Introduction

School leaders play a vital role in providing every student in New South Wales public schools with a great education and the best start in life. They have a positive impact in classrooms and on their staff. They guide teacher development and engage their communities. Here at the NSW Department of Education's School Leadership Institute, our mission is to support all NSW public school leaders by providing world-class, evidence-informed leadership development programs and resources.

Our podcast will explore the key issues and challenges of school leadership. Hosted by Joanne Jarvis, the director of the School Leadership Institute, tune in and listen to our guests and colleagues share their expertise, insights and wisdom on leading with purpose and impact. Welcome to our Leadership In Focus series.

Joanne Jarvis

Hello and welcome to episode 13 of the Leadership Conversations podcast series. I'm Joanne Jarvis and I’m the director of the NSW Department of Education's School Leadership Institute. This will be a two-part series where we will be exploring the notion of imperfect leadership. With me today is Professor Steve Munby.

Based in the UK, Steve Munby works with groups of schools around the world on leadership and system reform. He has worked in education throughout his career and served as Chief Executive of the National College for School Leadership in England, followed by 5 years as Chief Executive of Education Department Trust, an international not-for-profit education organisation working in Asia, India, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

Steve is visiting professor at University College London Centre for Educational Leadership and honorary visiting professor at Liverpool Hope University. His book, Imperfect Leadership: a book for leaders who know they don't know at all, is a great read.

It's a real privilege to have you join me today as we discuss imperfect leadership Steve.

Steve Munby

My pleasure. It's great to have a chance to engage with you, Joanne. I've watched the School Leadership Institute develop strongly over the past few years under your leadership. I've observed the kind of impact it’s making, and it's always a real privilege to work with colleagues from the School Leadership Institute in NSW and indeed with leaders in NSW.

Joanne

Thanks so much, Steve. Let's start off with why you decided to write a book about imperfect leadership.

Steve

Yeah, it's a strange title for a book, isn't it? I called it that because it's the best term I could think of to describe my own leadership. And that's not something I'm ashamed of or embarrassed by. I'm actually proud to be an imperfect leader because I have a problem with this idea of perfect leadership.

I think if we think we have to be perfect as leaders, we'll end up making ourselves ill, either physically or mentally. We'll do our heads in. If we think we have to be perfect as leaders, we won't encourage others to step up to leadership because they have to be perfect, too, and we won't share and distribute the leadership. We'll do it all ourselves.

So I called the book Imperfect Leadership because it's about my own leadership journey. And it's not a hero leadership book at all Joanne, it's about it's about mistakes I made, it's about things I found stressful, but it's about how gradually, over time, I came to be a better leader, I improved my leadership. And, you know, it's tough being a school leader because the children, young people, the parents, the school community, all the staff are relying on you to lead them.

And it can be a huge responsibility and you can find it very, very challenging. And sometimes it can overpower you. But it will be even more daunting if you think you have to be some kind of transformational, inspirational, individualistic superhero leader that no one can really be. It will just make you feel inadequate. So having an imperfect leadership mindset, I think is a positive thing.

You understand that we all make mistakes. So although we challenge and reflect on our mistakes, we don't because ourselves up when we make mistakes. We understand that asking for help is a good thing, not a bad thing in leadership. We know we can't do it all ourselves. We need a good team around us to share that responsibility. And we understand that sometimes we will have imposter syndrome. But imposter syndrome in moderation is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Joanne

What a relief that I'm an imperfect leader. I actually feel much more relaxed just hearing you define it that way Steve.

Steve

Yeah, it's important that we all accept the fact. It’s a relief sometimes to accept the fact that you're an imperfect leader.

Joanne

I loved reading your book, and in chapter 3 you write: at the heart of authentic and imperfect leadership is moral purpose, a commitment to ensure that we improve the learning in the lives of the children and young people we serve. And then you also argue that social justice should be at the heart of our moral purpose. Could you elaborate on this concept for our listeners?

