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For Len-Mike and Olé.
Copyright © 2013 by Corwin

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Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allison-Napolitano, Elle.
Flywheel : transformational leadership coaching for sustainable change / Elle
Allison-Napolitano.

pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4522-6091-4 (pbk.)

1. Executive coaching. 2. Leadership—Study and teaching. I. Title.

HD30.4.A455 2013
658.4′07124—dc23 2013014806

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

13 14 15 16 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FOR INFORMATION:

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 Contents
Foreword
Rob and Kathy Bocchino

Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author

PART I. PROMISE
Chapter 1. The Meaning of Transformational Leadership
Coaching
A Story of Transformational Leadership
Transformation Theory
Transformation Seen Through Carrie and Sarah’s Story
Transformational Leadership Coaching
The Transformational Leader
Agents of Change
From Transformational Leadership to Transformed Organizations
What if Your Leadership Coaching Initiative Played a Bigger
Game?
Chapter 2. Coach More, Lead More
Coaching Is Leadership
Empowerment
Opportunities for Leaders to Coach
It Begins With a Conversation
Norah’s Story
On-the-Job Leadership Coaching for Teacher Leaders: The
Key to Deep and Sustainable Change
To Coach or Not to Coach
When to Coach
When Not to Coach
Portals to Coaching
Long-Term Leadership Coaching: A Series of Powerful
Coaching Conversations
Just-in-Time Leadership Coaching: A Single Powerful
Coaching Conversation
Walkabout Leadership Coaching
Leadership Coaching as a Way of Being
Answering the Call
Called to Coaching
Reflecting on Your Inventory Results
On to Part II!

PART II. PROJECTS

Chapter 3. The Greater Good: What Leaders Want You to
Coach Them On
Projects
The Relevance of Projects to Coaching Conversations
What Makes a Project?
The Greater Good
The Greater Good Defined
Wisdom and the Greater Good
The Greater Good in Action
Helping Leaders Select Coaching Projects
What Could You Be Coached On?
Additional Tools Related to This Chapter
Chapter 4. The First 100 Days
What’s So Big About the First 100 Days?
The Power of a Good Launch
A Powerful Coaching Tool: The Relevancy of First 100-Day
Plans to Coaching
The First 100-Day Plan Defined
High Impact Actions
The First 100-Day Plan Template
Descriptions of the Actions in Each Phase
Phase I. The First 33 Days: Build Excitement, Interest,
Knowledge, and Demonstrate Systemic Coherence
Phase II. The Second 33 Days: Metrics, Pilot, Innovate,
Tinker, Insight, Communicate
Phase III. The Third 33 Days: Celebrate Early Wins and
Favorite Mistakes, Revise and Refine, Deepen the
Movement, Secure Support, and Remove Barriers
Final Guidelines
The Actions Are Prompts, Not Prescriptions
Timing of Actions
Processes Leading to Artifacts, Deliverables, Events,
Decisions

PART III. PRACTICE

Chapter 5. The Flywheel System
Flywheel Leadership Coaching Components
Component I. Be a Leadership Coach
Acceptance
Humility
Trust
Respect
Service
Equifinality
Compassion
Mindfulness
Component II. Relationship: Come Together as Coach and
Coachee
Coach Into an Invitation
Create the Invitation: May I Coach You on That?
Ground the Relationship: The First Meeting
Component III. The Coaching Agreement
Component IV. The Coaching Project and a Plan for the First
100 Days
Component V. The Powerful Coaching Conversation
Component VI. Optional Onsite Visits and Event Reflection
Coaching
Component VII. Record Keeping and Reflection
Component VIII. Celebration, Outcomes, and Accountability
Additional Tools Related to This Chapter
Chapter 6. The Powerful Coaching Conversation: An
Overview
A Process Engineered for Inspiration
How the Powerful Coaching Conversation Process Works
The Meaning of the Colors
Step 1. Greetings and Accountability
Accountability for Actions
What Coaches Do In Step 1
A Need for Restraint
Closure and Transition to Step 2
Step 2. Connect to the Work and Focus This Coaching Session
Sources of Focus
Antagonistic Forces, and Windfalls, and Opportunities
Step 3. Coachee Tells the Story
The Value of Listening
What Coaches Do in Step 3
Step 4. Question Assumptions and Deepen Understanding
Step 5. Interact Through Thought Leadership Questions (TLQs)
Thought Leadership
Step 6 and Step 7. Generative Reflection and Brainstorming
A Different Place
Step 8. Wisdom and Commitment to Action
Drawing the Conversation to Closure
“You’re Going to Be Great”
A Series of Powerful Conversations Leading to Wisdom and
Transformational Change
A Journey That Trends Up
Hills and Valleys
A Series of Coaching Episodes
Meanwhile, Back in the Real World . . .
It Ain’t Always Pretty, But You’re Going to Be Great
Additional Tools Related to This Chapter
Chapter 7. Listen, Just Listen
What Listening Means to Coaching
What Listening Means to the Leaders You Coach
Love and Shelter
What Listening Means to the Coach
What Stops Coaches From Listening?
Habits
Habit Triggers
Anxiety and Other Emotions
Fear of Not “Lookin’ Good”
In Need of Renewal
What Coaches “Do” When They Listen
Fall to Silence
More Than a Step in the Coaching Conversation
They Release Their Personal Net of Memories
They Listen in Service of Their Coachees
They Listen With a “Coach’s Mind”
Listening and Leaders Who Coach
Return to Listening
Listening Is the Gatekeeper to Great Coaching
Chapter 8. Question Assumptions and Deepen
Understanding
Transition From Step 3 to Step 4
Communication Skills Used by Coaches in Step 4
Summarizing and Paraphrasing Statements
Questions That Ask for Details and Clarification
What Makes Detail and Clarification Questions Powerful
Examples of Detail Questions
Examples of Clarifying Questions
The Ladder of Inference
Understanding the Ladder of Inference
How Coaches Use the Ladder of Inference
The Coaching Conversation in Step 4
Step 4 Pitfalls
Pitfall 1. Asking for Details or Clarification Out of a
Voyeuristic Need to Know
Pitfall 2. Asking Questions Based on Past Personal
Experiences Instead of From the Context of Coachees
Pitfall 3. Prematurely Introducing New Ideas
Pitfall 4. Rushing Coachees to Action
Readiness for Step 5
Chapter 9. Thought Leadership Questions
Inspired Thought
A Coaching Scenario: Meet “Caroline”
Adding Step 5 to the Powerful Coaching Conversation
Sample Thought Leadership Questions for Caroline
The Magic of Thought Leadership Questions: How the Mind
Works
Thought Leadership Questions Lead to Thoughtful
Leadership
Coaches Lead With Thought Leadership Questions
Ownership, Action, Accountability
Using Thought Leadership Questions for Good
Deep Wells of Knowledge
Chapter 10. The Jaunty Walk
The Jaunty Walk
Step 6. Generative Thinking
Possibilities Emerge
Initiating Step 6
Acknowledge the Shift
Step 7. Brainstorming Options
Initiating Step 7
Step 8. Wisdom and Commitment to Action
No Second-Guessing
You’re Going to Be Great
A Coaching Scenario: Meet “Adam”

PART IV. PROGRESS

Chapter 11. Monitoring the Results of Leadership
Coaching
Is Leadership Coaching Operating as Expected?
Feedback Inherent in the Coaching Agreement and the First
100-Day Plan
Throughout Coaching Engagements
At the End of Coaching Engagements
Do Leaders With Coaches Create Results for the Organization?
A Scenario
Project Indicators
Organizational Indicators
Student Achievement Indicators
Link Back to Coaching
Here Comes the Tricky Part
Chapter 12. Start a Coaching Movement
Remember When We “Did” Coaching?
Organizational Considerations That Support Leadership Coaching
Focus Coaching on Critical Initiatives
Align the Culture to Coaching
Sources of Workplace Energy and Joy
Reframe Leadership Coaching
Battle Busyness
Embrace Models of Job-Embedded Professional Development
Support Innovation and Experimentation
Provide Professional Development in Leadership Coaching
A Curriculum for Leadership Coaches
Make Leadership Coaching a Presence in Your Organization:
A Smattering of Practical Ideas
Final Words

