This week, I finished reading a book called Radical Candor, by Kim Scott. A former Google corporate executive, she later joined Apple to develop and teach leadership. She has been a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics and Twitter, she has been a senior policy adviser, a business developer, a founder and CEO of a software start up, she’s a Princeton and Harvard Business MBA grad… and her work comes recommended by lots of the great tech names you’ve heard of – Adam Grant, Sheryl Sandberg et al.

I’ve never really bought in to the “Silicon Valley” hype – I think there are lots of great examples of leadership and thinking from lots of places – but she’s certainly shown a mastery of her domain. And so, I was interested to read what she had to say. A lot of her insight is about the importance of caring personally: if you show that you are honest, authentic and open as a person, and you care deeply about your people, then you will be able to give them frank and candid feedback – in fact, it’s your obligation and your moral purpose to do so. There’s a lot of her thinking echoed in ideas I’ve heard expressed by Mary Myatt, or the Michaela team, for instance.

Like many of the books I have read on these topics – I’d read Bill Walsh’s The Score Takes Care of Itself immediately prior, and I’ve advocated for other thinking by Simon Sinek, or David Marquet et al. before – there are definitely elements of the learning and thinking that definitely resonated with my experience of education. I loved a lot of her ideas, but there were also elements of thinking that I couldn’t meaningfully translate in to the education context.

This set me thinking, and a poll was born:

The results were marginally surprising: I think, despite the broad central agreement, I was interested by the extremities and polarizing element of some of the views expressed.

I think there are a number of ideas that come out of this. In Part One, I just want to consolidate some of my thinking about the key components of the narrative that I feel are expressed here. In Part Two, I want to think more carefully about some of the context and impacts of our educational domain.

5.5% of respondents (in a tiny and biased sample on Twitter…) feel that the specific domain of education is not transferable, therefore these things are of no use to us. I wonder what examples they would have in mind? I wonder whether they have been burned by mis-applied ideas, or whether they just believe in the exclusively school-centred nature of what we do? If anyone voted in this category, I’d be fascinated to understand your thinking further.

78% of people felt positively: either believing that we have a huge amount to learn, or that we have some learning, but it’s limited by our context or application. Many of the commenters felt that this “value” component was the nuanced element that was important. I suspect that many who said “not enough to be important” were also getting at this concept.

For example, Andy Lewis (@AndyLewis_RE) commented that:

I think we have become a little polarised… running a school means you need to know loads about running a school BUT I’ve found through reading Goggins/Adeleke/Marquet/Willink&Babin they teach you a lot about human beings and about yourself – and that is always very useful. It’s easy to dismiss everything non school as irrelevant and highlight business terminology as a blight on schools (I think it is problematic), but maybe we miss something if we do.

Andy Lewis

Andy Buck (@Andy__Buck) agreed with the duality of the skill-set required by school leaders:

Many business books are useful for some of the ‘generic’ aspects of leadership such as managing change, building trust or having difficult conversations. But that is only one side of the coin. You also need the role specific expertise as shared in Teaching Walkthrus, for example.

Andy Buck

Both Andys share a clear point: there are human skills – leadership, your values, your key motivators – that are fairly universal. You recognise them and are drawn to them in the texts you read: whether that’s sports, leadership, military history – and they help you understand more about yourself and what you believe.

It is my perception that, increasingly, people are more aware of their values – as education divides and becomes a more “diverse product”, different approaches and perspectives on education become part of your thoughts, experiences, and your applications/jobs/job histories. Articulating your values and vision of education – and going through a process of shaping that discussion – is an enormously powerful and important component of understanding your purpose and approach. I believe that these books, TED talks, and experiences have a real value here.

However, school leadership is also about applying that purpose through the lens of the education system that we operate within. There are specific skills I use in my classroom that are not found at Google, or in the battlefield (I hope!), and we often struggle to recognise the requirements of creating cultures on deep and meaningful expertise. Mark and Zoe Enser’s Durrington Talk on Creating Cultures, for example, looks at the way in which we can explore subject-domain expertise. Matthew Evans’ excellent work on Leaders with Substance is predicated on a desirable mastery of domain-specific knowledge.

I do not believe that these two ideas are in inherent opposition: rather we need to find an equilibrium balance and pathway towards better understanding in both areas. For each of us, I believe that the domain and the values experience needs to be developed in parallel with our systems and school-specific expertise. Some of us may start from different positions: experience in a different career, life circumstance or wider non-educational context (e.g. competitive sport, parenting, family experience) having shaped your philosophies to a greater degree than your educational skillset – or vice-versa: getting in to teaching as a very young graduate, but not having the “life experience” to really understand yourself or your team leadership skills. In comments, Jonathan Mountstevens (@MrMountstevens) highlights the delicacy of this balancing act in terms of value for the institution and for the individual, as well as flagging some potential risks.

