Throughout the years as a school district administrator, I have endeavored to overcome the conflict I experience between what the perceptions of the position I hold and my own leadership priorities. I have been researching organizational culture and for the first time am beginning to understand why I feel this frustration at times with this role.
Research has only really been conducted on the subject since 2011, so this is a much more recent mindset shift. An emerging leadership model that I discovered is the “capacious leadership model” (Longman, et al., 2018). The capacious leadership model shifts the focus away from the concept viewing leadership from the perspective of a solitary lone actor to viewing leadership as occurring as a practice (Egan, et al., 2017). The authors continue to explain this “leadership as practice” or L-A-P as they termed it by saying that “L-A-P offers an implicitly democratic process that focuses on the where, how, and why of leadership work, rather than on the who” (p. 3). Women in leadership role tend to find greater work satisfaction, perform better, and move into more influential roles when the focus is on the practice rather than just the who in the position. This leadership work focuses on the details of what is to be accomplished and how, through a more collaborative process (Raelin, 2011).
In the upcoming blogs I will explore this relational leadership role. For now, I feel that it is important for us as women in leadership roles to begin chipping away at the male dominated view of leadership that sets a rigid hierarchy on the role with a greater focus on who is in the position rather than the work that needs to be accomplished by the group, department, or system as a whole. Through gentle influence, we can make positive changes that will improve the opportunities for women leaders in any organization.
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Egan, C., Shollen, S. L., Campbell, C., Longman, K. A., Fisher, K., Fox-Kirk, W., & Neilson, B. G. (2017). Capacious model of leadership identities construction. Theorizing Women and Leadership: New Insights and Contributions from Multiple Perspectives. Edited by J. Storberg-Walker and P. Haber-Curran. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 121-40.
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Longman, K., Daniels, J., Debbie, L. B., & Liddell, W. (2018). How organizational culture shapes Women’s leadership experiences. Administrative Sciences, 8(2), 8. doi:http://dx.doi.org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.3390/admsci8020008
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Raelin, J. (2011). From leadership-as-practice to leaderful practice. Leadership, 7(2), 195–211. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715010394808