Remember your colleagues have brains as well or "why I hate ice-breakers"

Over the years I have undertaken many activities which have induced terror in me, most often as a result of altitude and the potential death-inducing effect of gravity experienced on high mountains. But nothing compares to that feeling of terror I experience whenever a course-leader utters the word "ice-breaker" resulting in a tail-spin of fear and loathing as I descend to depths of misery! Why do I hate these apparently innocuous preliminaries? There are a variety of reasons so here are just a few.

Firstly I don't want to share details of my life, loves, hobbies, achievements, failures and so on with a bunch of strangers. Then I don't want to play silly games with a bunch of other people who also don't want to play games. Thirdly, do your job; I've come here to learn something, not bugger about. And fourthly (and in this list most importantly), I have a brain, I'm a professionally and academically successful and intelligent teacher, so treat me like one.

Before I go further here's a true story. Many years ago I attended a course (no idea what on) and I ended up on a table of relatively young female teachers (this was simply luck-of-the-draw). The ice-breaker was to share our most memorable days. My table-mates were either dim-witted or genuinely nosey since they all robotically poured out fond memories of recent wedding days. Utterly disinterested in the activity, and by now the banality of my colleagues, my turn raised some eyebrows. I happily explained that my most memorable day was seeing Stoke City beat Brentford at Cardiff's Millenium Stadium in a football playoff final. They struggled to comprehend how I placed this above my own wedding day, and their collective sense of humour failed completely when I explained that it was possible I would have another wedding day but I would never get to see Stoke win a playoff final again! Ice-breakers: treat with contempt!

In my list of objections the last one is the one I want to spend a little time discussing as I believe it is at the heart of good INSET as well as at the heart of good leadership, don't forget your colleagues have brains as well! 

I have now worked in every phase of education from nursery through to Universities and what I'm about to say is an observation rather than scientific fact, but by and large I have seen more primary colleagues treated as being brainless than in the secondary phase. This may be for a raft of reasons, none of which can be properly justified but I suspect that because there are far more primary heads than secondary that it stands a good chance that there are more poor primary heads than secondary (I'm not implying that the percentage is different), and also that secondary teachers, with their subject degrees (rather than education degrees), are a tad arsier! Please don't have a go at me over this point.

Here are some tips:

Discuss, debate and justify: if you can't justify your actions you are on slippery ice. Your colleagues will see through you and be asking what book did you get that idea from. Be prepared to discuss and debate your ideas, your colleagues may not agree with you but they will respect a cogent argument, supported by theory and evidence, and with a plan in tow. You must put in the leg work. Understand your subject and be ready for counter-arguments. Before I present an idea to colleagues I always make sure I have come up with a list of negatives and have thought about these viewpoints and how I will talk them through.

Listen and adapt: do you really know it all? It isn't a particularly appealing trait and it is highly likely that there is lot more experience in front of you than you have. Acknowledge and listen to concerns, recognise that there may be a multiplicity of opinions and be prepared to incorporate ideas from the staff. This has many benefits, staff will realise you will listen, that you are treating them as professionals, that you want to share and not simply impose, and that you are also aware that you do not know everything. This is a sign of strength and not weakness.

You don't know everything: it is true, you may have been doing the job 25 years but there are things you don't know. It will do your credibility no harm to (occasionally!) admit this and to use the knowledge and experience of others. Also be prepared to admit when you are wrong or to change your mind. I have done this on several occasions especially when as a secondary trained leader I had to lead a middle school with KS2.

Appeal to colleagues on an intellectual level: they are intelligent people and they will mostly appreciate you recognising this. Explain to them the research findings, the studies and the current developments. Don't assume that they do not want to know, if you are asking someone to change their established practice you had better have a good reason for doing so!

If you are an aspiring leader then reflect on these points and try to remember any situation in which you have been treated as if you are a wiles five year old. These negative experiences are crucial in the development of good leaders, you must remember how it feels to be led badly before you can lead well. I should also add that I am far from perfect, I know I have done exactly what I'm suggesting you should not do, but I hope I have learned from my actions and that I am now a better leader for it.

At the heart of this is a concept I have discussed in an earlier posting, that of authority and power. I have claimed that authority, the true stamp of leadership, is granted to you by others, unlike power which is simply a contractual undertaking. Please click HERE to read that article.

Some of the worst leadership I have encountered has been from those who treat their colleagues as simply worker-ants, they treat them as their proletarian labourers rather than as trusted, intelligent and professional colleagues. Why is this? I only have opinions but I believe it comes down to possibly two main reasons, the first being that they are leading simply because they want to be in charge and the second because they are actually the dim-wit!

Finally I do have a confession to make. In my leadership INSET package I do use an ice-breaker, it goes something like this. "Go and grab a coffee and a biscuit and chat to your colleagues. Come back in 10 minutes."

Jelly Baby Leadership

I'm currently planning an INSET day for middle leaders with a national schools association and I was wracking my brain for a gimmick. As often happens I put it to the back of my mind and went shopping and just as I was heading into a supermarket the penny dropped, I knew what my gimmick would be, jelly babies!

