21st C Leadership: Vision, Trust and Strategy. My #LFE15 Contribution. Photo via Kenny Temowo At the London Festival of Education LFE15, I took part in this panel discussion: It’s hard to capture the full extent of what was said – and I hadn’t prepared anything in advance – but, thanks to twitter, the main bits of what I had to say were captured in my timeline. So, here is a flavour, with many thanks to everyone who tweeted – you have largely written this post for me! On Leadership. The three most important needs for leadership in summary: VISION, TRUST and STRATEGY. Have a clear vision with audacious goals for success and the explicit determination to build a trust culture It’s important to recognise : It’s not my school – it belongs to the parents & community.
On developing leaders: It helps to give emerging leaders a clear remit; create a vacuum for them to fill and the space to make mistakes. You will not develop great leaders through micro management, more a trust, coaching culture. No, not anyone can be developed into a Head or school leader. Like this: The Art of Giving and Receiving Advice. Seeking and giving advice are central to effective leadership and decision making. Yet managers seldom view them as practical skills they can learn and improve. Receiving guidance is often seen as the passive consumption of wisdom.
And advising is typically treated as a matter of “good judgment”—you either have it or you don’t—rather than a competency to be mastered. When the exchange is done well, people on both sides of the table benefit. Those who are truly open to guidance (and not just looking for validation) develop better solutions to problems than they would have on their own. But advice seekers and givers must clear significant hurdles, such as a deeply ingrained tendency to prefer their own opinions, irrespective of their merit, and the fact that careful listening is hard, time-consuming work.
Because these essential skills are assumed to emerge organically, they’re rarely taught; but we’ve found that they can be learned and applied to great effect. Discounting advice. “Leaders” – look away now | Disappointed Idealist. I’ve been putting off writing this blog, largely because every time I started thinking about it, my prose quickly descended into a sweary litany of terrible examples of crassly incompetent “leaders” which have been gleaned from all over the educational system via various means.
However, I had a brief twitter conversation with a like-minded soul (@little-mavis), and also read an article which finally tipped the balance in favour of proceeding. More about the article on another occasion, but it’s time to take the opportunity to vent. This will be a lengthy rant. Make yourself a cup of tea. Before we start I also need to be very clear : there are plenty of people occupying leadership roles in schools to whom none of this criticism applies. For my own job security, can I be clear in saying that no personal criticism is intended towards anybody in my own line-management tree, all of whom are paragons of leading virtue !
When did senior colleagues become senior leaders ? Seriously. Stop it. My 7 rules for leading when it is hard | Ros McMullen: Things I've learned and things I'm learning. There has never been a time for me when it hasn’t been hard. Towards the end of my first headship, after OFSTED had been extremely complimentary about the turnaround that had taken place and had made some blush-inducing remarks about me, someone said “You can go and get a proper headship now – somewhere really good”. I knew that would never happen: even if I had wanted it, I didn’t have the CV for it and I’m not sure how I’d go down with middle-class parents! But above all else, to put the kind of energy into my work that I need to – I need to care deeply about it and for me that has always meant going where it is hard. This leads me straight into my first rule: 1. Remember why you took the job Leaders don’t take jobs because they think they will be easy; you didn’t take the job because you thought it would be easy, but because you thought you would make a difference.
Get through this bad time in order to follow through the promises you made and then you can go. 4. 5. 6. 7. Like this: Professional Standards for Teachers and Trainers in Education and Training - England - The Education and Training Foundation. Click here to view the video with subtitles. Download the Professional Standards 2014 and the corresponding Guidance developed with the support of practitioners. The presentation aims to assist individuals in introducing the Professional Standards to teachers and trainers in their organisations. Introduction Teachers and trainers are reflective and enquiring practitioners who think critically about their own educational assumptions, values and practice in the context of a changing contemporary and educational world.
They draw on relevant research as part of evidence-based practice. The 2014 Professional Standards: set out clear expectations of effective practice in education and training;enable teachers and trainers to identify areas for their own professional development;support initial teacher education; and,provide a national reference point that organisations can use to support the development of their staff. What’s in the standards? Professional values and attributes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Teacher wellbeing: how to mentally prepare for a new school year | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional.
