Nuance

Why Some Leaders Succeed and Others Fail

Nuance is Fullan at his impressive best—enabling leaders to see what was under their nose with sharp action-oriented clarity. Contexts—of people, time, and place—are such key factors in managing change and here he uncovers the subtlety of “nuance,” which is the essential bedfellow of “judgment” without which disaster will threaten any leader. Wise system leaders will buy a copy for all their school leaders and keep a copy for themselves.

Discover the subtle power of nuance leadership and get dramatic new results. A courageous and timely book that goes to the heart of our  complex leadership times. Why do some leaders get extraordinary results while others, ostensibly doing the same things, simply replicate existing patterns? Blending experience and uncommon intellectual acuity, Fullan explains both the key connected dimensions and the exceptional leverage of nuance.

I continue to be in awe that Michael Fullan is able to describe and explain so clearly the kind of leadership I am intuitively trying to do. Nobody else I have ever read can do this as well as he does. Fullan, more than anyone else, has given me the language for my leadership over the years.

Nuance is a powerful call for a different type of leadership—one that rejects the quick fixes, oppositional thinking, and superficial innovations that make no lasting impact on our most pressing and complex  educational problems. In Nuance, Fullan provides a richly illustrated account of how nuanced leadership embraces complexity and integrates competing forces in ways that foster deep understanding, collaborative learning and  accountability, and sustainable rather than superficial solutions. It’s not a recipe; it’s an inspiration and a call to action.

If you have been waiting to have your thinking on leadership provoked once again, Michael Fullan’s latest book will not disappoint you. Nuance raises the bar and challenges thinking about leadership while  providing those willing to work for it the concrete examples, actions, and steps  necessary to do so. As followers of his work have come to expect, in Nuance,  Fullan “leads from what he has learned” and artfully weaves together complex ideas into a pattern that accomplishes the “simplexity” that makes the seemingly impossible become possible.

I have to say that reading this manuscript was like looking in the mirror and seeing something of myself that I hadn’t noticed before, or valued before, or even been able to put language to. I feel simultaneously com-forted by what [Fullan has] written in that I feel validated and understood and even a bit more hopeful about myself, but it has also left me hungry for more.

I get what [Fullan is] saying about nuance. I mean there are 5, 10, 15  different ways to do something; depending on a particular context, it’s going to have a different result. I think [Fullan’s] on to something really important. [This work] actually helped me get my head around what I have been doing with everyone in the Toronto District School Board.