Читать книгу The Noble School Leader - Matthew Taylor - Страница 18

The pacesetter is one of Daniel Goleman's six leadership styles (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 2002).⁵ Pacesetters are driven by an admirable desire to reach and exemplify excellence. In schools, excellence is often equated with the social justice–related drive to close the opportunity gap for students, as measured by outcomes on achievement tests. This is mission‐driven work that attracts mission‐driven people. Leaders create organizational cultures around this goal that both deeply resonate with educators and create intense urgency. School leaders often assume that embodying this ideal means sacrificing themselves for the mission. This is an emotionally contagious phenomenon. When school leaders lead this way, their teams respond in kind.

While this approach may work for short periods of time, such as during start‐up or turnaround, it is not sustainable. Staff perceive their pacesetter leader as not caring about them as people. Schools and leaders who attempt to maintain the pacesetter approach to teaching and learning experience chronic stress. Teachers pass on their stress to students, who respond in kind. Performance of both adults and students decreases. Over time, there is significant teacher and leader attrition. The constant turnover of staff leads to even more urgency to develop new people quickly, which intensifies the pacesetter response over time.