Leadership and Illusion - leadership in school administration

School Administrator, Sept, 2000 by George A. Goens

To see through the mirage of power and control, leaders must connect with followers through values and common purpose

From the Wild West to the streets of Dirty Harry's San Francisco, the leadership icon in America is tough, controlled and remarkably resourceful in going against the odds, all with a tinge of isolation because it's lonely at the top.

The popular culture that spawns these illusions plants seeds of frustration because the world does not operate according to a script. Chaos, complexity and serendipity can stymie the John Waynes and frustrate the Indiana Joneses.

Illusions can be dangerous because they can divert us from the hard questions about ourselves as leaders, whether in politics, the corporate arena or public education. These illusions concern the context of work, relationships and behavior.

* Illusion 1: The world is a logical place that succumbs to the power of logic.

Some superintendents think Sir Isaac Newton is alive and well because they adhere vehemently to Newtonian part-to-whole, cause-and-effect thinking that fits a mechanistic view of the world. The language used today-"If everyone did his or her part ...," "as smooth as clockwork ..." or "let's grease the gears"-indicates a bureaucratic, rational and machine-like view of organizations.

The world is not a machine with cause-and-effect gears and hands. It is chaotic, confusing, immune to linear analysis and often playful, self-organizing and surprising. Even though it does not always respond to concrete action, there are patterns and connections in the universe. Fields are at work that cannot be seen or measured.

Even though they are unseen, fields are real and can be felt. When I was a superintendent in Wisconsin, an associate high school principal was shot to death in the hallway at 2 p.m. during the school day by an unknown perpetrator.

While chaos, terror and uncertainty loomed, people responded and got the things done without being told or directed. We let down the barriers that divide us; we stopped playing organizational roles and we connected on a human level without the games and power plays of conventional organizations. A field of caring, compassion and concern engulfed us.

While this was a dramatic case, positive or negative fields surround us and are created by us in other contexts. The fields of suspicion, fear or manipulation, however, are sometimes the unintended consequences of command-and-control approaches to leadership and to our desire to direct and rule an unpredictable world.

Chaotic systems are not predictable. Life intercedes, unforeseen things happen and science fiction becomes reality. The world does not surrender to reason. Linear views of the world doom people to tinkering with procedures to produce better results, ignoring the fact that people frequently act on emotion, belief, perception or intuition.

Illusion 2: Leaders control and make things happen.

In this Newtonian illusion, power and control make things happen. They are the cause for the intended effects where leaders exercise power and drive change, even though the world doesn't react to controlling forces consistently or uniformly. This illusory power leads to domination through command-and-authority structures designed to regulate workers by breaking work into bits and pieces and establishing standard operating rules.

Control is a mirage. If it were a reality, logic would rule and rational plans would work with clockwork precision. Force moves people, but it does not motivate them. Power can cause people to do things but it controls them only as long as the force continues.

As superintendents, we all have been weary of having to monitor people so they do the job the way we would like the job done. It is tedious because moving people is a lot like the cliche of herding cats: frustrating, tiring and infuriating. Yet we have seen principals and teachers produce wonderful results because they acted upon ethical or philosophical principles and found creative, stable solutions to issues without being threatened or monitored by anyone. Their actions had integrity of purpose and were in harmony with the values of the school.

Leaders who scurry for control miss what makes organizations successful in a tumultuous world order. The order growing from commitment to purpose provides direction and hope in uncertain times.

* Illusion 3: Important things can be quantified, measured or benchmarked.

Scientific management worships objective data and measurement. If it cannot be measured, it does not exist. But to paraphrase Albert Einstein, all that is important cannot be measured. What quantifiable number can you place on teachers' creativity? Their imagination, passion, caring? How do you quantify love or compassion? Yet these elements are important to successful schools. They are difficult to assess, but easier to feel.

In social systems, logic does not always prevail. Feelings intervene. Destiny calls. Heart conquers mind. People wander off from high-paying jobs and two BMWs to find something meaningful in their lives. The abstractions of justice, beauty, equality, truth, liberty and goodness create waves of change as people sacrifice and, in some cases, give their lives for them.