Distributed Leadership According To The Evidence

1
Distributed Leadership According To The Evidence

• Kenneth Leithwood, Blair Mascall Tiiu Strauss
• (New York Routledge, 2008)

2
Our study

• Mixed methods
• One large district
• 8 case studies (4 and 4)
• 1 round of survey data
• Now beginning a third phase
• .....Framework

3
A working definintion of leadership

• persuading other people to set aside, for a
  period of time, their individual concerns and to
  pursue a common goal that is important for the
  responsibilities and welfare of the group Avolio
  and Lock, 2002
• So what is distributed leadership?

4

• Distributing leadership entails spreading the
  task of persuading others . to several or more
  people in the organization.
• It is not just.
• Participatory decision-making or
• Delegated responsibility
• It could include, among other things..
• Shared leadership and
• Teacher leadership

5
What leaders do to persuade others

• Setting directions
• Developing people
• Redesigning the organization
• Managing the instructional program
• Ensuring accountability
• These are the leadership functions
• to be distributed

6
If distributed leadership is the solution, what
is the problem?

• Under-utilization of the organizations
  capacities (or how to squeeze a bit more out of a
  mature organizational form)
• Constraints on creative capacities within the
  organization.
• Complexity of the challenges facing the
  organization overwhelms the capacities of those
  at the apex.
• Unreasonable volume of demands placed on those in
  formal leadership roles.

7
Questions

• Patterns
• Influences
• Values and beliefs
• Effects
• Conditions

8
The buzzing confusion about patterns of
distributed leadership

• A Pattern
• who enacts which leadership functions, how and
  why?
• The buzzing confusion
• every author seems to be suggesting a
  different set of patterns

9
Four Patterns
10
Influences on the Development of Distributed
Leadership

• Negative
• No internal cohesion
• Administrator turnover
• Favouritism
• Staff feel overloaded, lack of time

11
Influences on the Development of Distributed
Leadership

• Positive
• Encouragement by top dog
• Clear focus
• Tone setting by top dog
• Opportunities for professional development
• Staff commitment to students
• Opportunities to act on ones values/beliefs

12
(No Transcript)
13
Known Potential Negative Effects

• Reductions in clarity of purpose
• Subtle form of coercian
• So -- effects are still unpredicable and likely
  depend on circumstances we are just beginning
  to understand

14
Known potential positive effects

• Power of participation (commitment to goals)
• Vital at recovery stage of turnaround process
• Ameliorates negative effects of leadership
  succession on SIP
• Improves teacher retention rates

15
Possible positive contributions to achievement
16
and associated with increased levels of academic
optimism (planful alignment)
17
Distributed leadership is most likely to have
these positive effects when

• those involved have relevant expertise
• there are, otherwise, no constraints on who
  participates, especially for complex leadership
  task
• leaders actions are coordinated

18

• The more the desire to take on leadership
  functions is spontaneous the better
• The more rewards there are for taking on
  leadership functions the better
• The more authority invested in those taking on
  leadership functions the better

19
Does all this take us anywhere new or useful?
20
Distributed leadership is another lense on
collaborative work (squeezing more out of the
standard model)

• Teamwork
• Collaborative cultures
• Professional learning communities
• Organizational learning
• and now.
• Distributed leadership