Page 18 - Leadership Basics 3

Conversation 2

Maris Stella Secondary School
Context

Maris Stella Secondary is a suburban school of 850 students that serves a community with a high proportion of
professional families.
Original Leadership Structure
The original Senior Team comprised the Principal, Deputy Principal and one of the Heads of School, who each served on
a rotational basis for two terms. The Senior Team met every Monday to set the agenda for the full general staff meeting
that took place the following day. The general staff would discuss issues and vote on them; they were the de facto main
decision‐making body, although the principal reserved the right to veto any decision. No staff could add issues to the
General Staff meeting agenda from the floor; if a teacher wanted to raise an issue they had to submit it to the Senior
Team on the Friday prior to their Monday meeting.
The Problem
The rotating membership meant that the Heads of School rarely served long enough to see an innovation completed.
Also, the size of the general staff meeting (68 teachers) meant that while everyone was fully involved, it was often a very
frustrating, unwieldy and time‐consuming decision making process. Staff also became suspicious that the Senior Team
was filtering or blocking initiatives, keeping them from being presented at the general staff meeting, and that only the
Senior Team’s ideas were ever discussed there. Some teachers even became angry at what they perceived to be
contrived collaboration; they became cynical that the general staff meeting gave only a meaningless lip service to
collaboration, when in fact all the real decisions had already been made.

How the school tried to improve the team
The principal describes the change like this:
“The first step was to disband the Senior Team. The next and most exciting step was to set up a 10‐member Learning
Leadership Team (LLT) that met weekly. This team includes the Principal, Deputy Principal, all of the Heads of School
and two teacher representatives elected at the General Staff meeting, each of whom serve for one year. The LLT is now
the school’s main decision‐making body, although I suppose as principal I am ultimately responsible for approving their
decisions. The General Staff meeting is now a forum for sharing ideas and information.”
Conversation

1. What do you think of this team leadership change?
2. What the criticisms might cynical teachers have of this change?
3. What would need to happen for this new team to be effective? Consider the Team Pyramid Framework.

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