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Mrs Leoni Degenhardt Loreto Normanhurst New South Wales, Australia
Change is inevitable. At heart, most people dislike change and the disruption of their regular and predictable routine. We human beings quickly find ways of adjusting to our surroundings and circumstances. We cope by setting up habits, routines and institutions. We organise ourselves. We develop a pattern of shared basic assumptions to solve the problems of both adapting to the external environment and developing internal integration within the group or organisation (Scheie, 1992). However, the institutions that we set up to organise ourselves can become locked in a time-warp and gradually lose their effectiveness, no longer internally integrated or responsive to the external environment.
The concept of the sigmoid curve (Handy, 1995) illustrates this. This S-shaped curve sums up life itself, and all organisations and relationships. We begin slowly, we grow and thrive and then we begin to wane. A new sigmoid curve needs to be started before the first one peters out. The challenge is to start that new curve at Point A, the very time that everything seems to be going well, and avoid the decline. Most of us know that it is usually only when we face impending disaster, at Point B, that we muster the necessary energy for change.
Change requires leadership - leadership implies change. Plenty of change happens without leadership. Life happens to us, regardless of our wishes. But leadership - real leadership - means constant change. Leaders constantly monitor the internal and external environments so that the group or organisation is effective in meeting its goals (Schein, 1992), whether this means a new training regime for the football team, developing new products, incorporating new technologies, or buying more and different food to feed a growing family. Given that people find change difficult, the task of the leader in helping the organisation, and the people within it, to adapt is often somewhat challenging. Nevertheless, particularly in the times in which we live, the role of the leader is to establish and nurture a culture of continuous change (Schein, 1992).
The external environment of the early 21st century is about profound and rapid change. These changes include the proliferation of information, globalisation, increasing mobility of people, restructuring of organisations, the growth and impact of technology, medical breakthroughs and new health problems, changes in the role of women, longer periods of economic dependency for young people, changes in human sexuality and its expression, the increasing rates of marriage breakdown, teenage suicide and ecological damage.
Schools must therefore change drastically. They have to address the changing external environment within which they operate and for which they are preparing young people. They have also to address their changing internal environment, as their populations of students, parents and staff have different needs and expectations from those of earlier times. In fact, schools need to be reinvented (Handy 1990; Dickinson 2001), preferably to reinvent themselves (Hargreaves and Fullan, 1998). This is what Loreto Normanhurst, the school of which I am principal, set out to do in 2000, when a process was established to develop a strategy for the future. This strategy involved cutting away to the heart of what the school needed to do in order to meet the needs of the 21st century and the Australian girls who are its students. In so doing, we would also help to address the needs of wider society. What follows is a brief outline of what has happened in the school up to the present, and some reflections and learnings about leadership made along the way.
Our school is a Catholic day and boarding school for girls from Year 7 to 12 in a relatively affluent and leafy part of Sydney. It was established in 1897 by the Loreto sisters, a religious order for women, also known as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM). It was founded by a visionary Englishwoman, Mary Ward, more than 400 years ago.
In 2000 the school ' s Leadership Team realised the need to begin a new strategy process. Strategy was defined as: ' Vision directed at what we want to be, not how we ' ll get there ' and the criteria for this process were inclusivity, simplicity and an ongoing, rather than a fixed-term, strategy. A Strategy Team, which represented all stake-holder groups in the school, was established and an external consultant employed. Data was gathered and analysed at the end of 2000 and, during the first half of 2001, every staff member was involved in a one-and-a-half day Strategy Workshop.
Similar, but shorter, workshops were offered to parents and students. The governing body (the School Council) and the religious order that owns the school endorsed this process and were also included in the workshops. Each of the workshops consisted of several elements:
By the end of June 2001 a final Strategy was developed. A clear intent - growing individuals and communities - was articulated, which crystallised the core purpose of the school. Future trends, both external and internal to the school, were identified, enabling the school community to name certain realities:
In response to the questions ' Who are we here to serve? ' , and ' How can the school cater for the needs of these communities? ' , the matrix shown below was developed.
Communities
Services/Products
Geography
1. Students and Parents
Individual student growth plans
NSW
Pastoral care of families
Parent education programs
2. Social Justice
Outreach
Local
National
Global
Leadership of church
Community education programs
3. Education
Leadership
The task since July 2001 has been to develop these services, starting with the creation of holistic Student Growth Plans for each student. This was effected by offering extensive tailored professional development, by calling for volunteers to work in teams to move the ideas gradually forward into action, and by the continual questioning of everything we did in the light of the strategy priorities and the school ' s values.
