By Fenwick W. English and Lisa Catherine Ehrich

Our new book Rethinking Educational Leadership focuses on both the theory and
practice of educational leadership, as well as some applications. While previously we
have expressed our discontent with the traditional view of leadership that views it in
terms of roles and processes embedded in bureaucracies and organisations, we
consider the prehistory of leadership to see how it can extend and transform current
thinking.

In pursuit of this line of thought, we return to a time prior to the establishment of
bureaucracies where leadership can be clearly seen as the conferral of social power
from a group to a person, and where in some egalitarian societies, authority or
command were not evident. This conferral of social power is what we call leadership.
The person who possesses such social power is a leader, and what they do with that
conferral becomes leading. While leadership is a constructed social function, leading
is a human being engaged in social actions influencing others. Even though much
research and writing too often focuses only on leader centrism, we posit that it never
loses its anchor in conferred relational social power, even in modern bureaucracies.

Rethinking Educational Leadership pushes the boundary out from previous research
about leaders. It does not replace but enhances the dominant social science
framework rooted in scientific empiricism and post-positivism. These perspectives
only provide a partial lens to describe and understand what leading involves. To
complete the picture of leading the researcher has to restore the emotional, intuitive,
sentimental, non-rational, socio-cultural subjective human being to a complete
person. In short, the heart has to be restored to take its place along with the head.

We proffer as one way to engage in such restoration is the philosophical branch of
aesthetics. An entire chapter is devoted to it that considers its history and its
connection to the arts and beauty (and humour since it is argued that humour is a
human experience and leadership tool). Insights from conductorless orchestras and
musical ensembles, the classics and stories of artists, as well as arts-based
vocabulary including collective virtuosity and beau geste are among some of the
discussion points.

Since meeting in 2011, both authors have worked together on a number of projects
that have explored educational leadership and, in the process, reimagined exciting
possibilities for the field. Rethinking Educational Leadership reflects our latest
deliberations. It both builds upon earlier work and introduces new ideas that provide
a different way of knowing and different forms of truth seeking regarding the theory
and practice of leading.

We began that earlier work with a metaphorical investigation where we reimagined
leadership as dance and this opened up a new vocabulary enabling us to view
leadership as an artistic performance based on rhythm, grace, passion, and beauty.

Such vocabulary lies in stark contrast to dominant metaphors of leading such as the
machine, accounting and the factory structure of work that continue to be pervasive
in organisations including schools. This work led to an empirical study where we
investigated the notion of connoisseurship and how artists and school leaders
developed a discerning eye and became more expert in their chosen fields.
Emerging from this study was the notion of leading beautifully which refers to the
ability to be aesthetically aware, drawing upon one’s intuition and emotions, passion,
and senses within the performance of leading.

Another important aspect of the book is a discussion of the western concept of
leading and how it has been portrayed in history. We sketch out several historical
portraits of leaders and their works to broaden our understandings. Included here are
early writers such as Plutarch and Suetonius, Machiavelli and Shakespeare, and
Carlyle and some contemporary writers all of whom managed through their stories
and rich descriptions of leaders/heroes captured their character, values and other
human qualities that have shown themselves to be timeless and still capable of
providing insight and inspiration. Via five historical portraits of women leaders spanning four centuries, we describe the nature of their leading practices that were
both constrained and enabled by their context, gender, and prevailing cultural norms
of their times. We call this “big picture concepts of leading” rooted in authenticity,
identity, passion, faith, and resilience. These human qualities remain resonant in the
pantheon of people we both admire and revile.

‘Socrates said something to the effect, “I know that I know nothing”. Not the case for these distinguished authors. This book is a beau geste, a beautiful gesture, to all who practice and teach nuanced and subtle leadership behaviours in new intellectual ways.’
– Rosemary Papa, Educational Leaders Without Borders

Concluding each chapter of the book is a discussion given over to implications for
policy, practice and preparation and some of these chapters provide practical
suggestions for how those responsible for leadership preparation and development
might consider using an aesthetic lens and arts-based approaches. It is argued that
aesthetic and arts-based approaches have the advantage of enabling aspiring and
current leaders to engage their senses and emotions, and by doing so gain greater
awareness of themselves, others, and their socio-cultural contexts and barriers.

In the end as we follow the conferral of social power from a group to a leader, we
were mindful of this near universal transference process as an intimate ascendence
for a group to deal with the challenges to its internal and external cohesiveness,
survival, and prosperity. In this exchange we see the dissolution of the binary
between leader centrism and leader relational views. To fully grasp the paradox of
this dissolution, as well as the simultaneity of both the simplicity and the complexity
of leadership, the bones of the science require the flesh of the arts to produce the
fusion and expression of the creation of the resultant social power.

Rethinking Educational Leadership (publishing in November 2026) is available to pre-order in hardback here.

The eBook version will become available to purchase once published here.