Beyond Shared Leadership

I can't say I really remember this, but people tell me there was once a time where the person "in charge" made all of the decisions. Organizations had organizational flow charts and literally the buck stopped at the top and the top made the call. As we have evolved in our leadership perspective, we created advisory committees to take input into our decisions. Then we learned we needed more than input, in order to build some level of investment, we needed representative leadership. So the committees evolved into decision making bodies. Now when examining successful organizations, the evaluating groups look for this shared stakeholder leadership. In reality this is not enough. Our leadership role needs to continue to evolve if we want our organizations to move forward.

There is a case for shared ownership. In a variety of districts, I have been involved in decision-making committees from 3 people to over 40. Representing anywhere from 6% to 50% of important stakeholders. Frequently in schools, those on the committee struggle with the idea of whether they are simply sharing their viewpoint or representing a greater stakeholder group. A position as leader I don't think I have ever helped a stakeholder negotiate through. The reality of most committees, is that the stakeholders work extremely hard and invest in a decision. They weigh a multitude of options, explore a large range of scenarios, and land on a decision that they feel will be best for the organization and it's constituents. From their a communication plan is developed, a professional training plan created, and then implemented. Any where from 9 months to 36 months later everyone stares at each other and asks why didn't this work.

The challenge is shared ownership. In previous incarnations of organizational leadership, the job was to make the decision. This evolved into make the decision and communicate the decision. Then to make the decision, communicate the decision, and support the implementation of the decision. We need to take this further. The organizational leader's new job is an ongoing one. The leader must scaffold understanding and ownership of the decision throughout the system.  If we want something deeply embedded into our professional world, we need to get the constituents to buy the decision in the same way that the original committee did. From this, leaders and committee members need to keep constituents looped in to the work of the committee while it is going. They need to be having ongoing dialogues during the decision making process, training process, implementation process, and beyond in order to transition ownership of the process from the committee leaders to the organization. Without it, while there may be initial excitement for the work of the shared leaders, the process will fail.

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with a community group of stakeholders. We discussed what we could do for the school and how we could do it. There were some good ideas shared. Just as we might have moved forward, a committee member suggested we take our ideas and get feedback from our constituent groups. While this meant a delay of a couple of months to beginning the work, it was a terrific step in building in shared ownership of the work of this team. The short delay will support us in accomplishing greater long term results.

Over the next year in Illinois schools, we will be hearing a lot about shared leadership as we explore the Every School Succeeds Act (ESSA). I encourage us to think beyond this. While shared leadership is a start, shared ownership will ensure that it is effective. In order to accomplish this, we may need to work on fewer goals, but work to build investment in these goals more deeply. The new job of the leader, is not to make the decision, but rather to catalyze the organization constituents around the decision.