You may be feeling zen now but for many teachers the start of term is like an onslaught. To help you get ready for a new school year, psychologist Gail Kinman offers advice on how to prepare and how to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Your employer has a legal and moral duty of care so, if you feel stressed, remember to talk about it with your line manager. A couple of weeks before a new term Ask yourself how you feel Some people dread going back, while others are excited. The majority of teachers will feel a mixture of emotions. If there are steps you can take to change things: great. Reflect on the way you work For example, if you usually do lesson preparation or marking late into the night and miss out on social life or sleep, think about whether there are other ways of managing your workload.
Listen to your body Recover before term starts by spending time listening to your body and what it needs. Try mindfulness techniques Build up your emotional resilience Rehearse saying no. The iAbacus Improvement Model. Introduction The iAbacus Improvement Model emerged from proven education and business developments in the late 1900s and early 2000s. Unusually and deliberately, it combines the emotional intelligence required in effective self-evaluation, coaching and mentoring with the rigours of criterion referenced inspection and review. This paper explains why the iAbacus is a unique professional development model and how it uses a proven sequence to build an organisation’s capacity for success by encouraging collaborative inquiry, or action research, to empower individuals and teams. It also explains the seamless link between The iAbacus Improvement Model and The iAbacus on-line self-evaluation and improvement tool. 1.
Make your JUDGEMENT Uniquely, the iAbacus model starts with the professional making an initial, inutitive, judgement about their current level of performance. Most other evaluation, or improvement models, use a quality control approach commencing with data and evidence gathering. 2. Teach like an All Black. Taringa whakarongo! Let your ears listen! Kapa o Pango kia whakawhenua au i ahau! All Blacks, let me become one with the land!
Ko Aotearoa e ngunguru nei! This is our land that rumbles! Au, au, aue hā! It’s our time! The All Blacks have been the best rugby team in the world for more than a century, the most successful sporting culture in human history. Stuart Lock pointed me in the direction of James Kerr’s book, Legacy, on how the All Blacks succeed. Humility: sweep the sheds Humility allows us to ask simple questions: ‘how can we do this better? Like all good teachers, the All Blacks love to learn. Focus on the team culture: not how each person performs, but how well they work together. Leaders are storytellers. Train like a champion Implement a set of high, non-negotiable standards. Practise with intensity: the training, decision-making wise, should be harder than the game; throwing problems at them – unexpected events – forcing them to solve the problems.
Ritual: your own haka Richie McCaw. Daniel Kahneman’s Favorite Approach For Making Better Decisions. Joining a new senior leadership team: the dos and don'ts | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional. There's a group of confident twenty-somethings in my head in about their third year of teaching. They are passionate, competent, cynical (because they know it all) and fiercely loyal to their school and students. Then in walks a new member of the senior leadership team (SLT). Much scrutiny, much snickering and plenty of mutterings: "So, what's this one got in store for us?
" I was one of those twenty-somethings once. Roll on fifteen years and here I am, on the eve of walking into a brand new school as a new member of a SLT in charge of teaching and learning. On the way to this point there have been many learning curves, a few hard knocks, a few triumphs, and a few zebra-stripes to my name. Old arrogance has been replaced by quieter confidence, paired with a recognition that with each new challenge there is a whole load more to learn. It doesn't take much imagination to work out how I'm feeling today.
First and foremost, relationships First impressions are important. Actions and decisions. TRS Academy extract. Posts Move, Goals Don’t. Many of us within the teaching profession would dearly love to see a period of stability and calm. I think we may need to learn to thrive in chaotic times (to misquote Tom Peters) as the pace of change is becoming exponential. To do this we need to be clear and consistent on the pursuit of our goals, posts may keep changing but our goals don’t (with thanks to Vivienne Porritt for coining this great phrase). The alternative is to desperately try to cling to the posts and keep them from moving. In reality, we have to accept the positioning of certain posts is not within our determination as the final authority and decision-making lies with others. Another great #SLT session, on the Great Education Debate, asked, “What is the purpose of education?” Not easy in 140 characters but lots of people made an attempt to answer and this was my offering: The posts may be changing all around us but I don’t think our goals are.
“The World is Not Flat” When Harry Met Sally When #SOLO Met Bloom Taxonomy? Advice to New Senior Leaders. #SLTChat is providing a whole raft of great issues to blog on and I’ve picked up another one this weekend proposed by @ChrisHildrew. He posed the question, “What single piece of advice would you offer to someone taking up a senior leadership post in September?” The chance of me limiting myself to one piece of advice is negligible but I do have some thoughts. This February we attracted the largest and most outstanding field of applicants, for two Assistant Headships, that I have ever seen in my time at St. Mary’s. In taking a number of candidates around the College, prior to the closing date for applications (by the way it is a really good idea to go and have a look at a school and meet the headteacher when you are applying for this type of post), I was asked various questions.
