LfM

CPD and INSET / LfM — No Comments
23
May 10

Day #3 LftM

Leading from the Middle Day 3

Each day has started with a review of the impact of Day 2 Learning and the period in between the day 2 and 3. Carole recorded the ‘Key Learning and Changed Behaviours,’ and the impact of the Team Health Check.

The focus then changed to evaluate the Leadership Focus. Without over-estimating the scope of the L4L programme (the IT strategy, incorporating the New Build, wireless, whole print facility) I sometimes feel that colleagues have the luxury of a more refined leadership focus eg cross curriculum mentoring, addressing the rewards system, supporting under-performing staff. Currently the L4L includes Year 8, 9 and 10 students, their parents / guardians, all teaching staff. IT support, finances and SLT assessment / support. Certainly the our success is impacted by many other factors, primarily funding associated with the New build and whole school initiatives such as establishing an IT budget for the school.

We covered two middle management models and one strategy. The first looking at defining the individuals following a heath check, another matrix highlighting individuals  openness to change and their experience of change. Team members fell into four categories; advocates, willing followers, resistants and blockers. A series of strategies were then outlined on how to develop ‘willing followers’ and move resistants or blockers to a favourable position. One aspect not highlighted by this model was the individual power of influence and so a second model once demonstrated that took this into account.

Finally a strategy to Problem Solving Team Building was presents. A tool used to solve the problems presented through the time structured input of a team. This was a very practical and inclusive tool that any team could adopt, one that will get transferred to my management toolbox.

  • 5 mins – problem solving
  • 10 mins – idea generation
  • 10 mins – idea selection followed by benefits vs concerns analysis of that selection
  • 5 mins – action Plan

The morning concluded with more coaching practical, with the opportunity to focus on either a) the content or b) the emotions shown. This learning opportunity demonstrated just how much information is to be processed when ‘coaching.’

Good Coaching

Listening, active listening

Recap / summarise / seek clarification

Settings – open gestures / quiet / comfortable / uninterrupted

Non-judgmental – develop a pool of effective coaching questions

Empathetic not sympathetic (avoid the transfer of ownership)

How / in what way – is often better than why

Don’t be afraid of silence, silent time is thinking time

Let the coachee talk, they may answer their own question

Stage 1 – Analysis eg What’s going well? What strengths can you build upon?

Stage 2 – Direction Setting eg What are some of the possibilities? What is do-able now? How do you think others will perceive the changes?

Stage 3 – Action Planning eg What support are you likely to need? What other considerations might there be? What is do-able next?

Finally a review of the coaching process untaken, merely underlined the value of the process but also the important of undisturbed, quality time and the setting.

Just for the record I thouht I should include a comment from my GTP mentee, at the end of a rather long email, he reflected on our weekly meeting. This week I told him I would be taking a different approach / style and that I would be interested in his view point.

Thanks again for your mentor support (I prefer it to coaching! :-) )

All that is left to complete is the 10 Minute Presentation, print 6 copies of Leadship Focus and complete Page 50 of the workbook…. plus one or two online tasks.

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CPD and INSET / LfM — No Comments
7
Jan 10

LftM Online Learning

Values and vision for change was the first E-Resource I attenpted today.

The purpose of a vision for the school … is to inspire everyone connected to the school to focus action and to have all stakeholders pulling in the same direction.

Next I am learning the value of vision. Is this something that can really be taught? First the tutorial outlined the terminology and assessed our ability to accurately define the reality. A passable task, but a little boring. Next we were lead through’ action planning’ – somewhat disappointing. An hours learning, I am not sure it was credible. Next, ‘Leadership Capabilities and Styles.’

Summarised duties of a middle leader, Leadership, Management and Administration. To which point we were offered the important/urgent matrix and some online resources (not visible on the screen but the icons were hyperlinked) to help us manage our time and decisions.

After a long intro (which put into perspective how important our vision actually was) before we get to the focal point, what is good leadership. Within this introduction, there was little inspirational content, but as with most things, there were a few interesting take aways. Fullan talks about the importance of relationship building with leadership and notes;

Effective leaders constantly foster purposeful interaction and problem solving. They also strive to involve others in the goal setting and goal getting process; so they have ‘internal commitment.’

Again more prospective links, but the links are not visible and I am not prepared to play pot luck with my time. Come on NCSL. Inspriational, sadly no.

Popularity: 3% [?]

CPD and INSET / LfM — No Comments
7
Jan 10

LftM – Leading Style

I am at my second sitting on the NCSL ViewPoints learning activity, designed to help me discover my own personal style. No surprise that I came out as a divergent thinker, but I was pleased that my prediction was accurate. However, there is a danger that, with a dominant style, I appreciate differences in others and do not discount alternative practice and procedure of my colleagues with different style patterns.

According to Dr Kathy Butler, divergent thrive on healthy conflict, think outside of the box and find sustained reflection (ie this blog) difficult….

With my interest tweak, I thought I would look a little deeper at Dr Kathy Butlers  work from the resources, but the link 404, so I directed back to her limited commericial offering.

Now I am supposed to observe myself for a few weeks, consider alternative delivery modes to support colleague with difference viewpoints to be able to contribute. Even better, to solicit the thoughts of linear viewpoints and to incorporate these into my delivery. I try to remember all that.

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CPD and INSET / LfM / Middle Management / Reflections — No Comments
15
Dec 09

LFtm Development Day

9:30am Our first Leading from the Middle Development Day.

