Developing Individual Leadership … Together
Sarah Heesom
Leadership & Partnership Expert
We believe that education has the power to transform lives and communities – that’s the strapline for Transform Trust & TSA but I’m sure that’s a belief that every one of us has – it’s why we work in schools.
This belief becomes more compelling when we understand that education, effective teaching specifically, has the power to make the biggest difference to disadvantaged children (Sutton Trust, 2011).
But who decides who teaches our children, who attracts and enables talented teachers to be in front of the children that need it most? Who creates and sustains learning communities where all children achieve their potential and love learning because they are taught by inspiring educators that know the difference they make.
This is the job of the leader - and in education that is the Headteacher. Leithwood 2006 says that school leadership is second only to the classroom teacher as an influence on pupil learning. The OECD acknowledged in 2014 that effective leadership is essential to improve equity of school.
It’s common sense isn’t it? Good leaders enable people to play to strengths and removes barriers. And because people understand the rules and their role, frustrations are minimised and trust is built. Who doesn’t want to be engaged in something they care about, be recognised fort’ their contribution, and be good at what they do.
We believe leadership amplifies effective or ineffective behaviour – we believe leadership matters.
From the start of the Teaching School and Trust we recognised that there was very little leadership development for Headteachers. After the NPQH, leadership development often took the form of conferences, one-day events on specific school functions, such as data or curriculum – it felt like a ‘one off / issue based’ approach.
Sir John Jones told Inspiring Leaders colleagues last year that for 80% of conference delegates there is little impact on practice following the event. We might hear great messages but when we get back to school and real life hits, it appears that we don’t get the chance or know how to make a change.
A Headteacher I know signs off his emails as Head Teacher and Lead Learner. I love the message that gives. But in Transform’s early days we wondered if this really included devoting time to learn about our own leadership?
We decided we wanted to create an environment where Headteachers (and other leaders) could engage in cumulative, in-depth and informed discussion on leadership. And we didn’t want to approach leadership as a subject or in a theoretical sense, we wanted to focus on the individual and their leadership in practice.
‘Who we are is how we lead’ Brene Brown
So what has Transform learned since we start focussing on leadership in 2012?
Leaders as learners
Firstly, we felt it was important to look for learning outside of education, after all leadership is a universal skill and my background is in training and development. That led to a partnership with Fiona Moore of Inoji. Fiona’s background in leadership development in the private sector brought a different, tested and wider perspective.
Research has also been important to our leadership learning. Our CEO Rebecca Meredith interviewed TSA colleagues on the phases of Headship and was able to define and group the periods of growth and challenge faced. We then considered leadership titles, as we would consider books on teaching and learning, from authors including Covey, Collins, Goffey and Steve Radcliffe (we’ll come back to Steve). Reading wasn’t new but dedicating regular time to define leadership terms, unpick the learning and relate it to individual school leadership was.
Secondly, we were responsive to the needs of our learners.
Our session adopt an iterative design process with regular evaluation (in the form of assessment tools, participant surveys and interviews) used to gauge suitability, impact, sustainability and future learning needs.
Thirdly, we learned from each other. We didn’t do lots of leadership study in the first year at Transform. Instead we invested in time to establish our shared values for schools and children and to build the trusted relationships vital to our stretching and personal leadership work together.
Liz Barratt at Emmanuel became the Teaching School lead for peer coaching and this practice became the backbone of Transform sessions. Heads knew that because leadership is personal, sessions would involve working at depth with colleagues, understanding practice and looking at the beliefs and habits that motivated them. Headteachers became expert coaches for each other. We became a trusted community of learners.
‘Who we spend time with now informs who we will be in 5 years’ Jay Shetty
Leadership Applied
Learning is our business, it’s the day job. But do we apply our understanding and strategies to learning for the ‘grown-ups’? We studied the national standards for CPD and used it evaluate the key components of Transform CPD. We were reassured to find that we were practising the recommendations – CPD should; link to pupil outcomes, evidence-based, collaboration, sustainable, prioritised.
But it talks less about the ingredients for effective application of learning – the transfer of theory to practice.
We realised that this is one of the key factors – perhaps the key factor - in Transform CPD. Modelling and practising our leadership skills and creating resources and how to guides to scaffold distributed CPD for school teams. We also noticed that when we explicitly used classroom language and skills, matching pedagogy with leadership tools there was a great ‘click’ for our leaders. Extending the concept of learning from each other, now all of our sessions include concrete examples
FED Applied directly targets activities that enable participants to repeatedly apply their learning, analyse and evaluate their practices, and create sustainable systems and processes to ensure long term embeddedness.
Getting to the Heart of it
November 2017, the Nottingham Conference Centre and Transform TSA were attending the Inspiring Leaders conference. We were keen to hear Steve Radcliffe talk from his book Leadership Plain and Simple. We recognised the key concepts – FED (Future Engage Deliver) as Steve was one of the authors that Fiona Moore had brought into our sessions. We liked Steve and his truthful manner. And we liked what he had to say – it was practical, it was about bringing out the best in people and it was personal. Crucially for Transform, FED also celebrates and builds on the unique characteristics of each organisation and its leaders.
Reflecting after the conference, we wondered what would happen if we used all of our best practice in leadership development, but instead of continuing to apply related but varied learning, we studied one text – Leadership Plain and Simple - for the whole year, adopting Future Engage Deliver as our shared leadership language and model of distributed leadership across schools.
Through this work and with Steve’s encouragement, FED Applied was born – an adapted, practical approach to applying FED in schools.
Our intent was to genuinely grow leaders; going beyond the superficial to develop mastery.
Peeling back the layers to get to the heart of who are as leaders at our best. And because we deeply understand about learning, we will create a “pedagogy for grown-ups”.
A year later, what do we know:
At Transform, we considered leadership development to be strength. A year of intensive focus, study and creating, plus coaching from an expert with shared values (Steve Radcliffe) has challenged our view of ourselves as leaders, accelerated our learning and significantly developed our CPD and leadership practice. We know this not just because of how we feel but because we have been running a detailed study alongside our work.
As we move into our second year of FED Applied, we believe this is ongoing learning, with a shifting focus onto developing others as leaders and building our team of FED Applied Experts.
Hear more about our journey at @FEDapplied
Sarah Heesom, Development Director, Transform TSA & Trust