Meeting, pre-meetings and bulletins

There are very few leaders in schools who won’t tell you, regardless of how long they have been doing the job that they are not constantly learning. The learning process is varied, reading, courses and so on, but still the most effective for me is reflecting on my mistakes. This may seem like a trivial topic to discuss but it is actually at the core of my current business and one that as you progress through leadership becomes increasingly important, that topic is meetings.

No-one ever taught me how to run meetings or how to get the most out of them so I have spent a lot of meeting time over the last 15 years wasting my time, the time of others and basically getting it wrong. I’m not claiming I’ve got it completely right yet but I’m doing it better than I ever have and achieving far more in less time.

To start with decide what your meeting is for. If it is simply information dissemination then you do need to ask yourself if that actually requires a meeting? Is your team blessed with the ability to read? If so take advantage of that skill! The sarcasm is aimed at myself because I can recognise that I have wasted a lot of time (and had a lot of time wasted by others) through meetings that are simply information sessions.

Since joining a new school I have changed the way I do my job. Whilst I have always met with members of my senior team I have now formalised this; I have set agendas and fixed time windows but the key element is what I do with the information. These meetings are very specific and linked to each colleague’s operational role, problems are discussed and priorities are identified. This is the forum to filter the noise and highlight what needs discussing with the whole team. I now produce a weekly SLT bulletin with set sections for each member of the team. This goes out before the SLT meeting, contains the key information and I highlight any matter that needs discussing. Whilst it takes time to produce the bulletin I suspect it is no more than the time wasted with information sharing in a meeting. A consequence is that colleagues recognise that their time is used far more productively and the important strategic discussions can take place. By identifying the discussion areas before the meeting also ensures that colleagues are prepared. You are also directing the discussion points and ensuring that time is not devoted to discussions that may be of no interest to some of the participants. One other point is that the bulletin is an excellent record and certainly reduces the load created by writing minutes.

 

Now looking back on my career I can see how I could have used this approach at middle leadership level. I have been a subject and faculty leader as well as a pastoral leader.  Pastoral leaders could meet up for 10 minutes every week with individual members of their team and run through key points. Collating these into a weekly pastoral bulletin (year groups or phases) will give an excellent overview of key information, waste less time and produce an excellent written record. Faculty and subject leaders should consider the same approach. I spent years as a Head of Science and in that time I could have saved huge amounts of time by meeting with the heads of subjects and collating their findings and deciding on the discussion points.

Some of you reading this (if you have got this far) may be thinking that the previous 600 words have been an exercise in stating the obvious but had someone held the obvious up to me 15 years ago I suspect my life may have been a little easier.