Teachers and students seek frameworks that help them sort out how they fit into a school’s culture. Cultural frameworks are sources of sense making and meaning that all of us need (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 112).
Schools teach their culture best when they embody purposes, values, norms and obligations in their everyday activities. This happens when leadership and virtue work together. How? (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 112) People become virtuous by practicing virtue and by living with moral mentors. Leaders must behave consistently, almost instinctively in moral ways (Walton cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 112). These leaders know and focus on what is important, care deeply about their work, learn from their successes and failures, take calculated risks, and are trustworthy people (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 112).
Four Leadership Values:
1. Hope
2. Trust
3. Piety
4. Civility
HOPE
Leaders can be both hopeful and realistic as long as the possibilities for change remain open. Hope can change things for the better. (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 113).
A sense of hopefulness from an increased sense of control is connected with biological changes that enhance physical and mental health (Roset cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 113).
Hopeful (not wishful) leaders react actively to what they hope for and deliberately strive to turn hopefulness into reality (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 113).
Faith and hope go together. Faith comes from commitment to a cause, from strong beliefs in a set of ideas, and from other convictions (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 114). When faith goes, hope goes with it. Hope is faith – faith with our eyes on possibilities for the future (Smedes cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 114).
If the hopefulness of leaders is based on faith in a set of assumptions, and if these are shared by the school community, then a powerful force of ideas will be created. These ideas provide the basis for becoming a community of hope and can drive the school’s efforts to turn hope into reality. Leadership then reaches a level of moral action. Leaders need to be concerned with what is good AND what is effective (114).
Hope is a cognitive set of comprised set of goals, pathways, and agency. Individuals with high hope possess goals, find pathways to these goals, navigate around obstacles, and develop agency to reach their goals (McDermott et al. cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 115).
Goals and practical steps must be set in order to realise hopes. Think about: goals, pathways, obstacles, commitment, and presence of efficacy/belief in ability to realise it and how to build it if lacking (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 115).
Role expectations are sent and received. Expectations that are sent typically deal with rights; received expectations, deal with obligations. Eg, a student’s obligations are to do one’s best, turn up on time, help others, and be respectful. Rights to qualified, respectful caring teachers; instruction that is responsive; a safe environment; respectful treatment; and a voice in learning (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 116).
Commitments and promises by everyone in the community are critical. They outline the obligations of each role, so that the outcome can be achieved. Networks are friendly when role sets are linked to common purposes and shared frameworks for working together. This linkage can transform networks of teachers and students into learning and practice communities (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 116).
In today’s learning organisation, work roles are defined “in terms of information gathering, problem solving, the production of creative ideas, and the ability to respond flexibly to new situations or adjust flexibly when interacting with others.” (Hage and Powers cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 117).
Members of an effective role set are interdependent and held together by relational trust. Trust is the tie that binds roles together and allows for the creation of role sets that embody reciprocal obligations. Trust is high when every party to the role set feels supported and safe. Safety is provided by social exchanges (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 117).
Relational trust is “the social exchanges of schooling organised around a distinct set of role relationships …each party in a role relationship maintains an understanding of his/her role obligations and holds some expectations about the role obligations of others.” (Bryk and Schneider cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 118).
Without trusting relationships, exchanges would likely encourage self-protection and holding back, severely limiting the capacity for collaboration, learning and improved performance. People keep things to themselves, hoard ideas and are less likely to be helpful and open (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 118).
Relational trust is an important catalyst for developing a supportive work culture characterised by school commitment and a positive orientation toward change. It’s also an important catalyst for developing a facilitative work structure that included developing a professional community for making decisions together and supporting teacher learning (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 119).
BUILD TRUST FIRST, then move onto vision, strategy and action. Open communications focused on who we are and what we believe. Decisions arise as fairly obvious conclusions drawn from a mass of shared assumptions. It’s the assumptions we spend our time working on (Hurst cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 119).
The secret to change is to ensure everyone has the support and capacity needed to implement the change successfully. Trust plays an important role. Everyone is vulnerable when trying something new and needs to be assured that mistakes will be accepted and that support will be there (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 119).
Principals play key roles in developing trust. They establish both respect and personal regard when they acknowledge the vulnerability of others, actively listen to their concerns, and eschew arbitrary actions. Effective principals couple these behaviours with a compelling school vision and behaviour that clearly seeks to advance the vision (They cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 120). By paying attention to personal integrity and other dimensions of trust, linking this trust to purposes, providing competent management support, and emphasising capacity building, conditions for change are created and people feel more willing to give a try to change (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 120).
Piety is a leadership virtue that encourages people to look inwards (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 120).
“Piety demands conformity and justifies exclusion, while civility welcomes diversity, encourages tolerance, and legitimates controversy. Civility builds frameworks within which people can co-operate despite their divergent views and interests” (Selznick cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 121).
Piety and civility are at the heart of building learning communities that bond people together while creating bridges that connect them to other people and views. Brides need to be built among different groups within and outside the school. Bridging honours diversity and provides opportunities for learning as groups are exposed to new ideas. Bonding and bridging should be balanced (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 121).
In schools, cultural universals include values, standards, and norms that are meant to be shared by everyone. These cultural universals are accompanied by other values, standards, and norms that are meant to be shared by some but not all. The two sets of values, standards, and norms together create a layered system of loyalty and commitments – a floor of common understandings that support differences (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 121).
When leaders strengthen the heartbeat of schools, their schools become stronger and more resilient. These qualities help leaders to share the burdens of leadership with others, to create collaborative cultures, and to be continuous learners. Leadership inevitably involves change, and change inevitably involves learning (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 122).
Leadership is more about helping people understand the problems they face, helping them manage these problems, and even helping them learn to live with them (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 122).
Schools need centres of harmony that contain enough of what is important and shared to hold things together. Creating centres of harmony is the work of a bonding community. Linking differences and learning is the work of a bridging community (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 122).
Wise leaders try to rely on others and build upon their relationship capacity. An important part of a leader’s job is to cultivate and amass the intellectual capital needed for the school’s organisational IQ to increase. Leadership and learning together are so important (Sergiovanni, 2005, pp. 122-123). Learning can be viewed as something individuals feel compelled to do because it is a public good that helps schools achieve their goals (Elmore cited in Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 123). In every case, effects multiply when these dimensions are brought together. Hope, trust, piety, civility and other leadership virtues can help (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 123).
References
Sergiovanni, T. (2005). The Virtues of Leadership. The Educational Forum, 69(Winter), 112-123. Retrieved July 27, 2013, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/7375166/Sergiovanni-Thomas-Virtues-of-Leadership
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