Conference Agenda

Educational leadership is at a crossroads. The global pandemic has irrevocably changed the expectations placed upon leaders and the nature of leadership has altered in recent decades. The increasing demands being placed on schools can lead to tensions including poor school cultures, increased blame among staff, unhealthy competition, and toxic leadership to name a few. There is a risk that the busyness of school life can create interactions that are transactional in nature and deficient of human centered engagements which can be detrimental to the wellbeing of the school community.

This symposium brings together three papers which propose the exploration of new concepts in the field of educational leadership. This includes working through challenges posed by ‘institutional hurt’ and disaffection in ways that evoke ‘reciprocal leadership and followership’ and working towards ‘organisational grace’ for understanding and growth, co-creating a climate where the educational workplace can become a site of flourishing for all.

This symposium is organised to generate dialogue on the new concepts from previous research findings that open space for experiencing the concepts in an embodied way. Examples include appreciative awareness exercises, reparative practice simulations, and followership activities. The session will be interactive, and participation will be encouraged.

Objectives or purposes

The purpose of this research is to establish the concept of organizational grace as a new perspective for leadership development established from positive organizational scholarship and living systems perspectives. This concept extends findings on research on flourishing in schools where teachers expressed a sense of wellbeing when conditions are created for them to feel purpose, passion, and play in their work (Author, 2016, 2018, 2018b) and where leaders described the importance of an additional value of presence, an awareness of the people and context in relation to what works well (Author, 2021). Organizational grace includes the conditions needed for flourishing in schools—compassion, hope, trust, presence, purpose, play, among others. Additionally, this concept emerges from research literature in social work and psychology on learning to navigate life well and grow fulfilment and meaning amid complexity and challenges (Brown, 2012, 2015; Frankl, 1946/2006; Hayes, 2005).

Framed within four dimensions—compassion, forgiveness, awareness, and vulnerability— organizational grace is a leadership stance to meaningfully navigate conflicts and tensions toward a goal of understanding, prioritizing relationships and encouraging respect, critical thinking and collaborative engagement. In this paper, the author suggests that leaders can learn to develop intra- and inter-personal capacities that foster organizational grace.

Theoretical Framework

This research is developed within an interdisciplinary theoretical framework of positive organizational scholarship (POS) and literature on living systems. POS focuses on the goodness, virtuousness and vitality in organizations and the people who work within them (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008; Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003; Dutton, & Heaphy, 2003; Lillius et al., 2008). POS scholars recognize the negative aspects and challenges of organizations and yet place an intentional research focus on the strengths, virtues, and positive human capacities of those within organizations (Carr, 2004). Cultivating wholeness and wellbeing within systems requires attention to community systems and relationships (Block, 2009; Madsen & Hammond, 2005; Palmer, 2006). Organizations can be life-affirming environments that inspire motivation, generosity, and caring among all members of the system (Schuyler, 2018; Wheatley, 2006, 2017).

Methods:

Methods for this qualitative research include a systematic, interdisciplinary scoping literature review and a case study approach to examining the concept in the field through the lived experiences of leaders. In this symposium, the findings from the systematic review will be shared, along with the initial framework developed for research with leaders in the field.

Significance of the Research:

This research examines educational workplace cultures with a new lens and from the perspective of intra- and inter-personal learning and wellbeing to determine how leaders move beyond negativity, conflicts, and tensions to create space for understanding among colleagues. This research contributes organizational grace as a new concept in leadership research and practice. This concept focuses on relational processes of seeking understanding and a sense of collective responsibility for ongoing learning and improvement.

Leadership was underpinned by the Great Man theory until the mid-twentieth century (Organ, 1996), whereby one individual was both in control of and responsible for the entire organisation. Within this theory, there is a clear distinction between leaders and followers (Organ, 1996). Leaders are seen to be born rather than made and are superior to their followers due to their enhanced knowledge and expertise. However, since the turn of the century there has been a movement towards shared models of leadership due to the challenges associated with relying on one individual to lead (Crawford, 2012).

