Leading Teaching and Learning - Leadership Style

12th February

Leading Teaching and Learning - assessing my learning style.

During the session we were given the opportunity to think about which leadership style we were. Around the room were the 6 leadership styles:

• Coaching
• Pacesetting
• Democratic
• Affiliative
• Authoritative
• Coercive.

We were asked to stand by the one we thought best described our own leadership style. I went to Coaching.  I felt that I would lead a team by giving a "Try this" approach, to improve performance and give a positive impact. This style of leadership would also allow to see the development of the team, seeing if they had been effectively coached and reached the goals through this coaching.
This learning style helps the people who are being led to understand their strengths and in turn develop and achieve their long term goals. This would ensure that the members of the team would feel commitment and loyalty in their leader who has given them the responsibility and skills to perform a set task.

After a brief discussion we felt that there are limitations with this learning style however, in particular it can be very time consuming and if the team are resistant to change, it can be challenging to coach new methods. This can be a major problem in schools as a lot of staff have their own set way of doing things and can be resistant to change. If coaching becomes too controlled, it can become coercive and this may lead to a team which resents the leader and demotivation.


There was the chance to complete a leadership style questionnaire which would give an assessment of our leadership styles based on 5 questions. I felt that this questionnaire would still point to me having a coaching style of leadership. This however, was not the case.

The assessment gave the results that I was primarily a Democratic leader.  This does make sense as I would rather get a teams consensus and solve problems together rather than just impose my ideas on them. Involving people in decisions and strategies is a sure fire way to maintain motivation as everyone feels that they are working towards a common goal which they all have input into. This leadership style should lead to a positive impact on the team. This leadership style does lead to improved trust and respect within the team and teams feel valued.

The issue with this is that in times of stress a team may just want to be told what to do rather than have a discussion. This can lead to quicker solutions rather that deliberating a pressing issue.

When working in the department and leading a team on Boys underachievement, it will be crucial to use a range of the leadership styles, depending on the situation and the member of staff involved.

Session 3 - Teamwork

Session 3 - 16th January

Developing Leaders - Teamwork

The sessions started by analysing what is Good Teamwork. My initial ideas are below:

Shared goals

Equality

Adaptability

Effective communication

Trust

Humour

Friendliness.

In groups we then used our own ideas to complete the table below which looked at teamwork and what it looks, sounds and feels like.
 
Teamwork

Looks like	Sound like	Feel like
Relaxed atmosphere	Ideas sharing	Eustress
Efficient	Laughter	Happy
United	Holding to account	Valued

 The theory for this session surrounded Meredith Belbin's  9 Team roles. These are:

·         Coordinator

·         Plant

·         Resource investigator

·         Shaper

·         Monitor evaluator

·         Teamworker

·         Implementer

·         Completer finisher

·         Specialist

 Each team contains these members and I feel that after the tasks I am a Plant, Shaper and Teamworker.

A Plant is creative, imaginative, free-thinking. New ideas are Generated and difficult problems are solved. There are some allowable weaknesses such as ignoring incidentals and sometimes you can be too preoccupied to communicate effectively.

To do: Come up with ideas and suggestions for solving problems and working out solutions. Invent a new way of tackling the issues in hand. Create an original piece of work. Look at things from a different angle.

Not to do: Evaluate your own ideas. Have strong ownership of your own ideas when co-operation would yield better results.

A Shaper is challenging, dynamic and thrives on pressure. A shaper has the courage to overcome obstacles. The allowable weaknesses are being prone to provocation and offending peoples feelings.

To do: Get things moving. Stop complacency and laziness. Be honest and straight forward and open with others. Make sure the team is achieving goals. Push things forward.

Not to do: Hold grudges, become overbearing. Lose you sense of humour when the going gets tough.

A Teamworker is co-operative, perceptive and diplomatic. Can listen to others and avert friction. Allowable weaknesses are that you can be indecisive in crunch situations and avoids confrontation.

It is easy to identify these roles in team situations and knowing the allowable weaknesses allows you to delegate and co-ordinate much more effectively as you can plan for this.  

To do :  Promote good team atmosphere by reacting to the needs of others. Support members of the group when necessary. Become a broker in times of argument and defuse any hostility.