Steve

Thanks, Joanne. Well, moral purpose gives us our why as leaders. It enables us to do the hard things we don't want to do, but we know we need to do. To have that difficult conversation with that member of staff, even though we’d rather stay under the duvet that morning, we get up and we have it because we have our moral purpose, because we know is in the interests of the children and young people that we serve.

I visited a slum school in Nairobi, quite a few years ago now. And, and it was a horrendously challenging place. And there was an open sewer running through the middle of the slum area. And the children had to get to school by walking on a plank over the sewer. It smelled horrible. But when they got into school, the children were so delighted to be there. They loved being at school, were thrilled to be at school.

And I asked the school principal why he was there because it was a very challenging environment to work in. And he said, I'm there because without education these children have got no hope. That's why I'm here because they've got their parents never went to school. They've got nothing in the world. All they’ve got is education. And although people in NSW won't be working in quite as challenging environment as that I suspect, it's still the case that as leaders in NSW and as teachers in NSW, you're giving hope to children through education. And that's the moral purpose. That's what drives us. That's why we do the job.

But I think social justice is at the heart of that in terms of our moral purpose. See I like the idea of social justice more like more than I like the idea of social mobility. I like social mobility. But social mobility is about how we get young people to reach their potential. Maybe who are talented but poor to go out and do well and get a good job and that's important. But actually social justice is allowing talent to flourish even if you're talented and if you're not talented. Social justice is about whether you got pushy parents or parents who don't help at all, making sure that every child, whether they’re talented or not, whether they've got pushy parents or not, every child gets a decent education. That's the social justice bit.

Social justice is about fighting against the corrosive impact of poverty, that school principal was in Nairobi. But it's not just about economic poverty. It's about poverty of ambition. It's about poverty of experience in terms of life enhancing opportunities to experience the arts and sport and travel. And it's about all children, not just some. And that's why I worry about education systems that put all the accountability on individual schools and judge everything about the individual school performance. I get why they do that, but if you all just focus on the individual school, you won't necessarily have equity across the system. The more we judge the success of principals in terms of how their own school performance rather than all schools in the local area, the bigger the social equity challenge becomes. So social justice should be the big driver because it's about all children, whatever their needs, trying to make sure they’re met through our education system.

Joanne

It reminds me of why NSW public education is so important because in the end we’re a public education system, not a system of public schools. So that that whole concept requires us to work collaboratively as a system and that's where our power is.

Steve

Absolutely. I think that's a really important point Joanne.

Joanne

What role does moral purpose play in a leader’s impact on teacher and student learning do you think?

Steve

Well I think having a strong moral purpose doesn't necessarily make you better at improving teaching and learning in your school. I'd argue it's necessary but not sufficient. I think you still need to have a good understanding of the technical aspects of teaching and learning, to know what searching questions to ask to make sure that teaching and learning is going well in your school. So you need to show curiosity, be good at leading collective problem solving on issues of improving teaching and focus on the professional development of teachers and teaching.

But with strong moral purpose and, as I said before, commitment to social justice. I think you have also, you're looking at the quiet child, the average unnoticed child who might be underachieving, the child will never do well in NAPLAN tests, but who still should be given close attention to make progress in their learning. You'll be prepared to have that difficult conversation with that member of staff who might be showing bias, conscious or unconscious, towards some children, or may not be performing as well, or might be behaving in a way that isn't good for the culture or for the ethos of the school.

The member of staff who praises achievement but not effort, or the member of staff who labels or stereotypes children. Will be determined to ensure the voice of all young people is heard, not just the usual suspects in the school, not just the one who are articulate and confident. That identity and community are recognised and celebrated. And the curriculum has meaning and connectedness.

So having the moral purpose, along with the technical focus on teaching and learning, means we don't settle for a quiet life, even if on the surface things seem to be going quite well. We’re passionate about every child being a powerful learner, not just some.

