What is Distributed Leadership?

Simply put, distributed leadership is the notion that the leadership tasks can be distributed throughout an organization.  Under an older, dated model of leadership, it was often felt that a school or school district could improve only if the right leader were selected.  Instead, distributed leadership looks to develop the leaders located throughout the organization by empowering them with a set of leadership tasks.  The works of authors such as Daniel Pink and his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us has shown us the importance of employee autonomy in motivation.  Distributed leadership provides that autonomy by giving faculty — and even students — discrete leadership tasks within the organization.  In so doing, faculty and students take great pleasure in accomplishing their work within the organization, and the organization as a whole improves dramatically!

Kyle and Distributed Leadership

Kyle is a huge fan of the concept of distributed leadership, and is a fan of the work of Dr. John DeFlaminis at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.  You can read more about John and his work here. Kyle devoutly believes that empowering faculty, staff, and students through distributed leadership is one of the most powerful ways through which we can unlock the human capital within our organizations and drive outstanding success.  It is a result of this empowerment that his staff feel so connected to him and so motivated to accomplish the organization's mission.  One of his employees writes:

Um, your…willingness to allow me to learn something on my own, um, the hands off piece that I enjoy about you, is that patience to allow me to learn instead of like what the type A personality would do, which is to see me struggling and say ‘Okay, stop.  Now I’ll show you how to do it.’ And I don’t learn that way.  You’re allowing me to struggle.  For example, one of my recent emails to you was questions about what I should do about something. I sent you several questions looking for answers, and you sent me questions back and said ‘Can’t you answer these on your own?’ And so I struggled for a little bit to think about what we should do, and then I gave you a response and you said ‘Well, it looks like you answered those on your own.’  So instead of cutting me off, saying you know this is what we should do, which I think a lot of managers would just go ahead and do it . . . you just sort of pushed and prodded me along to come up with the answer on my own.  So that I think you responded to me but it was sort of like a hands off, let me empower you to figure this out on your own.

 

Distributed leadership requires a cultural change in most organizations, and it therefore takes time.  The benefits of distributed leadership, however, are endless as motivated, happy, productive faculty and students busy themselves with amazing solutions for your organization!