Solo and Distributed Leadership

Introduction

Throughout the past 40 years, both in Educational Management Administration & Leadership (EMAL) and elsewhere, leadership in education has often been conceptualized as a solo activity, with a strong focus on the individual leadership of heads/principals, and those in senior leadership positions. What Meindl (1995) calls the ‘romance of leadership’ has exerted a strong pull on both the discussions in journals in the field, and among policymakers and practitioners in schools looking for solutions to practical problems in the school context. The romance holds that, if only the right person can be found, all will be well (Conger, 1989). This article draws upon articles in EMAL and other significant writings from educational, business and leadership journals, in order to look at where the field is are now in the debate, and where it might be going. Thus, although the shape of the article is intended to focus the reader on the major areas of discussion in solo and distributed leadership over the past decade or so, it will also lays out some areas for discussion and research in the future.

Gronn (2009: 383) has noted that it is a useless pastime to try and ‘battle for the high ground of superior insight’ in leadership, but it is noticeable that this is one of the ways in which the leadership debate has been framed in education, often harnessed to the school improvement or school effectiveness discourse. This debate has been travelled by the EMAL itself, in terms of the articles it has featured over the past 40 years and, even its change of title from Educational Management & Administration to its current title (in 2004); is in itself a reflection of how leadership has become the perceived focus for education, rather than management. This was not always so, as in its first 25 years, the emphasis in EMAL was on management and policy issues. It is in the late 1980s and 1990s that a move towards leadership in all its forms can be discerned. Periodically, this solo stance has been mediated by more prominence on shared leadership, variously described as democratic leadership, collegiality, participative leadership, and distributed leadership. This anniversary issue of EMAL offers a rare opportunity to pause and consider some of these debates. In this article, the discussion focuses on the movement away from an emphasis on solo leaders to the prominence of a particular kind of shared leadership, which has, it could be argued, changed and shaped practice both in the UK and elsewhere, that of distributed leadership (DL). This particular perspective has made a major impact on the way in which many conceive leadership.

The Discourse of Leadership

As Macbeath and Townsend (2011: 3) eloquently describe it, ‘ The qualities of leadership have proved harder to pin down than the less elusive functions of management, but have, nevertheless, provided a rich and growing seam of literature.’ This growth was dubbed ‘adjectival leadership’ by Leithwood (1999) as the leadership typologies began to expand. Macbeath and Townsend suggest that as this growth continued apace worldwide, universities established leadership centres, journals, such as EMAL, were renamed, and new journals were created. This new interest was soon picked up, and given renewed impetus by governments looking for policy solutions. As the 1990s progressed, the literature began to groan with interest in varying types of leadership and how this might (or might not) relate to practice. As the new century dawned, this interest was made concrete in England by the establishment of a National College for School Leadership (NCSL) in 2002. Standards for Headship were established in England, Wales and Scotland, and many countries worldwide began to take a keen interest in leadership preparation for principals (Webber and Scott, 2010). The discourse may have moved away from management to leadership, but within the leadership discussions themselves, the beginning of this century sees a clear move from solo leadership to various forms of shared leadership.

In some countries, such as England, this arose out of dissatisfaction with the solo model, especially after a series of high profile ‘superhead’ failures in England in the 1990s –‘the prevailing myth of exceptionality’ (Gronn, 2003). This ideal of the solo leader had not been able to transform the social practices of schools, and raise achievement through solo agency, as was required by successive governments in England. Gronn (2009: 383) notes:

Yet, even when this article was being written, one could detect in the appointment of a headteacher to lead inspections in England someone whom the current secretary of state calls ‘my hero’, a strand of thinking about charismatic leadership that simply refuses to die (Crawford, 2002). At the same time in England Hall et al. (2011: 32) consider that distributed leadership is the ‘officially sanctioned model of good practice’ advocated by government departments under New Labour, and in the following Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government with the renamed Department of Education. Hall et al. suggest that normative narratives are reflected in training materials produced by government agencies and argue that these should be challenged more robustly, by those who study leadership in education. They also argue not only that writers who use the term ‘distributed’ vary widely in their meaning of the phrase, but that the whole discussion around distributed and other forms of shared leadership is part of English government rhetoric to claim that power and autonomy are being shared with schools, whereas the reality points to centralization and many different forms of managerialism.

