My first post on the Leadership Lobby drew on showing up, the first of Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s keys to success. Moss Kanter has identified six characteristics of people working in healthy, inclusive and successful organisations. Her second key is to ‘speak up’ where she encourages us to use our unique voice.
She urges us to remember that we all have something to bring to the conversation; that we all have insights that can be used to solve problems; and that if we remain silent our colleagues might miss out on working through solutions, finding better ways and gaining new insights.
I think there is another dimension to speaking up and it is this: that each of us has an obligation to encourage others to speak up. Sometimes people feel that their opinions won’t be valued, they might be new to a role, they might have just joined a school, or they might be an early career teacher or a teaching assistant. How often are their views sought? What might we be missing out on if we don’t tap into their ideas?
So let’s think about the next staff meeting or department meeting: who might be hesitant, unconfident and can we draw them out? Sometimes the response to this is that we don’t want to put people under pressure, and that’s fair enough. In which case, we could invite colleagues to do a form of ‘think, pair, share’ which we know is a great strategy for drawing out ideas, insights, observations and sometimes misconceptions in our classrooms. We could use something similar, that gives people a chance to think, a chance to talk through with a partner and then the invitation to share with a larger group.
That’s when the magic happens: when everyone believes that their voice is valued, that their voice is heard.
I’ll be reflecting on the other keys in future posts and the Leadership Lobby is now live! It’s a paced leadership course blended with live sessions over 4 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