Joanne

It's committing to action that which one holds dear. That's the power of moral purpose. On its own t's not a strategy. I think Michael Fullan said that once.

Steve

Yes. One of my great heroes, Michael Fullan.

Joanne

Another point you make in your book is where you discuss leadership mindsets that support leaders to enact their role. You highlight many mindsets, but I'm interested in courage and curiosity. Why do you think these mindsets are important?

Steve

OK, well, just a little bit about courage. I think courage is really important in leadership. In the foreword to the second book that I wrote with Mary Clare Bretherton, Andy Hargreaves wrote the foreword and he said, I've known Steve Munby for 40 years and he's always struck me as someone who is equally courageous and terrified when he's leading an organisation, and I think that's a nice balance to have, actually.

I'm happy with that. Courageous and terrified. We’re frightened, we’re worried, but we’re also courageous, prepared to do the hard things even though it's hard and even though we're scared sometimes. So yeah, I think courage is really important in leadership. But let me just focus on the second part of your question, which is about curiosity.

I think it's really important for us as leaders to have open mindedness, to be slow to condemn or dismiss groups of people who just have a different view from most about education. Be curious rather than oppositional towards those who may see things differently. And to ask, what's really going on here? Why do these colleagues have a different view and what can I learn from them?

And of course, we see the opposite on Twitter and X and social media. I see people taking camps and attacking other people and I worry about that. I think a narrow point of view is an easy trap to fall into. The famous writer Agatha Christie said the secret of solving a crime is to keep an open mind as long as possible.

The moment you make up your mind as to who committed the murder, you start to only see the evidence that fits your thinking. Or even worse, you begin to make the evidence fit your assumptions.

Joanne

It's a great analogy.

Steve

I think open mindedness is very important as a leader. I think it's, we need to have strong values and beliefs, we need to follow the evidence, of course, but we need to walk in other people's shoes, see the things from their perspective and combat our own intuitive bias. Vivian Robinson says we should be about truth seeking rather than truth claiming. And I know that Vivian's doing quite a lot of work for you.

But it requires a level of comfort with ambiguity. The ability to see things in different points of view at the same time. It may be that we don't know all the answers and we accept that. I think it's easy for us as leaders to get stuck in habits. And habits are good. Habits make the job manageable, but they can also mean that we do things the way we've always done them, and sometimes there might be a better way of doing things.

But because we've got a closed mind, we don't open ourselves up to it. That's why being curious and looking outward is so important. It requires a level of ambiguity to seek different points of view. But it's not about wishy washy thinking. It's about being open minded and curious. Not about compromise. It's about being genuinely curious and wanting to be a better leader than we were before.

Joanne

And that requires courage too, doesn't it, to go back to where you started with your answer. You know you've got to feel the fear and do it anyway, haven't you?

Steve

That's why the question you asked is so good. Because courage and curiosity go together.

Joanne

Another part of your book that I enjoyed very much was when you talked about leaders being able to enable the right balance between power and love. What do you mean by that?

Steve

I think this is a really important concept, Joanne, and I use a lot of my leadership. See, by power, I mean the drive to achieve, to get things done, to move things forward. By love, I mean the drive to unify and bring people together.

And I think we unless we have both of these things in our leadership, we won't be successful. Because power, unless we have power in our leadership, nothing's going to improve. Nothing's going to change. We're going to carry on doing the things we've always done. And and if we don't have those high expectations, if we don't have that determination, if we don't have that relentlessness and that focus on doing the right thing and absolute commitment to making it work, then we won't be effective as leaders.

So the power side of leadership is really, really important and it's hard to keep and maintain. Sometimes we start off with that kind of power drive, but gradually we just get used to it and accept the status quo. So that's so important to have the power side in leadership. But unless we have the love side in leadership, we won't take people with us. Unless we show kindness, compassion, empathy, build relationships, we might be driving things forward, but no one's following us and no one's going with us, and we won't have a sustainable approach.