Appendix: Thought Leadership Questions

References
Index

Tools and additional materials related to Flywheel

can be accessed at www.WisdomOut.com and at
www.Corwin.com/Flywheel.
 Foreword

M ost likely you are holding this book because you are searching
for something. That’s probably a good sign: real leaders are
almost always looking further down the road, beyond what they can
currently see. Maybe the thing you are seeking is some wisdom that
is just beyond your grasp or maybe it is some truth that you have
lost along the way. Perhaps you see that others around you (or who
report to you) have great, yet unfulfilled potential. Perhaps you are
looking for ways to open the organization so the best ideas and
opportunities are heard and realized instead of lost. Whatever it is,
Elle Allison-Napolitano understands the journey and from her
research and experience she points the way to the path with heart.
For Elle, and for you,leadership means finding practical, field-tested
ways to empower, to develop, and to support others.
Flywheel is the pathway for leaders to learn how to coach others
to achieve what they could not, or would not do on their own. At its
heart, this is a book about the kinds of skilled conversations and
interactions that leaders can have that engage, develop, and
empower; it is about how leaders can be transformational coaches.
The title of the book comes from a simple idea of what a flywheel
does. In a watch, the flywheel stores and balances energy. In
systems, balancing energy is one of the key functions of leadership.
But how? Flywheel provides a constellation of practical skills, steps,
and protocols for leaders to support other leaders through coaching,
both formally and informally. Through examples, stories, and
research, Elle Allison-Napolitano provides a set of coaching skills that
are nothing short of transformational. Here you will learn how to go
beyond putting out fires and managing the status quo. Leaders who
embrace this practice find ways to be more conscious and present
and they are more ready to help others face and meet the
challenging realities of the 21st century.
To do this successfully and ecologically requires a frame of mind
that is open to the kinds of game-changing initiatives that make a
real and meaningful difference.Transformational coaching unearths
and challenges limiting assumptions, as by definition, it must. It also
means leaders must have specific, hands-on skills and protocols right
from the start. In Flywheel you will learn about when, where, and
how to listen well, and why this is such a demanding essential
leadership skill. In addition, you will learn how to deepen and assure
understanding, and the power and skills of asking real questions that
foster thinking, learning, and problem-solving.
Leaders step forward to start, revitalize, and champion
organizational initiatives for positive change. In the Flywheel model,
this means having real, concrete projects with deadlines,
deliverables, and real-life effects. It also means leaders need
practical protocols like the eight steps of the Powerful Coaching
Conversation, and ways to initiate a coaching contract. It means
developing and helping others develop the passion for doing “the
greater good” instead of “business as usual.” This work provides
templates, diagnostic charts, protocols, and other tools to facilitate
these kinds of important coaching conversations.
We have known Elle Allison-Napolitano for more than 20 years; we
first met her in her role as supervisor of school improvement. She
has always been an advocate for the kinds of developmental
interventions outlined and explained in this book. Her life journey
has followed this path with depth, authenticity, and integrity. Her
work has taken her all over the planet and has been dedicated to
this, whether it has been in her role as school leader, as coach, or as
an international consultant. All of these endeavors, and her work at
Wisdom Out reflect not only practical hard-won lessons that she is
willing to so generously share, but also her delightful, brilliant, and
engaging personality. Elle is an engaging storyteller, an amazing
teacher, and a wonderful person. You will get to know and learn
from her in this book, and you will be better for it. And it will take
work.
We recommend this work wholeheartedly and without reservation
of any kind.

—Rob and Kathy Bocchino

Heart of Change Associates
Carolina Beach, North Carolina, 2013
 Preface

F ollowing a conference where I led a breakout session on the

topic of leadership coaching, a superintendent from the
audience who was particularly enthused about the exercises on
listening I conducted with the group, took me aside to share a
personal story. “Joe” told me he was lucky to work in his district with
so many people who were true leaders in every sense of the word.
However, as Joe tells the story, this wasn’t always the case, and he
takes most of the blame for it. He said, “I knew I was working with
administrators and teachers who were smart, well-educated, and
experienced. And yet, they were always incredibly busy and
overwhelmed. They were good at putting out fires, but they did not
build the future.” One day, Joe went to work with a bad case of
laryngitis. He literally could not talk, he could only listen. He made a
sign for his door that said, “I have laryngitis and I can’t talk. You can
still meet with me, but all I can do is listen—sorry.”
When a few of his colleagues stopped by and joked with Joe
about how good it felt to talk when he could not do anything but
listen, he smiled and nodded. But, by the time the tenth person
came by and made the same joke, it suddenly dawned on him: he
was a poor listener. As the day went on, something else became
clear to Joe. The people he worked with were full of good ideas,
creativity, and passion for their work and for education. It’s just that
he never listened long enough for them to get that far in the
conversation. That day, Joe made a commitment to learn how to
listen, and that led him to discover what it meant to be a leader who
is also a coach. “I have to wonder,” Joe told me with a shake of his
head, “what did I prevent people from contributing, before I saw
myself as a coaching leader?”
WHY FLYWHEEL, WHY NOW
Admittedly, I am a coaching geek. I love all things coaching and I
never cease to be fascinated and downright thrilled by the effect
coaching has on leaders who are determined to make a big
difference in their organizations. In education, this translates to
benefits for students—and who wouldn’t be impressed by leadership
that empowers young folks to make good lives for themselves?
I invented Flywheel so that leaders can make big moves in
education and in their lives. Interestingly enough, big moves that
make a difference in education require incredible and sustained
focus, without which deep implementation is never achieved. Mike
Schmoker makes this point early in his book titled Focus (2011).
Schmoker says that if educators really want to improve schools, they
need to focus on well-known approaches, specifically, “a common
curriculum, sound lessons, and authentic literacy” (p. 9). Schmoker’s
point is that educators already know what works. As he sees it, the
problem is that “we have never fully clarified them or obsessed over
their implementation.” Leadership coaching is a personalized strategy
for just that—for mobilizing the energy of leaders to obsess on deep
implementation of what works and for taking action to make
systemic and sustainable change.

Flywheel?
It was a high school physics teacher in one of my workshops a
few years ago who made the observation that leadership coaching
was a “flywheel” to the hard work of leaders. Flywheel? This teacher,
who was at the helm of his school’s transformation to a science
magnet center explained to me that a flywheel is a mechanical
invention that stores energy, which can be called on and used to
keep things moving when the energy source is no longer available.
Aha! I know about flywheels from those grueling spin classes I take
at the gym. If you’ve ever been in a spin class, most likely the
stationary bike you rode utilized a large single flywheel that you
could adjust to simulate the demands of the open road, from a nice
flat course (where the flywheel is transferring a lot of energy to the
pedals) to a steep hill (where less energy is transferred to the
pedals). For the physics teacher in my coaching class, coaching
conversations created energy for him—energy for sustaining the
obsessive focus that Mike Schmoker writes about.

WHAT MAKES FLYWHEEL DIFFERENT FROM

OTHER LEADERSHIP COACHING APPROACHES
Leadership coaching is not a new idea. Every professional field,
including education, cares about developing leaders who are capable
of managing complex systems. But, while traditional leadership
coaching programs focus on increasing personal and organizational
performance (Storber & Grant, 2006), Flywheel is an approach to
leadership coaching that expands the expectations of leadership
from managing the inevitable challenges of day-to-day operations, to
developing leaders capable of changing the organization for the
better. Grounded in ideas from transformation theory, Flywheel is
geared for leaders who are at the helm of important work, especially
when they begin important projects or take current initiatives to
deeper levels of implementation.

Flywheel is an approach to leadership coaching that expands

the expectations of leaders from managing the inevitable
challenges of day-to-day operations, to developing leaders
capable of changing the organization for the better.

A Transformational Approach
 In his book Education Unbound, Frederick Hess (2010) candidly
writes, “The biggest challenge we face is not a lack of potential
practices or good ideas, but systemic rigidity that makes it difficult to
execute even smart solutions with discipline and focus” (p. 130).
Hess’s observation draws to mind Einstein’s famous quote, “You
cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it.
You must learn to see the world anew.” Thus, Flywheel embraces a
transformational approach to change. This means that it employs
tools and processes that pierce the limiting assumptions that prevent
people and systems from discovering breakthroughs and solving the
most vexing problems in education. It provides a way for leaders to
do meaningful work while simultaneously becoming leaders who do
meaningful work and who rewire the organization to support and
sustain new ways to assure that schools work for all students.

WHAT MAKES FLYWHEEL DIFFERENT FROM

OTHER LEADERSHIP COACHING MODELS

1. It develops leadership for change, not just managing day-to-

day challenges.
2. It’s geared especially for leaders at the helm of crucial
projects in the organization.
3. It’s designed for any leader at any level in the system, not
limited to administrators.
4. It seeks to rewire the system for sustainable change—not just
implement good ideas that never take hold.
5. It helps leaders deepen their leadership abilities through focus
on real work and real issues in the organization.

