Imperfect Leadership
Steve Munby
Munby Education
uLead Conference
April 2023
Crown House Publications.
June 2019
Crown House Publications.
April 2022
Developing and empowering teams
Asking for help
Managing ego
and acknowledging mistakes
Making public promises
Being a restless learner
Power and love
Developing
future leaders
Authenticity,
and doing the
right thing
External manifestation
Internal foundations
Show up with hope and pragmatism
Self-Awareness
and tuning into context
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
The iceberg model
1. What knowledge, experience and skills do
I have that make me an effective leader within my context?
What are the gaps?
2. What do I think others want and expect from
me as a leader? How do I know?
Am I happy with their expectations of me?
3. How do my traits work for or against me as a leader? What are my default modes –when I am tired or stressed? Why do I sometimes end up behaving in a way that I regret afterwards? How might I adapt or change my default modes to make me even more effective?
4. What motivates me about leadership? What are my drivers? Making a difference? Ambition? Status and power? Paying the mortgage/income for my family? Not being a failure? Being liked?
Leadership Style
“Leaders need to develop their own leadership style based on their beliefs and values, their expertise and skills and their personality. But context matters so our leadership style has to change as our context changes.”
Steve Munby Imperfect Leadership. 2019
Sigmoid Curve – �Understanding the inflection point
Source: The Age of Unreason, Charles Handy
Time
Activity
The inflection point
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
Why Invitational leadership/�asking for help is so effective
Santorini in the mist
Why Invitational leadership/�asking for help is so effective
2. It helps us to make better decisions
Knowsley Education Office.
The National College for School Leadership
Why Invitational leadership�/asking for help is so effective
3. Asking for help from our senior team builds trust amongst the team and encourages others to ask for help too.
The 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team
Absence of
TRUST
Fear of
CONFLICT
Lack of
COMMITMENT
Avoidance of
ACCOUNTABILITY
Inattention to
RESULTS
Lack of Openness
Artificial Harmony
Ambiguity & Vagueness
Low standards
Ego - Attention on me/my team
Patrick Lencioni
Members of trusting teams…
Patrick Lencioni
We are more likely to devolve �responsibility to those who �ask for help
“we asked 1000 leaders: what do your team members do that earns trust? The most common answer: asking for help. When it comes to people who do not habitually ask for help, the leaders we polled explained that they would not delegate important work to them because the leaders did not trust that they would raise their hands and ask for help”
Brene Brown Dare to Lead.
The Circle of Trust
B
C
D
E
A
Why Invitational leadership�/asking for help is so effective
4. If we don’t ask for help, we may fall over and struggle to get back up again
“Good leaders embrace the old Japanese proverb: ‘Fall down seven times, get up eight.’ It is just that imperfect leaders may well need support to help them to get back up again”.
Steve Munby
Imperfect Leadership. 2019
5 If we want to develop powerful networks between schools, being invitational is highly effective
Why jump from the bowl to the lake?
Full of unknowns. Expectations of the kind of leaping and swimming required are unclear. Some unfamiliar fish in the lake. Support structures are unknown. Rewards are distant and lack specificity. Dangers of leaping are in the present
Familiar. Expectations of the kind of swimming are traditional and known. Know who is in the bowl and how to interact. Current rewards are understood. Know how to survive.
Adapted from Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
“Success requires a moderate fear of failure because it is the balance of such fear with the desire to excel that leads to great leadership”……
those who lack this fear of failure “break rules, take risks and sense no boundaries; they are a law unto themselves”.
Dr Ben Laker
Source: Bretherton and Munby 2022
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
Make public promises to each other across a network or trust�
Kyra DNA. Making Public Promises to Each Other
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset
Integrating Power and Love
Imperfect leaders make use of their strengths but also know their weaknesses. They understand that people will not automatically change simply because the leader expects it. Imperfect leaders understand that everybody else is likely to be imperfect too. They therefore show both power and love in their leadership.
Power and Love
Martin Luther King
“
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic.
“
Driven Kind
Pacy Inclusive
Relentless Collaborative
Indomitable Relationships
Challenging Invitational
High expectations Asking for help
Holding to account Empowering
Assertive Compassionate
Confident Humble
Determined Empathetic
Power
Love
Stephen Denning
‘The Secret Language
of Leadership’
“
Once a commitment is made, the goal will seem larger, bolder, and more exciting… leaders need to fix on it like a laser beam. They need to see it intensely, even obsessively. They feel it. They hear it. They taste it. They smell it. It becomes part of them, their very identity, because it is something they are committed to make happen, come what may, whatever it takes.
“
Plato
“
Be kind for everyone you
meet is fighting a hard battle.
“
“ If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together”
African proverb
Power and Love in Leadership
“One of the criticisms that I have faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough, or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, I’m weak.
I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong”
Jacinda Arden. New Zealand PM.
Power in School Leadership
Love in School Leadership
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
Dr David Dao
©ResonateSocialMedia
‘Fly the
Friendly Skies’
United Airlines’ Slogan
�
1. The importance of modelling.
Minimising the rhetoric/reality gap
��
2. Incentivising good behaviours through systems and processes
Minimising the rhetoric/reality gap
If we are going to be effective as school leaders we need to do four things:
Viviane Robinson
2019
“The standards we walk past are the standards we accept”
Lieutenant General David Morrison. Chief of the Australian Armed Forces.
