Many organisational visions start with a flurry of energy, through beautiful orated speeches which conjure an alignment of visualised outcomes for many if not all followers. This energy then falls as, the day to day happens, followers have to fulfil their roles regardless of the original buy-in of the initiative. 

Leaders must reaffirm their visions regularly. The frequency is obviously relative to the context, various techniques such as having a diverse array of people leading change, using a joint vision and creating a common language are wonderful techniques in resistance.

This reaffirmation is not the iterative tiresome speeches in which we have all sat through, where people nudge each other, roll their eyes and mutter ‘here we go again’. Rather it’s the actions and the structures in place to hold people to account. 

Holding people to ‘account’ normally comes with negative connotations. Here it really does not. Once bought in followers are introduced to a culture of quick wins for this to happen followers work MUST be monitored. 

Here accountability does not have to take the form of a stick or a carrot but the aim is to make your followers accountable to their own buy-in.

I have always worked with a model of ‘it’s okay’ and then ‘How are we going to do to fix this?’ when followers are not on track. This is still holding people to account, being supported in a safe environment has always yielded better overall and sustainable results. It also breeds an honest environment, where people are more likely to come forward in good time and ask for support. 

This also endows followers with the self-efficacy of their role. They are in control of their buy-in to the initiative, that they are trusted and supported in their endeavour.

Various models around the world use this to great effect. Weight Watchers being one, where followers voluntarily (actually you pay don’t you) sign up to a scheme (buy-in) and follow a plan (act) and weekly you hold yourself accountable to your future thinner self. 

I can hear through you through the screen, what about those people who won’t buy in, perform at the required rate and are detrimental to the organisation as a whole. I too have moved people on to other organisations, but always once all support avenues have been exhausted. Not because it’s (just) fair to the follower but so it fair to the organisation. Losing a follower is the loss of an asset and part of a leader’s role is to keep people on track to achieve the vision.

“You don’t need eyes to see you need Vision.”

Faithless

What is Vision? 

A ‘vision’ for me is the visualisation of a destination point (this obviously can be and will be dynamic), all leadership is around facilitating and expediting that journey.

Starting with successful organisations,

How many of you knew that the employees work towards the BBC’s vision ‘to be the most creative in the world’? I certainly didn’t, but thinking about it it makes perfect sense, why would they want anything else for their organisation?

Let’s start with your organisation. What matters to them? what are the most important priorities? think about the mission statements and the artefacts around the corridors and use your own experiences to draw these out.

Rank these in order of priority.

1.

2.

3.

What matters to you?

Now think deeply about the above question (This activity was the most important thing I ever did as a school leader). Highlight points from your list which are the most important things, the things which you get up in the morning for. This essentially is your core purpose.

1.

2.

3.

Warning: If these two lists do not marry up relatively closely, I would suspect you are in the wrong organisation. As everything that you do in life should be in relation to your core purpose; When these values are compromised inner peace and congruence cannot exist.

Visualisation of Vision

In my leadership sessions. I often start with some blue sky thinking? If I could give you unlimited funds, unlimited time and resources, a proverbial magic wand what would you do? think big, not the little day to day changes but the huge and overwhelming, you can only dream of changes.

1. What is does your perfect school/organisation look and feel like? Including you, the staff body and the pupil?

Visualise this. Draw out common traits,

e.g.

A place where all pupils feel safe.

A place where all staff are valued and feeling comfortable enough to challenge leadership.

…

Keep going until you feel you have covered the needs of all your stakeholders. This picture in your head is your vision and the trait and are what you must do you articulate it to your followers. (that blog is for another day).

I have instilled a coaching culture in various schools that I have led in and as a leadership coach the title of this blog may seem like madness. As a leader the value of coaching is evident across all setting and sectors, however, one of the pitfalls is that it doesn’t work for everyone all of the time.

