Confucius and School Leadership

As a leader, how do you demonstrate Confucian leadership?  

Guest post by: Benjamin Law

School leaders demonstrate leadership and leadership capacity in many dimensions. What relationship do you see between the moral standard and the leadership of the school leader?

There were five classics of the Confucian canon in ancient Chinese. “Book of Rites” was one of the Five Classics.   It described the social forms, governmental system, and ancient/ceremonial rites of the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1050–256 BCE). The original text is believed to have been compiled by Confucius himself, whilst the edition usually referred to today was edited and re-worked by various scholars during the Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). (Wikipedia)

In one of the chapters of the “Book of Rites”, called “Great Learning”, it has been mentioned that:

“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the world, first ordered well their own States.

Wishing to order well their States, they first regulated their families.

Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.

Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.”

                                                                                             (Great Learning, Book of Rites)

“Rectifying the hearts” can be interpreted as having a high moral standard. If a person would like to lead a country or state, the person’s heart should be rectified at the beginning.

This philosophy is significant because it ties into many themes of Chinese philosophy and political thinking and it has been influential in both classical and modern Chinese thought. It correlates individual action and higher goals such as ultimate world peace. 

More on Leadership and Moral Imperative

As a leader, what does moral imperative look like in your leadership?

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)

Moral Imperative of School Leadership

As a leader, what is your commitment to the moral imperative of school leadership?

Waiting for Superman captures the moral imperative writ large, and writ deep.   But in my view, this is not the moral imperative if only a handful of disadvantaged kids get a chance.  The first two-thirds of the film is as brilliant as it is alarming.  Unfortunately, the last third relies on moral outrage as its sole strategy and fails to identify any way out other than to say we need more schools with passionate leaders and teachers.  Of course we do.  But moral purpose, even deeply felt, is not a strategy.  We need moral purpose actualized, and on a very large scale.  The latter is the essence of this book. 

Moral Imperative As Strategy

So the question is not just how deep is your moral imperative, but equally, what is your strategy to enact it.  Just as moral imperative is not a strategy, neither is being "right." .....but let's establish some basics here for making the moral imperative a strategy. 

1. Make a personal commitment
2. Build relationships
3. Focus on implementation
4. Develop the collaborative
5. Connect to the outside
6. Be relentless (and divert distracters)

From:  The Moral Imperative Realized by Michael Fullan

Published by: Corwin Press and OPC (the Ontario Principals' Council)