LIFESTYLE NEWS - To this day, Mandela provides aspiring strategic leaders a blueprint on how complex societal forces, uncompromising values and astute decision-making can merge into a compelling vision that can transform a community, a nation and even the world.
This blueprint is particularly needed in our basic education system as many school principals – excellent teachers in their own right – have not led a school until they are leading a school.
School principals are pivotal drivers of quality education, but how do we as a society support them and set them up for success, capacitating and empowering them to lead in a way that transforms the sector and provides ever higher levels of quality education to our children?
How do we produce a generation of ‘Mandelas’ among our school principals so that they can transform their schools for the benefit of our children?
Who are we?
Mandela understood that followers want to feel part of a community. He was able to motivate followers by inspiring and empowering them towards achieving a common vision; to end years of segregation and discrimination, through a strong sense of purpose and commitment.
Followers of all races and social standing adopted the necessary measures to achieve this common goal.
Research states that high-performing schools are all led by school principals who clearly articulate the vision, mission and common goals of the school. This clearly underscores that the development and implementation of a school vision that serves as a guide in the learning process is an essential requirement for effective school leadership.
Nothing is black or white
Mandela was comfortable with contradiction. As a pragmatist, he saw the world as infinitely nuanced. The iconic leader’s thought process was, ‘’What is the end that I seek, and what is the most practical way to get there?’’
Today, leaders across every sector, are being asked to lead in increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous settings. The education sector is a cauldron of complexity, and principals are required to lead and manage schools as CEOs to ensure that the policies and programmes of the school are executed in accordance with the Department of Basic Education’s governance structures.
However, principals leading schools in under-resourced communities in South Africa face extraordinary challenges, as their schools often experience a lack of infrastructure, inadequate water and sanitation facilities, learners who go to school barefoot and hungry, high rates of school dropout, teenage pregnancy, as well as issues of substance abuse and gang-related activity.
Understandably, this puts a strain on the principal’s ability to create a school environment that is conducive to the provision of quality education.
This is why it is imperative that society changes its view of school principals. We need to collaborate to equip them to become not just technical, but adaptive leaders who are able to deal with the challenges facing them in their unique and individual situations.
Principals must be supported and capacitated to lead in a way that is inclusive, participatory and collaborative in an effort to foster connections among staff and external stakeholders, and to ultimately inspire change.
Lead from the back
Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. "You know," he would say, "You can only lead them from behind. It is wise to persuade people to do things".
This is an apt analogy of leading effectively through influence, and not by imposing authority. For school principals, this approach to leading their schools can be truly transformational for both them and their stakeholders.
When principals are given the opportunity to hone their leadership skills, we see their confidence levels increase. They show a willingness to confront difficult situations, they are more able to be assertive and communicate their needs and desires, while also being mindful of the needs of others.
They listen more attentively without interrupting others, and support and appreciate staff members. They allow staff members to come up with their own solutions to problems by creating empathic, judgement-free thinking environments.
They cultivate an environment for success by increasingly delegating tasks, thereby promoting efficiency while fostering trust and ownership. A culture of collaborative decision-making takes root in their schools.
The history and legacy of any leader should not be scrutinised through extremes
Mandela was no doubt an extraordinary leader, but certainly not infallible. This point is especially relevant as our country continues to grapple with a difficult past, while it takes stock of the achievements and set backs of a 28 year old democracy.
A healthy democracy demands that we critically explore the shortfalls of all our leaders – Mandela included. Some quarters maintain the decisions made by Mandela while negotiating the end of apartheid and during his presidency allowed the majority of our people to remain economically oppressed.
Others find the sell-out narrative blatantly insulting and believe that Mandela’s is a formidable legacy that must be preserved and propelled.
Regardless, as we continue to make sense of the past together, we must engage with a more constructive question: What are we all doing now in the current context, with the resources we have at our disposal and with the benefit of hindsight?
Mandela once said: ‘’There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.’’
The opportunity to show our children how much we care is now before us. Let’s begin to invest in the leadership of our school principals who mould our children’s futures.
This article contains excerpts from Richard Stengel’s Time magazine article, Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership, as well as extracts from Citizen Leader Lab’s end of year report (2020-2021) on the impact of its flagship programme, Partners for Possibility.
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