England may be seen as a particular case but such claims are part of a continuing debate in the literature about how leadership is configured. In any country, whose agenda is served by the debate around leadership, can be examined more closely, in order to understand the leadership perspectives taken by policymakers and practitioners. Examining these debates enables those involved in leadership to have a clearer view of where the debate is going, and how we have got there.

From Solo to Distributed?

There has certainly been no dearth of perspectives over the last ten years in terms of leadership, and the idea of distributed leadership can be seen as part of a wider discussion on shared leadership. Bolden (2011: 254) has analysed the growth in the idea of shared leadership perspectives and in particular distributed leadership, and offers a cautionary note, asking whether such concepts offer a genuine alternative to past ideas or whether they are in some way either ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ or a pragmatic response to society’s demand for equity and purpose. He notes that DL is a more recent phenomenon than ideas of shared leadership, and has grown across fields of study. However, he (2011: 255) notes that 68 per cent of DL articles were published in education or educational management journals (26 per cent were published, not in EMAL, but in School Leadership & Management). Further, the proportion of publication of DL articles is much higher for the UK than the USA, partly due, he suggests, to the influence of the National College, which has taken up the idea in many of its publications. Bolden (2011: 256) also speculates that this differential take-up across contexts and countries, may ‘provide evidence of subtle differences in the ways in which leadership is conceived and enacted in different contexts’. Spillane et al. (2011: 159) argue that DL has ‘effortlessly entered the conversation about school leadership and management … often with simplistic and unwarranted mantras such as “everyone is a leader” or “the more leaders the better”’.

If looking at EMAL over a long time frame, the reader is keenly aware that it covers the key ideas and concerns of the day. So, in the 1980s, there are key articles on micropolitics of the school, the role of the headteacher and the deputy headteacher, and bureaucracy in organizations. Most of this has the UK as its focus. During the 1990s however, EMAL becomes more international in concern, interested in the principalship in the USA and Canada, the workings of teams in schools, collaborative decision making, and the role of values in educational leadership and management. In an article based on his retirement lecture, Tom Greenfield (1991: 213) highlights the centrality of values:

This is noted here because values are still central to any discussion of leadership, and underpin most of the discussions about the kind of leadership that are most appropriate for schools today. A reminder that schools are a reflection of the culture they inhabit signals to leaders of both the difficulties and the opportunities that working with young people brings. The discussion also begins in earnest in the mid-1990s about different types of leaders and leadership, from transformational to transactional and asking how leadership can empower teachers to develop their own professional practice.

The first major article in EMAL to deal with distributed leadership, ‘Distributed properties: a new architecture for leadership’ called it ‘an idea whose time has come’ (Gronn, 2000: 333). Gronn (2000: 324) argued that, at a time when the field sought a way to represent the realities of organizational practice, leadership might be reframed in a way that viewed it as fluid and emergent, rather than fixed. This was at around the same time that academics were turning their attention to leadership as a social and relational process with an emotional component (Ogawa and Bossert, 1997; Fineman, 2001; Gabriel and Griffiths, 2002). Very soon, in a systematic literature review, initially produced for the National College but developed for EMAL, Woods et al. (2004: 439) noted that when DL was discussed it:

They also noted the similarities in any DL discussion to the work carried out on teams and collaboration in education. For them, DL had three distinct elements, in that it highlighted the emergent property of leadership as groups of people work together; it opened up the boundaries of leadership; and it suggested to organizations that expertise can be found across the many, and not just the few. They also noted context, both internal and external to the organization, as important from the literature, and as Bolden has noted above. A major variable for Woods et al. (2004: 443) is the degree of control and autonomy that individuals have, and again is framed against a discussion of values within the organization. They noted that:

Some of these constraints come from an organization itself (and perhaps the hero leader), as well as from the political and policy climate within which a school operates. Thus, if school leaders are accountable to external agents for externally mandated targets, distributed leadership may have distinct limits on its uptake in the organization, even if it is rhetorically part and parcel of practice. In its own way, this is reminiscent of the much earlier discussions in the literature of ‘contrived collegiality’ (Hargreaves, 1992). Woods et al. also note that DL needs to be seen as distinct from democratic leadership because democratic leadership is concerned with much deeper philosophical values. Woods goes on to develop this argument further with Gronn in a later article in EMAL (Woods and Gronn, 2009). The Woods et al. (2004: 445) review makes the point that viewing ‘distributed leadership as concerted action through relationships allows for strong partnerships which at the same time entail power disparities between the partners’, but qualifies this by commenting that there is a further discussion to be had as to whether such disparities can be justified. They also note that DL is also discussed as in a spontaneous, fluid form, where expertise, rather than position in a hierarchy is the driving factor for distribution. Even so, they (2004: 446, 449) remind the reader that such forms of DL have ‘to coexist with an organization’s formal accountability structure’, and that those in positions of power and accountability, such as headteachers, mean that even when discussing DL agency is ‘crucial to understanding distributed leadership’. They then examine several DL studies, where DL is primarily viewed as structure, and others in which DL is viewed as agency. So, headteachers can conceive of and work towards a school where leadership is delegated, social relations are strong, and trust is high but, as Woods et al. (2004: 450) point out, ‘Ideas and ingrained assumptions about whom to trust, who is legitimately able to influence decisions and so on, condition the possibilities for widening the boundaries of leadership’. The agency of the headteacher is again important even when structure appears to be the principal focus.