So power and love in leadership is really important. And I actually use this about every few months. I used to reflect in my journal, how am I doing on the power and love balance? Have I been too much power in the past few months? Or too much love? Or what do I need to do in the coming few months given what I'm facing to get the balance right between the power side and the love side? And it's a great mechanism, I think, to reflect upon getting the balance right.

Joanne

I'd forgotten that you have talked about journalling. Is that something that you do every day, or how did that impact on the way you were able to lead and reflect on your leadership?

Steve

Joanne I'm a huge fan of keeping a journal, but I don't, it's not realistic for me to write in it every day. I write in every few months, maybe 2 or 3 months. I write about, I still do. I've been doing it for years and years and years. I write about how I'm feeling. I write about my leadership issues, my challenges.

I reflect upon how things have gone and maybe what I need to do differently in the next few months. And I found it very helpful, not just to use it for reflection time at the time, but also to look back on what I wrote a year ago or two years ago and look at how my leadership is developing, or some of the similar issues that I was, facing now, I faced a year or two ago and remind myself of how I dealt with them.

So I'm a huge fan. I remember once, writing in my journal on a Greek island, I wrote I'm really worried about going back to work after the summer holiday. I just don't think I'm up to the job. I think it's too hard. And then I look back and the year before that, on a different Greek island, I’d written the same thing.

So every year, every year I was, I was thinking, as I go back from my summer holiday, the job’s too hard, I'm not up to it. But when I got back, I was fine. But that that bit of self-doubt, I think, was a good thing not a bad thing. But the fact that was journalling it could see that I was always doing that every summer helped me to understand myself better as a leader.

Joanne

Well that’s a good place to end part one of this two-part series Steve, so thank you for your wonderful insights into imperfect leadership. For our listeners, please follow the School Leadership Institute on X. Our handle is @NSWSLI and for NSW Department of Education staff you can access our leadership resources on the department's website, including a recording of a webinar with Steve as part of our Insights Series for Principals. So thank you for listening.

Introduction

School leaders play a vital role in providing every student in New South Wales public schools with a great education and the best start in life. They have a positive impact in classrooms and on their staff. They guide teacher development and engage their communities. Here at the NSW Department of Education's School Leadership Institute, our mission is to support all NSW public school leaders by providing world-class, evidence-informed leadership development programs and resources.

Our podcast will explore the key issues and challenges of school leadership. Hosted by Joanne Jarvis, the director of the School Leadership Institute, tune in and listen to our guests and colleagues share their expertise, insights and wisdom on leading with purpose and impact. Welcome to our Leadership In Focus series.

Joanne Jarvis

Hello and welcome to episode 13, part 2 of the Leadership Conversations podcast series with Steve Munby.

Steve, we're going to now explore more around systems leadership in this particular part of the podcast. So as I was reading your book, I was drawn to the chapter on systems leadership, partly because you begin with lyrics from Van Morrison, Days Like This, one of my favourite songs, but also because of the emphasis that you place on collaboration in that chapter.

You write: the secret to a world class education is a mixture of some top down, some bottom up, and most importantly, a great deal of lateral development and sharing of effective practice between teachers, leaders, schools and local authorities. You go on to say the difference good leadership can make should never be underestimated. So what does this leadership look like for principals and for system leadership?

Steve Munby

Oh, that's a big question. That is some big issues there Joanne. But I'm glad you like Van Morrison because I'm a big fan of Van Morrison. See top down reform usually produces kickback and resistance, especially if it's managed and implemented by people who aren’t close to schools. And one of the problems with it is it fails to take into account the numerous different contexts that school leaders and teachers are in, across a country or a state.

And even if we incentivise that reform through funding, and that's hard to come by at the moment, as you know, if incentivises with funding, it's still won’t lead to enthusiasm. It might lead to compliance, but not enthusiasm in terms of implementation.