Four quick tests to see if we are possibly stepping over the line:�
Marc Le Menestral
Authentic Leadership
Carolyn Roberts, Headteacher, Thomas Tallis School, London. Quoted in “Imperfect Leadership in Action”, Munby and Bretherton, 2022.
“Authentic leadership calls for wisdom, experience, a commitment to justice, courage in the face of justifiable or ridiculous anger and constant good humour….School leaders are not just public servants but role models for children. Children deserve to see, every day, what it takes to live a good life, no matter what the weather”
The Imperfect Leadership Mindset�
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton April 2022
�The Queen�Aberfan disaster 1966�5 teachers and 109 children �killed.
The Queen said in 2002 that not going to visit Aberfan straight away was “her biggest regret”
Lead with Hope and Pragmatism.
Sir Michael Barber
Three reasons for the success of Michael Barber’s work in Pakistan
The Stockdale Paradox
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.“
Quoted in Good to Great by Jim Collins
“I have spent much of my life studying the great
philosophies – but cheerfulness kept breaking through”
Leonard Cohen
“Learned Hopefulness” - rather than Learned Helplessness.
Michael Fullan The Right Drivers for Whole System Success 2021.
Leading with resilience in challenging times
You are fundamentally unhappy with what is happening around you and blame yourself for it
You may not be happy with what is happening externally but within your school you work with others to find positive ways to make a difference
Victim mindset
Imperfect Mindset
Hero Mindset
You are fundamentally unhappy with what is happening around you and blame others for this.
You feel powerless and trapped, blaming external factors for why things are so hard. “If only the government would give us more money”, “if only the District or Region would help us more”. “if only we had a fairer system”.
When people try to hold you to account, you dodge the issue and blame others. The people you lead either feel that you are blaming them for things going wrong or they also end up feeling equally powerless and, like you, refuse to accept any responsibility for what is happening.
You understand yourself and your context. You are aware of what you can control/influence and what you can’t. You are good at putting to one side the things you cannot control or influence. You focus on the positive difference that you can make. Small wins/successes are celebrated and progress, even if slow, is recognised. You confront the brutal facts but you also tell the story of how things are going to get better and the positive impact we can make together.
You value your teams. You share and delegate responsibility – recognising the contribution of colleagues and having high expectations of them. But you also watch out for their mental health and stress levels too, and are careful not to push them so hard that they fall over. Power and Love in leadership.
You feel responsible for everything. If school attendance dips after the pandemic, it is your fault. If a child turns up for school hungry then there is more that you should be doing to help the families. If the budget is tight, you haven’t been efficient enough in how you run your school.
When others are supposed to share the responsibility in the school, you feel sorry for them and try to reduce their pressure by taking more onto yourself.
Leading with Resilience in Challenging Times
You don’t ask for help. “What’s the point?”. You feel that you have already exhausted all possibilities and fundamentally believe that, since the problems are all external, nobody else could do any better. | You are good at asking for help -internally and externally. This helps you to feel more positive about the work and gives you access to a support group. If you are struggling, you know that others will help you (and vice-versa). Because you ask for help, it enables you to build a sense of collective responsibility and trust within the school. It also enables you to learn from good practice elsewhere so that you can make better decisions. | You don’t ask for help because you feel that might damage your credibility with staff or with other colleagues. You just work even longer hours, trying to solve the problems. |
You feel depressed, despondent and under-valued. | You may feel tired and challenged but you also feel surrounded by colleagues who support you. You feel authentic as a leader and, although you may have some bad days, you remain positive about the difference that your school is making. | You feel stressed and guilty. You are not sleeping well and may well be burning yourself out and perhaps heading for some kind of breakdown. |
Victim Mindset
Imperfect Mindset
Hero Mindset
The Dark Nights of the Soul
“It’s not dark yet but it’s getting there” (Bob Dylan)
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The imperfect leadership mindset
Internal foundations
External manifestation
9
Authenticity and Doing the Right Thing
Asking for Help
4
Managing Ego and Acknowledging Mistakes
Being a Restless Learner
1
Self-Awareness and Tuning into Context
2
Developing and Empowering Teams
5
Making Public Promises
7
Power and Love
8
Developing Future Leaders
10
Showing Up with Hope and Pragmatism
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton 2022
Imperfect leadership is neither a set of competencies to be mastered nor a body of knowledge to be memorised. It is a mindset to be embraced. Adopting that mindset won’t necessarily make your leadership less challenging, but it should help to make it feel less lonely.
Imperfect Leadership in Action. Steve Munby and Marie-Claire Bretherton 2022
“Nobody has ever been more successful than me”
Donald Trump
Why Imperfect Leadership �is so important
‘If we want sustainable, well-led schools, if we want long-term and effective education systems, then we should ditch all the striving towards perfection, focus on doing right for the students, genuinely ask for help from others and celebrate the fact that we are imperfect leaders’.
Steve Munby Imperfect Leadership
Email: steve@munbyeducation.co.uk
Twitter: @steve_munby