Harris (2004) discussed the relationship between school improvement and distributed leadership in a influential EMAL article, which argued that DL was a way to assist capacity building within schools. Her (2004: 13) article drew upon two studies of leadership in action and suggested that ‘the distributed perspective offers a new and important theoretical lens through which leadership practice in school can be reconfigured and reconceptualized’. She argues that DL is all about a different way of thinking about leadership and ‘engaging expertise wherever it exists within the organization rather than seeking this only through formal role or position’ but goes on to note the difficulties in managing change unless the formal leadership is good at building relationships, and whether in fact this perspective has any value in terms of generating better outcomes for students. This question is one that is picked up in some of the more recent criticism of shared leadership approaches that are not particularly focused on students. Other writers also take the view that DL is a useful conceptual lens but viewed in a different way to Harris. Spillane (2006), for example, sees DL as being part of a distributed perspective on leadership which involves two key aspects, what he calls the leader plus aspect and the practice aspect. The leader plus aspect suggests that there are formal roles in the leadership and management of schools that are very important as well as the principal, including deputies, senior teachers and so on. The idea of the responsibility for leadership of multiple actors in a school has become a strong aspect of any DL discussion, and encompasses the spontaneity that Woods et al. have suggested can take place in many forms of DL. Spillane’s particular contribution to the discussion of distributed leadership is this emphasis on the practice aspect, and the use of the concept to describe the practices of a school. He (Spillane et al., 2011: 161) describes it in this way:

This emphasis on interactions seems to have descriptive power, but at the same time, it could be argued that it also relates to the loss of the organizational focus in leadership and management studies. In a much earlier article, Ogawa and Bossert (1997) see leadership as a quality of organizations rather than individuals. They are highly critical of any study that views leadership apart from the social context. It is noticeable too that over time, in EMAL, and elsewhere, the organizational perspective has gradually disappeared from the discussion of leadership, except in rare instances (Glatter, 2006). Glatter (2006: 73) suggests that ‘we’re in danger of continuing to be trapped within the ideology of the “can-do” culture whereby agency is always considered capable of overcoming structure’. As Bolman and Deal (1997) note, the argument may now too much focus on the actors, and too little on the stage where the play takes place.

What the preceding discussion suggests is that, even although DL may seem to be a move distinctly away from the agency of the solo leader, it is still inextricably bound to notions of power and influence, and has been used as a means to frame policy that seems to privilege the autonomy of the individual schools and its leadership structures. As Woods et al. (2004: 251) remind us, it may be best to approach distributed leadership from a position of analytical dualism, remembering the importance of ‘the broadest participation in situational analysis and in the development of capacities for contributing to and sharing leadership’, a point reiterated by Gronn (2009: 385), who notes how the term ‘distributed can inadvertently mislabel a situation in which the influence of a number of individuals continues to be significant’. Woods et al. (2004: 454) presciently ask whether interest in DL will indeed see ‘autonomy and empowerment widely spread, or the same leaders applying constraint and control in new ways’, which, of course is the thrust of the much more recent Hall et al. argument.