So on the one hand, top down reform often gets it wrong, doesn't lead to engagement, and often gets the context wrong. On the other hand, bottom up reform – just get on with it, do your own thing – that's also not always very good because it leads to very variable outcomes. Some schools will do very well, some not too well. And often the winners and losers, the losers are the ones from the more deprived areas and more deprived communities. So bottom up often doesn't work either.

So I think what's really powerful is when you get leadership in the middle, what I call lateral leadership. I'm not just talking about consulting here. I'm talking whereby school principals, leaders in schools help to shape a policy and to make it work within their context and understand the ecosystem in which they're operating, and help to make sure that policy is a better policy and a better strategy as a result of the interaction they're having with policy makers in order to make it work.

Now we have plenty of global evidence that demonstrates the impact that experienced school leaders can have in developing and improving not just their own school, which is crucial, of course, but helping to improve other schools across the locality too. And the exciting thing is, you don't have to stop being a school leader in order to do this. You can still be a school principal, you can still be a school leader, and you can impact more broadly outside your school through deep collaboration or some kind of mentoring role.

And I think expert advice working outside schools have a role. But there's something very powerful about working with school leaders from other schools on similar issues that you're wrestling with together, rather than to have outsiders try to advise you what you should do, who's not wrestling with those issues because they either have not done them before or they did it years ago.

So in terms of the leadership needed by school principals, which is the second part of your question, I think this lateral leadership is similar to leading a school, but different. Because when you’re leading a school, in the end you can make the decision. You consult, you engage, and then you say, right, we're going to do this.

When you’re leading a network with colleagues you can't do that because everyone's in charge of their own schools. You can't decide for them. So we use influence rather than decision making. It's not a controlling scenario. And those lateral influential invitational skills are really quite complicated, complex and sophisticated but very, very important.

And I think if we're going to make that work, and I think we can make it work, it's very important we have an imperfect leadership mindset. That we acknowledge what we can't do as well as what we can do. That we are as keen to talk about our mistakes and our weaknesses as we are about the triumphs and our successes, and that we are opening ourselves up and making ourselves vulnerable because we want reciprocity and we want trust. It's not going to happen if we come across as people who know it.

Joanne

It seems to me the power in the response that you've just spoken about is around principals working with each other in that really collaborative manner. In your experience, is it enhanced further when you've got the structures around that, such as what we have in NSW, we've got the, you know, directors in charge of networks of schools that enable that collaboration as well. Did you notice that in in the work that you've done?

Steve

I think different, to be honest, all over the world there are different, processes and different structures. Singapore has very powerful collaboration and has that kind of model. Other parts of Australia have different models. And of course in Europe and in North America as well, so they’re all different. But I think it's important to have a process. It's important to have some kind of structure. I think it's even more important not just to have that structure, but to have that common agreement as to how it's all going to work. and I think unless you have that, unless it's voluntary and people deciding to do it together, rather than told to do it together.

Unless people are taking collective responsibility rather than being told in a dependency way, I think it's not going to work so successfully. So I do think it does need a structure. I do think it does need leadership, but I think it also needs people to choose to do it in order to make sure it's done for the best interests and they take collective responsibility.

Joanne

Which is coming back to that point about moral purpose as well and having that shared understanding of what's required. I was also interested to read your description of senior leadership as a means to reduce variation between schools. So in your experience, what were the ingredients that helped reduce that variation?

Steve

Well, I think without knowledge sharing and without deep collaboration between schools, you're just going to have too much variation in your education system. You're going to have schools doing brilliant stuff, schools doing not so brilliant stuff, and there's not going to be that learning between schools. And if you want to reduce variation, the secret to that is deep collaboration and knowledge sharing.

No education system will be highly effective unless it has that effective collaboration and knowledge sharing. That's what helps to reduce the variation. Now, I'm not talking about identikit schools. I'm not talking about every school has to be the same. Do it this way, the same as this way, we're all doing the same so you can go into a school and not know which school you are in because they’re all the same, I'm not talking about that at all.