Flywheel is also different from many other leadership coaching

models in that it is not limited to leaders in formal administrative
positions in the hierarchy of the organization. Instead, Flywheel
invites leaders at all levels in the system to step up to the helm of
important work that actually shapes the future. Regardless of their
position in the organization—principals, teacher leaders,
administrators (you name it)—Flywheel supports people who see
themselves or come to see themselves as activists, innovators, deep
implementers, leaders, and change agents.

THE STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK

This book is divided into four main parts:
Part I is called Promise, which includes two chapters that describe
what a transformational approach to leadership coaching can
produce for individuals, leaders, and organizations. The first chapter
in Promise lays out the concepts of transformation theory and
relates them to leadership and to the process of leadership coaching.
In this chapter, the story of Carrie and Sarah, two leaders engaged
in leadership coaching helps you see transformation theory in action.
The second chapter in Promise focuses on the benefits that come
when all leaders see themselves as coaches. These benefits include
job-embedded professional development, developing leadership
capacity, and leveraging and sustaining their own energy for
important work.
Part II of this book is called Projects, and describes the
transformational change work most worthy of leadership coaching.
Chapter 3 explores how leadership coaches assist leaders in
identifying projects that have the potential to change education for a
greater good. Chapter 4 provides ideas and tools for leadership
coaches to use to inspire leaders to take action and get important
work moving in the first 100 days.
Part III of this book is titled Practice. Part III contains the most
number of chapters (Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9), each one focused
on the actual process of leadership coaching. My hope is that after
you read the chapters in Part III, you begin to use all or some of the
ideas to coach your colleagues and peers.
 • Chapter 5 is an overview of the Flywheel system. It describes
all of the elements to use if you provide long-term coaching to
colleagues and peers.
• Chapter 6 takes one of the elements in the system, the
Powerful Coaching Conversation, and provides an overview of
all eight of the steps in the conversation protocol. In this
chapter, there is also a pacing chart that helps you plan out
coaching sessions that last anywhere from 30 minutes to 75
minutes.
• Chapters 7 through 10 focus on crucial coaching
communication skills.
Chapter 7 is called Listen, Just Listen and as you might
expect, it focuses entirely on the critical coaching
communication skill of listening.
Chapter 8 is called Question Assumptions and Deepen
Understanding, and teaches you how to use summaries,
paraphrases, and to ask clarifying and detail questions in
order to help the leaders you coach uncover assumptions and
make potentially transformational discoveries. In this chapter
you also learn how to use the mental model known as The
Ladder of Inference, as a parallel tool for asking questions.
Chapter 9 is called Thought Leadership Questions and
teaches you to ask questions that put ideas on the table
designed to inspire insight and innovation in your coachees.
Chapter 10 is called The Jaunty Walk. This chapter pulls
together the final stages of the Powerful Coaching
Conversation that lead your coachees to make strong
commitments to take action, which over time accumulate to
the point where real change is visible.
Part IV, Progress, contains two chapters and is the final section in
this book. Chapter 11 describes considerations and approaches for
measuring the impact of leadership coaching. Chapter 12 ends this
book with encouragement for making leadership coaching a
movement in your organization. It contains myriad strategies that
ultimately create a pervasive culture of leadership coaching; a
culture where leaders embrace coaching for themselves and for
others.

BENEFITS FOR INDIVIDUALS AND

ORGANIZATIONS
The main message of this book is that transformational leadership
coaching is an essential strategy for supporting and sustaining
educational leaders who are engaged in meaningful work in order to
achieve results that change the organization for the better. The
benefits from applying the ideas presented in this book are many:
• More people interacting with each other through coaching—an
approach that empowers and builds efficacy in others.
• More leaders emerging from within the system to assume
positions of leadership.
• More people feeling confident about tackling challenging but
important projects to advance the goals of the organization.
• An engaged workforce: employees fully participating in the
most important initiatives of the organization.
• Ownership and accountability for important work.
• Increased happiness in the workforce through improved
relationships, conversations, and interactions on the job.
• More people interacting with each other in ways that spur
innovation.
• More people accomplishing meaningful work.
• Wise and timely decisions and solutions to challenges,
quandaries, and problems.
• A renewed workforce with energy to achieve even more
meaningful work.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

This book is for anyone who wants to know how to use a
transformational approach to leadership coaching in order to
engage, influence, and support their peers and colleagues as they
accomplish meaningful work. In education, leaders who want to add
coaching to their leadership repertoire come from the site level,
district level, state level, and university level. These savvy leaders
understand that their primary job is to develop the leadership
capacity of the people they work with and/or supervise, and they
want to learn how to coach others on the job, and on the fly.
Specifically, these groups of leaders will find value in reading
Flywheel:

1. Administrators and teacher leaders who want to add coaching

as a leadership strategy for supporting and sustaining
colleagues, peers, and direct reports. These individuals are
principals, assistant principals, deans, department chairs,
teacher leaders of professional learning communities,
superintendents, assistant superintendents, regional directors,
program supervisors, and curriculum coordinators.
2. Individuals who identify themselves as coaches and for whom
coaching is one of their primary responsibilities. These coaches
may work internal or external to the
school/district/university/organization or they may work for an
agency that provides leadership coaching to leaders in these
systems.
3. Supervisors/directors/mentors of coaching programs who
make decisions about the professional development they wish
to provide for the coaches they supervise.
4. Senior leaders who want to create a culture of coaching to
build leadership capacity throughout the organization, and who
want the administrators they employ to adopt a coaching
approach in their management/leadership style as they work
with the people they supervise.
5. Leaders who want to know what to expect from a leadership
coach, should they choose to work with one.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR CONTINUED LEARNING
Download tools and access other resources at
www.WisdomOut.com and at www.Corwin.com/Flywheel.

In addition to the many tools found between the covers of this book,
I also invite you to come to www.Corwin.com/Flywheel and to
www.WisdomOut.com to download them for handy and convenient
use. When you visit the Wisdom Out website, you also have the
chance to register for complimentary webinars on leadership and
leadership coaching that further illuminate the ideas presented in
this book.
 Acknowledgments

F irst, my gratitude goes to the many educators who have

attended my workshops to learn the skills of leadership
coaching, and to the leaders who allow me to serve as their
leadership coach. The narratives in this book are really their stories;
this book is just a conduit for their wisdom.
I also wish to acknowledge a number of individuals whose
influence on me is seen on the pages of this book: Michael Fullan,
Mike Schmoker, Peter Senge, Paul Axtell, Frederick Hess, Ron
Richards, Jody Leinenwever, Tracee Grigsby-Turner, Sue Page,
Maggie Cuellar, Janine Hoke, Doreen Corrente, Debbie Lee, Rob and
Kathy Bocchino, Bette Frasier, and Len Dose.
I owe the reality of this book to the kind judgment of Arnis
Burvikovs and Desirée Bartlett from Corwin. Arnis first gave me the
green light to write it when he contacted me to ask if I would write a
different book. He and Desirée gave their hearty support to me as I
produced both. Also from Corwin, I am grateful to the coordination,
editing, and production work of Mayan White, Ariel Price, Melanie
Birdsall, Kim Greenberg, Lauren Schroeder, and Janet Ford.
Finally, I thank my smart and handsome husband Len who always
supports me and never complains about my writing schedule. He
pays attention to my ideas, asks me great questions, makes me
laugh, removes obstacles, keeps everything running in the house,
takes me on surprise dates, amuses the dog, and cooks pasta for us
every single Friday night.

PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Corwin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following
reviewers:

Dr. Ann W. Davis

Clinical Assistant Professor
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC

Jason Ellingson
Superintendent
Collins-Maxwell CSD
Maxwell, IA

Laura Flynn
Instructional Coach
Los Ranchos Elementary School
Albuquerque, NM

Dr. Tracee Grigsby-Turner

Supervisor of Professional Development
Alief ISD
Houston, TX
 About the Author
Elle Allison-Napolitano, Founder of Wisdom Out,
specializes in leadership development and
organizational learning. Dr. Allison-Napolitano works
with leaders, aspiring leaders, senior leadership
teams, school teams, and leadership coaches to
teach them the strategies, practices, and tools they
need to increase their organization’s capacity for
sustainable change.
Elle has been a teacher, principal, supervisor of school
improvement, assistant superintendent, educational consultant, and
leadership coach. She earned her PhD in Organizational Learning
from the University of New Mexico. She is a graduate of the National
Staff Development’s Council’s Academy and is a member of the
National Speakers Association. She is author of several books and
articles on leadership renewal and resilience and on leadership
coaching.
Elle lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband Len and
their 16-year-old Vizsla dog named “Olé.” Contact Elle at
elle@wisdomout.com for customized workshops, leadership
academies, boot camps, and keynotes. To register for the Wisdom
Out newsletter and monthly complimentary webinars, please visit
www.WisdomOut.com.
Part I
Promise
 chapter 1
The Meaning of
Transformational Leadership
Coaching

Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner.

—Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of

the Learning Organization, 1990, p. 94)

A lthough Flywheel draws on many different theories, all of them

cogent to organizational and leadership change, transformation
theory is fundamental to the Flywheel approach. This chapter
provides readers with a foundational understanding of
transformation theory as it applies to leadership coaching. The story
of Carrie and Sarah provides us with an example.

A STORY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL
LEADERSHIP
Carrie and Sarah, two regional superintendents from a large urban
school district in the south (the names have been changed, but the
story is true) participate together in leadership coaching and use it
to focus on their most passionate work: developing principal
leadership capacity throughout the district.
 As you might expect, Carrie and Sarah are troubled when school
leadership teams do not click; when the principals, team leaders,
deans, and others either cannot or will not leverage their leadership
skills to create powerful and collaborative teams capable of leading
students’ learning.When dysfunctional teams exist then everyone,
including Carrie and Sarah, must divert their energy away from the
priorities of meaningful work.
Inspired by their new superintendent’s commitment to building
leadership capacity, and fueled by a deep and unwavering devotion
to the schools they supervise, Carrie and Sarah made it their shared
project to examine the current approach to leadership selection and
development in the district. They were determined to devote their
leadership coaching sessions on taking action to move this project
forward.
Over time, Carrie and Sarah’s coaching conversations shifted from
initially focusing on interventions when leadership teams fail, such as
moving individuals to different schools, which often created a
cascade of logistical personnel problems in the organization, to
eventually focusing on engendering a craving for leadership team
success right from the start, for each new, novice, and aspiring
administrator. As their leadership coach, I recall the change in their
language that signaled this paradigm shift. Instead of talking about
leadership growth plans (which describe interventions after
relationships and effectiveness have soured), Carrie and Sarah
began describing what they ultimately decided to call leadership
success plans(plans for success right from the start, beginning with
recruitment and the interview process).

Transformation Theory
Put forth by Jack Mezirow in 1978, transformation theory identifies
the processes by which adults come to question their assumptions
and those of others, and arrive at new perspectives. In other words,
transformation theory is about change—dramatic change that shapes
people and organizations and makes them visibly different to
themselves and others (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999).
Adult learning specialists Merriam and Caffarella (1999) tell us that
transformation theory involves a change in perspective that “ . . . is
personally emancipating in that one is freed from previously held
beliefs, attitudes, values, and feelings that have constricted and
distorted one’s life” (p. 320). More than being set free from these
binding ideas, transformation theory also holds that the person
finally understands how they were held hostage by previous beliefs,
which allows them to consciously choose differently in new
situations. Carrie and Sarah’s story beautifully illustrates the
experience of transformation.
Catalyzed by feeling ill at ease with the current approach for
responding to dysfunctional school leadership teams, Carrie and
Sarah’s experience is transformational in that they ultimately
challenged and freed themselves of assumptions that limited their
options. This is seen in their paradigm shift from remediation and
intervention to prevention and empowerment. Unburdened by beliefs
that previously stymied them, Carrie and Sarah gained a new
perspective, which generated a whole new set of possible actions.
These actions are likely to create profound improvement, not just in
the ways that leadership teams function once they are in place, but
systemically from the recruitment and interview process, to
professional development for leaders, to the long-term
administrative supervision and evaluation process.
The journey ahead of them will no doubt have its ups and downs
(meaningful change never comes easily), but Carrie and Sarah feel a
renewed sense of energy toward their aspirational goal of sustaining
strong and effective leadership teams in every school.
With Carrie and Sarah’s story serving as an example, we can more
clearly understand what it means to be a transformational leader
and what it means to provide transformational leadership coaching.
Transformation Seen Through Carrie and
Sarah’s Story
Returning to the story of Carrie and Sarah, we can analyze the
assumptions underlying transformation theory as constructed by
Mezirow (2000, p. 22), who acknowledges the process does not
always follow the phases exactly, but does seem to include some
variation of the following:
• A disorienting dilemma: An awakening, change, loss, or
challenge
In Carrie and Sarah’s story, the disorienting dilemma was the
unrest and edginess they felt about the processes in place for
responding to dysfunctional leadership teams and the
subsequent havoc they produced in the system.
• Self-examination sometimes accompanied by feelings
of self-recrimination, anger, fear, or guilt
In one coaching session, Carrie and Sarah sorted through the
complex emotions that came with the territory of supervision,
including their frustration and disappointment when their
interventions did not work. They knew there had to be a better
way.
• A critical assessment of the assumptions underlying
one’s beliefs and perspectives up until this point
Carrie and Sarah made a huge leap in their thinking when they
broke through the assumptions that dictated that the only way
to create functional leadership teams was if they had full control
over forming the teams in the first place, or if they took action
once they were aware of problems. Once they released those
assumptions, and replaced them with the perspective that
leadership success begins with the recruitment and interview
process, and that everyone has room for improvement, they
saw new possibilities, including a set of strategies for building
leadership capacity in others.
• Recognition that other leaders also experience
discontent and processes of transformation
 Carrie and Sarah accepted the challenges inherent in complex
systems. They realize that other leaders grapple with similar
issues, and believe that they too will handle whatever comes
up.
• Exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and
actions
When Carrie and Sarah realized they wanted to establish
leadership success plans with each new administrator hired,
they set up meetings with each new administrator and the
superintendent, during which time theyconnected the
leadership success plan to the administrator evaluation protocol.
• Planning a new course of action consistent with the
new paradigm
During this phase, Carrie and Sarah lingered over the pros and
cons of leadership growth plans versus leadership success
plans.
• Acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s
plan, provisional trying of new roles and building
competence, and self-confidence in new roles and
relationships
Before Carrie and Sarah held meetings with each new
administrator and the superintendent, they scheduled a work
session with each other to comb through the current
administrator evaluation instrument in order to locate
ambiguous language and clarify each point with examples from
the district. Because of this process, Carrie and Sarah became
facile with relating the two-dimensional leadership expectations
on the evaluation instrument to the three-dimensional
expectations of leaders on the job.
• Reintegration into one’s life and work on the basis of
conditions congruent with the new perspective
Carrie and Sarah began to think that the Leadership Success
Plan was a good idea and helpful tool for all of the principals
they supervised, not just the new and novice principals. They
planned opportunities to communicate to site leadership teams
that lifelong learning is part and parcel of leadership excellence,
 and that the supervision and evaluation process is meant to
expand their capacity for leadership. This plan brings them back
full circle to serving one of the most strategic goals of their
organization: building leadership capacity in all. However, now
they approach this work with a transformed perspective that
feels empowering and energizing.
As you reflect on the story of Carrie and Sarah through the eyes of
a leadership coach, you begin to discern the fundamental beliefs
underpinning transformational change. Before you continue reading,
use the space provided below to write your predictions about the
assumptions underlying transformation theory as it applies to
leadership coaching. Then, read the next section and see how your
predictions compare.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP COACHING

Transformational leadership coaching is an organizational strategy
for leadership development that is based on the qualities of
transformation theory and transformational leadership, and employs
processes and tools designed to help leaders remove obstructive
assumptions and beliefs that limit their greatness. Once free of these
limitations, and empowered by their new vision and story, these
leaders catalyze leadership in the people around them and create
needed change throughout their organizations in order to produce
remarkable results.
BELIEFS EMBRACED BY TRANSFORMATIONAL
LEADERSHIP COACHES

• Leaders come to coaching with wisdom and experience about

their work.
• A person’s frame of reference (how they understand the world)
is composed of assumptions that selectively shape and restrict
expectations.
• People transform their frame of reference through critical
reflection of assumptions.
• Transformative learning emancipates people from
unquestioning acceptance of what they’ve come to know.
• Learners need to be at the center of contextual learning—not
receivers of information and expert advice.
• Experience combined with reflective discourse creates learning.

The tools and processes you find in this book facilitate

transformational leadership development, and display a bias for bold
action that leads to profound results Leadership coaches who
approach their work through this lens embrace these beliefs and
translate them into practice.

THE TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER

I do not mean to suggest that transformational leadership coaching
is the only way to create leaders who are capable of
transformational change. However, leadership coaching grounded in
the precepts of transformational change is designed explicitly to
promote transformational leadership.

