Best Practice

School leadership: Why influence comes before impact

As a school leader we are focused on impact, but does this lead us to forget about the importance of influence? Robbie Burns explores ‘influence’ and how it links to leadership impact
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We measure a lot of the success of our work as leaders through the lens of impact. Recently, I wrote an article about this very concept which analysed how to understand which aspects of impact you can leverage the most in your work as a leader.

Elements such as climate, colleagues’ knowledge, systems and processes formed part of this, influenced by the work of Nick Hart.

Although a pervasive school leadership concept that has shaped policy and professional qualifications in recent years, I am feeling there is something missing about it. There is a deeper concept that impact interacts with, a stronger notion about what makes school leadership effective that I think is worth pursuing and understanding: influence.

Therefore, my claim here is that impact which really makes a difference can only ever be attained when it is aligned with positive influence.

When leadership influence and impact are at odds, change can only ever be fleeting and may cause more harm than good. With this in mind, let’s dive into the etymology of these two words – impact and influence – to understand them more fully.

 

The etymology of impact

In the 1600s the word was generally used in English in a literal sense to describe “pressing closely to something” and drew from the Latin “impactus” which meant “to push into, to drive into, to strike against, one thing from another”.

Other instances of the word in a more figurative sense were used by poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the mid-1700s to generate the idea of a forceful effect on someone or something.

Detach yourself for a moment from school leadership and consider the images created when you think about this. It is the sort of term that might be used in a battle scene, a boxing match, or a demolition at a building site.

In a more figurative sense, the word conjures up the idea of a football or rugby team developing tactics that outsmart their opponents or a speech as part of a debate. In a more concerning way, I can’t help but think of the boardroom argument or a shouting match between colleagues over a difficult issue, where choice words are thrown back and forth, causing far more harm than good.

Within school leadership, the ideas above haven’t always been associated with the word “impact”, at least not for me. Impact has always conjured up ideas of “making a difference”, “leaving a mark”, “achieving goals and development priorities”, and “raising attainment”.

Policy and research that uses the word impact to describe what they want to see achieved or what is working in education for me has always been about being driven and improving life chances.

But this etymology has actually hit on a gnawing feeling: I don’t want to just improve life chances and make a difference in the short-term. I want my work to make a lasting legacy on those around me and in turn let them leave a lasting legacy in my own life. To truly make sense of the idea of legacy, beyond having impact, the word influence must be understood.

 

The etymology of influence

The word “influence” was first used when studying the heavens. It was used to discuss the way that the planets above us had an impact on our everyday lives.

An astrological term, “influence” meant “streaming ethereal power from the stars when in certain positions, acting upon the character or destiny of men”; in old French, it was felt that influence came from the stars and “acted upon the character or destiny of people’s lives”.

In Latin, influence linked to “a flowing in” from an external source, which correlates directly to the way that Thomas Aquinas used it to mean “a capacity for producing effects by insensible (unconscious) or invisible means”.

Once again, detach yourself from the humdrum relentless busyness of school leadership and take a step back.

What are we trying to achieve? There is not one school leader I know that does their work simply for results, for raising attainment, for making a mark. The leaders who have life-long careers do their work to make lasting change; to act upon the character of the young people they serve for their own good.

School leaders I admire also do their work to make lasting change happen in the lives of their colleagues: they pay for qualifications, they give them a vision for their own future, they provide training, love, care, support, time, energy and effort to see them flourish so that they can teach their students well.

Sadly, the word “influence” has often been combined with the word “bad” to describe certain students and the way they treat others, or certain staff members who cause toxicity in their teams. Now I actually think about it for a moment, it is rare I have ever heard this word used in a way that is positive, or at least a way that comes anywhere near to the original etymology of the word.

 

Influence before impact?

As I reflect on my work to date, and these short etymological lessons, there are a few things that come into sharper focus. It would be easy at this point to simply conclude this article saying that we ought to aspire to influence and not impact, stating that the leader is too aggressive and forceful to be used in school leadership discourse.

