Stating the obvious: get a notebook!

Some of the articles I’ve posted so far have been a little theoretical or abstract. From time to time I’ll be posting a “stating the obvious” article. So if you do find this obvious I’m sorry for wasting your time, otherwise I hope this is useful.

This may sound trivial but it isn’t, keep records. Get yourself a notebook, use it and be seen to use it. One of the problems with leadership is that the further you rise and the greater the challenges then the more balls you have to keep in the air at the same time. You will have some great ideas, you will have numerous meetings, you will hear things, you will read articles and spot resources, you will deal with difficult colleagues, parents and children, in short you will be inundated with crucial information and you are only human. I’ve been a head of department, a head of year, a union rep, an assistant head and a head and throughout each of these posts I have kept records (well at least after my first year of leadership - read on!).

Let’s start with a negative reason why you should have a notebook. When I first became a head of department a wily old deputy head told me to write down all the conversations I had, or at least those directly impacting on my job. This all felt a little too paranoid for me and so I ignored the advice. That same year I had a raft of problems with a Newly Qualified Teacher. I naively thought that my memory and integrity would be sufficient evidence in dealing with the issues but sadly that was not the case. The problem was of course that I assumed that the first problem with this member of staff would be the last. It was trivial and on its own was probably not noteworthy but two or three of these incidents later on I wish I’d noted them all down so that I had a clear evidence trail. This would have then made tackling the problem considerably easier. My advice, make a dated note of even trivia just in case you need to use it. You never know when you will need a conversation that starts with “we spoke about this on the …”.

There’s also a key psychological element to using a notebook as a running record. Your colleagues will soon realise that you do keep records and that even if your memory is flawed your records are not and that you can refer back to the notes.

This has worked to my advantage on several occasions. A member of my staff reminded me of a conversation from the previous year regarding a “promise” I had made about a future opportunity as if promotion would be guaranteed. My notes, though brief, from that meeting reflected the assurance that I would look at things but that was the extent of the promise. In a another instance a I had made notes from a series of meetings regarding our staffing structure and being able to keep referring back to concerns raised on certain dates or promises made was helpful.

So what goes in my notebook?

• Ideas and reflections
• Notes from meetings
• Pieces of information such as data, websites, addresses and so on
• Events
• Phone calls
• Plans for the future

Basically everything that impacts on my job!

Another little tip to consider. If you have dealt with a particularly difficult situation which may come back to sting you then make sure that you have shared this information with a trusted colleague. When this has happened I have signed my notes and had my colleague sign them as well.

I have experimented with different notebooks for different purposes, one for daily reflections and ideas, another for dealings with colleagues, another for phonecalls, but in the end I have found that a single book suits my needs better. I now have a collection of these acting as a log of thoughts and deeds for the last umpteen years. When leaving my last post I was able to copy pages of my notes for my successor as a commentary on key activities I had undertaken over the past couple of years.

I realise that this is not very deep but it matters. Value your notebook, protect your notebook, because there are times when your notebook is your only friend!

Personality matters (don't forget to be yourself)

A great deal of recent leadership training seems more interested in creating leader-clones rather than working with diverse and talented teachers to develop them into leaders. Rather than exploiting differences and individual personalities there appears to be a belief than every leader can be shoe-horned into a one-size-fits-all model of leadership. Whilst we emphasise the importance of personalised learning for our pupils in light of the fact they are all different we appear to be in a world in which we do the opposite with school leaders. Lists of standards and competencies attempt to distil school leadership into a set of tasks and behaviours that anyone can do irrespective of personality. This is clearly errant nonsense! Just as learners are all so different, so are leaders and we must develop being highly self-aware of our own personalities if we are to be successful.

Over the years I have worked with many colleagues aspiring to various levels of leadership; where they have been successful they have made leadership work for them through the lens of their own personality rather than blindly following standards and competencies. My current leadership team are diverse, we are all very different and often approach situations in very different ways, not because we haven’t got a clue but because we are different people. Consider the “under-performing teacher”; there is no doubt a coping-by-numbers approach to this but in that your personality and the relationship you already have will not be mentioned. It will tell you to state the issue clearly and concisely before moving on to another impersonal statement. That’s not for me! I need to approach the situation differently, treating every teacher as an individual and approaching issues in a way that I know are likely to succeed. With some it is a case of stating the fact that things aren’t going well and I’m not happy, whereas with others there is a more reflective approach. Ultimately each interaction is different and that ensures that issues are resolved, relationships are maintained and children benefit. The way I go about this is unique, as is the approach of every decent school leader, because they all know that they have to do it their way, with their personality and through their relationships.

