Complexity in School Leadership

I have just completed a year-long course on Complexity in School Leadership. Unlike leadership courses which focus on the attainment of goals, this course was discussion-based and was an exploration of the complexity of the personal relationships which exist within schools. I was one of six participants and it was led by Keven Bartle, Head of Canons High School in Harrow, supported by Chris Mowles and colleagues from the Hertfordshire Business School and  co-hosted by Emlyn Lumley of Park High School in Stanmore.

At each session we had a visitor who came to discuss complexity theory and ideas with us for the first couple of hours. Two of us completed a reflective narrative of our own prior to each session and shared it with the other members of the group by email. The narratives focused on a particular working relationship or relationships and the challenges that this created. The second part of each session was spent discussing the narratives and exploring possibilities for change within the relationships and patterns of behaviour which had been described.

I do not find it easy to pin it down to words, because the course provoked more questions than answers and this is something that has had and will continue to have an impact on my working life. We have explored the nature of organisations themselves. An organisation is often referred to as an abstract entity that has an existence of its own. However, the reality of an organisation is that it is made up of individuals and their interactions in an adaptive and ever-moving experience. Workers often look to leaders to provide solutions, but these do not necessarily exist. What exists is shared experience and, hopefully, movement with a common purpose.

In our first session, this was likened to a murmuration of starlings and this is an image which had a powerful resonance with me. Each starling within the murmuration is moving in their own time and space but also connected to and adapting to the movement of the group. 

We also explored Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, which only came alive when he went off-script and started reacting to the crowd, creating a group dynamic and momentum.

We have explored what it means to be in the living present, which is informed by our past experience and to some extent by our future expectations and is comprised of the interconnectedness between ourselves and others. We have considered how reductive practices relating to bureaucracy, form-filling and unthinking procedures can be a barrier to opening up space to reflect on direction, purpose and relationships. 

My response to the experience of taking part in this course has been to try to reflect on my relationships with the people I work with and find ways in which our shared experience can move us towards a common purpose. It is not necessarily top of the agenda to have these type of conversations with colleagues but it needs to be, otherwise we can become trapped in the hamster wheel of bureaucracy and its invitation to thoughtlessness.

I would therefore invite anyone reading this to stop and think about the complex relationships which you are part of in the organisation in which you work. Pay attention to what you are doing within the organisation and why. Reflect on your repeated patterns of behaviour, whether they are helpful and what is behind them. Open up a space for reflective discussion within the group you work with, recognise the complexity of what you are doing and don't hide behind reductive practices or magic solutions.

Author AAM