For me respondents have overestimated the value of non-educational books for leaders. It’s not that I doubt individual leaders can draw lessons and inspiration from them, but that I doubt they will be effective for improving school leadership at scale (my emphasis). We are all influenced by the things we know and care about e.g. my thoughts about leadership have been shaped by my understanding of the Reformation, but I wouldn’t suggest that all leaders should read books about 16th century history! Also, mostly I think these influences from outside of the field are necessarily quite vague and tend to confirm in us what we already think. Therefore there are limits on their potential to improve school leadership. There is also a danger that ideas will be applied out of context and do considerable damage… A good example would be the Dave Brailsford aggregation of marginal gains stuff which was all the rage a few years ago. I don’t doubt that the idea can be applied in schools (although I’m not sure this was demonstrated), but it assumes you should tweak existing practice. What it was used to justify was ever more obsessive marking policies, intervention mania etc. What was rarely questioned was whether these things were right in the first place. Educational expertise would have been needed for that and it could have been a game-changer. So for me there is no question that reading domain-specific work is of much more value to leaders. Sadly it has been neglected. Other material can be interesting and inspiring, but mostly on an individual level and only when informed by educational expertise.

Jonathan Mountstevens

Jonathan’s core point – the need for inspiration and ideas to be filtered through the lens of educational experience and expertise, and the risks of doing it badly – may well be at the heart of the 5.5% who do not believe the business world has anything to teach us. Certainly, his example of “risky application” – the marginal gains theory – is something that I have seen explored and discussed as an INSET and then through a school year as a topic, though in my case, I feel it was a positively driven message of “we don’t need systematic change here and now”. But we have all seen weird exercises transferred – Google’s 10% time rings a bell for me, for example – without contextual thought to the educational domain.

It may be that this is simply a “cost-benefit” analysis. As Jonathan identified, these may not be effective considerations to make changes to schools at scale – it may be individual only, and therefore not something that we should advocate, or corporately spend time on. Certainly, if you are in a school struggling with teaching and behaviour, strong domain expertise in these areas is the most powerful lever you should be pulling first!

I think the most interesting component of this, then, comes when we try to analyse and explore more specifically what are the features of education that make it difficult to transfer components? While there are certainly job-traits that are specific, I believe that’s true of almost any profession: I doubt there’s many jobs in the world that I could immediately do, just because I’m a person: everything requires some training and skill development!

In Part Two, I want to organise my thinking about the key structural features of the educational domain that may limit the transfer of ideas, and be key components of the lens that we develop as educators.

“A little learning is a dang’rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Alexander Pope, 1711

The Classical inspired pre-cursor to the Dunning-Kruger analysis, Alexander Pope’s warning about a little learning being intoxicating feels as true today – in a world of EduTwitter – as it appears to have been in 1711. And, on reflection, while I genuinely do consider the wealth of opportunity offered by Twitter to be one of the most astonishing and engaging professional learning challenges of the last few years, my unease with it has been encapsulated nicely by that fear of shallowness.

The danger, for me, has been in a broad but superficial engagement with what I feel are really monumental texts, or shifting sands and paradigms in education. I feel like I know just enough to be superficially au fait – dangerous, and intoxicating – but not enough to really work through them and feel like I have anything vaguely approaching depth. In some places, I’ve worked through issues with colleagues, and in the application in my own context, but in others, they float, nebulously at the edges of my thinking: unargued, unrefined and ill-defined. While it’s possible that this could just be the very overactive Imposter Syndrome that often challenges my thinking, I also believe that there’s an element of this that is inherently linked to the way in which I read and engage with what’s currently out there.

So, this year, I’ve decided to focus on my own professional development, and embarked on a Masters in Education programme with the University of Buckingham. I’m very excited by the combination of experience days and research focus, and having already met some fellow students and completed an induction day with the very wise Dr Bethany Kelly, I’m apprehensive but excited to start drinking a bit more deeply!

While I’m sure there’s much to evolve, my initial ideas are focused on building cultures of teaching, learning and research-informed pedagogy, and how and where the independent sector fits in to that environment. I’m looking forward to reaching out to colleagues and shaping some thoughts soon, and hopefully getting a supervisor and getting started too!

Some subsequent posts may well contain thesis and research content – you have thus been warned, and any ideas and discussions are very definitely welcomed!

In a number of recent books, articles and discussions on Twitter, the concept of “servant leadership” has come up. It’s one that resonates with my own values and way I work – perhaps learned from my family, as much as the environments and academic leaders I’ve ever worked with.

What does servant leadership mean to me?

When I was younger, I learned my first principles of leadership through the Air Cadet Organisation – something I was delighted to rejoin and serve as a member of staff later in life. I’ve always been drawn to some of the thinking and reading that the Services offer – indeed, it’s fascinating to me that we call them “Services”, and even Royal Military Academy Sandhurst’s motto reminds us that we “Serve to Lead”.