By the time you get to headship the chances are that you’ve been in leadership for some time and so should have a very good idea about your own personality and how you operate. However if you are just starting out on the leadership path then this is unlikely to be the case and you need to do something about it. If you don’t you’ll be found out quickly and will struggle to gain the respect you need to have the authority required to do your job. I’ve got two routes to suggest, the first is simple, read a few books on leadership. Don’t just read one book or else you stand a chance of becoming the one-dimensional leader that I have bemoaned above. Get different perspectives on leadership from different authors, but at all times ask yourself how it will work for you. The second is quicker than ploughing through texts, and potentially more profound. We have all been led and no doubt moaned about those who have done the leading; this is where I start.

Try this exercise. Firstly make a list of those who have led you and in what capacity. For me it would contain heads of department, pastoral heads, senior leaders and some heads. Primary colleagues possibly see the leadership of their heads more than secondary colleagues. I’ve worked in some very large secondary schools where I rarely saw the head, even more rarely spoke to him or her and often had little idea of what they did or how they led. Now for each one lists the positive and negative traits that influenced your relationship with that leader and how they led. You may experience a little conflict here as you may not have liked the leader personally but they may have been successful (personality versus process). When you’ve done this put together the positive traits which you feel you possess, the positive traits you need to develop and then the traits which had a negative impact. There’s your starting point for leadership, not a list of tasks but a list of traits. No one ever won over a body of staff with a CV and a list of competencies!

In a coming article I will give you a couple of examples from my own career and reflect on how these have changed the way I lead.

Authority versus Leadership: who says you're in charge?

The central thesis of this posting may not quite fit with dictionary definitions but I do believe a personal reflection on this topic is crucial in establishing your leadership whether of a department, a phase or a whole school. This posting is all about authority and power, and how I believe (or by redefining them) they are very different. I don’t want to get bogged down in semantics and I hope that you will see beyond any frailty in literal definitions and see that this is an important topic on which school leaders should reflect if they are to gain the respect of those they lead.

It should firstly be stated that leadership is a very personal thing. I have found that much leadership training has a fundamental flaw, it attempts to squeeze a broad range of diverse individuals into a narrow set of beliefs and definitions. The problem I have with this is that I believe leadership is hard enough without having to become something or someone you’re not. I also believe that a great deal of leadership training is actually management training and is more concerned with processes than relationships.

Schools need leaders and teachers should not be put off leadership because they perceive that their personality is at odds with the current paradigm of school leadership.

                                                     

Assuming you have made the leap into leadership it is important that you decide how you are going to go about doing the job and this is when a reflection on “authority” and “power” is timely. The way in which I have defined these (though potentially at odds with dictionaries) is all about perception. I have tabulated some of the differences between these styles (as I define them).

At the heart of the difference is how authority and power are achieved. Anyone can have authority and that is because this is in the gift of your colleagues. It is an idea at the idealistic edges of politics, the concept that those who lead us are our representatives and only have authority because of our vote. To the best of my knowledge school leaders are not products of a democratic system (which is probably a very good thing!); this actually makes leadership harder. The best way to have someone come with you on a journey is for them to want to come on that journey, they want to be led and they grant you the authority to lead them.  

Authority	Power
Granted by those you lead	Granted by those above you
Not contractual, can be exercised by anyone	Contractual, you are given the right to act in certain ways
About respect and relationships	About position and control
Sustainable	Hard to maintain
Sharing of responsibility	Responsibility rooted in position
Leadership	Management

I’m sure we have all experienced school leaders who fit into these definitions. Ask yourself which type you preferred being led by and why? Have you worked for someone who exerted power and had no authority? Have you worked in a school where the staff have essentially downed tools and just down what was on their contracts because of the school leadership? Reflect on your own personality; are you confident enough to exercise authority or do you need to exert power?

Gaining power is easy compared to being granted authority. Your contract gives you power but your staff grant you authority. For the former you need to impress at interview whilst for the latter you need to impress far more people on a daily basis. Authority comes from respect, respect comes from leading with compassion and intelligence. Listen to your colleagues, value their ideas and experiences, recognise that you don’t know everything and that others may have better ideas than you, lead by example, work longer and harder, and show you truly care for your staff, your pupils and your school. Gaining authority is hard work and is not achieved over night, however stick with it and you will have success.

