Free resource included at the end of this post.
The past year and a half has been an amazing leadership journey, both for me personally and for the Academy. Here I try to capture some of the key revelations and insights that have allowed me to develop my own leadership skills and the leadership skills of staff that I either line manage or mentor.
1. The first ‘teaching moment’ was the burning realisation of the need to explicitly support staff to develop their leadership skills, and in recognising that leading is different from managing – from running strategic meetings (as opposed to meetings constantly mired in the operational), to knowing how to grow the bright spots in a team and create vertical influence (a la Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, and Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet). The USA has long encouraged the pedagogy of leadership in every relevant institution, from companies to politics to education; Britain has been somewhat slower in this realisation; industry taking the first step, but the pedagogy of educational leadership trailing a long way behind. Why, however, do we assume that a person can go from being part of a team to running a high performing team overnight?
habitsofhighlyeffectiveteaching 