ALARA Monograph 2 Building Leadership Capacity - Sustainable Leadership

This monograph outlines an action research project that was a learning journey for a group of New Zealand principals who wanted to improve the way that they addressed problems with their staff. The principals committed to exploring how they could overcome their defensive ways of operating in such stressful situations. Their goal was to use dialogue to be open and therefore trusted by staff. The typical action research phases of reconnaissance, implementation and evaluation were followed. Multiple outcomes resulted for the group and their staff with the most important that concerns/problems with staff were confronted via the use of dialogue and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this was done in a way that maintained relationships that were based on values of honesty and integrity.

This paper has been written collaboratively with the principals, with the plural ‘we’ outlining

a report of the learning journey from their perspective.