Andy Hargreaves – The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership

Our study showed that few things in education succeed less than leadership succession. Charismatic leaders are followed by lesser successors who cannot maintain the momentum of improvement. Leaders who turn around underperforming schools are prematurely transferred or promoted before their improvements have had a chance to stick.

Leadership succession events are almost always emotionally charged with feelings of expectation, apprehension, abandonment, loss or relief (Hart 1993). Frequent and repeated successions aggravate these anxieties. Sustainable leadership therefore plans and prepares for succession, not as an afterthought, but from the first day of a leader’s appointment.

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