Generation X leaders and leadership

Very little is known about GenX leaders, within or beyond education. Our study, along with a handful of others globally are trying to understand more about generational patterns in leadership and their potential influence on leaders, schools and systems. Throughout our study, we have seen several patterns that are consistent across London, New York City and Toronto. These occur to varying degrees based on, we believe, the very different policy contexts within which school leaders work. Based on our research, we report our findings around a series of emerging themes including:

  • GenX leader career trajectories: Early leadership, job-hopping, and time in post, role modelling and shoulder tapping
  • GenX leadership: The advantages and disadvantages of being a young leader
  • GenX leadership: Priorities, strategies, and school improvement
  • Recruitment and retention of GenX leaders (so big it gets its own page)
  • Women in Leadership (also so big it gets its own page)
  • Future aspirations: What do GenX leaders want to be when they grow up? ...coming soon!

Based on the evidence, we see patterns of true GenX-ness in our small sample of school leaders. They have a burning desire to make a real difference in the world. They thrive in diverse challenging environments. They are inclined to be collaborative and are passionate about ensuring their colleagues are developing and have access to opportunities to learn and develop. They prefer on-line or independent learning combined with problem based discussions with peers. GenX leaders also appear slightly restless. They are learning and experiencing leadership at such a pace and with such intensity, they are traveling incredibly steep leadership learning curves. They are committed to supporting their colleagues with work/life balance and are, after they get their leadership feet on the ground, are seeking it themselves. Most describe their short term career options within school-level leadership but see their longer term, 5-10 year plan, taking them beyond school leadership. Thankfully only a handful see themselves leaving education all together!

These findings point to some very important and time sensitive policy and practice issues to ensure governments, support organizations and districts/Local Authorities are thinking about how to best recruit, develop and retain this essential generation of leaders. We are dedicating much of our time to advocacy and sharing our findings around Role Models, Talent Spotting and Work/life balance to create awareness of potentially helpful strategies to keep GenXers in the system.

Work with schools, leaders and advocates

We deliver workshops and keynotes on our GCL Generation X leadership findings to support school-based leaders, Local Authorities (Camden), Teaching School Alliances (Hackney Teaching School Alliance) and innovative school support organizations (Herts for Learning). Our GenX Leader findings have also inspired new initiatives for our UCL IOE team. We have worked in partnership with two leadership coaches to design and pilot a series of workshops called: Leadership, Perfectionism and Imposter Syndrome: exploring how a quest for perfection and feeling like a fraud can influence teacher and leader performance. We are also planning to work with The Key to develop a series of videos for leaders on the hot topics and issues emerging from our research.

in support of refining recruitment, development and retention strategies.  We have given invited keynotes to the DfE Fellowship Commission participants on leader retention, the ASCL Leadership and Governance Committee on recruitment and retention of leaders. Based on our growing interest in recruitment, retention and succession planning, we initiated the Innovations in Succession Planning series to profile schools, alliances and Local Authorities with new and inspiring strategies for building the talent pool. We partnered with The Compton School to develop the concept and their case study is available here

In the Press

Our findings from the Global City leaders study on Generation X school leaders have been featured in the Guardian on Managing workload and stress and early careers of school leaders in different cities. Our work was referenced in the latest research on leadership pipelines in London.

Papers and Reports

Our new reports are coming soon..........

  • Report: Advantages and Disadvantages of Being a Young School Leader: Generation X Reflections from London, New York City and Toronto
  • Report: Career patterns and expectations of Global City Generation X Leaders: Observations from London, New York City and Toronto
  • Report: Global City Generation X Leaders: Leadership lessons from school based studies in London, New York City and Toronto
  • Report: Conceptions of Professional Identity: Generation X leaders on how who they are influences how they lead

 

Conferences Presentations