Agentic Leadership

I recently listened to a podcast from Professional Learning International that examined the role of leadership in the Enhanced PYP. The podcast was an interview with Christopher Frost an IB PYP principal, workshop leader and site visitor.

Chris shared his thoughts on agentic leadership. He stated that in the the latest PYP Enhancement release “agency is described as the leadership potential latent in the entire community. In an agentic learning community everyone including the students are seen as is leaders. Agency is the power to act and in this context it is the power to lead. There are components that must be present in order for agentic leadership to occur: Self-efficacy, intentionality and social context. In regards to social context teachers may not choose to lead because of a perceived or real lack of support, a lack of self- efficacy or motivation. He further states that everyone has the potential to lead but not always in a big way. People may choose to lead in formal or informal roles. Leadership is a concept as opposed to a position.”

Chris believes that with Agentic Leadership agency is not obedience or anarchy. It is the power to act intentionally. It can be self-directed learning, leading and initiative or service learning. He believes that our jobs as leaders is to motivate, challenge and support. We create the conditions for others to act intentionally. Teachers can be agentic leaders in their own classrooms by offering voice, choice and ownership to their students.

I believe strongly that all teachers should have the power to lead and I too share the philosophy that leadership is a concept as opposed to a position. Every single staff member has skills, talents and passions that allow them to lead within our learning community. Our learning community will be stronger and can better meet the needs of our students and parents if we work collectively as leaders. How then do we motivate our teachers to step up? How do we help them to tune into their passions, skills and talents?

Intentionality is a word that I use a LOT! What are the curriculum expectations that we are intentionally focusing on, what questions are we asking, how are we assessing what our students can do? How will we use the information that we gather about our students to intentionally drive our instruction? I sometimes feel that when we talk of student or teacher agency in inquiry based learning that some people believe that we are talking about complete freedom without parameters or boundaries. To me this is what Frost refers to as anarchy. If we allow all teachers and students to have complete freedom then how will we insure that curriculum expectations are covered, that learning is assessed and that we have consistency in expectations. How can we find the balance that Frost refers to between obedience and anarchy?

So how then as leaders do we create the conditions for agentic leadership? How do we motivate our teachers to take risks and to lead in small or BIG ways? How do we help them to see and to believe that we do not always have to do things the way they have always been done? How do we model risk taking?

As a leader I feel that I do provide voice, choice and ownership for teachers but even so I feel that teachers are reluctant to lead? What do I need to change as a leader to tap into the latent leadership potential of staff and students and to create an agentic learning community? That is the question for which I am seeking clarity.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *