Can Shared Leadership Really Work?

Note - this post was originally written back in June (over 6 months ago, so all references to dates are for the 2015-16 school year) but never was published for a variety of complex and personal reasons which I won't get into here . . . but I found the text in my notes and thought it needs to be published.  So here goes, with a few small tweaks and updates . . .

This year, I became a "director" for the first time in my career. Now that the school year is almost finished, I would have to say that this social experiment in shared school leadership is partially successful and partially a failure. Just to back up for a moment, the school director had no intent to explore shared leadership for educational technology - he wanted to either continue with the traditional leadership structure with a Tech Director, or split off educational technology from technology services and support.  In discussing this latter option and what that would look like, I was asked to draft a job description for an Ed Tech Director. Some of you reading this now will remember me asking for copies of your job descriptions and a structural breakdown of technology at your school (BTW - everything that I collected from you back in the fall was greatly appreciated).  As the job description started to take shape, it became apparent that out of our team of 4 tech coaches, more than one of us would be interested in the director of ed tech position. With the potential for terminal discord and a fracturing of our working relationship as a team, we jointly decided to propose a shared leadership model.

After about a month of planning how we would work together to co-lead educational technology across the school, the four of us (tech coaches) were appointed to be Co-Directors of Digital Learning. Our proposal separated ed tech from tech services, and a new person would be hired to manage and lead IT which includes hardware, infrastructure and tech support. The four tech coaches (2x ES, 1x MS and 1x HS) would have dual roles supporting tech integration in our school division (or assigned grades), plus collectively leading educational technology across the school.  

With shared leadership - is everyone looking/moving in the same direction?  Is there a clear, shared and articulated vision?

We have been working with this model since about November of this school year, and I have really mixed feelings about how successful it has been.  In general, we have been able to move forward with a number of initiatives and projects which probably would not have happened or have progressed as far in a short time if we had stuck with a traditional Tech Director model. As there are four of us Co-Directors, we could divide up the work and push forward with projects which interested us or were important to us. For example, some of the bigger projects that I led were:

• promoting and organizing the third annual Hour of Code, which featured events spread across the entire school
• formally adopting the ISTE Standards for Students (through embedding the standards in our PYP and MYP planners), Teachers (currently working on adding the standards into our new teacher appraisal process), Coaches (which we adopted as tech coaches a few years ago) and Administrators (which we adopted as Co-Directors of Digital Learning)
• writing and formalizing our job descriptions as tech coaches and as Co-Directors, to make them into usable documents which accurately describe both of these roles and what they truly entail
• bringing Learning2Europe to Warsaw, taking on the role of conference chair and forming a team of teachers and staff who will form the core of the organizing committee and support team 
• initiating an exploration and testing of Google Expeditions Beta along with Google Cardboard for use in the classroom
• proposing a new project to put iPad Pro's into the hands of teachers (as an interactive whiteboard replacement and to facilitate teachers being able to annotate, comment, sketch/draw/graph on the fly in class) through a two stage approval program

So what were the challenges and problematic areas?

1) With a group of four individuals who are given "carte blanche" to initiate new ed tech projects, there is no single decision maker to say whether it is the right time and/or place to start each project, or to oversee how it all fits into the overall vision for the school. As a result, what we end up with is a collection of projects all in various stages of development, which may be disjointed, out of alignment and sometimes even at odds with each other. Without a single decision maker, everything moves forward on their own pathways, but sometimes in different directions.  

With shared leadership - are everyone's views of a similar hue, or completely different colours?

2) How well the group functions together really depends on the different personalities involved, their individual styles, and how well they mesh together. Any friction or lack of trust creates disharmony in the group and the team breaks down immediately. We all know how hard it is to regain trust once it is lost, and how quickly trust can disappear entirely. Given #1 above, trust will always be eroded as friction builds from differing opinions on direction and vision. Conflict will also come from the simplest of things, like how the group interacts with each other, talks to one another, and is inclusive or exclusive. In fact, the team started off with a feeling is distrust due to how we came to even brooch the subject of shared leadership. As the school director favoured a business approach to leadership, he pitted the four of us "against" one another and was looking to appoint one of us to the director role. This approach forced us all into feeling distrust for one another, which we had to address as a team before anything productive could be done as a group. 

3) Following on from #2 above, I think that the current school organization with two coaches in the ES, but only one each in the MS and HS created an imbalance, as two of the Co-Directors work very closely together and tend to have a unified position on any issue. Not that this is a bad thing - having at least part of the group working closely together is better than not having any of the group at all.  However, this made making decisions about the whole school difficult with four "votes" in total, but an internal coalition of two in place. This last point is key if shared leadership is to work smoothly. Instead of having each member of the shared leadership team be all things to their constituency (their school division), they should all represent the entire community at all times. Or perhaps it could be divided up by school division, but in a more balanced way such as two for elementary and two for the secondary school.  

Epilogue on this last point - this re-organisation of the tech coaches has actually happened for this school year, but not for the co-directors role (I think the school just kept three co-directors now that I have moved on and changed schools).  I think shared leadership would have a better chance of succeeding with a smaller group than 4.  I can think of many dual partnerships which were spectacular (Lennon and McCartney, Jobs and Wozniak . . . you can add to the list), but it becomes harder to think of some great examples of groups of 3 or 4.  Too many chiefs or chefs in the kitchen perhaps? 

In retrospect, I am happy to have had the opportunity to work in a shared leadership environment as it provided a unique learning experience and collaborative work at the highest levels. If another shared leadership opportunity comes up in the future then I will be better prepared and so much wiser about what the pitfalls are and try to address them up front.  Can it work productively and smoothly?  I am sure that it can, and I wonder if it is happening anywhere out there?  Have you ever worked in a shared leadership role? Did it/Does it work? What was your experience like?  What were/are the challenges?