Photo credited to https://www.situational.com/the-cls-difference/situational-leadership-what-we-do/

Hershey and Blanchard propose that followers go through the 4 sections above S1-4. Personally, S2 and 3 are renamed as S2 Mentoring and S3 Coaching, as I define mentoring as mentor-driven and coaching coachee-driven.

S1. Directing: In the main direction by the leader and little support;

Follower: Low competence and low motivation.

Things to say,

Do this, just like this. Don’t ask questions.

S2. Mentoring: a lot of direction by the leader and a lot of support;

Follower: Low competence and high motivation.

Things to say,

We are working on this, this is how we are going to do it

S3. Coaching: little direction by the leader and a lot of support;

Follower: High competence and low motivation.

Things to say,

What are we working on? How do we make sure you get there?

S4. Delegating: little direction by the leader and little support;

Follower: High competence and high motivation.

Things to say,

What are you working on? What do you need from me?

Credited to: Obviously, the above plan was influenced by Fullan, Kotter and Lewin as well as the various leaders I have had the pleasure of working with.

Columns 

I start by listing the why at the top, normally this is a school improvement priority, this is to keep this at the forefront of your mind. Start at the right, detail your success criteria and note any opportunities of measuring it. Then move to what you ultimately want at that stage, and then finally to the who, how and when. The when is important, it not only allows you to hold other able but yourself too. The impact of setting a deadline is psychological, making anything time-sensitive creates a sense of urgency.

Rows

Increasing Urgency: All followers must be made aware of the environment and need for change. If done properly followers will manoeuvre themselves towards the change voluntarily. Additionally, it will provide the impetus for change.

Lewin refers to this as a frozen stage, we all heard people say ‘it’s just the way we do things around here’, work has to done to move organisations from this mindset to unfreeze.

Building the team: Thought must be given to who you bring to lead along-side. I would think around all staff including resistors in some cases and the dissonance will enrich them and refine the messages and actions of the initiative.

Getting the vision right: This is where as a leader you take a step back and guide, together with your team you build a joint vision, as long as the school priority is adhered to who cares where the vision comes from. Leadership is always about ‘we go’ and never about an individual ego.

Communicate for buy-in: Start this stage with building a language around the initiative, providing a coherent message. Plan for responses to resistor to engage and bring them on board. I advocate valuing dissonance here, engaging and not engaging is often driven through the same passion and harnessing this energy is part of your role.

Empower Action: Change agents will need resources to make to the initiative successful, as a leader how are you going to make this happen? Do they need times, training, money, self -efficacy, coaching, etc?

Creating short-term wins: Many initiatives lose their impetus because other day to day priorities get in the way. Keep the momentum through monitoring and celebrating wins, this keeps energy levels around the initiative high.

Don’t let up: Even if the initiative has far surpassed where you envisioned. Evaluate the initiative, forensically, learn from the failures and then adapt what you have and then repeat the process. Refine the process and vision, all the while recruiting more and more followers until it reaches its climax.

Make it stick: Ask yourself

Is the initiative worth keeping?

If the answer is yes then make it stick. Embed it into the culture of your organisation, make it a priority, write it into policy. Sustainable systemic change is the ultimate role of a leader and a great measure of one. Organisations are not built on individuals but the systems that they all follow. When leaders leaves do the systems continue seamlessly? or do organisation descend into chaos?

What you are essentially doing in this final stage is returning the organisation (in this aspect) to the frozen stage,  until you are ready to change it for the better.

Please do contact me if you want a copy of the original plan.

As educators, our core purposes will be around providing the skills and knowledge, in doing so leading to the best possible life opportunities for our pupils; I know mine certainly is.

I’ve been thinking deeply about the ‘our’ in our pupils. Who are they? Who do we serve? Is it the pupils within our own classrooms? Is it the pupils within our own schools? Or are ‘our pupils’ the pupil body as a whole.

‘You are not leaders within you classrooms and schools.

