I presently enrolled in a course called Collaborative Leadership. It has been great going back to school to further develop my skills and it has been interesting moving from a cohort back to a regular class. However last week I wrote on Facebook something that has come to be quite profound in my mind. In the what’s on your mind box I wrote “Working on a collaborative leadership project, alone. Possible oxymoron territory”. At the time I wrote the statement I was feeling a little frustrated by the lack of collaboration in this course. As time has moved forth it has come to stimulate my thoughts around building collaborative cultures in schools. Our coursework has been very heavy on theory, but very light on developing what collaborative leadership looks like and how to create it. This thought process has brought me to wanting see what this model looks like in schools and how the first year principal can create it.
I have heard people discuss collaboration in schools my entire professional career, but I have yet to see it applied meaningfully. I have always felt that the collaborative culture is a circular one, yet the examples I have seen have remained the ubiquitous triangle with the principal or superintendent leading the collaborative. If the leader is leading collaboration, do people take risks? I have always liked the circular model as people who take risks are safely within a leader-less circle that should be appropriately governed by pre-agreed upon group and process norms.
If people are exposed to the concept of collaboration and its importance, can they actually do it? What about people who have not been exposed to the concept of collaboration? How does the emerging principal create a collaborative culture in school with limited exposure to it? Are there any suggestions out there on how to get emerging cultures to embrace collaboration?
Your time for reading my post is always appreciated and I really welcome your comments. Thanks.