As the complexity of school life is increasing, a flexible leadership practice including a diverse range of expertise is required (Harris and Spillane, 2008). The importance of shared leadership, including distributed leadership, has been further established during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase pressures that this placed on leaders resulted in distributed leadership becoming the default practice by necessity (Azorín et al., 2020). Furthermore, it remains a topic of considerable interest in research spheres (Harris et al., 2022) and is embedded in school policy documents worldwide (Harris, 2011).

While shared models of leadership have been noted as compulsory in the modern world and have the capacity to aid school life considerably, they present a new set of considerations for the relationship between leaders and followers which remains underexplored. With an increased focus on building leadership capacity, workplace wellbeing, and human centred approaches to leadership as well as the blurred lines between leaders and followers, there is a distinct need to further conceptualise how this impacts the relationship between leaders and followers. The aim of this paper is hence to unpack some of the challenges associated with this dynamic and move towards connection and understanding through reciprocal leadership and followership.

This paper is informed by data collected via semi-structured interviews with 15 post-primary school principals and deputy principals currently working in Ireland, the aim of which was to explore participants lived experiences of distributed leadership. The importance of building positive relationships to successfully distribute leadership within the school context was identified as an underlying theme, thus informing the need for this conceptual paper.

The authors suggest the need for synchronicity and reciprocity between leaders and followers within the school setting. An increased sense of self-awareness and self-knowledge among both the leaders and followers will enable a movement towards connection, keeping I-though relationships (Buber, 1970) and the web of betweenness (O’Donohue, 2010) as the core focus. It is thought that this could create increased follower autonomy, developing the leadership capacity within schools as well as increased harmony and understanding among staff and students alike.

This paper explores the space between leaders and followers and the importance of the interactions between these actors. The current discourse in educational leadership suggests the need to move towards more shared leadership practices due to the increasing complexity of schools and the wider community. The relationship between leaders and followers is, therefore, integral to enhancing school effectiveness and improvement in our current climate.

The purpose of this paper is to make explicit the challenges that less than optimal work cultures present for authentic leadership. Negative staffroom cultures that are characterised by competition, gossip, suspicion, and at worst bullying, harassment, incivility, and narcissism present real challenges for effective school leadership. Leadership that is characterised by control or narcissism in turn presents real challenges for the well-being of staff. The intersection of unhealthy behaviours and lack of restorative engagements by those who lead organisations creates a platform for the exercise and experience of institutional hurt that if left unaddressed cannibalises workplace culture in detrimental ways.

This paper draws upon the extant literature that includes the dark side of school culture (Mannix McNamara et al 2021), toxic leadership (Fahie 2019, Snow et al 2021), institutional betrayal (Smith and Freyed 2014) and hurt; leadership as courage work (O Donohue, 2008) and heart work (Palmer 1997). It will also draw connections between the emerging and very popular restorative justice and restorative practices which, through dialogue and compassion move beyond hurt to healing engagements. These practices move the focus from not only repairing altercations between students to the development of restorative work cultures that acknowledge, and repair hurt among leaders and followers in meaningful ways that allow those hurt to move beyond hurt to workplace engagements that promote flourishing. Forgiveness is not a concept popular in the leadership literature but is practiced frequently by leaders who thrive. This paper will examine the role of forgiveness in the development of healthy leader and follower practices.

While the literature details the problems with negative cultures, it provides little in terms of ways of leader knowing and being that can effectively address these negative cultures in an impactful way. This often leaves leaders without the awareness or skills needed in a complex climate, that has been shown to adversely impact their health and well-being. This emerging research examines educational workplace cultures from a very different perspective, placing the quality of relationships at the centre of the work. This research contributes to our developing conceptualisation of organizational grace as a real and effective response to the challenges facing leader sustainability.

This paper and symposium align well with the conference theme of quality professional education for enhanced school effectiveness and improvement as the quality of school leadership has a direct bearing on the quality of educational provision. Given the challenges facing recruitment and retention of school leaders, a new and innovative lens to address the issues that may be adversely affecting sustainable leadership is timely. Our symposium seeks to open up this space in an innovative and generative manner.