Agents of Change
 Transformational leaders are what Michael Fullan calls “change
agents” (Fullan, 1993). Change agents are individuals who have a
strong moral purpose and have the ability to skillfully engage in the
process of change. Change agents, regardless of their formal
position, create new realities within their organization and inspire
others to follow. Consider these three examples of change agent
leadership:
• Two teachers propose to team teach literacy and inquiry with a
looped third and fourth grade class learning math, science, and
social studies.
• A principal who is passionate about creating powerful,
effective, and joyful Professional Learning Communities in each
grade level asks the 6th grade team to work with her to pilot a
progress monitoring approach that empowers students to track
their own learning and growth.
• A superintendent in a rural school district works with a broad-
based community group to develop a vision of an “anytime,
anywhere” high school that is able to evolve with emerging and
morphing handheld technologies.
The individuals in these three examples hold positions from
classroom teacher to superintendent. But, because all of them
stepped forward to take the helm of projects that serve their
organizations, compel passion and leadership in others, and create
new opportunities for stakeholders, each of them exhibits
characteristics of transformational leadership.
Transformational leaders seek to make meaningful change that
makes a difference over the long haul. These leaders are undaunted
by aspirational goals—goals that fix the problems that bedevil the
profession, and that create breakthroughs that lead to extraordinary
and sustainable results. Unsatisfied with superficial change or
change that merely contains a crisis, transformational leaders are as
passionate about how they achieve remarkable outcomes as they
are about the outcomes themselves. They do not agree that the
ends justify the means, if the means to those ends diminish people,
exclude vulnerable groups of stakeholders, rely on coercion, squelch
innovation, or create cumbersome policies and structures that de-
energize people (Denning & Dunham, 2010). Transformational
leaders exhibit these competencies:
• Employ a coaching leadership style in order to empower and
develop leadership in others.
• Articulate a compelling vision that challenges the status quo
and inspires others to action.
• Structure meaningful work to create multiple leadership
opportunities for others.
• Accomplish change through collaboration and built-up social
capital.
• Take a systemic view of change.
• Look for solutions that consider the needs of all, especially
those who are most vulnerable.
• Make daily actions consistent with the vision.
• Seek to break through pervasive problems, not just contain a
crisis, or manage the status quo.
• Invite experimentation and exploration from others that create
radical breakthroughs in paradigms, perspectives, and behavior.
• Tackle aspirational goals, resonate optimism when others think
the situation is hopeless, and be resilient in the face of setbacks
and disruptions.

FROM TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP TO

TRANSFORMED ORGANIZATIONS
Transformational change leaders not only influence their colleagues
to join them in creating needed change, but also skillfully shepherd
the process of change around initiatives, thus increasing the learning
capacity of the organization. In turn, learning organizations possess
the unique ability to sustain and nurture change initiatives and the
leaders at their helm.
 MIT lecturer and author Peter Senge (1990) is a thought leader on
the subject of learning organizations. He describes learning
organizations as places “where people continually expand their
capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and
expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective
aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how
to learn together” (p. 3). In the preface of his 2005 book, Presence:
An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and
Society, Senge and his co-authors eloquently refer to the
interrelationship between parts and the whole, an idea that applies
to the synergy between change leaders and the process of change.
They write: “It’s common to say that trees come from seeds. But,
how could a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the
resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the
medium or environment within which the tree grows” (Senge,
Scharmer, Jaworski, & Flowers, 2005, p. 2).
Organizations with a deep capacity for change take a resilient
stance in response to the messiness of change. They create
hospitable conditions for innovate change work to succeed. To the
extent that an organization views itself as a learning organization,
change work either succeeds or fails. Fullan (2001a) concurs. He
writes, “Working through the complexities of change until we get
shared meaning and commitment is the only way to get substantial
improvement” (p. 272).

WHAT IF YOUR LEADERSHIP COACHING

INITIATIVE PLAYED A BIGGER GAME?
Transformational leadership coaching seeks to create long-term,
systemic, and sustainable change—the kind of change that develops
leaders, teams, and cultures. It asks leaders and coaches to play a
bigger game, way beyond managing the status quo. This may sound
like a tall order, but why squander resources and energy on
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
has had the same Confucian conscience for two thousand years and
more, that her history has been so uneventful and unchanging.

Causes which Though every race and every age, since man is by
determine and
which modify
nature a moral being, must have some type or
the moral typestandard of moral goodness, still the cast and content
of this type is determined by a great variety of
circumstances, such as the stage of intellectual development, the
physical environment, social and political institutions, occupation,
15
and speculative and religious ideas.
The stage of intellectual development of a given society
determines in general whether the moral standard shall be high or
low. Peoples still on the level of savagery must necessarily have a
very simple moral code, embracing only a few rudimentary virtues.
As a people or race progresses in intelligence and the mental
horizon widens, the moral sense becomes clarified and the moral
standard comes to embrace new and refined virtues, corresponding
to the larger and truer mental life; for, speaking broadly, there is a
general coincidence between intellectual and moral growth. To
16
create a new intellectual life is to create a new moral life.
Physical environment is also a potent agency in determining the
cast of the moral type. Thus the hot depressing climate and the
prodigality of nature in the tropics foster the passive, quietistic
virtues; while the harsher and more grudging nature of the temperate
regions favors the development of the active, industrial virtues. The
strongly contrasted moral types of the peoples of the tropic regions
of the earth and those of the temperate lands may without
reasonable doubt be ascribed, in part at least, to differences in the
climatic and other physical influences to which these peoples have
been subjected through long periods of time.
More positively influential in the formation of moral ideas and
feelings are social institutions. Thus the place which a whole group
of moral qualities that we designate as domestic virtues are assigned
in the ethical standard is determined by the place which
circumstances may have given the family in the social organism. In
ancient Sparta, for example, where certain influences subordinated
the family in an unusual degree to the state, the family virtues held a
very low place, indeed scarcely any place at all, in the moral ideal;
while in China, where certain notions of the relation of the spirits of
the dead members of the family to its living members created a
remarkable solidarity of the family group, the domestic virtues, and
among them preëminently the virtue of filial piety, came to determine
the entire cast of the general ideal of goodness.
Government is another potent agency in molding the moral type.
Patriarchal monarchy and popular government tend each to nourish
a distinct morality, so that we speak of the ethics of monarchy and
the ethics of democracy. As time passes, governments, speaking
broadly, become constantly more and more ethical in aim and
purpose, and hence act more and more dynamically upon the moral
evolution. The greatest force making for a truer and higher morality
17
in the world to-day is political democracy.
More effective than any of the agencies thus far mentioned in
determining the moral code of a people is occupation. “Man’s
character,” as the economist Alfred Marshall truly affirms, “has been
molded by his everyday work ... more than by any other influence
18
unless it be that of his religious ideals.” Every occupation develops
a characteristic group of virtues. This is especially true of agriculture.
“The cultivation of the soil,” says Wedgwood, “cultivates much
besides—it molds ideals, implants aspirations, creates permanent
tendencies. It gives, where it is the predominant industry, to the
19
character of a people its moral stamp.”
Finally we mention religion as the most potent of all agencies in
20
the molding of the moral type. Religion has been the great
schoolmaster in the moral education of the race. It is true that
religion has to go to school itself in morals before it can become a
schoolmaster. That is to say, religion in its beginnings is in the main
unethical. In its lower manifestations it is hardly more than a system
of incantations and sorcery. One of the most important facts of the
moral history of the race is the gradual moralization of man’s at first
unethical conception of the gods, and the rise out of the unethical
religions of primitive times of the great ethical world religions.

In what virtue or Having defined ethical ideals and noted the

moral goodness
consists
agencies determining their cast and content, we may
now seek an answer, in terms of the ethical ideal, to
the question, In what does moral goodness consist? All the truly
great seers and moral teachers of the race have here the same word
for us, and it is this: Do the thing thou seest to be good; realize thy
ideal. In the words of Sabatier, “The essential thing in the world is not
to serve this ideal or that, but with all one’s soul to serve the ideal
which one has chosen.” Such loyalty to one’s ideal is moral
21
goodness. This imperative of conscience that one be true and
loyal to the best one knows is the only thing absolute and categorical
in the utterance of the moral faculty.

