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An Introduction to Cultivational Leadership

What is Cultivational Leadership?

Let's start with the elevator pitch. The term 'cultivational' is built from the words culture and cultivation, which might give you a bit of a clue. At the heart of this style of leadership is a reflective lens, which looks within an organisation, focuses on putting in place the conditions needed to achieve the best possible results and then sustaining these conditions. Just a quick note at this point, if you adopt this approach I would strongly suggest not trying to shorten the term cultivational as, although I fear you would be quite popular you would not be attracting the crowd you are looking for!

How and why did I develop it?

Cultivational Leadership has been developed over more than a decade and it comes from my belief that as a leader you need to be true to your own values and personality in order to be successful. 

When I moved into school leadership I had a predetermined idea of what a leader should look like, and how they should behave, but I quickly realised that I was not that kind of person. Rather than try to change my style I worked hard to be the best version of myself that I could be in my leadership roles, and I am pleased to report that my style proved to be a successful one. 

The deeper into my leadership career that I got, I saw my style diverging even further from the norm. I became more evangelical about this as the years passed, as I could see the those around me approach things in what I consider to be a back-to-front way, target driven without considering that schools are in a sense living, breathing organisms. I could see that the education system was losing its heart, and I believe that cultivational leadership is needed across the board more than ever now.

As suggested above, the two arms of cultivational education are 'culture' and 'cultivation'. The cultural arm focuses on developing a supportive and nurturing environment and the cultivation arm focuses on creating and maintaining the conditions for growth and eliminating factors which could damage this.

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