Creative leadership: it's a decision: most administration are analytical and practical. Administrators who are great leaders are also creative and wise, and develop those skills by using them.

There are administrators who merely administer and there are administrators who not only administer, but also lead. Here is an example of the former:

I was invited to consult with a superintendent who had just started his job in a large district in the West. I was there for his opening speech to the school district. I knew by five minutes into the speech he was in trouble. He had sketched out a vision for his superintendency in which he obviously had great confidence.

There was a problem with the vision, though: It was exactly the same one he had used in his previous superintendency in New York. The vision may or may not have worked there. But it was not going to work here. The districts had little in common--geographically, culturally or socioeconomically. He was merely trying to transport what he thought had worked before to his new setting, without adapting it to the new setting. I told him as much; he didn't listen.

The second year I was back to hear his opening speech. He started it with an apology. He recognized that the first year had not gone well, and he said that this year he would make sure things worked. But it was too late. He had lost the confidence of most of the stakeholders in the district, and by the end of the year, he was out of a job. Perhaps he is now trying to implement the same stale vision in some third district.

What does it mean to be an administrator who is also a leader--and a good leader, at that? I have proposed a theory of educational leadership that has four basic elements, and that I share here (see also Sternberg, 2004, 2005). Underlying the theory is the idea that good leadership is in large part a decision--a decision to think creatively, analytically, practically and wisely.

The creativity piece

A creative leader is an administrator of vision. It is someone who proposes ideas that are original. As dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts, my own vision is to ensure that every student learns to the highest level possible. This means that teachers learn how to teach to all of the different learning styles, cultural backgrounds and family circumstances that children bring to their schooling.

We have opened a teaching center at the university that provides continual in-service to help teachers reach all students, not just the ones they are most comfortable teaching. We use a series of teaching techniques (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2000) that we have found to substantially increase student achievement (Sternberg, Torff & Grigorenko, 1998).

Is this the best vision for Tufts? Who knows. But it is a vision we believe worth executing, because the goal of schooling is to teach, and teaching is successful only when all students learn!

Our superintendent from New York failed in part because he was not creative. Rather than coming up with a new idea, he used the same old idea he had used before, with unfortunate results.

The analytical piece

Great leaders are not only creative, they are analytical: They ask whether their ideas--and the ideas of others--are good ideas. Are they appropriate for the circumstances? The hapless school superintendent seems not to have asked himself this question. He moved from one side of the country to the other, and did not bother to ask whether his ideas, however appropriate they might have been in the East, were equally appropriate in his new district in the West.

The analytical piece is the only part of good leadership that has much to do with schooling. Schools teach students to be good critical/analytical thinkers. Tests in school often measure such analytical thinking. So schooling gives one an edge in analytical thinking, but it does not give one an edge in deciding to think analytically in the first place. A lot of very well schooled administrators fail not because they cannot think analytically, but because they don't.

As an administrator, there are three questions I ask myself for any decision of consequence:

1. What is the best possible outcome of the course of action?

2. What is the worst possible outcome?

3. What is the most likely outcome of the course of action?

If the best possible outcome is not very good, why do it? If the worst possible outcome is too awful, then why risk it? And if the expected outcome is not so great, is there some other course of action with a better expected outcome?

The emotional/social/practical piece

Recently, the president of a major university in the East was forced to resign. He was academically brilliant but his brilliance did not enable him to keep his job. What was missing?

Leaders need tremendous emotional/social/practical savvy. They need to understand themselves, others, and how they interact with others. The university president seemed clueless in his interactions with others. Worse, he was arrogant.

I used to consult for a high-level executive in an academic publishing firm. He was good at what he did. Nevertheless, when the bearer of the position above him was named, he was crestfallen. When he was called by the chairman of the board and informed that he was not selected, he told the chairman why the company's choice was a poor one. Within a year, the executive not only had failed to get the promotion, but also had lost the job he had. He was back on the breadline!

The emotional/social/practical piece requires us to think about how we can successfully execute our ideas, and as importantly, how we can bring others along with us. It is not enough to have good ideas--much of an administrative job is convincing relevant stakeholders that they should back these ideas. Good leaders lead by moral authority. Leaders who blatantly need to show their position authority quickly lose it.

In my own work as dean, I often have an idea that I think would be good for the school. But I usually form a task force to discuss the problem, and if I can, engineer things so that they come up with the idea or a similar idea. They then feel like they have a stake in its success. I also have a steering committee on which I try out my ideas to ensure that an idea that sounds good to me sounds good to others as well!

The superintendent transplanted from New York failed to get buy-in for his ideas. He failed because he did not see it as his job to show stakeholders why his ideas would benefit them. He merely expected them to go along because he was the superintendent. They did, but only in a half-baked way because they were forced to. And in the end, the ideas failed because the superintendent had not garnered sufficient buy-in.

The wisdom piece

Good leaders are wise leaders. They use their creative, analytical and emotional/social/practical skills for a common good. They look out not only for their preferred group of stakeholders, or the stakeholders most like themselves, but for all stakeholders. They balance their own interests, other people's interests and institutional interests, and they think for the long-term as well as the short-term.

Administrators can be smart but foolish. The "smartest guys in the room" at Enron were all smart, but in the end, they were foolish, which is to say they were unwise. Foolish leaders have certain ways of thinking that, ultimately, not only do them in, but also do in those around them. These ways of thinking are:

* Unrealistic optimism. They think that the mere fact that they have an idea is enough to make the idea work.

* Egocentrism. Their ideas tend primarily to benefit themselves and those in their inner circle.

* Omniscience. They think they know everything, and thus do not learn from advice because they do not realize they can profit from advice.

* Omnipotence. They think they can do whatever they want because they are all powerful.

* Invulnerability. They believe that no matter what they do and no matter how bad it is, they can get away with it.

* Moral disengagement. They tend to neglect the moral side of what they do and to think only in terms of what is expedient.

Developing leadership skills by doing them

Most administrators are analytical and practical. Administrators who are great leaders are also creative and wise. One might think that these various skills are inborn, and that one is fated to have a certain level of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. We develop our creative, analytical, emotional/ social/practical and wisdom-related skills by using them.

Great leaders come up with creative visions, analyze whether their ideas are good, execute their ideas well, convince others of their value, and ensure that their ideas are for the common good. You don't do these things because you are, a priori, a great leader. Rather, you become a great leader by doing them, and any administrator who puts his or her mind to it can do them.

References

Sternberg, R. J. (2004). "WICS: A model of educational leadership." The Educational Forum, 68(2), 108-114.

Sternberg, R. J. (2005). "A model of educational leadership: Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized." International. Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory & Practice, 8, 347-364.

Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2000). Teaching for successful intelligence. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Training and Publishing Inc.

Sternberg, R.J., Torff, B., & Grigorenko, E. L. (1998). "Teaching for successful intelligence raises school achievement." Phi Delta Kappan, 79, 667-669.

Robert J. Sternberg is dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University.