Distributed Leadership

The basic idea of distributed leadership is not complicated. In any organized system, people typically specialize, or develop particular competencies, that are related to their predispositions, interest, aptitudes, prior knowledge, skills and specialized roles. Some principals and teachers, for example, are simply better at doing some things than others, either as a function of their personal preferences, their experience, or their knowledge.

Organizing these diverse competencies into a coherent whole requires understanding how individuals vary, how the particular knowledge and skill of one person can be made to complement that of another, and how the competencies of some can be shared with others.

In addition, organizing diverse competencies requires understanding when the knowledge and skill possessed by the people within the organization is not equal to the problem they are trying to solve, searching outside the organization for new knowledge and skill, and bringing it into the organization.

In a knowledge-intensive enterprise like teaching and learning, there is no way to perform these complex tasks without widely distributing the responsibility for leadership among roles in the organization, and without working hard at creating a common culture, or set of values, symbols, and rituals.

Distributed leadership, then, means multiple sources of guidance and direction, following the contours of expertise in an organization, made coherent through a common culture.

It is the "glue" of a common task or goal - improvement of instruction - and a common frame of values for how to approach that task - culture.

Distributed leadership does not mean that no one is responsible for the overall performance of the organization.

It means rather, that the job of administrative leaders is primarily about enhancing the skills and knowledge in the organization, creating a common culture of expectations around the use of those skills and knowledge, holding the various pieces of the organization together in a productive relationship with each other, and holding individuals accountable for their contributions to the collective result.

• The purpose of distributed leadership is the improvement of instructional practice and performance, regardless of role.
• Instructional improvement requires continuous learning.
• Learning requires modeling.
• The roles and activities of leadership flow from the expertise required for learning and improvement, not from the formal dictates of the institution.
• The exercise of authority requires reciprocity of accountability and capacity.