It has been a huge task, which has left no aspect of the school, or of the individuals within it, unchanged. The reinvention of the school has involved the development and adoption of a ' radical new pedagogy ' . Changes have occurred in the roles of students, parents and staff; processes for ongoing evaluation; architectural innovation; and cutting edge technological developments. Now known as the Loreto Normanhurst Student Growth Model, the new approach to growth and learning in the school was implemented for the first time in 2004 with Year 7 students, and will roll out successively over the next five years.
As Principal of the school, and chief change agent, there has been the opportunity for much personal learning. My decision in 2001 to document and analyse the change process as a formal study helped me to become a reflective practitioner (Schön 1983) . In particular, there has been much reflection on and many learnings about leadership, and leadership of change, in particular.
The needs of the people
In any major change, people must be a priority. For schools to become genuine learning communities, continually reinventing themselves. The people who comprise those school communities must be prepared to continually change and learn and grow. This can happen only when people know they are valued for themselves, not as a means to an end (Mitchell and Sackney, 2000). In the process of reinvention of the school, when problems arose, it was often because people did not feel sufficiently valued. This was sometimes experienced by the staff generally, sometimes by particular individuals, and sometimes by those in senior leadership positions when they bore the brunt of others ' distress over change. This distress is understandable if seen as a manifestation of transition management.
The transition management framework was a useful tool in helping people in the school to understand what was happening. Transition management refers to the psychological processes that people go through in coping with change. Bridges (1995) has developed a framework that includes three major phases in transition management: ending (grief for what is being lost); the neutral zone (a time of disorientation and reorientation, as new directions and ways of thinking are developing) and the new beginning (sometimes tentative). These phases are not discrete: in any one day a person can experience all three of these phases.
What helps people to cope with change is to have a clear and effective framework. The strategy matrix provided an overall benchmark against which the whole community could judge the school ' s progress. Yet, as the process of reinvention continued, often things became blurry. Countless documents; the workings of myriad task forces, implementation teams and focus groups; the minutes of a million (or so it seemed) meetings and my own ' brain dumps ' (usually developed in the course of sleepless nights) meant that, in an effort to ensure that that nothing important was forgotten, we risked getting bogged down in the detail. What has helped greatly in more recent times is the development of a matrix for ongoing implementation, in which areas for development and sectors of the school community intersect, and each is the responsibility of an identified Leadership Team member.
While an effective matrix is of great value in approaching change logically, what helps people most through the phases of transition is the need for a ' Why? ' The leader needs to constantly remind herself and others of the reasons why the change is being effected. In the case of Loreto Normanhurst, which by a range of measures was perceived as already an effective school, many considered change to be unnecessary: ' If it ain ' t broke, why fix it? ' . There was no energy for change coming from a perception that the school was in difficulties, and there was certainly no impending disaster.
Rather, by looking into the future, we were trying to foresee what our students needed and then changing our school to accommodate those needs better. We were beginning the next sigmoid curve, right at the time when it seemed that no change was necessary (Handy, 1995)! Constantly, the ' Why? ' of change needs to be repeated.
Managing all these needs of people requires that leaders are people of heart, ' emotionally mature enough to develop mutually elevating and productive relationships ' (Duignan, 2003). This type of leadership is also referred to as ' moral ' (Sergiovanni, 1992; Starratt, 1995; Sergiovanni, 2000), or ' authentic ' (Bhindi and Duignan 1997). Being aware of, and drawing from, this literature was helpful in the struggle to live out this type of leadership.
What the literature does not stress enough, however, is that leaders also have needs and must put in place support structures for themselves in order to antici pate and respond to the needs of others. From experience of the change process at our school, I suggest three such support structures. First, it helps if leaders within an organisation have a sense of mutual solidarity and support each other, even though, at times, that very solidarity is seen by others as threatening. Second, while it is important for one ' s sanity to be able to separate work from other parts of one ' s life, the emotional support of the leader ' s family and friends cannot be underestimated. Third, professional support, in the form of the sort of ' supervision ' that counsellors and social workers have in place, and which allows a dispassionate analysis of leadership dilemmas in a supportive environment, is a further support structure of great value.
The role of values
The underpinning core purpose and mission of the organisation and its proclaimed values can, and should, provide the inspiration for all - the leaders and the whole community - to persist with the challenge of change. In the case of Loreto Normanhurst, the vision and foresight of the foundress, Mary Ward, and of so many IBVM sisters who followed in her footsteps, provided that inspiration to everyone. At our school we have used symbols, such as framed drawings of the shoes that Mary Ward wore on her three treks across the Alps to Rome, to remind ourselves of why we are reinventing our school. This symbol connects with the idea of pioneering, of walking in Mary Ward ' s shoes, of ' making the path by walking it ' . The recipients of these symbols usually have them in pride of place on their desks. Leaders need to feed people ' s souls. They need to offer inspiration that enables people to soar and achieve their dreams of what might be.
