How many innovators have been lost to organisations because leaders were unwilling or threatened by the maverick who would not conform. So many organisations spend so much time and energy on trying to make middle tier leaders conform to the ‘corporate method’ that they forget that ‘there more than one way to skin a cat’ (no animals harmed or intended harm.)
In coaching middle leaders I have found it is much more important, and effective, to find what motivates them and to secure that the goals they hold align to the organisation. The distinction? It is not necessarily the method that is important to achieve that goal.
So many educational institutions have lesson planning, schemes of work and action planning documentation that are imposed to develop conformity, causing some people real difficulty in making it fit for their context . The effort to conform far outways the need.
‘Rebels’ are often not rebels, they are ‘section’ leaders who want to get the job done and have great ideas about how to do it. A pet dislike of mine is where I find people who say that a person doesn’t fit becasue they don’t fit ‘Our way of working.’ The real leadership skill is in being able to marshall different people with different ideas and experiences to a common goal with different methods, their world becomes a much richer place! Certainly labelling them as rebels is robbing the world and the workplace of some stunning insights. 