In my current school I am particularly proud to see young and relatively inexperienced colleagues exercising authority. They have no contractual power but by virtue of their ability, dedication and professionalism they are respected by their colleagues and are able to lead. This can happen if you establish a culture of authority rather than power. This is where it really pays dividends as others step up to the challenge and this can (and should) take some of the pressure off you.

It is far easier to exercise power when you have authority, when your staff respect you, have faith in you and follow your lead. In reality this is a continuum; there are times when we do have to exert power but I have always found that being granted authority by my colleagues has produced far better outcomes and a happier school than would be achieved by exerting power over them.

Leadership on the high wire

A key part of leadership is having an awareness of the directions in which you are constantly being pulled. If you don’t think about it explicitly then it stands a reasonable chance that you will end up facing a “pull” from somewhere you never same coming. Irrespective of your position in a school, from NQT through to Headteacher, this is an exercise worth undertaking. I would suggest that before reading on you do this for yourself. Ask yourself:

·         Who am I answerable to?

·         Who am I answerable for?

·         Who directs the work I do?

I liken this to a tight-rope walker. Maintaining your balance requires you to appreciate the factors pulling you off balance and then adjusting your position to keep you on the wire.

If you understand the factors it will help you balance the time and effort you devote to these as well as the amount of pull you allow these factors to exert. For instance one pull may be the local community but compared to the pull of the Headteacher it doesn’t have too much influence and so isn’t worth too much time. However if the pull is needs of the pupils it may be that the head deserves less attention and you need to tell them so!

The relative effect of the different pulls is also a function of your personality, the people around you, your leadership context and so on, so there is no single right (or wrong answer). I’ve done this reflecting on various roles I’ve held as Head of Department, Assistant Head and Head.

I have included “Own beliefs and values” as a factor. You need to recognise these as they will change the way you see and deal with situations. Your entire job is seen through the lens of your values and will be something which will pull you in a certain direction. For example you may fundamentally disagree with the testing of 11 year olds but legislation requires it, you therefore have to balance these two diametrically opposed factors as you traverse your personal tight rope. Successful leadership sees you balance the factors and understand the multiple perspectives presented by the competing factors. Often a core part of your job is articulating these perspectives to others. A head of department needs to be able to understand the views of the headteacher and articulate these to the staff in his or her department, but conversely the head of department needs to understand the views of his or her staff and articulate these to the head. 

Please also remember that these are just examples for you to start from and are very far from being exhaustive. It is often said that helps to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, this exercise will help you identify whose shoes you need to try on.

 



 

So why teach geography?

This is actually not a dissection of the geography, in fact for “geography” you should substitute any subject. It is an important question, just why should we teach geography, or maths, or technology? This is not an article about the curriculum but about leadership and at the heart of this piece is asking you to understand your own subject, its inherent value, its place on the timetable, the attitudes of your staff and the reception by pupils.

If you are interviewed by me it stands a reasonable chance that you will be asked that question. I have asked this question numerous times and received a variety of answers, some good, some weak and some that are downright meaningless.

So why should you justify your subject? It’s on the curriculum so isn’t that a good enough reason? To use an analogy, we wear our seatbelts because of concerns for safety rather than because it’s the law. There are a raft of reasons why you should justify your subject on the curriculum, here are some of them and I’m sure there are more.

You are appealing to a range of key stake-holders, from pupils to headteachers and governors. Why should a headteacher agree to running your GCSE when you can’t give a reasoned justification for the time, resources and costs the subject will incur? Your subject does not exist in isolation in a school and by devoting time, staff, resources and money to your subject it is likely that someone else will get less.  

Going back to the original question (for any subject) a usual answer is the utilitarian, “because it’s useful” answer. I am often exasperated by this response as it shows very little personal reflection on the subject. If a subject is “useful” then something you learn will be directly applicable in later life. I’m not sure how I have used Macbeth, the Sine Rule or a solid knowledge of the Franco-Prussian War! Very little of what we teach has direct use in life, were that the case then we would simply offer apprenticeships for all eleven year olds!