Leadership as a Conceptual and Practical Utility

Whether looking in EMAL or elsewhere, an important part of the discussion about DL, is whether it is ‘considered from a normative perspective, as a means for enhancing the effectiveness of, and engagement with, leadership processes’ (Bolden, 2011: 256), or descriptively, in order to analyse the way leadership might be distributed within any organizational context. In terms of distributed leadership, Bolden (2011: 263) concludes that:

This can be seen against a background of discussion about the field of educational leadership and management more generally. In 2005, EMAL published an analysis of the field by Heck and Hallinger (2005: 239), which argues that ‘in recent years, the field has been long on intellectual critique, but short on sustained action (and demonstrated results) about alternatives that will enhance schooling for children. This has created a crisis of credibility’. The article discusses the previous decade and, in a sense, how the field has got to where it is now, based on a critique of the diversity of leadership perspectives used, they argue, without integration or consistency, and an over prominence on the normative, without any really substantive studies moving the field forward either empirically or theoretically. Glatter (2006: 77) has responded to this critique by noting that arguably there is more to the field then schooling for children, but there needs to be more debate about whether indeed there is such a crisis and what its causes are.

Simkins (2005) also looked at some of these dilemmas around leadership in another article published in EMAL. He (2005: 16) saw the preoccupation with DL as due to the demands of the policy environment, which are arguably even greater now than when he was writing, and that such an environment ‘demands that some roles be redefined: that other roles are played in new ways … however it may just be the traditional model in a new guise’. The roles that he suggested might be part of a concept of distributed leadership were enhanced line roles, project roles focused on short term outcomes, and networking roles with individuals and groups outside an organization but, it could be suggested, also within an organization. Simkins emphasizes the fact that in collaboration, informal influence may be more important than formal power in some cases, and contribute to sense-making in a school context. Again, he notes fundamental concerns around how power is distributed and what may be legitimate in terms of power. Crucially, he (2005: 20) also stresses ‘the values on which the exercise of such power should be based’.

Gronn (2003) has also drawn attention to conceptual inadequacies in the discussions of leadership, and more recently, he (2009) has noted that although studies in distributed leadership may have contributed to our understanding of situated knowledge, this is only part of the entire picture. He (2009: 383) argues that, ‘solo leaders continue to figure prominently in accounts that purport to be distributed and that distributed leadership apologists have not adequately clarified the role and contribution of individuals as continuing sources of organizational influence within a distributed framework’. In his view, DL does not ‘pass muster as a description’ because it does not adequately explain the different forms of leadership that may be at work at any one time, from concentrated solo leaders working in one part of an organization to much more dispersed forms of networks or collaborations within the very same organization. By applying the stretched view of DL or the ‘large numbers’ viewpoint, he argues that policy makers have taken hold of the less interesting part of DL, and ignored the potentially more useful paths of enquiry around the ‘person plus’ aspects and a more holistic viewpoint. He contends that this may well be in part because policy makers have found the large numbers viewpoint easier to sell to teachers, because it has a ‘clear take home message’. His argument is that a different term, that of hybrid leadership, gives a clearer picture of situational practice because the term allows for a variety of types within it. Also, if leadership is to be conceptually and practically useful, it seems that the field might consider removing the term distributed altogether and broaden the concept to that of differing configurations of leadership practice.

The Future

Although the concept of ‘distributed’ has been seized upon by schools and policymakers, a key benefit of the discussions around distribution is that it has allowed scholars to recognize the importance of activities performed by different groupings of people in organizations. It has, in particular, made students of leadership question how these relationships of interdependence might be categorized. This still leaves space for solo agency in an organization and refocuses thinking on the creative adaptive side of organizations (Morgan, 1998).

Given the influence of DL over the past decade, for the various reasons suggested above, the normative appeal of it may appear undimmed. Like charismatic leadership, it has a strong, rhetorical pull. Bolden (2011: 265) characterizes the challenge for researchers as moving beyond the ‘simplistic or aspirational’. However, in focusing attention on this particular aspect of organizations, the idea of a complex, adaptive, living organism of a school has been forgotten in the search for simple solutions to difficult problems. Public sector reform has gathered pace all over the world at the same time as many of these writings on DL in schools, and it may be time to question whether the research base gives an adequate response to the challenges of reform. Ways in which concepts of solo or shared leadership are related to professional identity in a time of upheaval for the public sector in the UK might also be a fruitful avenue of research (Baxter, 2011). In a review of identity in the public sector in the UK, Baxter identifies the formation of resistance discourses among public sector workers. Leadership in its hybrid forms may be part of any developing resistance discourses as professionals in schools interpret policy and institutional discourses in a variety of ways. This would allow investigation of the role of both solo and distributed leadership in identity making within particular contexts.