But that would miss the realities of the terms and the way words are used: meanings change, even within our own lifetimes. It also would not be a very useful article for anyone if all I was to say was that we simply need to change the words we use while the meanings in practice just remain the same.

Instead, I think it is more accurate for us as leaders to see influence as something that is our first task, with impact naturally flowing from it. We cannot make a difference of any sort of lasting form without first acting upon the character, the beliefs, the attitudes of our students and our staff team.

If we jump to simply changing initiatives, approaches and policies, we put paper before people, we put actions before beliefs. Although these things intermingle in a complex way in reality, as leaders we should aim for influence before impact, for the former follows the latter.

Therefore, with influence before impact in mind, I think there are three general principles which flow out of this ordering of ideas.

 

1, Our leadership should seek transformation of character first and results second

Unlike the business world, or any other profession that does not involve children’s education, we do not have the luxury of building things slowly over time in quite the same way.

At the end of the day, every child needs a good education, so the work we do needs to be good or better from day one. We should seek strong results for students within the very first minute of the work we do, and we should always be checking on whether the children in each year group are truly getting the very best we can provide for them.

But this should not be the overall, first aim of our work. The impact on our children’s education that we want to have can only be achieved by the influence we are having on the way our teachers teach and on the way the school runs, and on the ethos and the culture of the places and spaces we inhabit during learning hours.

We must first foster good quality teaching among our staff teams, building within them a strong “this is how we do things around here” culture, and investing in them deeply. Hand in hand with this we must seek the development of our students’ character before their test scores.

What will last in the end is the content of our children’s character, not the pieces of paper that have all manner of numbers and letters on them. Our leadership should seek transformation of character first and results second.

 

2, School leadership should seek lasting change over quick fixes

There are always times in schools when quick changes should be made. And that they should be made there is no question. They can take all manner of forms: a timetable shift to enable year 6 to prepare for SATs adequately, a teaching assistant role change to accommodate a suite of interventions, the job description of a member of the office staff to enable them to focus on parent communications.

Quick change and big wins for the way a school runs should always be made. But even in the midst of rapid changes, school leaders who want to have influence that alters the course of action of others in a way that benefits them for the good should also consider the way in which they build the character of everyone along the way.

School leaders should have an eye on the way these quick changes work within the big picture. If the quick fix will enable long-term improvements, then it is a good idea. If in the end the quick-fix which will make a difference today will cause more problems eventually for someone else, then these sorts of things should be avoided. These sorts of quick fixes might sometimes be perceived as “impactful decisions”, but in the end they come back to bite us.

 

3, School leadership should always look beyond our experiences

In my experience, sometimes you don’t realise the impact a leader has had on you until you don’t work for them anymore. This is a strange phenomenon.

Often people label this simply as “being appreciated when you’re gone but not while you’re there”. I actually think it runs deeper than this. The event actually showcases the way “influence” works. It harks back to the original usage of the term.

Thomas Aquinas used it to mean “a capacity for producing effects by insensible (unconscious) or invisible means”. This might at first seem like a negative way to describe influence, but in fact I think it strikes at the root of why leadership must prioritise influence before it prioritises impact.

When we have influence, we have an effect on the way a person is, the way that they see the world. When we have impact, we only change what someone does, the way they work. When impact happens, without influence, people eventually revert back to the way that they were before as if nothing happened. When a leader influences someone else, the impact might be mixed initially, but eventually the influence they have leads to lasting impact, lasting change. This is because when great leaders have influence before they aspire to impact it goes well beyond their tenure in their post – it goes to who they are and the vision they are creating for others to engage in.

Robbie Burns is vice-principal at Bede Academy in Northumberland. Read his blog via www.howthenshouldweteach.wordpress.com and follow him on X @MrRRBurns. Read his previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/robbie-burns