You are leaders within *our* profession’

Hannah Wilson  @TheHopefulHT

 

With this in mind, what is the essence of collaboration? I don’t mean the collaboration within your organisation, I mean collaboration across the local to the international community to benefit the pupils we all serve.

This sounds uncomfortable, even for me as I type, I feel myself wincing at the idea. I was trained and I practised during the of my whole career under the era of league tables.

Let me ruminate around this;

What is the point of an ‘open evening’? School A. pulls out all the stops, invites prospective parents to the school in a hope to win the best crop of pupils from the community. Leaving the less able crop to the Schools B through Z.

Presumably, this leads to better a nicer teaching environment, better outcomes, leadership is allowed to flourish, recruitment and retention issue become easier to manage, This then leads to school A becoming more desirable; through a better OfSTED grading, which leads to house prices rising, attracting more affluent families to the area meaning this process then propagates.

School A. is now the go-to, first choice, school; Great!

What now happens to schools B-Z, even more importantly what happens to the community who are served schools A-Z?

How does any of the above serve the community as a whole? 

From a community perspective; schools all serve the same pupils, and every pupil deserves the best possible life chances.

Why introduce a competitive nature to state education? There is the competition drives change argument; I agree schools are innovating to get ahead of the race; however, this still begs the question how does this serve the whole community?

In my training year, I suggested collaborating with a local school. I remember my line manager scoffing, telling me that we want our pupils to perform better than the pupils at local schools as that would be that mean that our results would be higher than theirs.

Imagine if we abolished that mode of thinking, what could we achieve together?

1. Shared capital resources across the community. 

A Science laboratory, a coach/minibus, a sports hall, etc. How do we justify schools not sharing their resources (especially when they are not being used)? When the school next door is in need or even worse paying for them.

2. Shared teaching resources across skills.

If you serve a community why wouldn’t you share resources with teachers who also serve the same community? The same is true for school trips, school events, revision sessions, external speakers all could be completed together for bulk discounts.

3. Shared teachers across schools.

When interviewing two great Physics teachers, you hire one and pass the details of the other to a local school, this is used to happen under the old LEAs, now collaboration on this level is unlikely to exist due to the competitive nature of education. Now let’s take it one step further, a school has 3 great Physics teachers and another has none. Send one across. As we serve a community, school teachers are also a resource for that community.

4. Shared CPD and staff shadowing

Where opportunities don’t exist in one school, let staff take the responsibility in another; yes you may lose leaders as they are taken out of your school but the community/profession doesn’t lose them.

5. Teachmeets and JPD across schools

In every school, I have ever worked is a range of differing talents from pockets of amazing practice to teachers who need rudimental support. The nature of CPD and INSET rarely cater for everyone. However, imagine looking CPD as a regional endeavour with a joint CPD pot; the possible modes of delivery excite even me as I type.

6. Evaluation and School Improvement

Putting OfSTED out of business. The best people placed to judge and hold a school accountable and provide context-specific support are the local schools. There is not one function do OfSTED perform which could be completed by local regional schools.

7. Pupil experiences across schools (instead of managed moves and movements to fit the pupil’s skills)

Managed moves and permanent exclusions, after the fines and appeals those very same pupils either end up in local schools or they end up in alternative provision. ALL PAID OUT OF THE SAME BUDGET. Let’s just stop the bureaucracy, cut out the middle person make the whole thing more efficient.

There is a similar open day process with schools key stage 5; Instead of fighting over sixth form students because of the funding they bring, centres of excellence for subjects could be created and pupils could move fluidly around centres.

8. Greater link primary, secondary and sixth form provisions.

In my experience, the pastoral transition between key stage 2 and 3 is usually completed really well. However the academic transition is often overlooked, I’d postulate this is due to the hierarchical nature of schools (a conversation for another day). Can you imagine a local school system where secondary school teachers offer their expertise to primary and primary to secondary? Magic.