Key reads

Good to Great
Jim Collins

Published 2001, Random House Business Books, ISBN 0712676090

Good to Great offers an insight into how an effective organisation can become an unusually effective one. Collins suggests that “good” performance acts as a disincentive to the vision, decisions and risk-taking that can transform an organisation from effective to extraordinarily effective.

It is based on an analysis of performance in 28 major companies and focuses on leadership practices in the extraordinarily effective companies, ie the most profitable ones.

Changing Leadership for Changing Times
Kenneth Leithwood, Doris Jantzi and Rosanne Steinbach

Published 1999, OUP, ISBN 0335195229

The response of today's schools to challenges presented by such forces as technology, changing demographics, and government austerity offer useful clues for envisioning and attempting to understand the nature of schools of the future. Going forward, schools will need to be able to thrive on uncertainty, have considerably greater capacities for collective problem solving than they do at present, and meet a much wider array of student needs.

Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach examine the types of leadership that are likely to be productive in creating and sustaining such schools. Based on a long term study of 'transformational' leadership in school restructuring contexts, the chapters in this book offer a highly readable account of such leadership grounded in a substantial body of empirical evidence. Focussing on inclusiveness and adaptability, the analysis of Changing Leadership for Changing offers an interesting challenge to national educational policy with its emphasis and standards and standardisation.

The New Leaders
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyzatis and Annie McKee

Published 2002, Little Brown, ISBN 0316857661

Drawing heavily on Goleman’s well-known bestseller ‘Emotional Intelligence’, the authors’ combined research and knowledge take the subject of emotional intelligence into the leadership arena. The message of the book is that primal leadership operates at its best through emotionally intelligent leaders who create ‘resonance’.

The subject builds through the three parts of the book, from the concept definition and neurological basis of EI in part one, through developing the EI competences in the individual in part two to building emotionally intelligent teams and organisations in part three.

Moral Leadership:
Getting to the Heart of School Improvement
Thomas J Sergiovanni

Published 1992, Jossey Bass Wiley, ISBN 0787902594

In Moral Leadership, Sergiovanni makes use of anecdotes and stories from the field to develop a theory of school leadership based on moral authority.

Key themes are: the development of a new theory of school leadership; the need to expand the value structure and the bases of authority for the practice of leadership; the need to build substitutes for ‘follow me’ leadership; and the development of norms as a key strategy, emphasising the idea of the school as a community that is concerned with relationships, shared values, commitments and obligations.

The Arts of Leadership
Keith Grint

Published 2001, OUP, ISBN 0199244898

The Arts of Leadership examines the concept of leadership considered through a number of examples, including Richard Branson, Florence Nightingale and Hitler. Grint believes that leadership is a process rather than a quality and is dependent upon circumstance and the part played by followers. He treats leadership as a ensemble of arts employed together: philosophical arts, fine arts, martial arts and performing arts.

Leadership: Theory and Practice
Peter G Northouse

Published 2000, Sage Publications Ltd, ISBN 076192566X

Leadership is a fashionable concept, but an ill-defined phenomenon. Following this Northouse seeks to define leadership as, “a process whereby an individual influences a group so as to achieve a common goal.”

The text, updated with new research sources, models, and case studies to keep current with the popular field, provides a description and application of many approaches to leadership, with an emphasis on how theory can inform practice. With 12 themed chapters, each describing the theory and then explaining how it can be used, and each containing three case studies to contextualise the points made, this is a short but rich book and an ideal starting point that introduces many different leadership theories.

Leading the Self-Managing School
Brian J Caldwell and Jim M Spinks

Published 1992, RoutledgeFalmer, ISBN 1850006563

This book offers a detailed analysis of the school leader’s role in the era of self-management that had become established in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and that had begun to spread elsewhere in this brief period of major international educational reform.

It addresses the challenges school leaders face as managers of the school as an organisation, focusing particularly on the implications for leadership roles and behaviours. It offers different perspectives on leadership and organisation culture and on the need to think strategically about the school’s development.

The Constructivist Leader
Linda Lambert

Published 2002, Teachers College Press, ISBN 0807742538

Written by a team of seven American authors, both academics and school practitioners, using perspectives explicitly drawn from other disciplines. Whilst not an easy read, The Constructivist Leader will repay careful study, providing educational leaders at all levels with a conceptual framework for leadership. The need for shared leadership, the importance of constructing common meanings and gathering and interpreting information (ongoing learning, CPD) all form the core of the constructivist approach which can be defined as reciprocal, purposeful learning in a community.

Transformational Leadership:
Industrial, Military and Educational Impact
Bernard M Bass

Published 1997, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, ISBN 0805826963

Transformational approaches to leadership have dominated educational literature. Bass traces their development and explains the assumptions underlying them. The transformational/ transactional approach more accurately describes the practices of “the best of leaders”, Bass argues, than the simple transactional paradigm that previously dominated. Organised into 13 chapters - which include Bass’s Full Range of Leadership model - Transformational Leadership offers an outlook which can lead to a real sense of ‘meaningfulness’ in the lives and works of leaders.

Effective School Leadership
John MacBeath

Published 1998, Paul Chapman Publishing, ISBN 185396395X

Detailing a comparative study between leaders in Denmark, England, Scotland and Australia, the chapters of Effective School Leadership are organised around three main areas: a literature review, concentrating on leadership ‘heresies’; data from the study (“who really runs the school?”); and, finally, an attempt to identify broader themes - ethics, relationships and the nature of professional development.

There are elements of repetition between the chapters and the book tends to ask more questions than it answers. But the questions it does raise are key to the issues of effective leadership – particularly about the relationship between school leaders and other partners ‘in the system’. Importantly, it rejects the notion of “one model of leadership fits all” ideology.