Every age must “A man must learn a great deal,” says Marcus
be judged by its
own moral
Aurelius, “to enable him to pass a correct judgment on
standard 22
another man’s acts.” And among the things which
he must first learn is this—that the men of every age have their own
standard of excellence and that they can be judged fairly only by
23
their own code of morals. It is largely because of the general
ignorance of the history of moral ideals that there is so much
uncharitableness in the world, so much intolerance, so much race
prejudice and hatred. As one’s intellectual outlook broadens, as he
becomes acquainted with the various types of goodness of different
peoples and different ages, he becomes more liberal and charitable
in his moral judgments, since he comes to understand that moral
character is determined not by the ideal of conduct but by the way in
which this ideal is lived up to. “There may be as genuine self-
devotion,” declares the moralist Professor Green, “in the act of the
barbarian warrior who gives his life that his tribe may win a piece of
land from its neighbors, as in that of the missionary who dies in
24
carrying the gospel to the heathen.”
 Studying the ideals of races and epochs in the spirit of these
words, we shall make some fruitful discoveries. We shall learn for
one thing that since the beginning of the truly ethical age there has
ever been about the same degree of conscientiousness in the world;
that the different ages, viewed in respect to their moral life, have
differed chiefly in the degree of light they have enjoyed, and
consequently in their conceptions of what is noblest in conduct, of
what constitutes duty, not in their fealty or lack of fealty to their
chosen standard of excellence. That is to say, speaking broadly, the
majority of men in every age and in every land have ever followed
25
loyally the right as they have been given to see the right. “If men
and times were really understood,” the historian Von Holst truly
observes, “the moral fault of their follies and crimes will almost
always appear diminished by one half.”
 CHAPTER II
THE DAWN OF MORALITY: CONSCIENCE IN
THE KINSHIP GROUP

I. Institutions, Ideas, and Conditions of Life

determining the Rules of Conduct

The kinship The most important social product of the human

group evolution on the lower levels of civilization was the
patriarchal family or clan. This community of kinsfolk is the great
history-making group. It was the seed plot and nursery not only of
almost every social and political institution of the historic peoples, but
of their morality as well. In the bosom of this group were born and
nurtured the chief of those affections and sentiments into which
enters an ethical element and which form the basis of the moral
26
life.
The fundamental bond uniting this group was the bond of blood.
The members of the group were, or believed themselves to be, the
actual descendants of a common ancestor. It was this tie of blood,
this physical relationship real or assumed, that rendered the clan
such a closely knit body and created its feeling of corporate
oneness. “The members of one kindred,” says W. Robertson Smith
in describing this characteristic of the Semitic clan, “looked on
themselves as one living whole, a single animated mass of blood,
flesh, and bones, of which no member could be touched without all
the members suffering.... If one of the clan has been murdered, they
27
say ‘Our blood has been shed.’” Compared with this sense of
solidarity as it is found among certain of the negro clans in Africa, the
feeling of solidarity of the family among European peoples “is thin
28
and feeble.”
It was this corporate consciousness of the primitive clan that
created its moral solidarity. It naturally called into existence those
altruistic sentiments that formed the ground out of which grew man’s
earliest feelings of moral obligation.

The religious There was a second bond uniting the members of

bond​— a​ ncestor
worship
the kinship group. They were united not only by the
ties of physical kinship but also by the bonds of a
common cult. This was the worship of ancestors. To realize the
ethical educative value of this worship we must recall the remarkable
constitution of the clan. This group of kinsmen has a visible and an
invisible side. There are the earthly members of the group and the
spirit members—the souls of the dead. These spirit members are the
protectors of the little group, the punishers of wrongdoing, the
conservators of morals. Among the most sacred duties of the earthly
members are the duties they owe to these spirit members; for these
spirits have need of many things, especially of meat and drink at the
grave, and it is the duty of their earthly kinsmen to supply all these
wants. The earth group is thus enveloped in a sort of sacred
atmosphere, and in this atmosphere are nurtured those ethical
sentiments which form the most precious product of history.
As an agency in the moralizing of the life of the race it would be
difficult to exaggerate the importance of ancestor worship. To no
other form of religion, save ethical monotheism, does morality owe
so large a debt. In this cult religion and morality are at one almost at
29
the outset, whereas in nature cults, or the cults of nature gods, it is
generally only at a late period that these elements are united. It was
this cult of ancestors which formed the basis of an essential part of
the morality of the Greeks and Romans, particularly the latter, at the
first appearance of these peoples in history, and which to-day, as the
chief religion of the Chinese, Japanese, and other peoples of the Far
East, fosters the best virtues of a third of the human race.
 Another influence determining the moral code of
Conceptions of primitive man is his ideas of the god world. It is true
the god world that the conceptions formed of the gods by the
untutored mind are for the most part crude and unethical. But man
ever makes and remakes his gods in his own image; therefore as
soon as an ethical element begins to enter into his own life he begins
to moralize the character of his gods. At this stage the god world
begins to react favorably upon the moral life of man. The gods are
now conceived as taking notice of the conduct of men and as
approving certain acts as right and disapproving certain other acts as
wrong. Especially are they believed to punish atrocious crimes, such
as the slaying of a kinsman and the breaking of the word sworn by
the oath-god. In this way primitive man’s ideas of deity react
favorably upon his morality.
The gods further advance morality by being invoked as the
witnesses and guardians of treaties between clans and tribes. By
thus giving an added sanctity to solemn engagements mutually
entered into by communities they widen the moral domain and
30
become the promoters of intertribal morality.

The fact that In nothing perhaps does primitive society differ

competition is
between
more widely from modern than in the fact that the
communities competition or struggle for existence is between
and not betweencommunities and not between individuals. Within the
individuals
kinship group life is almost wholly communistic. There
is practically no competition between the individuals of the
community such as characterizes societies advanced in civilization.
The only real competition is that between communities. And here the
struggle for existence or for superiority is generally habitual and
ruthless, often being carried to the point of the complete destruction
of one of the competing communities.
These conditions of existence have vast significance for morality.
Just as the individual competition in cultured societies molds an
essential part of their moral code, so does the group competition of
races still in the clan or tribal stage of civilization determine what
qualities of character shall be developed among them. As we shall
see in a moment, it makes them strong in the clan virtues.

II. Essential Facts of Kinship or Intratribal

Morality

The life of As students of morals our chief interest in primeval

primitive man as he emerges from the obscurity of prehistoric
peoples largely
unmoral times is not concerning the degree of skill he has
developed in making his weapons or in constructing
for himself a shelter, nor concerning what advance he has made in
the arts of weaving and pottery, nor yet concerning what kind of
social arrangements he has worked out; our main interest in this
primeval man as he appears on the threshold of the historic day is
not concerning these or any like things, but rather respecting what
kind of a conscience has grown up within him during those long
prehistoric ages of struggle, privation, watch and ward.
The first fact that compels our notice here is that the life of the
31
savage is largely unmoral. His activities to secure food, shelter,
and clothing arise from purely animal impulses, such as hunger and
cold. Into all of these activities, however, there enters as time passes
32
an ethical element. The economic life, in a word, comes more and
33
more under the dominance of moral feelings and motives.
Conscience becomes more and more involved in all these matters.
This gradual moralization of these at first nonmoral activities of
primitive man constitutes one of the most important phases of the
moral evolution of the race.

The “goodness” A second fact in the moral life of savages that

of uncivilized
races largely a
claims our attention is that much that is counted unto
negative them for “goodness” is a purely negative goodness.
goodness Failure in discrimination here often results in a wrong
estimate of their morality as compared with that of advanced
communities. Thus in portraying the manners and customs of
primitive peoples, some writers, like Tacitus in his account of the
early German folk, laud their morals as superior to those of civilized
men. This opinion is based rather on the absence among such
peoples of the usual vices and crimes of civilized societies than on
34
the practice by them of the higher positive virtues. But the absence
of the vices which characterize civilization is to be explained, of
course, by the simpler organization of society and the fewer
temptations to wrongdoing. Thus the single circumstance that the
institution of individual property has not yet come into existence, or
at least has not as yet received any great extension, accounts for the
comparative absence of crimes against property, which constitute
probably the greater number of criminal acts in civilized society.

The true starting But notwithstanding that so much of the life of

point of the
primitive man is lived on the nonmoral plane, and that
historic ethical
development much which is reckoned unto him for goodness is
merely negative goodness, still in certain of his
activities growing out of his clan relationships we discover the
beginnings of all human morality. For as we have already said, the
true starting point of the moral evolution of mankind is to be sought
in the altruistic sentiments nourished in the atmosphere of the
kinship group. There is scarcely an ethical sentiment which does not
appear here at least in a rudimentary form. Out of the most sacred
and intimate relationships of the group we find springing up the
35
maternal virtues of patience, tenderness, and self-denial, and the
filial virtues of love, obedience, and reverence; out of the fellowship
36
of the men in hunting and in war we see developing the manly
virtues of courage, fortitude, self-control, and, above all, self-
devotion to the common good; out of the hearth worship of
37
ancestors we observe springing up many of those religious-ethical
feelings and sentiments which form one of the chief moral forces in
civilization; out of the sacrificial meal shared with the gods and the
spirits of the dead through offerings of portions of the food and drink,
we see forming customs of incalculable moral value in the ethical
38
training of the race. A great part of the history of morals consists in
the record of how these earliest forms of social virtues, first
nourished by the customs, habits, and practices of the kinship group,
have been gradually refined and developed into wider and richer
forms of ethical sentiment and feeling.