Not to do:  Avoid situations that may entail pressure. Side wit h the most dominant in  a desire to please.

 

It was useful to have the roles of a team broken down in order to see how a team works effectively and how to plan to ensure that  you know how to deal with each team member to get the best out of them.

 

 

 

Project decision

Following from the last session, I thought about what I wanted to do and felt that my initial idea was too far removed from my day to day job and wasn't really relevant at the moment with what I want to achieve at the moment. Therefore, following discussions with my Head Of Department, it was suggested that I look at the performance of boys in ICT in Years 9, 10 11. This will involve me analysing the performance of boys after each set of data is produced. This will lead to leading the department in looking at which interventions we can put in place to help to bridge the gap between boys and girls achievement.

Introduction and first day reflections

Introduction
The main expectations I had and indeed have for the course are that:

• I will develop an understanding of the personal qualities that I need to become an effective leader.
• I will learn from the experience of others.
• I will develop strategies to overcome common issues with leadership.

We began by listing what we thought were effective leadership qualities. My list consisted of the following:

• Role model
• Experienced
• Problem solver
• Calmness under pressure
• Innovator
• Good people skills
• Human/compassion
• Organised
• Delegator
• Knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the members of their team
• Utilising the strengths and addressing the weaknesses of their team

These qualities were those which I thought were the most important.

The Chief inspector believed that outstanding schools had strong governance and leadership.
In my opinion, a school's leadership flows from the top of the hierarchy (the Headteacher) to the bottom of the leadership hierarchy (Middle Leaders). Without the leaders at the bottom, the leaders at top would struggle to do an effective job. Furthermore, the leaders at the top of the hierarchy must be sure that the Middle Leaders are effective in leading their teams in order for the whole school to progress effectively.

Effective leaders:

• Motivate people to develop new ideas
• Shapes their department, their team
• Opens up new horizons for themselves and their team
• Behaves with emotional intelligence, knowing how to deal with difficult situations
• Does the right thing
• Concerned with ends and the future direction of their department/team/school
• Empowers people
• Is dynamic

I can relate to an occasion where I felt effectively led, by a former Headteacher who recognised my skills pastorally and appointed me a Head Of House (Head of year equivalent at that particular school) even though at the time I was Learning Mentor and the other Heads of House were members of Teaching staff, so it was a risky step by the Headteacher. This decision by the Headteacher motivated me to develop new ideas,  it allowed her to shape her team, also it opened up new horizons and opportunities  for me and my career. Most of all, this empowered  me and allowed me to feel like a highly valued member of staff who became extremely motivated by this decision and gave me lots of confidence as to  my standing within the school.

Kolb Learning Style

I carried out a questionnaire to determine my learning style. My  'kite' was very much pointing towards 'Active Experimentation' which was summarised by:

• Showing the ability to get things done
• Taking risks
• Influencing people through actions

This also pointed towards a Converging Style. The main points to this style are:

• Problem solving
• Making decisions based on finding solutions to questions
• Technical issues preferred over social ones
• Experimenting with techniques

These traits do relate to me, although I don't necessarily prefer technical issues over social ones.

A Converging Style of learning means that I should work on:

• Creating new ways of thinking and doing
• Experimenting with new ideas
• Choosing the best solution
• Setting goals
• Making decisions

The main areas that I feel to progress in are:

• Initiating and getting things done
• Adapting to situations
• Reflection
• Being imaginative
• Brainstorming

I'm not totally sure of what I want to do for my project. I currently feel that we could add some Maths to form times, to develop the basic mathematical skills of our tutees. I currently use the Maths weekly tests with my form during a "Reading or Maths" morning on a Wednesday. Some pupils ask for the Maths rather than wanting to read. The Maths tests are 25 questions long and are available in a range of ability levels. This could be an activity that could be managed and rolled out to progress tutors, in a similar way to the PSHE in the 'News, but probably without the teacher needing to do anything to plan. As I am not a Maths teacher however, I'm not sure that this would be a good focus for myself.

Another idea would be to work with the very able pupils, but I am unsure of how that would involve leadership.

Plenty to think about before November.