Sunday, June 30, 2019


    There are myriad factors potentially influencing educational leaders and their potential effectiveness.  Effective leaders of sustainable learning organizations recognize certain factors are more influential than others for creating sustained success.  Effective leaders optimize the learning organization’s sustained success by:
·     Sharing common values to guide the organization’s collaborative vision (Lezotte & Snyder, 2011; Sheppard & Brown, 2009),
·      Inspiring stakeholders’ emotions toward innovation and right action rather than triggering fear-based immovability (Reason, 2010; Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007), and
·      Using institutional memory and symbolic language to influence cultural change (DuFour, et al.,2008; ). 
       Let’s examine and evaluate the influence of these factors upon the creation of a sustainable learning organization.  Effective Schools Research examines sustainable learning organizations and consistently finds “effective schools have strong and effective leadership” (Lezotte & Snyder, 2011, p. 51).  A hallmark of effective leadership in schools is the ability to communicate the mission to all stakeholders, understand the principles and values needed to optimize learning, and possess the knowledge to manage the organization’s programs.  Therefore, knowledge of key factors influencing the creation and sustainability of the learning organization is essential. 
An effective school reaches clarity and consensus on the mission, core values, and beliefs.  It is then important to develop ongoing processes to avoid mission drift.  Effective schools strategically stave off mission drift when it periodically reviews and renews “the organization’s mission, values, and beliefs” (Lezotte & Snyder, 2011, p. 67).  Educators benefit in many ways from working to develop a clear, shared vision (Dufour et al., 2008). 
It is effective practice for an organizational leader to assure the presence of a clear mission, shared vision, and non-negotiable values.  The purpose of this effective practice is to optimize the collective commitment to reinforcing the foundation of the learning organization’s culture.  Approaches for promoting this practice have been available to learning organizations for decades.  For instance, Anderson and Pigford (1987) cited earlier work by Rutherford to explicate the following five effective leadership qualities:
1.      Have a vision:  Work toward a shared understanding of the goals, progress toward their achievement and coordinate curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
2.      Translate the vision into action:  Work as a team, emphasize school wide goals and expectations.
3.     Create a supportive environment:  Promote an academically-oriented, orderly, and purposeful school climate.
4.    Know what's going on in the school:  Find out what teachers and students are doing and how well.
5.  Act on knowledge:  Intervene as necessary accommodating different teacher personalities, styles, and teaching strategies (pp. 67-68).
     A consistent exhibition of vision toward a clear mission, commitment to learning for all, and shared responsibility for success certainly appears to be the minimal ethos of an effective school.  Citing Jenkins, Louis, Walberg, and Keefe (1994, p. 72), Lezotte and Snyder (2011) posit the most significant feature common to world-class schools is the ongoing effort to become “learning organizations with a commitment to continuous problem-solving and a sense of shared responsibility for improvement” (p. 67).  A learning organization’s culture promotes collaboration, which is profound because the ethos of a school either promotes or suppresses collaboration between teachers and stakeholders. 
     Leaders must find a balance between motivating their learners and minimizing negative emotions.  While self-destructive schools gravitate toward fear and stress, institutions making a difference consistently exhibit love, courage, and hope (Reason, 2010).  Therefore, this range of emotions either positively or negatively affects organizational learning. 
     Diverse emotions can result in either ruminating or sagging emotions.  An effective leader does not leave the emotional tenor of a school to chance.  Rather, he or she promotes an emotional climate that focuses attention to optimize conditions for learning. 
Regardless if the perception is the need to accept or the need to overcome, change will be the result.  The greatest concern is the impact of such change upon the learning organization.  A trusting relationship between a leader and her or his followers is often based on how, when, where, and why the leader uses power (Bartram, 2007).  The ability to influence others to do something defines power.  Often the success or failure of a leader results from how and when she or he accesses and utilizes power through various mechanisms of rewards or punishments.  
     Leadership behavior affects stakeholder perceptions of trustworthiness.  This is important to researchers and managers interested in how leadership behaviors influence other areas of the organization (Caldwell & Hayes, 2007).  Key characteristics associated with most leadership theories include the ability to quickly assess situations, move accordingly for the benefit of the group, and to engender trust from followers (Burke, Sims, Lazzara, & Salas, 2007).  Quickly assessing situations and moving accordingly for the benefit of the group is what Roach et al (1999) called “wisdom in spontaneity” (p. 17).  Emotional Intelligence theorists call this social awareness and relationship management (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009).
     Ceremony and other structured memory construction activities exhibit the ability to form traditions within learning organizations that provide thoughtful reconstruction of historic events, thereby reinforcing particular values or beliefs.  The understanding of organizational events culturally frames the shared beliefs, values, and norms.  In this way, culture affects organizations at several levels.  Just as within society as a whole, an organization will also seek to preserve its own culture.  Thus, the creation of an effective learning organization requires the establishment of an organizational culture open to possibilities of what the institution can become. 
    Sustained improvement results when leaders of learning organizations structure time so institutional teams are empowered to meet regularly.  Effective leaders recognize goal achievement is necessary to sustain the improvement effort.  This commitment embraces the truth that teams outperform individual efforts because "learning not only occurs in teams but endures" (Schmoker, 1999, p. 12).
      Derived from personal experience and research, Reason (2010) posits a nine-step protocol for creating an organizational vision, reinforced by effective mental representations. 
Step One: Evaluating Personal Belief Systems
Step Two: Evaluating Context
Step Three: Evaluating Existing Mental Representations
Step Four: Evaluating Current Degree of Intention
Step Five: Establishing New Degrees of Intention
Step Six: Evaluating Current Belief Systems
Step Seven: Establishing New Actions to Support a New Vision
Step Eight: Reviewing the Learning Context
Step Nine: Continuously Reexamining the Vision (pp. 64-69)

