Thinkpiece: Innervision

It’s time for leaders to focus on their personal growth, says John West-Burnham.

In recent years we have seen an enormous growth in preparation for headship and leadership development – but there has not been a commensurate increase in the focus on personal growth.

If anything the personal element has tended to be marginalised by the technical/rational needs of headship and school leadership.

Personal effectiveness is a product of personal understanding, in particular a level of self-awareness that nourishes and nurtures personal confidence, capability and sustainability. This starts with recognition of the importance of the inner life that helps us engage in the public arena.

This inner life might be understood as mental models or maps. They are the constructs by which we understand the complexity of the world and the ways in which we process it. Think of your daily journey to work – chances are you drive.

With a bit of encouragement you could probably talk someone through that journey – the bottlenecks, the fast stretches; you probably can tell the time by where you are “The Shell Garage means 10 minutes to go."

We all have mental maps of regular journeys and of our homes and our offices and classrooms. Mindscapes help us understand where we are geographically (and just think of the total sense of disorientation if you do not have a mental model of a place) and also, and more importantly, socially and professionally.

You grew as a leader by developing and changing your mindscape – in the same way that you changed in your relationship with your parents, partner and your own children over time. We grow as people by developing our mindscapes. We need to develop our personal mindscapes in order to enrich the professional elements of our mindscapes. It might be that in recent years our mental maps or mindscapes have become too much concerned with getting from A to B. To be effective leaders we need to explore the highways and byways; to find the alternative routes which will enrich our lives; we need the occasional diversion and to question the routes we have followed for years.

There are three areas that have the potential to significantly enrich the inner lives of leaders as they focus on the deeply personal which in turns enhances the other dimensions of personal and professional life – the two are symbiotic. The first is the moral; there can be little doubt that educational leadership is a moral activity – there are few if any aspects of a school leader’s professional life that do not have moral significance. The National College research project on outstanding headteachers found that moral purpose and a sense of vocation was the most significant factor in explaining their outstanding performance. This implies high confidence and security in what these leaders believe and, crucially, how they embed their belief in their day-to-day practice. This in turn implies a rich inner life – a detailed moral map in which alternative perspectives have been explored and questioned.

The outstanding leader is successful partly because they have a very rich ethical mindscape, they are morally confident because they know the road so well.

The second area that enriches our inner life and develops our mindscapes is the spiritual dimension. Not necessarily in the sense of a particular faith but rather in the cultivation of higher order human characteristics – cultivating a sense of the uniqueness of each life, celebrating our capacity to love, care and show pity and enriching our lives through the numinous in art, nature and our inner growth. This implies being comfortable in exploring, understanding and questioning that part of our lives which is elusive and intangible yet explains so much of who we are. It is the spiritual dimension that fosters the deep humanity that characterises so many effective leaders; it helps to explain their resilience and is what makes them truly authentic.

The third element is the intellectual – not in the sense of a marginal and rarefied academic life but rather in the way that leaders develop the knowledge and confidence to ‘speak the truth to power’. This implies a deep understanding and awareness of self as a learner and a willingness to question, challenge and confront the status quo and prevailing orthodoxies.

The intellectual derives confidence from the moral and is sustained by the spiritual; the moral is tested by the intellectual and nurtured by the spiritual; the spiritual is tested by the intellectual and given expression by the moral. The inner life is cultivated through rigorous thinking, analysis, review and reflection. It is enabled through friendships and relationships, insights and challenges and opportunities for personal space and time. Crucially it is the result of a deep respect for self, an investment in personal development, the deliberate cultivation of rich and detailed maps of inner mindscapes and to quote Seneca ‘the cultivation of humanity’. ldr

Professor John West- Burnham is a writer, teacher and consultant in education leadership with a particular interest in leadership learning and development, and learning in schools and communities. His latest book, Rethinking Educational Leadership: From Improvement to Transformation is published by Continuum Books (www.continuum.co.uk).

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