At the primary school where I’m chair of governors we are planning to recruit a new headteacher.  As you might expect, governors started by clarifying where we want to take the school in the future.  With thanks to my friend and ex-colleague Jim Laing  who prompted this question, I asked: what is the greatest threat to society today?  There were many, so I asked ‘which of those can we address in school?’ I suspect, given long enough, we would have been able to tick them off one by one.  We talked about self-worth, relationships and respect, breakdown of faith, amongst other things.  We might have added critical faculty, confidence,  love of learning, commitment to values and values-based education.  As governors, we have the privilege and the responsibility of setting the strategic direction of the school. If we fulfil our role effectively, what matters to the school will matter to the children.  We talk about primary schools having a role in putting in place the foundations.  Do we know what happens when our children arrive in and leave secondary school?  Not enough, is my answer.  Governors could and should be asking that question.  As the national education agenda demands that we work more closely with other schools, we have the potential to grow that influence: we could work with other primary and secondary schools, so that children have a consistent message from the age of two to 18.

As is often pointed out, we have the children for a very short time, so we need also to work with parents and families.  More importantly, though ‘No-one spends longer with children than they spend with themselves’ was a chance remark by a friend, which has stayed with me.  The new national standards of excellence for headteachers   describe governors as ‘guardians of the nation’s schools’.  By implication then, we are guardians of the nation’s education.  As a board of governors, have you a corporate view of what education is for?

In every school there will be a different balance between the focus on academic results and the pressure to achieve them.  It’s relatively easy for me: it’s not my job on the line if our academic results are not where we expect them to be.  In holding our headteacher to account, perhaps we should also be holding ourselves to account for the impact we are having, not just on this generation of staff and students, but on their children, and their children’s children.

Last month I visited York Minster.  It took 250 years to build. Perhaps those who laid the foundation-stones feared that their work would be in vain. They could not know what their legacy would be.   All we can know today is that over five or six generations the vision was strong enough to overcome all the barriers they faced so that – despite the more recent challenges  – the building still stands.   If we as governors embrace the opportunity to shape a society based on acceptance of difference, perhaps not in my lifetime, nor in my children’s, nor possibly in their children’s, but before the end of time, love will overcome fear.

The post Terror in Paris: what can schools do? first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Dear Vicki Davis (aka The CoolCatTeacher)

I’ve only just found your blog If I’m such a great teacher, why do I want to quit?   I’m sorry to be slow.  It took a long time to cross the pond.  I will now join the 100,000 followers.  I heard your cry and I want to tell you – like lots of your followers:  I’ve listened.   You and they know you’re not alone.  In fact, feeling as you were last April might even be normal.

Just because it’s normal, doesn’t mean it’s how it should be.

I don’t teach in a school.  I work with teachers – and more often school leaders. Sometimes standing on the touch-line allows me to see more of the game.  What I see is that schools are full of people who invest not just time and energy in teaching, they invest themselves, too.  They may not be perfectionists (and if they are, they will certainly be heading for burnout) but they live in a world where nothing is ever enough.  Scarcity breeds fear.   Fear gets in the way of becoming our best selves.  Helping someone else to realise their potential at the expense of your own is a poor choice, and when society demands that of us we need to say ‘no’.

I’ve just read your 12 Choices to help you step back from burnout.  It’s great.   Keep choosing to do the things that help you to stay healthy. But I want to say when we are exhausted, we lose the power to choose.  When we’re exhausted, we have no energy.  We need as much energy to stop doing something as we do to start.  So if we have no energy, and no power to choose – no ability to be our own advocate – we’re likely to get stuck on automatic pilot when actually, maybe what we need to do is to land the plane and take a short vacation.  Maybe you don’t need to quit.  What would happen if you pulled into a layby and thought about yourself?  What would happen if, instead of focusing so hard on helping others, you focused on helping yourself when you need it?

Then we get on to core beliefs …  How does this sit with your core beliefs and values?  How far do you value your own intrinsic worth – not your worth because you can be helpful to others, but the wonder that is you, body mind and spirit?  How often do you say to yourself ‘Today, I am enough’?

The term has just started.  You’re feeling resilient.  You know things will look different  by the time everyone gets to Christmas. Like runners in a marathon, you have to get through to the finish.  Why not make a pact with someone now?  When they see you hitting that wall which runners hit, get them to promise to ask you ‘are you sure you want to push through this?  Maybe your body is trying to tell you something’.  If your calling is to look after others, then put the oxygen mask on yourself before the plane spirals out of control.