I think school principals have to make their own decisions about their context. What's right for their community, their children and young people. But I do think knowledge sharing, open up to other ideas and ways of doing things is crucial for an effective system. Otherwise, you only know what you know. And you might think it's a good strategy, what you’re doing, but when you see what's happening in another school, oh, that's even better. So we'll learn from that. And that's how you reduce inappropriate variation whilst remaining a celebration of diversity.

Joanne

Thank you. Finally Steve, you make the observation and I quote that you are not aware of any high performing school system that leaves leadership to chance. It is too big a risk for the future. Why did you make that assertion?

Steve

I stand by that assertion Joanne and I’m absolutely clear that that is still my view. Because I think the quality of teaching is the single most important thing within a school that makes a difference to children’s learning.

And if you want to improve the quality of teaching, there's two things you can do. The first thing you can do is recruit better teachers, and train them in initial teacher training very, very well. And that's important. And I think it's important that all systems recruit the best teachers they can and train them as best they can.

But that's a long process, and it's expensive process. If you want to improve the quality of teaching more quickly, you need to improve the ones you’ve got, so the ones who are already in the system. And you do that through professional development. But too often professional development is not that good. National training programs have limited impact. The thing that makes the most difference for professional learning for teachers is learning on the job. Trying things out, seeing what works, getting feedback from colleagues or from the students themselves, getting some coaching or some mentoring or looking at what other people are doing across your school, across your subject or your department. That's how most people improve their teaching practice, certainly I improve mine. And that's what makes the role of the school leader so crucial in this process, because the school leaders who create the climate to enable a teacher to be a learner and successful in their classroom. The teacher makes the weather in the classroom, but the school leader creates the climate across the school.

If you have a school leader that encourages learning and encourages and coaches and supports teacher development, that will make a huge impact on the quality of teaching. And we know from Vivian Robinson's research that the thing that has the biggest impact on student outcomes in terms of leadership behaviours is investing in the professional development of teachers, school leaders doing that and modelling it and supporting their teachers.

So if you think that the quality of teaching is so important, the second most important thing is therefore the quality of school leadership, that's going to help or hinder the development of the teachers. So if you have a leadership approach, an approach to school leadership that says, well, we'll see who comes up, we'll take a chance and we'll just try and appoint leaders, we'll have no program for that. That's a risky strategy. It's even more of a risk, by the way, because there's no financial incentive for schools to invest in developing future school principals. Because financially, you're not going to say, well, I could invest all this money in training our deputy to go be a principal of another school.

That's why the state or the system need to invest in principal development, not just the individual school. And and I would say this. The average turnover in an education system is about 12%, 10 to 12% of school leader turnover. I don't know what it is in NSW, but it is in most systems, about 10 or 12%.

If you have a very good training and development program for school leaders, so they're ready to step up to replace those leaders who leave, and you’re replacing 10 or 12% every year, by about 5 years you’ve got about 50% of your schools improving because you've trained the leaders well. I know of no investment better in terms of impact on teaching and learning and student outcomes than investing in training and developing the next generation of school principals.

Joanne

Look, I love what you've just said. It reminds me of the mission of the School Leadership Institute Steve, which is the provision of world class, evidence informed, future focused leadership development programs and resources to support leaders at every stage of their career. It's something we live and breathe and it points to the very evidence you've just provided for the listeners of this podcast.

Steve

And if I may say Joanne it's a credit to you in the NSW School Leadership Institute that you're doing this important work.

Joanne

Thank you, Steve. And I think that's a very good point on which to end this podcast.

And really thank you for sharing your insights into imperfect leadership and system leadership. For all listeners, please follow the School Leadership Institute on X. Our handle is @NSWSLI. For NSW Department of Education staff, you can access our leadership resources via the department's portal, including a recording of a webinar with Steve as part of our Insights Series.

So thank you for listening.