 Pupils have a right to know why they should be learning something. I’m sure you want to know why someone in authority makes you do something so why should children be any different. They deserve to know what’s in it for them. They are far more likely to engage with you if they see the purpose of what they are having to learn and what it is you expect them to give up their time for with homework and revision. Similarly if you want the engagement and support of their parents they need to know the point as well. Your pupils may not get the big picture at first but any coherent reason is better than “because you have to” and it will also help keep you sane when the teaching gets tough.

This is an exercise that is worth the time. This could be the subject of a departmental meeting, it could form the backbone of your vision, but do consider the original question. It may be that some areas are directly useful, your subject may develop sets of skills or improve reasoning ability. It may improve understanding of the society and the world in which we all live and so help make our pupils better citizens. It may be that it is simply fascinating or fun! Often for me as a science teacher it is about cultural significance rather than utilitarian value. Science is a corner stone of modern culture, it has pushed back our understanding of life and our place in the Universe, it has driven technology and it poses fascinating questions for the future. Its history is strewn with fascinating tales of investigation, discovery and human struggle (and occasionally it is useful).

I want to know that my staff can think about their subjects as intellectuals engaging in their discipline rather than simply subject delivery technicians. I want to know that they understand the relevance of their subject and then I can have the faith in them that the message the pupils receive is the right one and that the investment is worthwhile.

There is no unique right answer to the original question as the justification is personal, and it’s your commitment to your vision that matters. All I would say in conclusion is that make sure you know why you should teach what you’re teaching.

So why do you want to lead?

The range of leadership roles in schools are many and varied but they tend to have several things in common, they all involve you being responsible for, and therefore answerable for, an area of school life that has an impact on children. More often than not this also will involve responsibility to a lesser or greater extent for other teachers or support staff. Often the position will come with an additional payment though not always as is experienced by those with subject responsibilities in primary schools. With the responsibility comes added workload and culpability. The more responsibility you acquire the larger the target painted on your back becomes, and be warned that the target is particularly noticeable (and attractive) to senior leaders (especially the headteacher), to parents and governors. Consequently you should be aware that as you gain responsibility the “kick me” sign becomes bigger and more inviting!

I have read dozens of books on leadership, sat through a great deal of INSET and gained plenty of qualifications but I can’t remember being asked the question, the key question, why do you want this? You need two answers to this question, one that you can produce at will in interviews and the other that motivates you every day and keeps you doing the job especially when the going gets rough. The first one merely gets you the job whilst the second is what makes you do it day in and day out, and so it is the second that truly matters. In reality the interview answer will fall out of a proper consideration of the real motivating factors and so we will come back to this only once we have drilled down into the real reason you want to lead. Also as you read through this and reflect on your own personal motivation don’t feel you need to chisel your thoughts into stone. My motivation has changed over time and had it remained unchanged then I would never have aspired to senior leadership as the motivation to do this is very different to that required to be a senior leader.

I would suggest that you actually list the reasons you want leadership responsibilities. These may be many and varied, and you may find that they contradict each other. If they do then that’s OK, this is not an exact science and motivation cannot always be rationalised. Here are a few of the factors that have affected me over my career; judge for yourself those that are laudable and those that are less so!

Challenge

J.F. Kennedy’s famous “Moon Speech” is a particularly good place to start:

We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.

I like being challenged and I like succeeding. Middle and senior leadership constantly poses fresh challenges, both in the broadest terms of developing as a leader and leading a department or school, and in the finer detail of dealing with specific issues. This is probably one motivating factor that has never changed throughout my career and I hope it never does.

Power and Ego

It is a thrill to address your first departmental meeting or your first whole staff meeting. It is thrilling to make decisions that influence not just your class but whole year groups, whole subjects or even whole schools. It is a great feeling to walk around your department or school and know that the buck stops with you. You get the job and you think “damn I’m good!”

In my career I have tended to hold several posts at each level of leadership, each rung I’ve climbed I’ve experienced that buzz, the sense of “power” and the affirmation that I must be pretty good at what I do for someone to think I deserve the job.

Money

We are only human and we have commitments that extend beyond the school. We want nice things and often our responsibilities are expensive! I get paid considerably more than most of my colleagues and it’s because I accept the workload and responsibility that comes with the job. As I’m now passing through the moderate comfort of middle age and a mature career the desire for pecuniary reward has subsided but there have certainly been times in my career when a successful promotion came with a healthy monthly reward.

