Introduction

The development of a leader is perhaps best seen as a series of increasingly stretching positions. These, together with formal training and support, hone their capabilities, self image and skills for more senior roles.

The notions of career 'ladders', 'paths' or 'frameworks' are therefore helpful in a number of ways. This leadership map offers you a generic leadership framework or platform.

In a critical departure from other forms of career ladder, the map describes a number of different routes through leadership. It may be helpful to you in a number of ways.

Firstly:

You can use it with your own leadership population to communicate expectations and provide a sense of progression and opportunity.

Secondly:

As you identify and define the roles that your school and schools in the area need to deliver their strategies, you can plot them against the map. This will help you to:

• test your thinking
• spot gaps and duplications
• get a sense of the way the roles fit together
• translate roles into the capabilities required to succeed in them.

Thirdly

You can plot career trajectories against the map, using it to identify:

• your next move
• your likely potential (taking account of risks and changes of plans)
• the gaps in your capability required to make the next move effectively and to reach your ultimate destination (and thus plan development accordingly).

Fourthly

The map is a useful spin-off tool for tasks like organisation design. It can help you to build and test management structures and natural reporting relationships. And, of course, the more that different management processes and systems refer to each other, the greater the sense of coherence that people will have.