Custom as the There is one special feature of this germinal

maker of group
morality
morality to which our attention must now be directed.
It is what is often called customary morality. That is to
say, the standard of right and wrong in the kinship community is
custom. Custom is the lawgiver, and morality consists in following
custom. The individual, in a word, follows the tribal or group
conscience rather than the dictates of his own conscience. Indeed
there is practically no such thing here as a private conscience.
Individualism has not yet arisen. No one ordinarily has private
notions of right and wrong which he feels impelled to set up against
39
the immemorial customs and usages of the community.
But there is really nothing in this fact which sets this nascent
morality apart from our own. It differs from ours not in kind but only in
degree. The morality of the masses is still largely customary morality.
Most persons in their social relations, in business, and in religion,
follow unthinkingly the tribal conscience, that is, the conventional
morality of the society of which they are members, rather than their
own individual sense of right and wrong. “Reflective morality” is still
the morality of the few. The ever-renewed moral task of man is to
change the customary tribal conscience into a reflective individual
conscience.

Collective There is still another phase of the incipient morality

responsibility
of the kinship group which claims our attention
because of its significance for the history of the evolution of morals.
It is a group morality, that is, a morality based on the idea of
collective responsibility.
 This conception presents one of the most striking phenomena in
the history of the moral evolution of mankind. Among peoples in the
earlier stages of moral development the family or clan group rather
than the individual is regarded as the ethical unit, and the act of any
member of this group, when such act concerns a member or
members of another social group, is looked upon as the act of the
40
whole body to which he belongs. For the wrongdoing of one all are
41
held responsible.
This group morality, with which the true history of the unfolding
moral consciousness of the race begins, we shall meet with as a sort
of survival in every stage of the moral progress of humanity from the
lowest to the highest level of culture. “It is,” in the words of
Hobhouse, “one of the dominant facts, if not the dominant fact,
42
ethically considered, in the evolution of human society.” The
account of that slow change in the moral consciousness of man
which has gradually caused group morality, in most spheres of life
and thought, to give place to individual morality, that is, to that
conception of moral responsibility which holds every man
responsible for his own act, and only for his own act, makes up one
43
of the most instructive chapters in the moral history of the world.
We shall find significant survivals of this idea of collective
responsibility, particularly in the religious domain. In truth, a large
part of religious history is nothing more nor less than an account of
the influence and outworkings of this notion. Men making their gods
like unto themselves have imagined them as acting on this principle
of communal responsibility, and as bringing upon a whole people
pestilence, famine, war, or other calamity in revenge or punishment
for some neglect in worship or act of sacrilege on the part of perhaps
a single member of the tribe or nation.
By the early Fathers of the Church this idea of collective
responsibility, embodied in the doctrine of the imputation of the guilt
of the transgression of the first man Adam to all his descendants to
the end of the world, was given a prominent place in Christian
theology and has been a great force in molding the morality of the
Western world.
 Again, we find this idea of group morality embodied in the war
ethics of the modern nations, which, regarded from one point of view,
is largely group ethics, that is to say, the survival in the domain of
international relations of ethical ideas that had their birth on the low
intellectual and moral levels of barbarism.
As we follow the upward trend of the lines of the moral evolution
of the race we shall hear louder and louder protests against this
notion of communal responsibility, especially when this form of
human morality has been transferred to the heavens and made a
fundamental principle of the divine government.

The duty of In primitive society if a man slay a kinsman, he is

revenge; the
blood feud
punished by outlawry, that is, by expulsion from the
44
family or clan. The story of Cain, the first murderer
45
of a kinsman in Hebrew legend, is typical. If, however, a member
of a clan is slain by an outsider, it is the duty of the nearest kinsman
of the person killed, or of the collective body of his kinsfolk, to kill in
46
revenge the slayer or some relative of his. To ignore this obligation
or to forgive the slayer of one’s kinsman is regarded as base and
cowardly.
As, through the advance of society, the ties of the clan become
relaxed and this group becomes more and more perfectly merged
with the larger group of the tribe or state of which it has become a
part, and justice comes to be administered by the tribal head or by
regular tribunals, then blood revenge on the part of the kinsmen of
the slain gradually ceases to be a duty and private vengeance
becomes a crime. But this is a slow evolution, and within societies
far advanced in civilization we often find belated groups still following
with good conscience the ancient custom of blood revenge. The
vendetta in Italy and the feud in some sections of our Southern
47
states are survivals or degenerate forms of this primitive virtue.

The Lex talionis Closely related to the punishment of homicide in

primitive society is punishment of lesser offenses, especially the
infliction of bodily injury, within the social group. Here, too, private
vengeance rules. The person wronged or injured inflicts such
punishment upon the offender as passion or resentment may dictate.
As time passes, however, and the sense of justice grows more
discriminating, there are limits set to this private vengeance. There is
established what is called the rule of equivalence. The avenger is not
allowed to wreak upon the offender indiscriminate and unmeasured
punishment, but is restricted to the infliction upon him of exactly such
injury and pain as he has inflicted upon his victim. Hence arose the
48
Lex talionis, limb for limb, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. This
regulation thus registers an advance in moral feeling, and may be
regarded as probably the first rule of the criminal code of the nations.

The virtue of In early society those virtues are most highly

courage; its
altruistic
esteemed which are of service to the clan or tribe.
element Thus courage comes to hold a first place among the
virtues. What is especially important to be noted here
is that under courage is hidden the virtue of self-sacrifice, which we
give the highest place in our ideal of character. It is this altruistic
element in courage which lends to it its real ethical quality. In
primitive society this virtue finds expression chiefly in the ready self-
devotion of the individual in battle for the common good.
Throughout pagan antiquity this virtue held a central place in
practically every ideal of excellence. In the words of Robertson
Smith, “This devotion to the common weal was, as every one knows,
the mainspring of ancient morality and the source of all the heroic
virtues of which ancient history presents so many illustrious
49
examples.”

III. The Beginnings of Intertribal Morality

Primitive man’s The accounts given by travelers and observers of

double standard the morals of savages often present a perplexing
of morality contrariety of opinion. Some writers represent such
people as absolutely without a moral sense, while others, as has
already been remarked, hold them up as models for imitation by
ourselves.
This contrariety in view results in part from an overlooking of the
fact, just pointed out, that the moral goodness of the savage is
largely a negative goodness, but chiefly from a failure to observe that
the shield has two sides, that is to say, that savages have a double
standard of morality—one standard regulating conduct within the
social group, and another regulating conduct toward outsiders. Thus
the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” means to the savage merely that
he shall not kill a kinsman. It has in his mind no application to
strangers, just as in our minds it has no application to animals.
It is the same in regard to lying. Savages in general have a high
regard for truthfulness, as they understand this virtue. The plighted
word among them is probably as sacredly kept as by the average of
50
civilized men. The repute of many savage folk for untruthfulness
comes about from the fact that they do not think that a stranger has
any right to the truth. “Among themselves,” writes Professor Starr of
certain Congo tribes, “lying is not commended and truth is
appreciated; but to deceive a stranger or a white man is
51
commendable.”
And so it is with stealing. Many uncivilized peoples are charged,
and in a certain sense rightly, with making of theft a virtue. But it
must be borne in mind that to the savage all persons not members of
his own group are strangers and enemies. To steal from such is
looked upon as a most praiseworthy exploit, while to steal from the
52
members of one’s own group is regarded as a crime.

This dual Now the important thing to note here is that this
morality a
survival in
double morality is not something peculiar to the ethics
civilization of savages. This dualism runs through the whole
moral history of the race, from the beginning to the
present day, and constitutes one of the most important facts in the
moral evolution of humanity. We too, like the savage, have our
double standard of morality. The chief difference between us and the
savage is this: he puts his double standard in practice all the time,
we only occasionally. On occasion we fling aside our ordinary
standard of morality, lift the savage’s war standard, and then like the
savage lie and steal and kill—outside the tribe. To deceive the
stranger now is commendable; to steal from him proper and right; to
kill him a glorious exploit.
The great task of this century is to put an end to this scandal of
civilization, to teach men the oneness and universality of the moral
law, to get them to understand that right and wrong are right and
wrong everywhere—outside the tribe as well as within.
The history of intertribal or international morality, then, is the
53
record of its gradual assimilation to intratribal morality. It is a record
of how the stranger, the outsider, has come, or is coming, to be
regarded as a kinsman, as a neighbor.

