Leadership: a pilgrimage of the soul

Headmaster's Blog

In July 2011, as part of my commissioning service as the new Headmaster of Scotch College, Swanbourne Western Australia, I was presented with a hand-crafted Celtic Cross from the College's Design and Technology department. It was a beautiful piece of work, a gesture reflecting what I assumed to be the Christian and Celtic foundations of the College. While I assumed a connection to this Celtic symbol, on reflection there was no contextual background relayed to me as to the specific role played by Celtic history or spirituality at the College.

Having previously been the Head of a Uniting Church institution, I was well aware of the College's strong Scottish Presbyterian heritage, so I didn't give it much further thought at the time.

However, looking back, it was this simple gesture that lit a small fire of intrigue in me about the College's heritage and whether or not there was a strong alignment with Celtic history and spirituality.

The lighting of that 2011 unexplained flame now finds me some 13+ years later writing this blog in the midst of the Glendalough mountains, in Co Wicklow Ireland, rich in the story of St Kevin and his depth of connection to Celtic history and spirituality and its role today. As for me, I am here simply trying to make sense of my own Celtic connections and that of the College, in order to assess where Celtic Spirituality should be positioned in the College's on-going journey.

Our College is known as a community which values a progressive approach to education, while never forgetting how we got to where we are today. It is important to stay committed to our heritage through a deep understanding and appreciation of where we have come as we continue to journey forward. While exciting, this is not a simple journey, and one that will be ever evolving, as it should be if we continue to believe in a philosophy of continual improvement and progress.

We are also very cognisant of the importance of not allowing complacency to become an option. In his book Anam Cara (meaning soul friend), the Irish theologian John O'Donohue rightly highlights the trappings of becoming over familiar. He argues that generally the familiar, precisely because we consider it to be familiar, is actually not really known. We need to consciously go deeper with our thinking. Familiarity can be a quiet and slow death allowing routine thinking and action to mask the need for change. As such, we may miss the hidden jewels that await our discovery in the sands of time.

There is an Irish saying that 'It is in the neglected or unexpected place you find the lobster'.  For leaders this may well be at a time of quiet reflection or through an unexpected experience. What I have come to appreciate in my search into Celtic spirituality, and the life of the Celts, is the important role of Pilgrimage and that of the Soul, especially within the context of soul friends (Anam Caras).

For the Celts, pilgrimage was everything, it was in their DNA. Some of the great Celtic stories came about through individuals such as St Kevin, St Bridget, St Patrick, St Columba, St Columbaeus, St Aidan and so many others.  Their selfless journeying as pilgrims based on a calling from the heart or soul to unknown places with no pre-conceived plans other than to take the word of the scriptures to those who would listen, has led to the establishment of institutions such as schools, hospitals, congregations, and religious orders that still exist today.

Modern school leadership in the current climate is undoubtedly complex and challenging. Society is expecting more and more of schools and their leaders. In referring to leaders, I include teachers and ancillary staff as leaders in their own right given the impact they have on the students within their respective schools and colleges.

No doubt the increasing challenges are in parts due to the many influences thrust upon schools from external regulatory authorities and agencies. These are coupled with schools' own internal governance expectations of compliance, strategic plans, risk management charts and all matter of increasing fiduciary activities.

Having said this, these may not be the only contributors. Maybe we need to consider that complexity is the result of having lost our sense that leadership is a pilgrimage of the soul and that just possibly, we are forgetting that it is important that we do not lose or sell our souls in order to align with or match a paradigm of leadership held by others. My question is, as pilgrims on a journey of stewardship, have we lost our capacity to lead by our soul?

In reality, we cannot separate the soul of a school and its leader, they are intertwined and through this have a two-way impact. If the leader understands the importance of soul, then so will the staff. The result of this strong internal alignment will be the clearly defined manifestation and visible alignment of a community leading as one through their shared soul.

If you are like me, you may have spent a lot of on your own time on reading leadership journal articles, books, and reflections with the goal of being the best image of a leader one can be.  A lot of this reading focuses on leadership from an educational perspective provided via educational leadership academics such as Fullan and Hargreaves, or from business literature and books like Built to Last by Collins and Porras, Good to Great by Jim Collins or a plethora of other academic books and articles espousing what good leadership looks like.

Maybe hundreds of years ago, without this plethora of leadership theories and manuscripts, the Celts had already discovered the jewel in the leadership sand. Could it really be that leadership is simply a pilgrimage of the soul?

If we lead with soul, not through an imbalance of the transactional elements of leadership, then those who we lead will, as John O'Donhue urges, be exposed to the unfamiliarity, and through such exposure, grow as professionals, finding the role of the soul in their own educational pilgrimage.