I tried to give them honest and frank answers so they could determine whether St. Mary’s was a place where they could be happy and make a contribution. Outstanding Teaching Publicly Support, Privately Challenge. Learning to Live with Leadership. I feel this might be one of those confessional moments which are sometimes part of group therapy for people who are struggling with an addiction. My name is Stephen, I’m fifty years old and I have been addicted to leadership since being elected Head Boy when I was eighteen. Leadership has come at a cost for me and my family ….. The challenges of leadership seem to be increasing in a World that is becoming more and more frenetic. After fourteen years of headship my main regret/reflection is that I tried to do too much.
Mr Gove certainly won’t be reading this blog but if he was my only advice would be slow down or we will end up doing lots of things badly rather than just a few things very well. We’re not in a crisis in education, in England, we are good but want to get better and more haste will not be the answer. This post is a series of random thoughts on surviving, thriving and enjoying leadership. You’ve Got to Love the Job This tweet from @kalinski1970 neatly sums it up. Like this: Articles - The Changing Face of Middle Leadership. TL_Quarterly_Q5_14_Greany. TRS_Academy_extract. The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion: Kristin Neff at TEDxCentennialParkWomen.
Resilient leadership: why moral purpose isn't enough. The Beaufort Wind Scale - why we need an observation revolution - Tom Bennett - Blog - Tom Bennett. Before technology bled the last drop of romance from navigation, sailors used the Beaufort Wind Force Scale to measure wind speed. Without instruments to accurately measure conditions, mariners resorted to subjective value judgements - ‘rowdy seas’, ‘stiff breeze’ etc - that varied from ship to ship. In 1805 Admiral Francis Beaufort devised an elegant and beautiful standard which used a clever trick to avoid the ambiguity: he described the effect that each level of wind or storm had on the sail of a man-o-war (the most common ship at the time). This ranged from 0 (dead calm) to 12 (that which no canvas could withstand).
Adjusted, extended and sometimes still used (fans of Radio 4 will be used to catching up with the weather conditions inf the Orkneys) it was a way to gauge something as wild as the wind without codifying it. Rather than bottle lightning, Beaufort simply described it. Part of the problem lies with the nature of our job. And this is true. Who watches the watchmen? Groups and Teams | McGraw-Hill Answers. The effectiveness of teams may be measured based on the extent to which the team achieves its objectives and performs on behalf of the overall organization.
Previous research has, at times, failed to note the ways in which teams are embedded in overall organizations. Consequently, studies of team effectiveness may not have revealed a complete picture of the nature of team success. For teams to be more effective, they must overcome some of the problems and dysfunctions that groups in general encounter (see this summary above). Long-standing models of team effectiveness include creating the right environment where support, commitment, goals, Reward Systems, communication systems, and physical space are all in sync to allow the team to work in a productive atmosphere. Team BuildingTeam building begins with the understanding that work groups require time and training before they develop into productive and cohesive units. Collaboration Effective group leaders do not act alone. Coaching for Team Performance - Team Management Training from MindTools. Improving Productivity by Improving Relationships Building great teamwork. © iStockphoto Teams are the force that drives most organizations.
Whether it's a functional team, a team of managers, or a project team, people get most done when they work together effectively. So when members of a team don't work well together, performance and productivity can suffer. That's not good for anyone. Have you seen hostility, conflicting goals, and unclear expectations within your teams? So how can you help your team improve? Team Coaching Team coaching helps people understand how to work better with others. To coach your team, focus on interpersonal skills and interactions instead of on individual development (as you tend to do with individually-focused coaching). People must learn to work together and understand how to relate to one another – otherwise the team's output will be less than it could be.
Note: Understand Team Dynamics Some people can be "pushier" than others. Establish Behavior Expectations. Why Teams Turn Toxic, and How to Heal Them. Leading Together-Where next for OFSTED and Inspection? | leadingtogether. Leadershipofchangefinal. «Poem of the Day Ithaca. Ros McMullen. One year on- @ASTSupportaali | NewToThePost. Lollipop Moments.