For the pupils

How many times have you that those who lead you are letting down the children you teach? You want to change things because the children truly matter. The only to do this is to take the helm. My first headship was like this; I had looked on from the wings and desperately wanted to do things differently (not necessarily better) because I believed it would benefit the children, improve their experience of school, improve their attainment and progress and ultimately their life chances. Leadership is a privilege as your influence and impact on the lives of children increases with each step on the leadership ladder.

Novelty

I had been a Head of Science for many years when I had the opportunity to take on a pastoral role. I was curious, I had little experience of pastoral beyond being a form tutor and wanted to know what it was about. It would be something new and as a consequence something that I would throw myself into and reignite my enthusiasm for the job.

The long game

When I first entered teaching I knew what I wanted, I wanted my own science department and then a school. I knew that the journey would be long and hard and that there were key stages to accomplish on the journey. Among the many roles I have held include second in department, subject leader, faculty leader, pastoral leader, exams officer and senior leader. All of these were key pieces in the jigsaw that I needed to complete to give me the chance of headship.

It is not for me to judge your motivating factors, but knowing yourself and what makes you tick will give you a crucial sense of perspective as you work your way towards your goals.

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog. I’ll be sharing with you my thoughts on leadership in schools based on my experience at middle and senior level in a range of schools covering a broad range of age settings and school contexts. This is a personal view and one that is derived from practice and theory. At times it will be pragmatic and other times more theoretical but always rooted in my experiences of leading departments, year groups and schools.

Who is this for? Well anyone interested in school leadership. You may be only thinking about promotion, preparing for an interview, new to the role, established in the role and so on. Hopefully you will find something useful here to give you a different way of looking at your leadership. I don’t profess to have answers to your problems. Too many books on school leadership seem to tell you how to do it; I don’t agree with this approach as I believe that leadership is a personal undertaking and as everyone is different so everyone’s approach to leadership is different. Solutions to problems may work for some and not others, contexts are different but crucially so are the personalities of the leaders. So basically leadership is something that you have to make your own and adapt the tools of leadership to your needs, skills, aspirations and shortcomings.

My own belief is that leadership in education boils down to two elements, relationships and processes. We frequently use the “leadership and management” label, and crudely leadership is about relationships whilst management is about processes, however such a reductionist approach doesn’t do the role justice and so I will use the term “leadership” encompassing all aspects of the role. I will refer more often to relationships and processes as this can be clearly linked to the day-to-day life of a school leader. Much of this blog will be based on the processes as the life of a school leader can often be broken down into a set of tasks but threaded throughout all of these tasks will be the crucial golden thread of “relationships”. The nature of the relationships with those you lead and with those who lead you will ultimately determine the way in which you execute the processes. Consequently you must always place the process within the context of relationships you have formed with all of the key stakeholders. Therefore whilst the process may be the same from department to department or even school to school, the way it is put into practice will depend on the relationships between the individual leader and all those affected.

I place so much stock in the importance of relationships that my approach to leadership has changed radically over my career. Early in my leadership career I studied for a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Management. I remember reading various sources that talked about the range of leadership styles including such categories as “collegiate”, “democratic” and “authoritarian” (there are more but I can’t remember them!). At the time I found this useful by analysing myself and recognising where these different styles apply. However all of these were about you as the leader and didn’t really consider those being led. I realised that the same process when applied to different members of staff required different leadership styles and that these styles were not necessarily the same when a different process came along. This quickly got out of hand as I was leading a large science department at the time with lots of staff and a multitude of processes. Gradually with time I came to realise that leadership was not a process in itself that gave itself to such a mechanistic methodology, instead it was a human activity rooted in the relationships between thus leading and those being led. I was recently quizzed about my approach to leadership in an interview (the outcome of which was successful) and I roughly said what you have already read. I went on to explain that I had about fifty people working for me and that they had good days and bad days. Consequently I explained that I had about 100 leadership styles, two for each member of staff! Now whilst this may sound like an exaggeration in reality all I am saying is that I know my staff well and that I lead them in a way that meets their needs. Staff want to be led and it is considerably easier to lead a group of people who recognise that you see them as individuals rather than as a group who can be herded into the categories dreamt up by management “experts”.

Please visit again. In coming articles I will be considering the concept of authority as opposed to power along with some practical issues that may be helpful.