Hospitality, or The duty of hospitality, to which a high place is

the guest right;
the first step
assigned in the code of primitive peoples, shows
beyond kinship morality taking a step, the first step, beyond the
54
morality narrow circle of the original group of kinsmen. As we
have seen, in the beginning the feeling of duty and
obligation is restricted to the little group of fellow clansmen or
tribesmen. Every one outside this social circle is an enemy, and is
without rights. But necessity forces men to go beyond the limits of
their own clan or tribe, and in time there grows up a rule that the
defenseless stranger shall be kindly received, entertained for a
certain period, and then allowed to depart unharmed. It is easy to
see how among clans scattered thinly over a wide territory, and
where the earlier isolation is beginning to be broken by trade
relations, this duty of hospitality should come to be regarded as a
very sacred one, and the person of the stranger guest as
55
inviolable.
Thus in the development of the guest right we see morality
broadening, the circle of moral obligation enlarged, and the stranger,
ordinarily counted as an enemy and as rightless, brought for a
56
moment within the sacred pale of ethical sentiment and duty. A
new ground of moral obligation other than that of kinship has been
established. Morality is now something more than clan morality. We
witness the rise of intertribal morality. The first step in the moral
unification of the human race has been taken.

Beginnings of Even in the domain of war we discover traces of the

the ethics of war
awakening of an intertribal conscience in races that
are still in what we may regard as the kinship stage of culture.
Speaking broadly, primitive man, whose chief occupations are
57
hunting and fighting, makes no distinction between war and the
hunt. All persons not belonging to his own group are regarded by
him just as he regards wild game. In his efforts to kill or capture
them, all means are right. Once in his power, he may do with them
as he likes; he may make slaves of them, he may torture them, or he
may eat their flesh as he would that of animals taken in the chase.
Conscience lays upon him not the least restraint. Only slowly do the
moral feelings make conquests in this province.
One of the earliest mitigations of the barbarities of primitive
warfare is probably to be found in the discontinuance of the practice
58
of eating the bodies of the slain. It is this practice of cannibalism as
a concomitant of war by peoples in the earlier stages of their
development that perhaps more than any other circumstance gives
such a repellent aspect to human life on the lower levels of culture.
But as Montaigne observes, the wrong consists in killing men, not in
59
eating them after they are dead —a very just observation, and one
which should awaken reflection in us who, while piously abstaining
from eating our enemies, still persist in killing them.
The discontinuance of the practice of cannibalism—the practice
seems invariably to be left behind by all peoples as soon as they
60
have made any considerable advance in civilization —may with
little hesitation be attributed in part at least to the growth and
refinement of the moral feelings. In one case at least we have
historical evidence that among a wide reach of savage tribes the
custom was abolished by the action of a more civilized people, who
did just what the more advanced European nations, under the
impulsion of moral feeling, are doing in regard to the slave trade and
cannibalism in Africa to-day. The Incas of Peru, before granting to
conquered tribes terms of peace, forced them to abandon the
61
practice of cannibalism.
The disuse of poisoned arrows marks another significant
mitigation of a common barbarity of early warfare. We know that in
the Greek world by the opening of the historic period there were
communities that had come to look on the use of poisoned weapons
with abhorrence, and to regard the practice as a crime that aroused
the anger of the gods. Thus Homer represents Ilus of Ephyra, when
asked by Odysseus for the fatal poison wherewith to smear the tips
of his arrows, as refusing his request because he feared the
62
immortal gods.
In these mitigations and prohibitions of the barbarities of war on
the lower levels of savagery we have probably the earliest articles of
the war code of the nations. They mark the first steps taken in the
humanization of war. They indicate the birth of those sympathetic
and moral feelings which, though of painfully slow growth and of
intermittent action, have during the course of the historic ages
effected great ameliorations of the cruelties of primitive warfare, and
foreshadow a time when war between civilized nations shall have
become an inconceivable thing.

The reaction of There is a heart of good in things evil. Even the

intertribal upon
intratribal
habitual intertribal wars of primitive communities
morality contain a germ of good. The pressure exerted by
these life-and-death struggles upon the clan or tribe
has a good effect upon the inner relationships of the group. Many of
the social virtues, such as loyalty to comrades and self-devotion to
the common weal, are called into constant and keen activity. For this
reason we usually find these social virtues well developed among
peoples in the clan or tribal stage of civilization. Such peoples may
even be stronger in these special virtues than civilized peoples.
But there is another side to this. Intertribal wars, though they may
in the very earliest stages of human culture be positively promotive
of some of the social virtues, in later and more advanced stages
exert a decidedly unfavorable influence upon the moral
development. The low backward standard of intertribal ethics,
reacting upon the higher and more advanced intratribal standard,
tends to make it like unto itself. As Spencer expresses it, the life of
internal amity is assimilated to the life of external enmity. “Taken in
the mass the evidence shows,” he says, “as we might expect, that in
proportion as intertribal and international antagonisms are great and
constant, the ideas and feelings belonging to the ethics of enmity
predominate; and conflicting as they do with the ideas and feelings
belonging to the ethics of amity proper to the internal life of a society,
they in greater or less degree suppress these, or fill with aggressions
63
the conduct of man to man.” Thus tribes engaged habitually in war
are characterized by the frequency of homicide within the group.
Tribes that regard the robbery of strangers as honorable come to
64
regard stealing within the tribe as irreproachable. Revengefulness,
inhumanity, and untruthfulness within each tribe characterize warlike
65
communities. On the other hand, peaceful tribes are characterized
by their superior intratribal morality. Tribes among whom war is
66
infrequent or unknown are scrupulously honest. Among such
67
people crimes of violence are rare.
Thus war, a heritage (as a phase of the “struggle for existence”) of
the human from the lower animal world, becomes early in the human
stage of the cosmic evolution a drag upon the moral progress of the
68
race.
 CHAPTER III
THE MORAL LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: AN
IDEAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

I. Circumstances and Ideas which molded

and motived Morality

A homogeneous Egypt was the China of the ancient Mediterranean

population and aworld. Like the Chinese, the Egyptians were a
comparatively
static comparatively unmixed people. During the historic
civilization period no new elements of importance were
incorporated with the native population. Again, like the
civilization of China, that of Egypt throughout a great part of the
historic age was singularly static. After having made wonderful
advance in early times the Egyptians ceased to make further
noteworthy progress.
Both these fundamental facts of Egyptian history had great
significance for Egyptian morals; for since when races mingle their
blood they mingle also their moralities, it is a matter of supreme
importance to the moral life of a people whether on the one hand it
has, as the centuries have passed, undergone a change in physical
type through the incorporation of new racial elements, or on the
other hand has preserved unchanged its racial type and physical
characteristics.
Equally important for the moral ideal is it whether the civilization of
which it forms one element is progressive or unprogressive; for
changes in the moral standard are largely dependent on changes in
the other elements of civilization. Where the intellectual life and the
religious ideas remain unmodified, and where all political, social, and
industrial institutions remain essentially unchanged, we need not
look for fundamental changes in ethical ideas and convictions. How
the history of conscience in ancient Egypt illustrates these truths we
shall see a little further on.

The teaching We have seen how potent an influence the notion

that immortality
is conditioned
of a life beyond the tomb exercised upon the conduct
on of the members of the primitive kinship group, giving
righteousness birth to some of the noblest virtues of their simple
code of morals. Now this idea of continued existence after death
dominated the life of no other civilized people of antiquity so
completely as it dominated the life of the Egyptians; and probably in
the case of no other people ancient or modern has the belief exerted
so profound an influence upon conduct. This was so for the reason
that the conception was here early moralized and represented the
blessed life in the hereafter as dependent upon rightdoing in the
present life. No soul that had done evil was admitted to the bark of
the ferryman at the Egyptian Styx. In this discrimination we find “the
earliest traces in the history of man of an ethical test at the close of
69
life.”

The ethical It is the sun-god Ra who in the remotest times is

qualities of the
sun-god Ra
most intimately associated with these moral
requirements for participation in the felicities of the
celestial hereafter. The latest reading and analysis of the texts of the
Pyramid Age has thrown new light upon the relations of the rival
divinities Ra and Osiris to the development of the moral
consciousness in ancient Egypt. In his latest work Professor
Breasted says: “The later rapid growth of ethical teaching in the
Osiris faith and the assumption of the rôle of judge by Osiris is not
yet discernible in the Pyramid Age, and the development which
made these elements so prominent in the Middle Kingdom took
place in the obscure period after the development of the Pyramid
Age. Contrary to the conclusions generally accepted at present, it