The last of Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s keys is to lift others up. For me this is the most powerful. There are two elements to this:
The first is to consider the structures and support needed to help colleagues to carry out their work. One of the ways to do this is to consider how professional learning is offered.
Does it make us feel better about our work?
Does it makes us feel better about ourselves?
Will it help us to offer lessons to our pupils and students that really make them think?
Do we feel we are being invited into professional learning?
Does it feel as though it is done with us rather than to us?
Here’s an example of creating a professional learning session: one headteacher was concerned that his colleagues did not have an in-depth knowledge of children’s literature beyond a diet of Dahl and Walliams. He also knew that this would have implications for the range of texts offered to pupils. He needed an imaginative way to shift this.
So instead of asking colleagues to do this in their own time, he used a staff meeting to get the ball rolling. Colleagues came into the meeting expecting the usual agenda. Instead, they found a pile of children’s books on the table. He said to them, ‘Instead of the usual meeting we’re going to be reading some books! Just select any book that takes your fancy, spend the next half hour reading it or skimming it and then we’ll have a chat about what you think.’
What he found was that everyone was excited to have the chance to do this and virtually everyone wanted to take their book home! It hadn’t been the intention that they would continue in their own time, so what was going on here? Well, they had been invited into the professional learning; their curiosity had been provoked and they wanted to continue.
As Jerome Bruner said in The Process of Education, ‘A curriculum is more for teachers than it is for students. If it cannot change, move, perturb, inform teachers, it will have no effect on those whom they teach. It must be first and foremost a curriculum for teachers. If it has any effect on pupils, it will have it by virtue of having had an effect on teachers.’
And here, we have a neat, high impact example of Bruner’s insight.
The second aspect of ‘lifting others up’ is to encourage the people we work with. We know the difference that a kind word, a message of appreciation or support can make to our sense of doing a good job, so let’s not lose an opportunity to do the same for others. We’re very good at doing this for our pupils, let’s do the same for our colleagues!
The Leadership Lobby is now live! It’s a paced leadership course blended with live sessions over four terms with Andrew Morrish. If you’d like to know more, here’s a link to our recent webinar.
I hope this is helpful, feedback welcome!
Until next time
Mary