Relational Leadership in Education

A Phenomenon of Inquiry and Practice

David L. Giles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429819131
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

When is leadership not relational? When is education not relational? When is life not relational? Relationships always matter to our living, educating and leading. Relational Leadership in Education considers this 'Relational Leadership' within the context of education, critiquing the current ideological 'context' and contemporary understandings of its influence. Employing a phenomenological approach, this book explores the relational nature of education, Relational Leadership, and the organizational culture to provide a more sophisticated exploration of practice-based wisdom. It offers an extensive range of activities for further thinking on the experiential nature of Relational Leadership, grouped around a number of themes: Relational Leadership and sensibilities; organizational culture; professional development; curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; and the reconstruction of a postgraduate Educational Leadership and Management programme for experienced, emergent and aspiring leaders.

'Relational Leadership' is not about describing yet another style of leadership but rather about a relational way of being in leadership that utilizes refined relational sensibilities. 'Relational Leadership' is also a reminder of what is critical in a leader's practice — leadership is always relational, and relationships are the essence of leadership.

SECTION III
Intentional engagement

Practices and strategies for enhancing relationships

In this section, I consider the implications and applications of the ontological findings in Chapters 4, 5, and 6. In Chapters 7 and 10, I describe the implications for these findings in relation to ethical leadership and to an academic programme of study within a tertiary institution. In Chapters 8, 9 and 11, I describe how these ontological findings might be applied to the professional development of emerging and aspiring leaders and the enhancement of an organization’s culture as well as in relation to pedagogy, curriculum and course evaluations. Throughout this section, I have included practical activities that open critical dialogue about the relational nature of leadership. The examples and practices are designed to proactively grow Relational Leaders concerned with the culture of their organization.

8
THE RELATIONAL NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Research findings on the phenomena of relationships and Relational Leadership have significant implications for how we might think about the dynamic and complex nature of organizational culture. In this chapter, we explore the relational nature of an organization’s culture and provide four activities for engaging others in a greater awareness of the phenomenological nature and influence of a particular organization’s culture. Based on earlier phenomenological research we know that relationships exist between those relating. This being the case, organizational culture can be thought of as the collective set of ‘betweens’ that constitute an organization.

Introduction

In this chapter, I consider characteristics of organizations and their leadership where change has been intentionally embedded in an educationally focused manner such that a shared and generative culture forms. It would be nice to think that local and context-specific wisdom underpins the actions of those that are rolling ‘out’ such change agendas. Is this the case?

My research agenda has involved the application of phenomenological research techniques in pursuit of embedded meanings and taken-for-granted understandings within the culture of various educational organizations. From the outset of my overarching research questions have remained as follows:

• What is the relational nature of an organization’s culture?
• What are the characteristics of an organization that give a sense of ‘life’?
• How can the relational nature of an organization be influenced?

Given my deep concern over the ideological creep of neoliberalism occurring in education, the objective of my phenomenological research has been weighted more towards positive descriptions of an organization’s culture. I have hoped that my ontological findings would trigger a critical dialogue within organizations as to the mood of their culture. Indeed, how individuals experience an organizational culture should matter and be influencing a leader’s way of being. My priority in the first instance has been to gather experiential stories from leaders using strengths-based and appreciative questions.

This chapter begins with contemporary understandings of organizational culture and leadership, before four research-based activities are described alongside first-hand data.

The ideological creep on Relational Leadership and organizational culture

A particular outcome of policies and practices driven by the neoliberal ideology is the compliance and performativity processes for the purposes of accountability (Bennett, 1997). This progressive change influences relational experiences and interactions with those in leadership.

Within this prevailing ideology, educational leadership is manoeuvred as a political endeavour and is invariably reduced to a form of managerial leadership (Alphonce, 1999; Thrupp & Willmott, 2003). As such, the focus of leadership practice frequently centres on the attainment of prescribed outcomes, in the guise of standards, with less regard to the underlying culture within which learning occurs (Fullan, 2008).

