School leadership is devolving and hierarchies are flattening as schools are tasking middle management to take on greater levels of responsibilities. However, leadership professional development is seldom sufficient or well-focused enough to give the middle managers the skills and dispositions to support schools through ongoing cultural and pedagogical shifts. Furthermore, current best practice and research shows that schools with more devolved leadership and a flatter hierarchy improves student learning. If this is the case, why don’t schools spend more time developing the leadership capacity, particularly transformational leadership skills, of their managers?
In this fast-paced and lively presentation, Peter will present some insights into the theory of leadership development, what works and what doesn’t work. He will then make the case for how schools could intentionally develop leadership by helping people better understand their leadership strengths and how to implement these strengths in the daily management of teams. Peter will provide some frameworks for how schools can successfully do this.
Peter is currently completing his doctoral studies in the development of leadership capacity in mid-level managers.
