Although Fullan focuses on generic leadership, his analysis and examples have relevance to leadership in education.
Leading in a culture of change
Synopsis
Fullan argues that in a complex world, leaders face considerable challenges. But whatever the nature of these challenges, leaders must refine five core capabilities if they are to be successful. These are their moral purpose, acting with the intention of making a difference to the lives of employees, customers, clients or society through understanding change, relationship building, knowledge creation and sharing, and coherence making.
He discusses the six leadership styles and argues that good leaders must be able to act in different styles at different stages of a project. For example, while leaders should be able to tolerate enough ambiguity, to “keep the creative juices going” once a leader their group have developed sufficient knowledge they should seek coherence.