The last few days has been all about leadership. Starting from the whole leadership vs management binary, through educational leadership models and into what the leadership structure here at Hobsonville Point Secondary School will look like.

As a group we set about trying to place characteristics (such as develops a team culture or maintains stability) under the headings of leadership and management. Interestingly, we quickly fell into negative connotations about management while placing positive aspects under the leadership heading. Eventually, however, we realised that there were important aspects that needed to be placed under the management heading. At this stage, our conversations turned reflective as to why we had such negative feelings about management.

We realised that we associate management with bad management or micro-management and forget about good management all together. My personal reflection on why this occurs, is that when management is functioning well it slips into the background, becoming almost invisible and lets the rest of the organisation get on with their functions. Management is critical for a school (or any organisation) to function effectively and leadership simply cannot function without it. Maurie reminded us of the saying “Leadership/vision without management is simply an hallucination.” I think it is really important for us to remember this as we move from our big picture thinking into our work setting up the structures that will allow this vision to flourish. Continue reading →