Look at the picture, what do you notice? Well there are red ones, orange ones, green ones and so on. Different colours but look beyond that and what do you see? They are all basically the same. A sugary goo has been moulded to ensure that in fact they are all the same shape, all that is different is the colour. Unfortunately I feel that this is a pretty good analogy for current models of leadership training in schools, both at middle and senior level. Aspiring leaders are forced into moulds, the "colour" or contexts may be different, but basically they are all the same. For red jelly baby read secondary leader, for yellow read primary, for green read curriculum leader and so on, the colours change but they are all the same shape.

This is the what I believe has become the fundamental problem, the state-directed leadership training is designed to produce identical leaders, forcing teachers into moulds, stripping away the individual personalities of aspiring leaders and replacing them with a formula. The courses and criteria has produced a generation of generic leaders most of whom define school success in similar ways and lead by numbers. I am not dismissing the quality of these leaders, I've done one of these qualifications myself and know the right things to say! However I constantly question and have never taken these courses at face value. My worry is that many leaders simply believe all that they are told or if they don't they do toe the party line because they feel that that is what is expected.

My approach is the complete opposite to the jelly baby model. Rather than forcing the aspiring leader into a uniform mould I believe that you should identify a potential leader and mould leadership around them. We would do well to remember that leadership is a personality-centred undertaking, it is undertaken and transmitted through the personality of an individual. Given that everyone has a different personality I would suggest that this implies that everyone's approach to leadership should be different. But why? Your leadership comes into focus once your knowledge, understanding and experience has been focused through the lens of your personality. It isn't just about knowing about "delivering sustainable change" or "transformational leadership", it is about working with people, it is about understanding the needs of staff, their strengths and frailties, it is about people first. Ultimately a future leader should be moulded around their personality rather than the other way around.

Personality is akin to a lens through which leadership is projected. The lens is personal and unique to every leader. That personality is a complex and ever evolving thing. There are so many factors that form an individual's personality that I cannot do justice to it here but it is fair to say that family, values, community, experiences, health and personal history must play a part. Once again given the unique nature of everyone's experience it is little wonder that personality is unique.

Leadership training should help develop the self-knowledge of aspiring leaders and helping them realise their own potential. It shouldn't be about a core curriculum, every school is different, every teacher is different, and the corollary of these facts is that it is impossible to completely teach someone to lead. Instead leaders should understand themselves and how they fit into school structures. They should understand what motivates them, what inspires them and what their values are. They should know how to communicate these to others and when they believe what they say they become authentic and others will follow them.

The best leadership training I have undertaken has been a Master's degree. Read, reflect, synthesise, analyse and adapt. Leadership is a human pursuit, it relies on your personality, it is an intellectual pursuit and your colleagues deserve to be led by someone who has thought about leadership, it is always unique and never the same twice.

Don't be a jelly baby leader, be unique, be yourself.

Developing middle leaders - a different perspective

I have been in leadership for over 16 years and have done all sort of CPD. I've been through courses on running science departments, managing budgets, pastoral leadership and so on but what all of these had in common was that they were trying to turn me into a technician, turn me into someone who could do a specific job, turn me into an exact copy of anyone else on the course. Unfortunately this seems not be uncommon in leadership development at any level, the aim being to produce leader clones who all operate in the same way.

I have a problem with this. Consider this; you wouldn't take 16 teachers into M&S and make all of them fit a 34" waist pair of black trousers! Maybe 1 or 2 of the them might fit but they are 16 individuals, all different, all unique. We wouldn't try to squeeze our leaders into the same garment so why on earth would we attempt to squeeze them into the same form of leadership. My belief is that you mould leadership around the leader rather than forcing a leader into a mould. Of course if you believe that leadership is simply a set of common behaviours, characteristics and attitudes then you won't agree with me, and you'll probably find yourself wondering why we can't find leaders in education. If however you're with me on this one, you will recognise that leadership is first and foremost a human process, a relationship-led structure in which individuals work with each other in certain capacities to achieve a desirable goal (in our case the education of children).

Some may want all aspiring leaders to be the same, I want exactly the opposite, I want them all to be different.

Leadership certainly has a core set of attitudes and behaviours but these have to be reimagined and practiced by the individual. A simple way of looking at it is to compare a Van Gogh and a Manet, give them the same paints and you'll get two very different pictures, both masterpieces in their own right but very different. I want our attitude to leadership development to be the same, let's give our leaders the same palette but let them paint their own picture.

An approach like this would assert that leaders are not formed but they emerge. They should use their own personalities to shape their practice rather than the personality of an author preaching a certain leadership model. A leader is more authentic if they are themselves rather than someone they are not. Leadership training should focus on behaviours, attitudes and values rather than specific processes. Encourage reflective practice where the leader is a learner rather than prescriptive practice where the leader is a transmitter of received knowledge.

So I don't think you need a course on being a Head of Maths or a Head of Year, leadership development is about incubating leadership so that when it emerges it can fill any role it encounters.