The Importance of Agency in Leadership and Inclusion.

I am looking forward to getting back into blogging – it has been a while and I am looking forward to sharing these ideas again.

Over the next few months, I hope to share and test some ideas. In sharing these ideas, I will land on some practical takeaways. But not in the form of a playbook or handbook as the the practical in my mind doesn’t always have to be big things – sometimes, they can be a question to take away or a idea to implement and play with.

Plus, I believe there is so much practical wisdom in the sector waiting to be harnessed. In many places, there are piles of wood organised and shaped, with a firestarter underneath. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely look to bring some kindling for a fire too! There are places where I am looking to build these fires too, and I hope to share these with you in an upcoming series of publications this year.

But I already see these set ups ready to go and maybe what we need sometimes is the ignition – ideas ignite the ideas and practical wisdom within our sector, to harness it and move forward in these changing times.

I want to share some reflections on leadership, all of which is based on ideas of I have been producing over the past few years. This has included in the field of:

· Self-efficacy and how we develop it in pupils and leaders.

· What school leaders need to learn about complexity and wicked problem. Click Here and here

· The psychological factors that affect school leadership decision making, including. Click here and here

Click the links to see some of my work from both research and practice. Also, there are series of blogs and podcasts on these topics from the past 10 years.

Over the next few posts, I want to tackle key themes and ideas. This one is about a central component of what affects so much of the decision making that school and trust leaders need to navigate – wickedness.

On Wickedness

A while ago, myself and James Biddulph wrote about the notion of playful leadership. In this section, I brought to life two ideas.

1) That central to how we influence shape systems and people is what we are responsible for. Chris James and colleagues recognised that it’s responsibility gives us power, capacity and a platform to act – both from others and within ourselves.

2) That, by virtue of working in education, these responsibilities expose us to complexity and wicked problems.

Wicked problems is a concept from Rittel and Webber, which recognise problems not to be simple; define as having a fixed remedy and solution that will solve it and end the problem. Instead, wicked problems contain multitudes – of understanding, of potential solutions and ways in which the problem could evolve. You can find out more about this here.

· Think about how many problems you handle and decisions you have to make – whatever position of leadership. Some will be fixed and tame, but are they the ones keeping you up at night? The problems you hold responsibility for, are they simple? Or are they hard to define, hard to resolve and seem to keep coming back?

· Now think about this as problems that us as a sector have responsibility for – in particular, is how we build an inclusive system of child development and education. Multiple perspectives, no single right answers, in built tensions and the need to continually adapt to emerging need.

I propose that tame and complicated problems exist. But I wonder how many times we are trying to treat a problem of multitudes as though it is single and linear – with one understanding, one predictable response? How does that affect how we carry our responsibilities toward these problems, and how we therefore lead within them?

What do we need?

If many of our challenges have multiple answers and multiple potential solutions, we need to recognise there isn’t a flow chart of what we should do to follow in every circumstance. They’ll be better ideas and worse ideas; the context will matter and how we bring understanding and context together wont be a nice to have – but a need to have.

There are many things needed to address wickedness. Collective capacity, as its likely to be too big for one organisation or team to tackle alone. A rich, deep knowledge on the challenge itself and the contexts. Practical wisdom – the ideas on how to get things done and what could be done.

Now, we are not short of these in Education. We have these factors in different forms across our system. But what’s missing?

What we ultimately need to develop is the capability, structures, consent and belief that as organisations and individuals, we can take informed action for our communities and the individuals within them.

I lean toward agency as it gives us some clear takes on how to develop it (Click here for my post in Inclusion and Agency). Others might lean toward autonomy. Whilst this and how we develop this will be the feature of other posts, this post today makes the simple point.

Note three things within this point:

· We need agency. Its not a nice to have. It’s going beyond the important and noble point often made that agency a supportive factor which enables organisations to function (e.g. wellbeing or retention). Its that without agency, decision making will be poorer. Without agency, organisations and individuals cant fully embrace its wickedness and will struggle to function in the ways we need them to.

· We need capability and that requires development. Its more than just going off and doing what you want – this approach involves being deeply informed. That involves knowledge, practice and understanding of what’s happening around us.

· That it just can’t be ‘told’ – consent is important but insufficient. Organisations and individuals need to believe they can, not just have ‘consent’. Structures, such as a time, resource and decision-making structures need to be in place with this built in.

· This is needed across different layers of the system – macro (big organisations),medium (within our locality – our community) and and micro (individual teams and collectives).

I would argue that

· Localism

· Responding adaptively to the needs we see

· Utilising our resources to navigate the wisest path in relation to what we are responsible for

Can only happen if we have the consent, the structure, capability and belief that, of the multiple potential paths and understandings within the wickedness of the challenge, that we can forge the path for the benefit of the individuals and communities in our care.

If we briefly return to inclusion, we can see what this matters:

• Consent is needed, sure. But consent alone to act for the community and individual is not enough. We need these actions to be informed by capable individuals – the knowledge and practical intelligence which infuses and supports (not replace) decision making. Decision makers need access to this knowledge and support to implement it.
• They need a structure – a process by which people can make sense and enact. This includes resources and decision making which enables people to commission and build responses for the way the wickedness manifests within what they are seeing across their context.
• Finally, there’s a belief that the organisation and the team can do best by the children in their care. That they can, to quote a classic children’s film Robots, “see a need, fill a need”.

Without the capability, consent and structure to undertake decisions, we risk undermining hampering our ability to act on the reality of the challenge at hand. Applying solutions that might not fit and holding expectations of efficacy which are unrealistic. Or, it creates a system and group of individuals that are watching and waiting – rather than using their power to decide and enact based on them being the best placed to do something.

Summary

Wickedness is rife. Its built into the role we have in education and what we are asked to do – as individuals, as a system and as whole. The wickedness necessitates that we develop the capabilities, consent, belief and structures which enable organisaitons and individuals within them to act. To use deep knowledge, organisation and wisdom critically to inform what they need to do for their communities and individuals within them. As such, when we ask about leadership in schools and education, the wicked responsibilities and how we act toward them is a critical and central part of the conversation.

Practical Take-away

· Reflection: I’d love to hear about your responsibilities. How does this thinking of them as wicked influence how you interact with them?

· Decision making: Study the decision making within your school, trust or organisation. How are decisions made? To what extent is there a recognition that this has multiple perspectives? That there is multiple possible answers?

· Where is it tame? Where can we provide clarity on the tame so as to free us up to recognise and ‘play’ with the wickedness?