Leadership and the curriculum

Why school culture matters

Hello there!

This is a new strand on my substack where I’ll be sharing thoughts and questions about leadership.

There are two reasons for this:

1. I’m increasingly convinced that in order to get cracking with great work on the curriculum, we need to revisit the culture within schools. And this starts with leadership: we can have all the ideas and terrific resources in place, but curriculum development is less likely to take off and maintain momentum if the ways of working feel ‘off’.

2. I’m going to be running an online leadership course with Andrew Morrish and I want to share some of the thinking that has informed my own development.

If this isn’t for you, you can unsubscribe from this element of the substack!

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

I want to start off with some thoughts on Rosabeth Moss Kanter's six keys to success. Moss Kanter is professor of business at the Harvard Business School and in her work with thousands of organisations around the world has identified six characteristics of people working in healthy, inclusive and successful organisations.

Here they are

• Show up

• Speak up

• Look up

• Start every meeting with why we do this: reminding ourselves of our vision and values

• Team up: everything goes better with partners

• Never give up: everything can look like a failure in the middle

• Lift others up

The first of Moss Kanter's six keys is: Showing up

There is no point in running away, in absenting ourselves from the work in hand. Credit and rewards over time, go to those who stick with the work, through the tough as well as the better times.

Showing up is a discipline. By refusing to give up and resisting the urge to be either physically or mentally absent creates resilience and power in the long term. It also sets an example to others.

It can be tempting to show up physically, but not make the real effort to engage. In other words to be mentally and emotionally absent. Paying attention is the way to over come this.

Giving respect to ourselves and others for sticking things out over the long haul, will make the later rewards sweeter.

I’ll be reflecting on the other keys in future posts and if you’d like to know more about the online course, it’s called the Leadership Lobby, starting in April and we’ll be doing a couple of webinars on Wednesday 1 February 6-7pm online and Thursday 9 February 7-8pm online. Free to join.

I hope this is helpful, feedback welcome!

Until next time

Mary