Components of Leadership in Fullan's "Leading in a Culture of Change"

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Fullan discusses five components of leadership in a culture of change, in the book Leading in a Culture of Change (2001). The first component is moral purpose – making a positive change on the life of employees. “To strive to improve the quality of how we live together is moral purpose of the highest order (Fullan, 2001, p. 14). The second component is the understanding change process. Fullan list six ideas that help understand the change process 1) the goal is not to innovate the most; 2) it is not enough to have the best ideas; 3) appreciate early difficulties of trying the best ideas; 4) redefine resistance as a potential positive force; 5) reculturing is the name of the game and 6) never a checklist, always complexity (Fullan, 2001). The next component of leadership is relationship building. The fourth component is knowledge creation and sharing of information. The last component is coherence making. “Moral purpose is concerned with direction and results; understanding change, building relationships, and knowledge building honor the complexity and discovery of the journey; and coherence making extracts valuable patterns worth retaining (Fullan, 2001, p. 6-7). These five characteristics balance each other in that they must all work together for an effective leader.

The first component of effective leadership is moral purpose. “Moral purpose is about both ends and means (Fullan, 2001, p.13).” Moral purpose is how people treat others and how they evolve over time by working together. Fullan states that in order to have moral purpose the other four components of leadership have of be present (Fullan, 2001). Moral purpose is natural, but it will only flourish if leaders cultivate it (Fullan, 2001). Leaders have to have strate...

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...rpose have great cohesive power built in; with such powers in place, what we have left to worry about are complacency, blind spots, and groupthink, so we thus seek new diversity and new disturbances (Fullan, 2001, p.118-119). These five components create a complex process when dealing with change. Leaders can use these components to develop a process for change in their school building.

Works Cited
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Marzano, R. J., Waters, T. & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School Leadership that Works: From Research to Results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wagner, T., Kegan, R., Lahey, L., Lemons, R.W., Garnier, J., Helsing, D., Howell, A., Rasmussen, H. T. (2006). Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Shcools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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