Bolden and others suggest that researchers have suggested that writers have not given due consideration to the dynamics around power in organizations and the contextual factors that leaders are faced with, which may lead to the marginalization of certain groups or positions. He (2011: 261) concludes that ‘the shift to a more collective or distributed representation of leadership does not necessarily have a beneficial effect for those people involved with it’.Woods and Gronn’s (2009) injunction to pay more attention to democracy in discussing shared leadership warrants further discussion.

One of the criticisms made by Heck and Hallinger (2005: 239) of the field in general is that the diversity of discussion of leadership has meant that many ideas have been not only accepted uncritically by practitioners, but also by academics, and that journals themselves have contributed to the ‘fragmented nature of scholarship’, which has caused the whole area, in their opinion, to move in circles around problems rather than looking at the issues that are of key concern to practitioners. It has also contributed to adjectival leadership in its many forms (Leithwood et al., 1999), a trend Gronn (2009) urges students of leadership to leave behind. In many ways, the discussions around distributed leadership, or even shared leadership more generically, could be viewed as surplus to requirements in the continual ramping up of high stakes accountability measures in so many western countries. DL seemed to offer, perhaps, a solution to some of the inherent tensions in such a system, giving the promise of a shared approach in its more normative forms, but could in some instances be viewed as a smokescreen for the more authoritarian practices of headteachers that were developing as a response to pressure from policy makers (Hall and Gunter 2011). As a means of analysing and describing practice, DL has been influential in highlighting aspects of leadership in organizations, but with the caveat, noted by Gronn and others, that the dynamic nature of leadership resists short term description, and calls for longitudinal mapping of practice. Gronn (2009: 392) notes that ‘acknowledgement needs to be given to the reality, over time, of a unit of analysis that encompasses both temporary and more enduring leadership features. That unit, I have argued, is a configuration and, equally, the most accurate way of characterizing a leader ship configuration is as hybrid’.

The lure of leadership as a key dynamic could be one of the many reasons that DL has acquired such a strong hold on schools leaders, much as solo leadership did in the 1990s. It may also reflect the changing reality of schooling, with at least some realization that, if an organization is to be dynamic, then it needs leadership flowing throughout it. As the last decade has progressed, work on professional identities (Day et al., 2006; Crow, 2007; Baxter, 2011) has suggested that concentrating on leadership alone, in whatever form, is not enough. Theoretical considerations may also be moving back to the organization as a way of understanding leadership practice, as more research focuses on the social relationships in an organization (Fineman, 2003; Crawford, 2011). Work has also continued to point out the cultural sensitivities of any leadership discussions (Dimmock and Walker, 2004).

This point of arrival leaves students of leadership with something of a dilemma. Whatever the ways forward, it is likely to take account of both ontological considerations, some of which have been outlined above, and challenges to the kind of research that needs to be undertaken. Bolden points to work such as that by Robinson (2009) which turns its attention to look more closely at the differing ways that leadership may impact upon student learning. He (2009: 263) argues for more usage of critical discourse analysis in ‘shedding light on underlying dynamics of power and influence and the rhetorical significance of DL terminology’. In his (2009: 265) view the key contribution of DL is not to view it as another form of leadership, but to regard DL accounts as helping both academics and practitioners to identify the many forms of leadership that may exist ‘in a more integrated and systemic manner’.

Conclusion

This article has been an opportunity to reflect on the work in this Journal over time that has added to our knowledge of forms of leadership, in particular those characterized as solo or distributed. EMAL has played an important part. The article has argued that the time is ripe for a move beyond some of the more one-dimensional forms of distributed leadership, to an analysis that looks to concepts such as hybrid leadership, social relationships in the organization, and what Bolden (2009: 264) calls the ‘the important balance between individual, collective and situational aspects of leadership practice and, importantly, when and why particular configurations are more effective and/or desirable than others’. In his conclusion he draws attention to Pearce (2004: 55) who suggests:

These questions are still relevant and ripe for more detailed research almost 10 years after they were written. If there is to be a new impetus in educational leadership studies in this area, more attention will need to be paid to such questions as well as those concerning identity, influence and power (Alexander Haslam et al., 2011).These discussions may seem a long way from the early days of EMAL, when Smyth (1985 186) noted that:

Encouraging practitioners to explore questions of identity and power, and theorize about their work may be one of the ways that journals, such as EMAL, can discuss how and when leadership should be shared, and the hybrid forms that make this possible. Most of all, however, research and discussion should be more willing to identify and discuss forms of leadership in a critical manner, and relate it to policy and cultural contexts so that both new and developing leaders move towards a keener understanding of the practice of both solo and distributed leadership.