generally referred to as ‘contingency theory’, has dominated. It places emphasis on the interplay between the leader and the organisation and increased attention is directed not towards the individual, but towards the collective. Valued consensus, shared vision, building the capacity of teams and distributed leadership have all come to the fore in this more ‘modern’ understanding of leadership functions. Through this prism, leaders are seen to work within a dominant culture to achieve change. Symbiotically they shape and are shaped by the environment around them in order to be most effective. Seen like this, leadership is less about an individual but rather a shared responsibility distributed throughout an organisation. The key function of the leader is to create the conditions for others to thrive and surpass them as communities improve.

In 2020 it is accepted at least that there is no ‘one size fits all’ person or methodology of leadership in education, or more generally for that matter, and studies that attempt to identify any measurable difference between cohorts of leaders and followers fail to do so, except to suggest that leaders chose to apply for positions of responsibility whilst others, for varied and valid reasons, do not. Choice is the only difference. Leaders are not born; they do not pop up miraculously like mushrooms overnight, traditionally from patrician soil. Leadership is an open pathway available to all who wish to develop themselves in this particular direction.

Our Prefects make a choice. They choose to step forward. BGS, at this moment in our history, needs their example and leadership more than ever and it won’t be easy to get it right. But the current bunch are delivering, magnificently! Did we expect anything different? No, not really. Applicants for student leadership positions have to make a case for their selection, and some then go on to be interviewed. What they say, in writing or in front of a panel, provides a window into the values we foster and come to share at Bradford Grammar School. By way of an insight, these are some of the things put forward in the applications of recent Year 13 student leaders:

“Honesty is very important to me, having integrity matters” … “I’ve never been top at anything but that doesn’t stop me going for things” … “I respect people… the key thing is to be fair” … “It was scary coming to this school” … “I am someone who can speak the truth to others” … “I love reading books and my cousins and I talk lot about what we read” … “I always try my best even when I’m not very good at something” … “I’m not a perfectionist, but I try really hard” … “Success does not mean an absence of failure, it’s a process of getting better” … “To be seen, recognised as a person, not just for academic success, it feels special” … “I appreciate it when people are straight up with each other” … “If things don’t go to plan that’s fine, I try again” … “I respect my family” … “I can lack confidence and doubt myself sometimes, but it doesn’t stop me” … “Being honest with your teacher when you are struggling is one way to stay on top of things” … “Increasingly I don’t take myself too seriously” … “To share my passion for my city [Bradford] felt really good” … “I like throwing myself into all aspects of BGS life and showing others what is possible” … “Never go in with an assumption, always ask why” … “Teachers supported me my whole life, I feel I want to give back” … “I’m not the cleverest person in the school but everyone has their own qualities” … “Unfortunately, these are things I’ve had to go through, so I’d like to help others get through them too” … and … [at the end of an interview!] “I enjoyed that!”

Like others, our young leaders at BGS do not have a straightforward job and receive plaudits and criticism, but no one should doubt their values, commitment to the community and good intentions. They are an integral part of the shared leadership and collective responsibility that binds BGS together and which provides cohesion and strength to our whole school community. They lead with head and heart and we all wish this year’s cohort well, knowing they’ll grow into their roles, learn to roll with the punches and make a positive difference to BGS.

Confident in what they bring to the leadership of our School, I shall now return to my inbox…