The landscape of leadership literature is built up with stories about how to become the successful super agent of change. Accomplished business leaders write tales of their rise to the top of the organization that cherishes their successes while handing out hints or how others can too. Educational writers, often with only minimal actual leadership experience, serve up formula concepts about how to convince teachers to follow suggestions through seemingly instantly acquirable skills of charismatic persuasion. Philosophers dwell, often painfully and in great detail, over the multitude of complexities of the human condition within systems. Principals and superintendents reading this mixed literature may find the information disconnected and overly myopic. They live within the existing systems that not only demand and consume their every moment but are dotted with political land mines that constantly challenge their personal sense of balance. If leadership can improve learning in schools, what improves leadership? Is it wise though self‐serving stories from the private sector, inspirational though fantastic ideas from educational pundits or projections from philosophers? Likely, none of the above can singularly supply useful answers and insights on improving learning. Nonetheless, Gordon Donaldson has brought them all together in his insightful book, How Leaders Learn: Cultivating Capacities for School Improvement.
Gordon Donaldson has lived in the world of urban schools and has carried that experience into the environment of leadership development both in a Principals' Academy and at the University of Maine where he is currently a Professor. He has spent years, since 1967, listening to leaders and learners talk as they move forward to meet the daily performance challenge of transforming mediocre and poor schools into powerful teaching institutions. In his book with the deceptively simple title, How Leaders Learn: Cultivating the Capacities for School Improvement, Donaldson convinces the reader that, as Roland Barth states in the foreword, “… one is a learner and THEREBY a leader.” But the question becomes a learner of what?
The book is organized into ten chapters focused on a dynamic professional development tool that introduces a framework for thinking about how school leaders cultivate and support their own learning. According to Donaldson, the Interpersonal‐Cogitative‐Intrapersonal or I‐C‐I model is the thought system that guides the reader into three interconnected leadership domains. The “interpersonal” examines leaders capacity to cultivate productive working relationships and to motivate/mobilize subordinates to action: these relationship dynamics are key to the success or failure of any leader. The “cognitive” capacity convinces followers that the leader is in a position of authority, based upon authentic knowledge on school improvement through quality teaching. Probably the most ignored domain in our systems of leadership training is Donaldson's concept of the “intrapersonal”. Although less technical than interpersonal and cognitive, intrapersonal development emerges from within – a mix of critical examination of one's behavior, understanding ones inner self and deeply reflecting on the organizational improvement process. It is this continuous combining of interpersonal, cognitive and intrapersonal skills that transforms the person in authority to become a transformational leader or an organization.
The major section of How Leaders Learn addresses the ways of measuring the interpersonal and intrapersonal elements of leadership through the words of practitioners. Donaldson brings in interesting elements to discuss from real life concerns, including how far/fast should I push as a leader? Do I have the capacity to be considerate towards those I may not personally enjoy? Even harder, how do I open my inner self or my unconscious to my conscious self? Then, how do I use this unfolding information to become a better leader? It is not just enough to know who I really am, but how I can apply this new found insight to become a better person – and leader. Donaldson refers to the work of emotional intelligence – popularized by Daniel Goleman – and applies it to creating leaders who first come to know themselves before they study the technicalities of leading. Donaldson also cites the context based leadership work of Paul Bredson and others. It is the unique person who creates leadership in a format of performance at a specific site, changing in that moment the organization's history. Yes, leadership is the vortex between the science of systems and the art of the fully conscious and engaged individual.
Finally, Donaldson addresses the logical conclusions of his I‐C‐I premise: how to train leaders. As a professor of education, former principal and the founder of the Maine Principals' Academy he is of course interested in and focused on the “how” of leadership training. He encourages school districts and universities to (p. 88) “take leadership development seriously and treat it as a core business process”. He encourages the superintendent to be a learner and culture builder for the system and quotes Peter Senge to urge potential leaders to use action to create thinking and thinking to create action. Learning is all.
How Leaders Learn is a compilation and fusion of the work of many noted educational authors who will be familiar to most principals and superintendents. This book is one of the most highly valuable and recommended volumes of its time, presented insightfully and rigorously by contributors who have invested a great deal of exploring and implementing cutting‐edge practices in educational leadership – as researchers and leader practitioners. It is especially recommended as a comprehensive and viable professional development resource particularly for those involved in teacher and leadership preparation programs. It is equally recommended for aspiring and practicing school administrators, policy makers, teachers for its accessibility and engaging research and practice. Donaldson blends the various perspectives into a structure around learning that is self‐designed and ambitious, learning that is introspective and courageous, and learning that is focused on performers in organizations. He reminds us that leaders are not mere technicians, but real learners who vigorously seek to improve learning for students. Our training institutions are challenged to create learners first, leadership will follow.
