6.12 Meta-Reflexivity in Professional Practice
6.12.4 Comparing Management and Leadership
Incident 12
Source: City Press, 01 July 2007.
School: Hlokohloko Primary School, Ubombo district – Mpangeni.
Incident: Two members of the National Teachers Union, (Natu) Bonisiwe Mthenjane (HOD) and Philile Ntuli (Post level 1) were murdered. The principal, who is a member of the South African Teachers Union (Sadtu) was implicated in the killing, together with co-accused who were alleged to be hit-men. They were charged with kidnapping, murder, robbery and possession of an illegal firearm. As a consequence, the three led the police to where they had dumped the bodies, which were found badly decomposed in the bushes after the teachers had been missing for nine days.
With such a growing number of socially, morally, culturally, and legally unacceptable incidents one could be forgiven for believing that the social order has irretrievably collapsed and that there is no hope at all to reign in such widespread abuse of power, influence, and privilege.
What is needed is true leadership as distinct from attempting to manage the situation. This distinction between leadership and management skills is clarified as follows:
Managers administer; leaders innovate Managers maintain; leaders develop Managers control; leaders inspire
Managers have a short-term view; leaders have a long-term view Managers ask how and when; leaders ask what and why
Managers imitate; leaders originate
Managers accept the status quo; leaders challenge it.
Source: Hughes et al., (2001:1)
I am indebted to Kotter, as cited in Daft (1999: 39), who has refined my taken-for-granted view of management and leadership practice.
Direction:
Alignment:
Relationships:
Personal Qualities:
Outcomes :
Source: John P. Kotter, Leading Change (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996:26); Joseph C. Rost, Leadership for the Twenty- first Century, ( Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993:149); and Brian Dumaine, The New Non- Manager Managers, Fortune,
February 22, 1993: 80-84.
Planning and budgeting keeping eye on the bottom line.
Focusing on objects-
producing/selling goods and services Based on positions of power. Acting as boss.
Emotional distance Expert mind Talking Conformity
Insight into organization Organizing and staffing Directing and
controlling.Creating
b d
Maintains stability
Emotional connections (Heart)
Open mind (Mindfulness) Listening (Communication) Non-Conformity (Courage) Insight into self (Integrity)
Focusing on people-inspiring and motivating
followers.Based on personal power to be the boss. coach, facilitator, servant
Creating shared culture and values helping others grow.
Reduce boundaries.
Creating vision and strategy keeping eye on the horizon of new possibilities.
Creates change, often radical change.
This study proceeds from the notion that public schools need to focus on leadership in order to achieve sustainable development required for 21st century organizations. It is envisaged that this research will help fill the gaps and contradictions apparent in the current South African education system, particularly in the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education.
One becomes confused whether the bracket analysis (Jansen and Blank, 2014: 28) must focus on the bottom of competitive league of Zero to 20 per cent, or below the 50 per cent bracket.
Surprisingly, although our district stands at the last out of 12 districts (53%) in the province, we are coerced to strive for 80 percent to 100 percent. As the foot-soldiers that work where the tyre meets the tar, we feel that the performance target is set unrealistically high and it is viewed with scepticism. I challenged this attitude because in my own experiential knowledge, management should set objectives or targets that are specific, measurable milestones that are realistic, attainable within the set timeframes, and agreed upon and accepted by the majority of staff. (Hit et al., 2009).
In addition, the objectives/itinerary submitted on a weekly basis, the monthly report, the school functionality monitoring (SFM), which is submitted at the beginning and at the end of the term, and the PPM 104 which is submitted at the end of every term, are time-consuming and demonstrably ineffective tools. One can draw the conclusion that our public schools will not be able to turn-around the present performance trajectory due to the focus on command, control, coercion, conformity and compliance (Fayol, 1949; Senge, 1990, Barnes, 1992). This view is supported by Peters and Waterman’s (1982: 31, 1988) In Search of Excellence. Further support comes from Burnes (1992:57), who refers to the Policies and ‘Paralysis through analysis’ syndrome – whereby action stops and planning runs riot and takes over. In brief, there is little or no implementation or execution.
As a result, of exploring the implications of asking: How do I improve what I am doing? I decided to create my own educational living theory, which recognises the need to acknowledge and address the obsession with the gathering and analysis of statistics as an end in itself, and which generates paralysis with regard to efforts to institute change. I also need to recognise that our public schools are trapped in this ‘Paralysis through submission syndrome’ and finally that our public schools are trapped in a process that Bennis and Nanus (2003:119) describe as being ‘over-managed and under-led’. As Bennis (1976: 27) puts it: ‘Many an institution is very
well managed and very poorly led.’ Another trenchant point made by Bennis (1984) is that leaders are people who do the right things; managers are people who do things right.
Wheatley (2002) has argued comprehensively that contemporary organizations have the industrial-age approach. That is to say the industrial revolution that emerged in the seventeenth- century, with emphasis on one best way, which was the scientific approach: it is reductionist, analytical, using a command and control approach that left a heavy imprint on contemporary organizational contexts. Running counter to this, the present enquiry is grounded in the shift from symbolic control to symbolic emancipation epistemology (Bernstein, 2000). The enquiry examines the shift from propositional theories that claim to have definitive answers and prescriptive solutions to every organizational malaise, as opposed to dialectical theories that claim that the universe is a social construct made by people and therefore an open space. Instead of tailor-made answers, dialectical theories respond to an organization’s ill-defined problems through exploring, reflecting, critiquing and enacting on the implications of asking, searching and answering questions of the kind, ‘How do I improve and sustain what I am doing?’
Moreover, Whitehead (2008:12) maintains that an individual can hold certain values and, at the same time, deny these in practice. But, importantly, living this contradiction seems to spark one’s imagination and innovation to generate possibilities for improving practice in work and in life contexts, guided by action-reflection cycles.
Popper (1972); Marx and Engels (1989) and Derrida (1997) deal with the concept of deconstruction and reconstruction – a process of stepping outside the research and locating it within my own changing understanding of the historical, educational, economic, and political contexts. The shift from the view that theory informs practice to a view that the practice informs theory lies at the core of my educational living theory.
This study has chronicled my journey as a practitioner, simultaneously modelling and learning from the application of reflection on administration, management and leadership roles, whilst introducing the process to other leaders (Fernandez, 2014:248). This is the core theme of my educative influence among the cohort of educators, school governing bodies, officials of the Department of Basic Education in the KwaZulu-Natal province through which I attempted to influence a shift of mind-set about how public schools work and should work, which could prompt new discourses.