Page 13 - Leadership Basics 4

Confidential Disinformation

Imagine the leader pulling aside a mid‐level leader for a ‘confidential’ discussion during which they
say “I want to tell you something highly confidential it must not leave this room, but I want your
opinion about …”
When we confide in one another, the confider usually believes what is confided. That's one reason
why we tend to believe what others tell us in confidence. Enhanced credibility explains, in part, why
political operators sometimes tell lies — or partial truths — in confidence. And they also gain the
protection of secrecy and deniability.
Don't assume that confiders believe everything they tell you in confidence. Verify and validate when
you can. In the example above, it may be that the leader is actually ‘sounding’ you out to see if what
you know something.
Supervisors sometimes designate a favoured subordinate who receives extra attention and multiple
benefits, and who can seemingly do no wrong. Especially when this designation results from
supervisor initiative — that is, when the designee hasn't curried favour — the supervisor has
acknowledged and usually accepts the possibility that other subordinates will become resentful or
demoralized.

Credit Appropriation

School leaders who take credit for the work of subordinates are using a tactic known as Credit
Appropriation. Credit appropriation is the most obvious, least effective, and perhaps the most
common of all political influencing behaviours amongst school leaders.

Unfortunately one way that mid‐level leaders ‘appropriate’ the idea or solution of a teacher, is to
present an innovation to the Executive Leadership level as something ‘their’ team has come up with,
thus implying that they were the leader of the team and hence really it was their good leadership
that made it happen. The actual teacher who came up with the solution does not get a mention.
Credit appropriation can be even more infuriating when the person who receives the credit does not
even ask for it, but simply does not deny that it is theirs to take.

9