         For instance; based on his or her own K-12 experience, virtually every adult has a mental model or mindset of a real school (Tyack & Cuban (1995).  This mental representation becomes omnipresent for him or her.  Such an internalized mental representation, relative to schools, is typically associated with strict rules about how a school actually works.  Therefore, to promote educational reform or institutional change, the negative mental representations held by stakeholders require reformation. 
        The quest to optimize learning at the highest levels is contingent upon perception, memory, and learning.  By rethinking or replacing older, less functional traditions, metaphors, or symbols, a learning organization can identify and promote new stories to create different mental representations capable of moving the organization toward positive change.  Perceived relevance affects attention.  Attention affects how effectively and efficiently learning occurs.  “The emotional tenor of a school is up to those who work in it” (Reason, 2010, p. 5).  Emotional states can affect individuals as well as organizations.
      As an organizational change strategy, storytelling is an integral tool because stories have the potential to create experiences; whereby a strategy is comprehended more diversely and personally (Adamson, Pine, Tom & Kroupa, 2006).  Therefore, “storytelling builds stronger teams and a stronger sense of community” (p. 36).  Images created through metaphorical language influence thought processes.  For instance, Jung (1964) wrote extensively on the instinctive nature of symbolic thought, suggesting symbols transcend cultures. 
        Identifying existing metaphors that are actually constructive and then replicating or expanding their scope optimizes the relationship between the learning organization and the organization’s culture.  Collective efficacy allows identification of the most positive aspects of an organization’s culture (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2004).  Thereafter, developing and perpetuating these messages could create effective, sustained change.
     Effective leadership produces collective, energized, collaborative commitment to the clear mission, shared vision, and non-negotiable values of an organization.  This alignment will deepen sustained, trustworthy, and emotionally fulfilling organizational learning.  By contrast, ineffective leadership exacerbates negative emotions and suppresses collaboration among stakeholders, which hinders organizational learning. 



To Cite:
Anderson, C.J. (June 30, 2019) Sustaining organizational learning. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

 
References
Adamson, G., Pine, J., Tom, V. S., & Kroupa, J. (2006). How storytelling can drive strategic change. Strategy & Leadership, 34(1), 36-41

Anderson, L., & Pigford, A. (1987). Removing administrative impediments to instructional improvement efforts. Theory Into Practice, 26(1), 67-71.

Bartram, T. (2007). The relationship between leadership and follower in-role performance and satisfaction with the leader.  The mediating effects of empowerment and trust in the leader. Leadership & Organizational Development Journal, 28(1), 4-19.

Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J., (2009) Emotional intelligence 2.0.  San Diego, CA: TalentSmart

Caldwell, C., & Hayes, L. A. (2007). Leadership, trustworthiness, and the mediating lens. Journal of Management Development, 26(3), 261-281.:

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (2008). Revisiting professional learning communities at work: New insights for improving schools. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., & Hoy, A. W. (2004). Collective efficacy beliefs: Theoretical developments, empirical evidence, and future directions. Educational Researcher, 33(3),  3–13.

Immordino-Yang, M.H., & Damasio, A.R (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Retrieved from:

Jung, C. G. (1964) Man and his symbols London, England: Aldus Books in association with W.H. Allen

Lezotte, L. W., & Snyder, K. M. (2011). What effective schools do: Re-envisioning the correlates. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Marzano, R. & Waters, T.(2009).  District leadership that works. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press

Schmoker, J, (1999) The key to continuous school improvement (2nd edition). Alexandria, VA. ASCD

Sheppard, B., & Brown, J. (2009). Developing and implementing a shared vision of teaching and learning at the district level. International Studies in Educational Administration, 37(2), 41-59.

Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

No comments:

Post a Comment