With One Mighty Leap
- Ted Dunphy
- Nov 22, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 25, 2024
Radical to its core.
It looks to the future.
But at 4pm, Monday 25th November, 2024 submissions for the Chief Executive Officer of the new Catholic Multi-Academy Trust (CMAT) in Birmingham archdiocese will be halted.
Then one of the most spectacular appointments in the diocese for a long time will begin.
A radical post that requires a radical selection procedure.
And a radical way of selecting the selectors who will appoint.
Surely!
Stand in line
The advert suggests the MegaLeader will be one person answerable to
one person at BDES who is responsible to
one person higher in BDES who is directed by
one archbishop who is accountable to
one Pope who looks only to
one God.
The Megaleader of the new MegaCMAT will be only five steps away from God.
Awesome.
That puts God five steps away from the action.
Chucking in a prayer now and then won’t bring God any closer.
Just one?
Why just one person in charge?
Useful.
- A point of focus for questions. (Like a harassed interviewee.)
- They set the pace. (Pace setters drop out of the race after a few laps.)
- Useful figurehead for special occasions. (Like a monarch? Of little use other than as an ornament.)
- Easy to manipulate. (Using subtle bullying techniques for harassing and harnessing.)
- Easy to apportion blame when it goes wrong. (Sacrificial lamb.)
How else but with one leader?
Is there another way of leading, and of selecting the leader?
You might imagine it was always thus. The assumption being that the Church grew this way with one person always in charge.
That ignores history.
And the New Testament.
The advert says “To provide Christ-centred motivational, inspirational, inclusive leadership at all levels.”
Hay McBer never listed that on their leadership styles inventory.
The new post will break with conventions in other ways.
Just as you find in the Gospels.
To do or not to be?
The job advert puts great stress on things the Megaleader will do. Twenty-nine of them.
It is so much easier to select on and measure performance against ‘things to be done’.
Here’s hoping no selector asks how to create a lived experience of Church while shaping an excellent education in each school in such a way as to preach the Gospel.
Single leader?
One leader can lead to dictatorship; to sycophants pursuing betterment; to strangling channels of simple communication; to bureaucracy.
Garrulous critics might point out such a person atop a structure of sixty-three anchor schools is too remote, too aloof, too finely balanced, too easily knocked off track, and too out of reach by reality.
Like the lunar module atop the massive rocket, about to blast off into space.
We all know what happens to the boosters.
Together is Better?
What about a coalition of leaders of equal rank?
Consensus would be the order of the day, even if it took longer to get things done.
Different viewpoints, different groups represented with each feeling they have agency in the thinking, planning, and operations. An effective way of keeping the project alive and prospering.
How about a triumvirate? History and experience tell us they plot and kill each other off.
How about a rotating leadership role with a fixed term? Like our parliamentary system and run on ideological lines? Maybe not.
How about the model used in Conversations in the Spirit? This might let God have a word. How unusual.
Saying and listening
So many questions and so many viewpoints to consider.
Eruptions of briefings, edicts, bulletins, explaining, expanding, adding detail.
Where are the listening points? Or is the Spirit once again relegated to whispering outside the window like the wind circling the house on a winters evening?
Selecting the selectors
How choose those who will choose the new leader for the radical new role?
Will they attend a residential weekend retreat to prepare? Or will they just chuck in a prayer at the start of the proceedings?
Even that would be innovative, considering some practices from the past.
Will they use the same method they used in appointing leaders of existing smaller MACs, only this time the selection process will be larger, to match the new size of the CMAT?
Larger in what way? Louder, longer, more role play, more prayers, more shouting?
Maybe even, dare we think it, as radical and innovative a selection process as the new post itself?
Conversations in the Spirit give a useful model, even if it allows the Spirit to play a role.
Word of warning
The advert carries the caveat, “In carrying out your duties … you shall not do anything in connection with your employment that is in any way contrary or prejudicial to Catholic principles of morality or practice or which might bring either the Catholic Church in general, or the Archdiocese, or the CMAT, into disrepute.”
The appointment is to a radical role requiring a radical approach. Surely, there is room for a touch of disrepute, some latitude for the ruffling of feathers? How else do you make an omelette?
The Sadducees and Pharisees struggled with the same rigid expectations of John the Baptist and of Jesus of Nazareth.
Time for prayers
Whatever you think about the post and the selection process, pray that the right person will emerge. Someone who will, with the help of God and of all others connected with the enterprise, lead the CMAT to “provide the very best Catholic education, nurturing the hearts, minds, and souls of our pupils, staff and the parishes and communities it will serve.”
That is as radical as it comes.
Just like the Gospel message.
Ted Dunphy
Mobile: 44 (0) 7891 179180
‘Words mean more than we can say'
Disclaimer
The views expressed are based on my experience, my research and the evidence I have uncovered.
My experience comes from teaching in and working with Catholic schools around England over many years.
My research is based on investigating Catholic school websites in countries around the world, but especially in England.
My evidence-based approach challenges and refines my learning from the experience and the research.
I support Pope Francis’ concept of synodality as a way of finding truth. I listen before I talk. I welcome you to have your say. Make it a conversation in the Spirit.
Ted Dunphy