A new way of understanding situational leadership
Situational leadership (Hersey, Blanchard et al., 1996) generally refers to leaders ' adapting their management style to meet the needs of particular individuals. For example, a person new to a role will usually require more direction than a highly experienced and committed staff member.
This theory needs to be adapted into a sociological framework. Different styles of leadership are needed for different communities or organisations, not just for the individuals within them. For example, the climate of the organisation - whether it is open or hostile - will determine how a leader should proceed. Other variables include the degree of experience of the members; the amount of shared experience that those individuals have within the organisation (and whether that is positive or otherwise); the success of previous change efforts; the stage of the change process; the type of transition issues that people are facing; and the degree to which it is acknowledged that change is needed.
Variables in the leader herself are also significant, including the degree of experience and the length of time the leader has been in her present school, and the degree of acceptance of the leader by the community. A highly experienced leader might proceed more confidently, yet act too quickly without listening to, and absorbing, the school culture, causing resistance. On the other hand, a struggling school may welcome strong leadership right from the arrival of a new leader. These reflections have led me to question what is meant by shared leadership.
Shared leadership
There is a growing literature on shared leadership (Handy and Aitken 1986; Telford, 1996; Bradford and Cohen, 1998; Sackney and Mitchell, 2001; Starratt, 2003). My own understanding of shared leadership has changed significantly in the course of and as a result of leading the reinvention process at Loreto Normanhurst. Perhaps naively, I wished others to share completely in establishing the direction and its implementation. I felt my role was to lead from the middle and to enable, to encourage my colleagues to believe that, together, we would forge the school of the future for our students. I did not see the need to be on the various taskforces and implementation teams, thinking that this may hinder their progress and make others feel dependent.
What I came to understand, however, was that this was confusing for staff. People started to wonder whether there was a ' hidden agenda ' , believed that, as principal, I was calling the shots anyway, but in covert ways. Although the sharing of power is considered a major tenet of leadership ideology in the field of education, it is not always the right solution. Besides, the final responsibility always lies with the leader (Wilson, 2004).
I came to see that my role had to be much more direct, leading from the front, and being personally and directly involved. Since the start of 2004, therefore, I am much more visible, attending meetings of most groups in the school, creating new roles for myself in order to actively hear, support and sometimes challenge, staff. At present I am establishing and chairing a Strategy Evaluation think-tank, membership of which is representative of all sectors of the staff. This has been appreciated by the staff.
This is a significant learning. While it is of paramount importance to use inclusive and democratic methods of involving staff - and at Loreto Normanhurst this has been done better at some times than others - in a time of major change the leader needs to be out in front, as well as accessible and involved in the day-to-day interactions and decisions. Paradoxically, however, I suspect that had been the case from the outset, the reinvention could well have been judged by staff as having been imposed. Perhaps the greatest benefit was gained by acknowledging the problem and being prepared to learn and change. This gives credibility. It also requires some humility.
Level 5 leadership
Collins (2001) describes Level 5 leadership as ' the triumph of humility and fierce resolve ' . It is a concept he discovered in his research into companies that had shifted from good performance to great performance - and sustained it. Such leadership is not only counter-intuitive but also counter-cultural, as most people expect that transforming companies from good to great requires ' larger than life ' leaders. But it is the combination of extreme personal humility with intense professional will that brings about the most effective transformation. In many ways, this is nothing new. It is the message of Jesus Christ and other great religious leaders, of leaders such as Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Such people have ' creative, intuitive frameworks based on in-depth understandings of human nature and of the ethical, moral, even spiritual dimensions inherent in human interaction and choice. Above all, they need sound judgement and a wisdom derived from critical reflection on the meaning of life and work ' (Duignan 2003). This is the sort of leadership that our schools need in order to meet the needs of young people and the world of the 21st century.
The role of leadership cannot be separated from change. Clearly articulated values and a sense of meaning and purpose; frameworks that clarify the change and enable it to be staged, awareness of the needs of people, and leadership that is sensitive to the situation and based on a combination of humility and fierce resolve, can help both the leader and the community through the challenges of change.
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*Loreto Normanhurst has been referred to in other papers by Leoni Degenhardt as North West Independent Girls' School (NWIGS) .
Mrs Leoni Degenhardt (B.A. Dip. Ed. M.Ed. MACE) has been involved in the field of education for thirty-five years. She has taught in government and non-government schools in both rural and urban areas; held regional and head office positions in the Catholic Education Office, Sydney; was deputy principal of a highly multi-cultural inner-city Sydney school and principal of a large co-educational Catholic systemic school in the southwest of Sydney, before taking up her current position as principal of Loreto Normanhurst in 1994. She has also been a member of a range of educational boards, commissions and committees Mrs Degenhardt is currently engaged in PhD research, based on the documentation and analysis of the reinvention process in her own school.
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