Educational Views


		Joan M. Sinclair Dean of the Faculty Mayfield Senior School Pasadena, CA A Legacy of Leadership: Launching the New "Cornelias" The Network of the Schools of the Holy Child Jesus bears testament to the leadership skills of its foundress, Cornelia Connolly. In a time and place that neither valued women nor encouraged their formal education, she successfully transformed a vision of education into a network of schools that has sustained both young men and women into the twenty-first century. The challenge for today's Holy Child educators is how to empower youth to become the new "Cornelias." While Holy Child values are embedded in each of its schools, the challenge is how to instill in youth not only the moral courage to act on those values, but also the skills that will increase the effectiveness of their leadership. As the Dean of the Faculty, and as member of the English Department at Mayfield Senior School in Pasadena, my concern with developing leadership skills, particularly in young women, has been an ongoing concern. Opportunities for leadership for women have increased dramatically from my generation to the next. The challenge is not to create new opportunities but, rather, to insure women learn the necessary skills to succeed in these roles. In the day-to-day life of a school, whether single sex or coed, we demand leadership of youth, whether in regard to academic integrity, to social situations laden with high-risk behaviors, to managing a school publication staff, or simply to taking charge of a school club. While adults sense the potential power of students to provide moral support for each other, they are alarmed when those who exercise leadership skills do so in a way that harms others. We find ourselves asking, are leaders born and not made? Can leadership be taught? Can anyone lead? If so, how do you identify, nurture, and recognize leadership in youth? These questions sent me back to school. Like most high school teachers, I've had little formal training in the subject of leadership, but I live only 30 miles away from the Peter Drucker and Masatoshi Ito School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. Consequently, over the last few years I've enrolled in a number of classes in leadership and organizational behavior. These courses introduced me to a rich body of research that calls for a fundamental change in how educators think about leadership in a global society characterized by diversity. The impact of technology on that world, and its concomitant implications for leadership, have been highlighted by Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat. The special needs of the present have also been underscored by Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, who wrote in regard to the cultural conflicts of our times that, "We're living in the post modern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain." To prepare our students to lead in a diverse, dynamic, conflicted world, we need consciously to teach leadership as an integral part of the curriculum rather than delegating it to the province of extracurricular activities such as sports or student government. A leadership curriculum founded on contemporary research should be based on the following tenets: Leaders are made, not born. Over seventy-five years of intensive research has failed to yield a single common set of traits possessed by all leaders. What has emerged from the research are sets of characteristic behaviors that typify different styles of leadership. Leadership is a function, and it is an activity that can be shared or distributed among members of a group. Edgar H. Schein in Organizational Psychology wrote, "Good leadership and good membership, therefore, blend into each other in an effective organization. It is just as much the task of a member to help the group reach its goals as is the task of the formal leader." Implication for the classroom: Teach leadership skills to all students. Help them understand that leadership is a shared responsibility. Men, move aside. The new model leader, who Jeanne Lipman-Blumen has described as "the connective leader" in Connective Leadership: Managing in a Changing World, needs many of the attributes traditionally identified as feminine qualities. Joyce K. Fletcher and Katrin Kaufer wrote in "Paradox and Possibility" that, "The traits associated with new models of leadership are feminine – men and women can display them, but the traits themselves – such as empathy, community, vulnerability, and skills of inquiry and collaboration – are socially ascribed to women in our culture." (qtd. in Shared Leadership by Craig Pearce and Jay A. Conger.) Implication for the classroom: Abandon stereotypes regarding men and women as leaders. Focus on developing the key behavioral traits of the modern leader in both young men and young women. These include the ability to empathize, develop shared visions, and build coalitions. Leaders understand, and accept, diversity. With an understanding of diversity comes the ability to value and to build upon individual gifts. In The Art of Leadership Max De Pree wrote, "Leaders endorse a concept of persons. This begins with an understanding of the diversity of people's gifts and talents and skills. Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed." Implication for the classroom: Teach students to view those who they perceive as different from themselves as potential allies rather than as adversaries. Prize diversity. Search for the commonly shared values of what appear to be divergent groups, and work to articulate the shared values and goals. Emphasize activities that develop the ability to persuade and negotiate. Teachers either encourage, or suppress, leadership skills by how they teach. John Gardner wrote in On Leadership that, "Teaching and leading are distinguishable occupations, but every great leader is clearly teaching – and every great teacher is leading." What is also true, however, is that teachers reflect different styles of leadership, and that those different styles impact how they teach. For example, the directive leader, also known as the "command and control" leader, dominates one end of the continuum. Teachers who are extremely directive in the classroom tend to be content driven and take great pride in marching students through the curriculum at a predetermined pace. All students complete the same tasks and are assessed in the same way. Everything is scripted. Students are discouraged from asking questions that appear to diverge for the proscribed curriculum for fear that the discussion that might slow the delivery of content, even if those questions relate to legitimate concerns about essential human questions. The transformational leader anchors the other end of the leadership continuum. In the classroom, the transformational leader encourages student self-direction whether in the choice of an essay topic, a project, or through an independent study project. Students are encouraged to think critically about ideas, formulate their own opinions, and explore areas of study that offer the opportunity for meaningful intellectual engagement. Implications for the classroom: Assess your own leadership style. Think about whether your classroom activities encourage students to accept the curriculum without question, or whether they encourage them to develop a personal vision, self-confidence, and the inner strength to argue successfully for what they see as right or good. It's all about relationships. Max de Pree said the art of leadership is "…: liberating people to do what is required of them in the most effective and humane way possible…Leadership is more tribal than scientific, more a weaving of relationships than an amassing of information." Implications for the classroom: Remember what drew us to teaching in the first place, the chance to liberate students through a meaningful education that will enable them to weave successful human relationships throughout their lifetimes. If they can achieve that, they can lead, even in a conflicted world. Who better than Holy Child educators to teach the foundational skills of successful leaders? Holy Child educators understand the need to ground youth in a meaningful relationship with God, with the members of their community, and with humankind around the globe. That platform of relationships will sustain our students as they grow into a world that so desperately needs an entire generation of new "Cornelias."