Strategic leadership in school education and the public and corporate sectors

Deposited with permission of the author. © 2000 Dr. Pam DettmanToday's schools operate in a climate of great change, along with increased responsibility and accountability for their own futures as a result of the move towards self-management. This has resulted in calls for a new kind of leadership, called strategic leadership, at the school level. The essential features of strategic leadership are its future orientation and its concern with both the external and internal environments of the school. Strategic leadership is usually associated in policy documents with the role of the principal. Information on the exercise of strategic leadership and the development of relevant capacities was gathered from eight outstanding strategic leaders from the school education, public and corporate sectors, who were identified through a peer-group nomination process. A hermeneutic phenomenology methodology was used, which consisted chiefly of the collection of lived-experience accounts of the participants, and the interpretation of these by the researcher. Information was collected through in-depth interviews over a period of four years. A body of information was produced, not only through areas of similarity and difference between the eight individual participants, but through comparison and contrast of education with non-education, public' sector with private sector" and to a more limited degree, male with female. Outstanding strategic leaders in schools were found to be strongly involved in a values-based personal journey, but at the same time to be grounded in current realities through the constant collection and interpretation of information to determine outcomes. They exhibited several levels of vision and a complexity of futures thinking across a range of areas, the most prominent of these being technology and the change process. Their planning reflected a move from traditional strategic planning towards a more dynamic and fluid approach based on values. In working with people, emphasis was placed on empowerment, professional development, mentoring and appraisal. The leaders saw themselves generally as energetic, restless, risk-taking, strong in decision-making/ hard-working and sensitive. Major factors in the development of their strategic leadership capacities had been early exposure to a mentor either at university or the workplace, reading broadly, involvement in personal development programs and/ for women/ the family. The study confirmed indications in the literature that approaches to strategy formulation have changed. The approach used by these leaders borrowed from several current concepts, but most closely resembled the 'heroic quest,' with the addition of the interest in data. The way in which strategic leadership was exercised tended not to change with changes in time and context. The study suggested areas for further investigation in terms of the leader-follower dynamic, the leader's involvement in school culture, the effects of the leader’s adrenalin-fed behaviour, the effects of context, and gender difference