This is an empirical study of everyday leadership practices in action in a post-compulsory education context. The issue of 'leadership'; the need for good, insightful and decisive leaders is a prominent theme in Education. Yet few can define exactly what leadership is. This book examines the phenomenon of leadership in post-compulsory education through the careful description and analysis of a long-term observational study of college Principals at work. In contrast to other, more theoretical, attempts to understand leadership, this book develops an understanding of leadership by pointing to specific examples of what leaders actually do as they go about their everyday work of resolving organisational issues. Instead of presenting leaders as charismatic heroes this book investigates a number of familiar, routine, aspects of everyday leadership work: how leadership is 'performed'; the various technologies - email, documents, slide presentations - involved in leadership work; the everyday management of organisational personnel and meetings; and, how success and failure is defined and understood by the leaders themselves. It concludes with some suggestions of what is learned from understanding leadership as everyday work and some 'cautionary tales' for those who would become educational leaders themselves.

Written by an author team from one of Europe's leading management schools, Leadership encourages critical appraisal of the mainstream viewpoints and personal reflection on leadership experience in a way that is both clear and highly engaging. Divided into four parts, the book brings together core themes and debates within the field and provides a wealth of diverse real-world case studies to help readers make the transition from theory to practice. The first part of the book, 'Defining the Terrain', lays the foundation for subsequent chapters by exploring what we mean by leadership, how it compares to management, and why we study it. The second and third parts of the book build on this, addressing core topics that have shaped leadership thinking for academics and practitioners over the last fifty years; as well as considering the cutting-edge debates within the field and tackling issues such as leadership-as-practice, strategic leadership, ethical leadership, and leading change. Finally, the fourth part, 'Developing Leaders', explores traditional and state-of-the-art development techniques, before encouraging the reader to consider their own leadership through identity work. Leadership mappings in the final chapter assimilate the range of theories and themes from the previous chapters, providing a framework for comparisons and connections throughout the book. In addition to the book's thematic approach, carefully designed learning features invite readers to exercise critical thinking skills and develop their own practice and perspectives on the material presented. This book has dedicated online resources, which include: Student resources: Web links to related sites Links to feeds from topical journals Online glossary Lecturer resources: Integrative case studies PowerPoint slides Suggestions for discussion points Video clips of inspirational speeches and discussions on leadership

Even if we don't realise it, most of us are now familiar with the idea of 'emotional labour'; that 'service with a smile' which everyone from cabin crew to restaurant or call centre staff is expected to give, irrespective of what they actually feel or think. This book considers the complex ways in which this need to show (or hide) particular emotions translates into job roles - specifically those of leaders or managers - where the relationships are lasting rather than transient, two-way rather than uni-directional and have complex, ongoing goals rather than straight-forward, one-off ones. The book contends that these differences contribute unique characteristics to the nature of the emotional labour required and expounds and explores this new genus within the 'emotional labour' species. The main theme of this book is the explication and exploration of emotional labour in the context of leadership and management. As such, it focuses both on how our understanding of emotional labour in this context enriches the original construct and where it deviates from it. By exploring these issues at the level of situated practices and the real world, real time experiences of leaders, the book seeks to make an innovative and nuanced contribution to our understanding of the emotional element within 'leadership work'.

Even if we don t realise it, most of us are now familiar with the idea of emotional labour; that service with a smile which everyone from cabin crew to restaurant or call centre staff is expected to give, irrespective of what they actually feel or think.

This book considers the complex ways in which this need to show (or hide) particular emotions translates into job roles specifically those of leaders or managers where the relationships are lasting rather than transient, two-way rather than uni-directional and have complex, ongoing goals rather than straight-forward, one-off ones. The book contends that these differences contribute unique characteristics to the nature of the emotional labour required and expounds and explores this new genus within the emotional labour species. The main theme of this book is the explication and exploration of emotional labour in the context of leadership and management. As such, it focuses both on how our understanding of emotional labour in this context enriches the original construct and where it deviates from it.

By exploring these issues at the level of situated practices and the real world, real time experiences of leaders, the book seeks to make an innovative and nuanced contribution to our understanding of the emotional element within leadership work .

The grounding of leadership theories in the practical doing of day-to-day leadership work is a vital, though often neglected, aspect of leadership research. This 'missing what' (Button, 1993) of leadership - the routine, day-to-day practices that constitute its doing - is the essence of the ethnomethodological approach taken in this book. With its emphasis on making visible the everyday, taken-for-granted practices of leadership work it offers the reader a 'unique adequacy' (Garfinkel,1967) in the practices of the study setting and explicates the accomplishment of leadership work 'from within'. Based on extended shadowing of college leaders, the book thus seeks to present a detailed understanding of the practical accomplishment of leadership work in the often neglected learning and skills sector. This book will be of interest to leadership practitioners who find the generalisation and abstraction of more theoretical approaches unrecognisable in relation to their own need to 'do leadership better', as well as to students and academics in the field who wish to draw on its rich resource of situated detail in support of theory development.

The issue of 'leadership', the need for good, insightful and decisive leaders is a prominent theme in Education. Yet few can define exactly what leadership is. This book examines the phenomenon of leadership in post-compulsory education through the careful description and analysis of a long-term observational study of college principals at work. In contrast to other, more theoretical, attempts to understand leadership, this book develops an understanding of leadership by pointing to specific examples of what leaders actually do as they go about their everyday work of resolving organisational issues. Instead of presenting leaders as charismatic heroes this book investigates a number of familiar, routine, aspects of everyday leadership work: how leadership is 'performed'; the various technologies - email, documents, slide presentations - involved in leadership work; the everyday management of organisational personnel and meetings; and how success and failure is defined and understood by the leaders themselves. It concludes with some suggestions of what is learned from understanding leadership as everyday work and some 'cautionary tales' for those who would become educational leaders themselves.