Yours with great respect

Julia

PS Thanks for inspiring me to write this blog.

The post To CoolCatTeacher – and anyone else trying to balance doing their best with being their best first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

‘Think of  a reservoir high in the mountains of central Wales.  At one end of the long submerged valley is a dam with the technology to control the flow of the water.  The rest of the lake is the most evocative and powerful combination of natural features – rock, trees and water  …  All around the lake are small rivers and streams flowing down from the surrounding hills.  In many ways I see this scene as a metaphor for the inner-life of transformational leaders.

Each working day school leaders have to draw on their personal reservoir – on some days a steady flow will suffice, on other days the floodgates have to be open as energy, compassion, creativity, optimism, courage and hope are called on.  The deeper the reservoir, the more can be given, but eventually even the deepest reservoir will begin to run low.  A period of drought can transform a rich reserve into something arid and barren, incapable of nurturing and sustaining growth … ‘
from Rethinking Educational Leadership, West-Burnham, 2009

I was working with a headteacher.  ‘My resilience is low’ she said.  ‘I know I haven’t been looking after myself as well as I should, but there’s just been so much on’.  I have worked with this headteacher regularly over the past year.  At the heart of all she does are the needs of her pupils and staff.  Perhaps that’s part of the difficulty: they’re in her heart rather than in her head.  We have talked about her taking time out – and to be fair, she has put aside some time to work with her coach (not myself).  In many cases, though, time out of school has been with like-minded colleagues, most of whom ‘know’ that at this stage of the term, it’s ‘normal’  to be flat on the floor with almost no energy to get through the last 2 weeks.  What a year it’s been: at least 2 Ofsted frameworks; changes to the National Curriculum; the sudden and unexpected introduction of free school meals for children in Key Stage 1 (and who saw that one coming?); changes to the special educational needs code of practice; changes to assessment; reduction in staffing in other agencies leading to increased pressure on schools; and increased pressure on school budgets with more to come.   The pressure inevitably builds on the headteacher, particularly in primary schools, where the head may be the only person not in front of a class.

For possibly the past 5 years, at this time of year, headteachers I’ve spoken to have said ‘I’ve never known a year like it; it’s just been so full on’.  How many of them, I wonder, have increased their investment in themselves?

Last week, at the University of Worcester Festival of Leadership Learning we listened to Floyd Woodrow talk about elite leadership.  Given the audience where ‘elite’ often means ‘privileged’ and ‘better resourced’ I wondered how everyone would react.  What I took from his explanation of the term, however, is that we can all work to reach elite status, given  motivation, drive and practice.  The elite perform exceptionally because they practise.   Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers tells a similar story.  Those at the top of their game, whether in the field of sport, music, or battle: all practice.  Gladwell talks about practising for 10,000 hours. Leaders are no different.  Floyd talked about training your mind: drilling it, to prepare for the unexpected.    If you want to move from the transactional to the transformational as a leader, you need to be prepared to invest in yourself.

Headteachers have it tough.  High accountability, high profile, working in a system that expects them to fix society, where (as we discussed afterwards) if you get it wrong, you can quickly forfeit your career.  Floyd held the attention of 50 headteachers for 2 hours.  In the world he referred to, it isn’t just your career you forfeit if you get it wrong, it’s your life – and potentially that of many others.  It doesn’t get tougher than that.

He talked a lot about building resilience.  In a small group conversation afterwards we confronted the reality of what that means.  It means practice.  Practice is what builds new neural pathways; it’s what moves us from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence.

When I was asked to run a 2-hour session which would result in headteachers recognising when they are stressed and doing something about it, I politely (I hope) pointed out that it takes more than 2 hours to effect behavioural change.  You cannot build resilience with the ‘sheep-dip’ approach.  It takes time, commitment and practice.   Next term I shall be working with a headteacher and his senior leaders on developing emotional resilience for school leadership.  It’s a year-long programme.  As a leader of learning, he recognises that embedding learning takes time.  As leaders, we need to listen and attend to our own needs.  The alternative is to project them on to others so that we can take care of them, and risk infantilising our colleagues, and exhausting ourselves at the same time.

