Leadership and listening: The transformation of School X

Leadership is a vague concept that engenders a surprisingly precise mental image. When we think ‘leadership’ we think of more or less ideal ‘types’: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Churchill, Nelson Mandela – individuals with substantial personal charisma. In the leadership literature charisma is closely associated with theories of transformational leadership, but transformation is possible without charisma. As an organisational psychologist I had the privilege of witnessing a dramatic revival of a large urban high school, driven by a man who neither looked nor sounded like Richard Branson. It was a case I conducted along with research assistant Georgina Cohen as part of a study lead by professors Paul Gollan and Adrian Wilkinson, and funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partner Voice Project. This, briefly, is the story of School X, a school where, in the words of one of the principals was characterised by “blue lights and sirens, and [students] getting carted off”. School X hit the national news more than once for all the wrong reasons, but its successful transformation has barely touched the media.