A pressing need is for educational leaders to remain attuned to the informal nature of their organizational culture as this represents taken for granted values, beliefs and norms. The organizational culture has an enduring quality for those inside the organization. Indeed, new members to an organization can notice the ‘taken-for-granted’ culture until such time as their immersion in the culture has them swimming in a similar manner. Schein (2010) reminds us that there is real importance that organizational cultures need to be managed.

Organizational culture

Every organization has a distinctive culture. An organization’s culture is not a matter of numbers but rather a qualitative dimension relating the interrelationships and shared understandings of those within an organization. An organization’s culture is located within, and between, the many interrelationships, lived experiences and artefacts that tell the story of how the organization is forming. Everyday experiences of culture lie within shared, taken-for-granted and subliminal assumptions. The culture of an organization is in the way things are completed (Schein, 2010).

The priority for re-culturing

Running counter to the neoliberal influence is a movement, which advocates for a re-culturing of their educational contexts ensuring socially just practices occur for all the participants within a particular organization. Such an agenda assumes that organizational leaders have an up-to-date ‘feel’ for the culture they are responsible for. Such a feel contributes understandings of the way things are and opens the potential for a proactive and ongoing change agenda (Giles, Smythe, & Spence, 2012)^. Educational leaders need sensitivity to the organizational culture in their local contexts, given the need for leaders to be catalysts of cultural change having a bigger educational picture in mind (Fullan, 2001).

The organizational culture shows what an organization is said to value and provides information as to its mission and vision for the immediate future as well as being able to ‘point’ to historical understandings and artefacts that have been critical to the identity and development of the organization to date. All too often, what individuals experience within an organization is not the espoused culture but an everyday, taken-for-granted, pragmatic concern for what works. Rather than intentionally building an organization from its espoused culture, the busyness of the ‘here and now’ can squeeze out essential dialogue on the mid- to longer-term alignment between an organization’s purposes and processes. In this scenario, and with an absence of dialogue, the authenticity of the leadership and management of an organization comes into question.

The special character of an organizational culture

Schools, like other educational institutions, have particular organizational cultures. While schools in general may have similarities in their everyday practices, the organizational culture is unique to the particular school. The organizational culture of a particular school is influenced by its unique history of events, people’s stories and specific moments that make up the narrative of the organization. Two schools may have organizational cultures that appear to be the same, but artefacts, people and relationships within each school ensure that there are different storylines arising from the different contexts.

In the 1970s, the New Zealand Department of Education established an integration agreement with the Catholic Schools Association to assist with the financial issues they were facing. In short, the Department of Education recognized the unique contribution the schools within the association were providing for their learners and their community. As a consequence, the department funded 80% of the teacher’s salaries. A requirement of this process was the need for schools to construct a special character statement detailing the unique educational opportunities that underpinned their contribution in the local context. At the time, I argued the position that given that all schools are unique culturally, every school should have to construct a special character statement; further, a framework for such a statement could be Meighan’s component theories (Giles 1995). The point here is that the co-construction of a special character held the possibility of rich and collaborative dialogue.

Systems thinking

Another lens on organizational culture comes from the systems thinking literature (Senge, 2006). In this perspective, the culture is seen in a qualitative manner where the total culture is more than the sum of the parts. In the living systems approach, organizational leaders must have a ‘feel’ for the current culture.

More recently, an alternative lens on organizations and organizational culture has emerged, which starts from the primordial nature of humanity as relational (Gergen, 2009a, 2009b; Giles, 2008). From this social constructionist position, an organization and its culture are seen as living systems that are a matter of priority for those in leadership (Quinn, 2004; Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, & Flowers, 2004; Wheatley, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figure and tables
• Section I Education as a critical context
• Section II The phenomenology of relationships
• Section III Intentional engagement: Practices and strategies for enhancing relationships
• Index