Jelly Baby Leadership

I'm currently planning an INSET day for middle leaders with a national schools association and I was wracking my brain for a gimmick. As often happens I put it to the back of my mind and went shopping and just as I was heading into a supermarket the penny dropped, I knew what my gimmick would be, jelly babies!

Look at the picture, what do you notice? Well there are red ones, orange ones, green ones and so on. Different colours but look beyond that and what do you see? They are all basically the same. A sugary goo has been moulded to ensure that in fact they are all the same shape, all that is different is the colour. Unfortunately I feel that this is a pretty good analogy for current models of leadership training in schools, both at middle and senior level. Aspiring leaders are forced into moulds, the "colour" or contexts may be different, but basically they are all the same. For red jelly baby read secondary leader, for yellow read primary, for green read curriculum leader and so on, the colours change but they are all the same shape.

This is the what I believe has become the fundamental problem, the state-directed leadership training is designed to produce identical leaders, forcing teachers into moulds, stripping away the individual personalities of aspiring leaders and replacing them with a formula. The courses and criteria has produced a generation of generic leaders most of whom define school success in similar ways and lead by numbers. I am not dismissing the quality of these leaders, I've done one of these qualifications myself and know the right things to say! However I constantly question and have never taken these courses at face value. My worry is that many leaders simply believe all that they are told or if they don't they do toe the party line because they feel that that is what is expected.

My approach is the complete opposite to the jelly baby model. Rather than forcing the aspiring leader into a uniform mould I believe that you should identify a potential leader and mould leadership around them. We would do well to remember that leadership is a personality-centred undertaking, it is undertaken and transmitted through the personality of an individual. Given that everyone has a different personality I would suggest that this implies that everyone's approach to leadership should be different. But why? Your leadership comes into focus once your knowledge, understanding and experience has been focused through the lens of your personality. It isn't just about knowing about "delivering sustainable change" or "transformational leadership", it is about working with people, it is about understanding the needs of staff, their strengths and frailties, it is about people first. Ultimately a future leader should be moulded around their personality rather than the other way around.

Personality is akin to a lens through which leadership is projected. The lens is personal and unique to every leader. That personality is a complex and ever evolving thing. There are so many factors that form an individual's personality that I cannot do justice to it here but it is fair to say that family, values, community, experiences, health and personal history must play a part. Once again given the unique nature of everyone's experience it is little wonder that personality is unique.

Leadership training should help develop the self-knowledge of aspiring leaders and helping them realise their own potential. It shouldn't be about a core curriculum, every school is different, every teacher is different, and the corollary of these facts is that it is impossible to completely teach someone to lead. Instead leaders should understand themselves and how they fit into school structures. They should understand what motivates them, what inspires them and what their values are. They should know how to communicate these to others and when they believe what they say they become authentic and others will follow them.

The best leadership training I have undertaken has been a Master's degree. Read, reflect, synthesise, analyse and adapt. Leadership is a human pursuit, it relies on your personality, it is an intellectual pursuit and your colleagues deserve to be led by someone who has thought about leadership, it is always unique and never the same twice.

Don't be a jelly baby leader, be unique, be yourself.