School leadership is serious business. It takes a combination of clear personal values, persistence against a lot of odds, emotional intelligence, thick skin, and resilience. It also takes a knack for focusing on the right things and for problem solving. We will see plenty of named cases of this in action, but let us realize that the best leaders have strong values and are skilled at strategy. Attila the Hun and Hitler meet this definition. Leaders with moral purpose, on the other hand, have a different content - deep commitment to raising the bar and closing the gap for all students.
Leaders need to support, activate, extract, and galvanize the moral commitment that is in the vast majority of teachers. Most teachers want to make a difference, and they especially like leaders who help them and their colleagues achieve success in terrible circumstances. Revealingly, once this process is under way, teachers as a group value leaders who help the hardcore resistant teachers leave. When this happens, the cohesion of the rest of the staff actually increases (Bryk, Bender, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010; Linton, 2011).
From: The Moral Imperative Realized by Michael Fullan
Published by: Corwin Press and OPC (the Ontario Principals' Council)
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