I challenge you to finish next school year with something in reserve.  To do that, you need to plan and practise.  Do something each week which will support your resilience.  Resilience is intensely personal.  Only you know for sure what supports and undermines your resilience, so do more of the former and less of the latter.  If only it were that simple…  You have to be prepared to invest in yourself.  More about that anon.  For now, consider some of these behaviours that might help you in building resilience.

The post Topping up your resilience reservoir first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

I was around when Ofsted was invented

I gave up Ofsted inspections in 2000 to focus on something where I felt I could make a difference in the longer term.  Now I support headteachers through coaching and helping them to develop resilience to deal with the stresses of the job. We’re told that ‘good leaders will allow teachers to identify and celebrate what their strengths are’.   In my experience, too many good leaders forget to celebrate their own.    It’s as though there’s a silent conspiracy amongst school leaders: it’s not okay to take care of yourself as a leader, you have to be looking after everyone else.  Leaders absorb all the projections and insecurities of those around them – including a government and press who want to blame schools for all society’s ills. Resilient leaders know it’s important to take care of themselves – to put on their own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs.  When you’ve spent months climbing the mountain, are near the top, and the oxygen supply is thin, it’s easy to hallucinate and imagine you can manage by simply holding your breath.

Correspondence in the TES (8th March, 2013) suggests that the only organisation to be surprised that Ofsted inspections are data led is Ofsted.  As a school governor, Mr Wilshaw, I know that data is important; I also know that the latest dashboard doesn’t tell the whole story.   There can be no excuse for a school which fails its students – but there can be lots of reasons – many of them outside the school’s immediate control. A system is only as compassionate as those who implement it.  Staff in good schools understand the reasons for students’ under-achievement and consistently support them to improve.  We know that the climate created by the leader has a significant impact on the way staff perform.  Should we be surprised that compassion is largely missing from the inspection system?

The post Ofsted – requiring improvement first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Rather than speeding past him, the 24-year-old quickly caught up with him, stayed behind him and gestured towards the finishing line, allowing the Kenyan to cross the line first.
Anaya is reported to have said ‘today, with the way things are in all circles, in soccer, in society, in politics, where it seems anything goes, a gesture of honesty goes down well’

Friday 24th January 2013 sees the launch of the UK Values Alliance. The stated vision of the Alliance is to build a values-driven UK society where all people are consciously aware of and live their values

Their starting point is the Barrett Values Centre’s  2012 survey of the national and community values of the people of the UK, whose results will be revealed at the launch.  The detailed statistics are embargoed until then, but they reveal an interesting capacity to discount our own experience in favour of what we believe about society as conveyed through the media.  If everyone consciously lived their values, and was able to interact with others doing the same, would that change our perceptions of society?

Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979-1990 famously said ‘there is no such thing as society’.  Whether or not we agree with the comment in the context in which it was made,  I wonder whether a resolution to talk about and take responsibility for our own experience, rather than ‘what happens in society’ would result in a different picture.   It’s human nature to seek evidence which confirms our beliefs.  It’s not difficult to find examples of people behaving dishonestly, showing disrespect, putting themselves first or behaving in other ways which might challenge our principles.  It’s a short step from there to believing that ‘everybody does it’ and giving ourselves permission to do the same.  When we behave contrary to our values, we lack authenticity and it’s harder for people to trust us – or indeed for us to trust ourselves.

Values-led education is a growing movement. Every school leader knows the importance of articulating educational values, yet schools rarely assess systematically the extent to which their own values are experienced by – and resonate with – all members of their community.  When our work allows us to live our values, the work becomes easier.  Our efforts go with the grain of the corporate wood, rather than across or against it.  We are able to take our whole selves to work, knowing that what is important to us is valued by our organisation.  Being conscious of and using this knowledge allows organisations to tap in to what Richard Barrett, founder of the Values Centre, calls ‘the new social capital’.

Imagine what might be achieved if everyone in the UK contributed to realising ‘the new social capital’; if you and those closest to you openly talkes about any mismatch between behaviour and values; if you knew that you and your boss had agreed on what’s most important to you and your organisation and always behaved accordingly.

You can help by being values-conscious and values-driven.  If you’d like to know more about yourself and explore what’s important to you, and you can carry out the free personal values assessment on the Values Centre website.

To learn more about the UK Values Alliance, visit http://www.facebook.com/UkValuesAlliance

The post Living your values first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.