Another welcoming start to the day, if a little tight for space. The opening discussions on protocols led to a sharing of our perspectives for the course, withand between delegates. Not an atypical start to a course however my frustrations was that a significant amount of time was allocated to professional themes.

‘As middle leaders subscribed to LFtM are we not lead professionals? I would like to think that we were aware that we should show trust, discretion, professionalism, honesty, that we were expected to participate and mediate constructive criticism of ourselves and of one another….’

I made these notes following the length 55 minute development day opening. By the end of the course and considering the confidentiality of some of the topics discussed during the day, it was important, if a little long winded.

Next, Boyatism – International Change Model was reviewed next and this was set in against a diaognostic model we had completed at teh start of the course. Now, I have to admit that the diagnostic model provided valuable feedback for me personally, but I am finding this review a little turgid. More on leadership and here we are being reminded that leadership change is not automatic, that change needs action, monitoring and reflection. This early into the experience, perhaps I should be more open minded and take more care listening to the conversation. Break….

How do we learn leadership.

Without question the main contribution to the delegates (and my own learning) was modeling positive leadership behaviour in others they have worked with. The needs around our table highlighted that the opportunity to learn / lead actions implemented to address ‘the really difficult, under-performing or inappropriate professional behaviour, were rarely offered. It was conceded, that the nature of these leadership opportunities / situtations made it almost impossible to experience. As a consequent, the most challenging leadership/professional situations may become sink of swim situations later on in our careers. Where / when do we learn these skills?

Time was given over to reviewing the diagnostic feedback we had received, but as I had already done (and posted) this. A little frustrating, I used the time to catchup on other duties / reading and so forth. Making notes about the expereince to date that you are reading here. In the lead up to lunch we review changed models, Moharry model and how you extend the influence the public / open content about you and your leadership. An interesting concept but perhaps more applicable to dispersing a leadership teams ‘public content’ than to that of an individual, IMHO.

The afternoon sessions focused on ‘Coaching.’ However, our triad were distracted and discussed the relevancy of coaching to our positions / role. Most importantly our conversation focused on whether you can coach or be coached when the roles are not disparate. We were still undecided despite encouragement to see coaching as a leadership tool. One interesting point I drew from a colleague’s response was that if we are to encourage coaching, should the coach be an external role, an employee not directly employee by the school but perhaps the county? If given an external coach, would colleagues be more open and the outcomes monitored more appropriately/skillfully? In truth, coaching in such a small team is a challenge, but to support coaching between colleagues may be an option. Given the time I might post and extend this conversation in the course forum.

To end, a number of tasks were set and some online expectations. Finally, identifying the coaching sessions with my coach at Hamble College, dates for Day 2. Thats a wrap for Development Day 1. Overall, 5/10. I enjoyed the peer conversation, unsure about the structure/content of the day especially as I had given up personal time to review the diagnostic model, that was then given to us on the day.

(I forgot to publish this post, so back dated it sorry).

Popularity: 2% [?]

LfM — No Comments
28
Oct 09

1.1 Middle Leader Development Diagnostic

lftm-programmeNow that I have at least 5 raters contributing to my report, I can seek feedback. I am keen to see how this information is presented and what I can take from the information. I am hoping that the data will be fairly consistent, although I am expecting a slightly lower rater score as some of the colleague I asked to rate me, have proven to be quiet challenging. Overall, the ratings are all slight lower, but all within 0.5 on a six point scale with the exception of leading ‘innovation and change,’ which is about 0.9. Overall a 0.54 difference.The second page is hard to follow as components are rank ordered. Generally I was looking for two aspects. Significant mismatched component scores and second, the overall average. This was not given by the report. The strengths highlighted by the diagnostic were ‘Drive and Determination,’ and ‘Focus and Commitment,’ and to a lesser degree ‘Managing Resources and Performance.’ One weaknesses highlighted was ‘Flexibility and Openness to Change’ noted as the lowest score by both the raters and myself. My greatest disappointed was the difference in my perceived ’Motivation and Team Awareness,’ and that of the raters, a 1.64 difference. This is something I wish to address and yes, I know I need to get to know my team better rather than racing off to yet another meeting somewhere else…. I need to give my team greater priority. 

The written feedback stated, 

‘responses to this section suggest that you are reasonably confident, with a degree of understanding of what you do well and what areas could be developed further. Perhaps there are some relationships at work that you find more difficult than others.’

Given I targeted some on the more challenging relationships, I feel this is a fair summary.

The area I was most disappointed with, does not seem that disappointing in a formal written format.

Your score in this area suggests that you are able to take change in your stride. There may be times, though, when you find it frustrating to have to re-prioritise, resulting in disruption to your workload. Reasonably confident in anticipating the impact of change on resources, you are able to prepare others for the adjustments needed. You could, however, seek to clarify that they understand clearly what is required of them, giving reasons and explaining the potential benefits of change. Your usual preference will be to apply procedures flexibly, although there may be times when you do not do so and thus some colleagues may see you as rigid in your approach. Perhaps you find it difficult to adjust your operating style to suit some of your colleagues.

Certainly this final paragraph has summarised my experience at Hamble College. I have worked very hard over the past 3 months to improve my ‘damaged’ working relationships with the IT services team in particular.  I am confident that I have benefited from the experience of working with non-teaching staff at this point in my career. Leadership here has required a different management approach, one not yet fully honed. With teaching staff, the transition has been much smoother and the improvement in the results would suggest that.

Overall, a very powerful learning leadership tool. I would recommend any middle or aspiring middle leader take this diagnostic.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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