Training & Development

I really valued the fact that the course focused on an authentic type of leadership. I have been on leadership courses before and there is a definite push to identify inspirational leaders and try to adopt their approaches. This course was much more focussed on identifying areas of personal strength and weakness and building/ developing those so that you can lead but in your own way. The reading was also fantastic, especially the texts on bias.

I think it would be useful if there was a bigger reading list. I really feel inspired and I would like to be able to sit down over the summer holidays and get stuck into some of the reading. I also valued the role plays a lot, I think some of the scenarios used (especially in the session on conflict/ conversations) were really close to the bone and gave us a genuine chance to practise.

I think the balance was perfect. At the end of the day, sometimes you just need someone with knowledge and experience you don’t have to make suggestions and tell you about things you don’t know about yet. Most coaching programmes just steadfastly refuse to do that and it’s incredibly frustrating. The cynic in me wonders if coaching is such a popular model because it allows people with limited knowledge and brains to hide behind “but what do YOU think?”. (I know real coaching is supposed to be more than this! Just think it’s easy to fake.) At the same time, the coaching aspect has really helped me to develop habits of critically appraising my own thoughts and actions as well as those of colleagues. Being asked to think and apply principles builds your fluency in that kind of thinking I guess, and your confidence.

I think the opportunities to talk with colleagues were really valuable both because of the thinking that developed in the conversations and also the culture of middle leadership that we have built in our school as a result of them. The delivered parts of the sessions were excellent. They were well-planned with attention to detail and it was clear they represented great wisdom born of wide reading, experience and intrinsic acumen. I appreciate all of this even more because I know that most leadership courses are really not like this and would not be the sort of thing I would get a lot from, so this is very unique. I consider myself very lucky to have been invited to take part.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the course. I have attended other leadership courses through Teach First and Ambition School leadership which I have enjoyed but haven’t always found useful. I think I expected this course to be thought provoking and get me to self reflect. I didn’t expect the course to be so practical and to give us time to practise. The fact that the role plays and scenarios were brought into in the sessions was invaluable. It gave me a chance to understand some of the theory and ideas behind interactions and then really practise. It has also changed the way I approach colleagues on a daily basis and made it easier for me to address challenging issues in a positive way. The one-to one coaching sessions were also brilliant. Having a really safe space to sit and talk about issues that were arising was genuinely very useful. It made me think about how others might perceive my behaviour and asked a lot of thought provoking conversations. These conversations and questions have really challenged me and forced me to look at my own behaviour and interactions every day.

The coaching was probably the best part of the entire course in my opinion. I think I had a lot of personal ideas/ misconceptions about leadership and the type of leader that I ought to be. The coaching sessions helped me to realise that I am already a leader and that in order to be the best leader I can be, i need to be genuine and follow my

own style. That said, the coaching sessions helped me identify areas of weakness that I need to work on and also offered thought provoking  conversations to see how others might interpret situations. For example, one thing I have learned is that it is very easy to create a narrative  in your head about what you think is going on in school and the way that other people perceive you. This is not only damaging to professional relationships, but it also discredits colleagues by making the assumption that you immediately understand what is going on their heads. I now know that first and foremost, when I start to create a narrative in my head I should stop myself and seek to understand where the other individual is coming from. This approach has helped me foster a really positive relationship with one of my colleagues that was previously quite strained. Another aspect of the coaching that really helped was hearing some personal experiences. Although we were never pushed to follow examples, hearing about other people's experiences in a very self-reflective way has made a huge impression and left me with a lot to think about. For example, whereas previously I might be drawn into quite negative conversations with colleagues about the high pressure of the job or performance management expectations, I now have a better understanding (or rather know to go first and get a better understanding) of why certain procedures have been put in place and how they can actually be incredibly positive.