As a school leader, you are very likely to be an ethical person—you know the difference between right and wrong and your decisions reflect this. Except that what you think is right is not always the same as what others think is right. What’s more, being appointed to a senior management position in any organisation doesn’t make you a leader, despite the way that the Common Inspection Framework (CIF) implies that it does.
Let’s unpick both these concepts, ethics and leadership, and then explore what being an ethical leader involves.
We’ll start with leadership. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ Given this view, anyone can be called a leader if they are a senior manager. However, most research on leadership disagrees with this perspective.
Management is a role, and a very necessary role. It brings with it what is called positional power (or legitimate authority, the phrases mean the same), the power that ensures that people and resources are used to bring about the desired results. And most of what is in the CIF regarding ‘leadership and management’ is primarily about this, making sure that effective systems and procedures are in place, that people know them and use them correctly, and that the desired outcomes are achieved.
This is good and necessary, but it’s not leadership.
Leadership derives from the power people are given by their followers, the willingness of people to do more than they are required to do by their contracts, the discretionary effort that people put in because they want to, because they are inspired by their leader to do it.