The Art of Being a Brilliant Middle Leader by Gary Toward

Author:Gary Toward [Gary Toward, Chris Henley and Andy Cope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785830617
Publisher: Crown House Publishing
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is.

Finally, there’s the room of regeneration, a heady place where you are Ofsted outstanding, award-winning, media- and parent-friendly. Everybody understands the vision, staff are playing to their strengths and, guess what, work doesn’t feel like work. This room takes an awful lot of graft to get into and is very easy to fall straight back out of and into one of the other three. The inspectors arrive and give you the handshake of ‘outstanding’, so what do you do? You go out and celebrate with lots of beer and backslapping about ‘how good we are’ and ‘I think everyone else needs to change to be a bit like us’ and, boom, you’ve come full circle back to complacency.

It’s easy to peep into the regeneration room but before long someone will slam the door in your face. Too much of a pupil premium gap? Too much pupil absence? Now, we know this is hard to do but, for the purposes of this room, we think it’s best to disentangle yourself from the yoke of Ofsted. Stand back and ask yourself, ‘Where are we now, and how can I, as a leader, help us to move forward as a team?’

The challenge arises because there is no magic silver bullet of an answer. You will have already twigged that different members of your team might be in different rooms and therefore require different remedies. And herein lies the art of being a brilliant leader: applying the right leadership to the right people in the right amount and at the right time. Crikey! If this was easy we’d have every school led by extraordinary people with staff bouncing in like Tigger and kids skipping to school swinging their satchels in glee and asking for extra homework. So, easy it is not. Challenging, exhausting, frustrating and totally worthwhile, it is!

The leader’s role involves tapping into a well of inner inspiration. If you can do this, you will be a positive energiser, creating and supporting the vitality of staff and pupils. You will have an uplifting and boosting effect that leaves others feeling lively and motivated.

High performing organisations have three times more ‘positive energisers’ than average organisations.2 Kim Cameron‘s recipe for a flourishing organisation is that managers need to model positive behaviours, and build networks (i.e. allow the behaviours), as well as reward and support them.3 Also, crucially, positive staff should be placed in key positions so they can influence others. Andy calls this the ‘leadership multiplier effect’. By empowering your team to look deeply at themselves – thereby engaging them in the process of change – and constantly and consistently valuing every contribution (as we explained earlier), you will stand a much better chance of creating a high performing team.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.