In the Air Cadets, in the 1990s, we learned “functional leadership” as it was taught then, and the thinking process was about what a leader does and what a leader looks at and focuses on. As well as helpful mnemonics about “PICSIE” or “SMEAC” to execute tasks, we were taught Adair’s model of functional leadership – in which he described the three components of success:

In my opinion, “Hero” leaders tend to focus on the task, or individuals needs. They get the job done, they are all powerful, and it all relies on their “dynamism” or “charisma”. The team is a distinct third in their priority list.

If one is cynical, we can argue that a number of poor leaders in schools are so focused on their own personal needs as an individual – career development, being seen to be successful, or being able to get that promotion – that they perhaps even relegate the task in to second place.

Servant leaders, by contrast, put the team’s needs first – believing that a successful team is the most essential component to getting the task done. They will prioritise the team’s needs over their own – but also, sometimes, over the task. If it’s too much work (e.g. “let’s write our entire curriculum in to booklets at the end of the summer term!”), they’ll relegate the task importance second to their team.

In the later evolution of this, Adair talks about situational leadership – there are times when you have to change your support/directive nature to accomplish different things – but I think this is expected: we can all do different things at different times. For me, the heart of servant leadership goes back to which of those three circles are most critical, and closest to your values. When push comes to shove – what’s your priority? Team? Task? Or individual?

What does servant leadership look like for me?

I’m a middle leader – so for me, servant leadership is about the conditions that I can create for my own team, my students and Department and colleagues. As I see it – my job is to look out for the team, which means that individuals will thrive and then we’ll all be able to take on the task.

As much as possible, we operate on a culture of “no surprises” – which means a lot of work is engaged with forward planning, and scanning for the things we need to know. I have written about some of these process-approaches before: whether it’s on creating workbooks, whether it’s about Department bulletins, or whether it’s about the ways we work as a team. I don’t have success – we do, as a Department. I don’t have great results – we do, as a Department. My job, as I see it, is just to make the right conditions for the team to do its’ best work.

Far better and more insightful authors than me have written about this, and the evolution of military thinking and leadership: I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek’s work (Leaders Eat Last is particularly focused on this, though the Infinite Game is a great read when you think about “Trusting Teams”), and I remain hugely inspired by the Stephen Covey-influenced Captain Marquet in his superlative book “Turn the Ship Around”. These are people who have spent a lot of time with, or lived, that life of service to their nation, and their ideas and the clarity with which they communicate them are powerful beyond measure.

But to me, educational leaders and thinkers like Sam Strickland, Kat Howard and John Tomsett & Jonny Uttley are just the same in terms of their approach. They talk about leadership, wellbeing and culture – but whatever their focus, the values are shared. The teams they lead are safe, inspired and supported by them – and that is the result of a deliberate, values-based decision to act, think and prioritise the team above all else. I don’t know if they would agree, or define it in the same way, but to me, they model servant leadership in the same way as David Marquet does.

What are the risks of servant leadership?

I think servant leadership can often be mistaken for other things, and I have found that there are a number of challenges of servant leadership – particularly in a culture that is not aligned to it, or doesn’t recognise it or the values that it brings.

First, you run a risk of being overlooked and not thought of as “a leader”. Many schools – and many job adverts – cling to the notion of charismatic and dynamic leadership, and the hero leader narrative. Servant leaders don’t look like that; they don’t think, talk or interview like that – and while I don’t presume to say that there is a “right” or a “wrong” way to be a leader, you do want to be aware that you will potentially appear different to other people if you’re competing for a job. For me, I am comfortable with my values, and I’d rather find somewhere that fits them – but the persistence and prevalence of hero leader words in job adverts in TES means that it could be some time before “the right culture” finds you!

Second, and I think this is perhaps more critical in a Kat Howard-inspired reflection, your own personal sense of self and well-being can easily be lost in service to others. When “it’s for the kids” or your member of staff who “just needs five minutes”, you can easily lose your own work and end up doing all the hours to compensate. You can end up being ‘a people pleaser’, and not having your own values, vision or direction.

Third, I think this is particularly critical when you’re not on someone else’s team – if you work in a servant leadership culture, then you’ve got someone who will look out for you, and tell you when to stop. If you’re a servant leader in a hero culture, you run the risk of burning out for someone else’s agenda and gain, and no one will stop you doing it to yourself!

These haven’t been easy lessons to learn, necessarily – but I remain resolved that servant leadership is the philosophy that best fits my values, my approach to my work and professional life, and how and who I want to be. I accept and understand the risks and challenges are part of the cost of doing business, and I am increasingly comfortable with defaulting to “my values” rather than “what should I do?”. It’s something I actively seek out whenever I look at leadership reading, or in school’s reflections about themselves – and I think it’s a valuable addition to the dialogue around how we do education. I hope we see more of it, and that it becomes a wider narrative context!