waka

A personal story of leadership for learning

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Leading authentically and mindfully closes the gap between our intentions and reality. Being culturally responsive requires effort, and relational pedagogy is an experience best measured by those around you. It’s not what you say you do, it’s how others experience your decisions and actions that defines your leadership and ultimately leads to successful outcomes.

This post shares my learning from leading a Ministry of Education funded national project supporting the implementation of the revised curriculum Te Whāriki He whāriki mātauranga mō nga mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum (2017). I was excited by the challenge and opportunity to work with others to develop new leaders, build unity through early learning networks, and strengthen practice across the sector.

waka

Two recent events have prompted my reflection on how others experience my leadership and its relevance to my learning.

  • The first is the name kaiurungi given to me by a colleague to describe my new role at CORE Education as navigator of the waka of the Early Years team.
  • The second event is an expression of leadership portrayed in the image above by Ngāi Tahu artist Morgan Hale-Matthews, which was commissioned by a stunning group of wahine toa/strong women.

Part of my role included recruiting and leading 26 ngā Kāiaki Marautanga/Curriculum Champions to support the implementation of Te Whāriki across Aotearoa. This taonga/art piece was presented to me at our final hui along with some stories and recollections of my leadership. The korowai/cloak adorned by 26 feathers represents each curriculum champion. The image and their tribute are dear to my heart and reminds me of our shared experiences, and my learning, and acts of leadership. When I look at this image and hear the name kaiurungi/navigator, I think about two things — my leadership intentions and others’ experiences of my leadership.

The context — Leading a project on the implementation of the revision of a highly acclaimed and treasured curriculum, Te Whāriki, was daunting. The kaupapa demands a compelling vision for all children in Aotearoa. I entered a new work environment with different systems and online tools, developed and led a national team, worked in partnership with the ministry, and engaged with diverse perspectives across the country. One of the hardest things was the high expectations and, at times, polarising feedback from a very interested ECE sector. I quickly became overwhelmed and consumed with worry.

My story and what helped? I will focus on the following four areas that are important to me and have guided me in my leadership practice.

● Self-efficacy and emotional intelligence
● Authenticity and leading mindfully
● Acting with purpose to ‘be’ culturally responsive
● Relational [online] pedagogy

What does it look like, feel like, and sound like?

Self-efficacy and emotional intelligence: My previous learning and focus on self-awareness helped me to be resilient and adaptive in this situation. Being successful in leadership has been linked to having a strong sense of self efficacy and emotional intelligence. Self-efficacy is more than having confidence, it means believing in your own abilities. This required me to think about and define what success for me looks like, feels like, and sounds like.

Goleman (2018) considers emotional intelligence one of the most significant success factors in the context of leadership. This includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Goleman suggests we check in with others and warns against only going by your own sense of how well you do. We all have blind spots when considering our own strengths and limitations — from the very humble to the ego driven personalities. He recommends seeking an evaluation of your emotional intelligence from people who work with you, know you well, and whose opinions you trust.

New pathways and insight are created by being open to feedback and a review of your work. Having the courage to ask for help was a defining moment for me that resulted in a shift in mind-set. I began to see things differently, changed my expectations, reprioritised, and intentionally moved into a space of uncertainty that, overtime, became comfortable. Constantly consolidating, chunking things down, adapting my ideas, and checking in with others became a useful strategy. Some advice I received was to use my connections and the people around me well. When you actively work to create a culture of respect and seek input from others, you increase the intelligence of the group. This created powerful learning moments. At times, feedback or a different perspective would stop me in my tracks and lead to a greater understanding. Acknowledging my learning and understanding my emotions and reactions helped me to be strong enough to change my mind, be less planned and scripted. What does it look like, feel like, and sound like to be agile and responsive?

Dr Kate Thornton online

Shared with permission from Dr Kate Thornton guest webinar.
Ministry of Education Te Tāhuhu o Te Mātauranga: Spotlight:Leadership for Learning

Authenticity and leading mindfully

You don’t own your thoughts
Hold ideas lightly

Dr Kate Thornton provided a guest webinar on Leadership for Learning. She talked about the capability of authenticity. For me, being authentic means being true to yourself, honest with others, and aware of your influence and impact. Being vulnerable and in control of your emotions can lead to deeper learning opportunities. Alongside this is awareness of context and maintaining perspective. As leaders, we can spend a lot of time in our heads — thinking, reflecting, analysing, perfecting, re-visiting past events, and planning our responses. Whilst reflection and self-awareness are necessary, I learnt first-hand the impact of spending too much time in my head and worrying too much. This worry and overthinking is counterproductive and gets in the way of action, creativity, and seeing what you need to see. Investing in self-awareness and surrounding myself with different viewpoints helped me to lead in different and unchartered waters. Several points in the book, Leading Mindfully (Sinclair, 2016), resonated with me — most especially, the idea of getting out of my head. The strategies and suggestions in this book helped me to recognise when I was stuck, to understand my reactions and to let things go more quickly and move through things lightly. This freed me up to focus on what really matters.

Acting with purpose to ‘be’ culturally responsive

Another of the capabilities that Dr Kate Thornton referred to was having a clear vision and purpose. The project had clear deliverables and was based on a new model of teachers teaching teachers in a mostly online environment. My role and our vision was to grow others, build leadership capability, and create a new layer of leaders for the sector. This required deliberate and purposeful strategies. I talked with others, read about online pedagogy, and learnt about effective ways to develop an online community of practice. An important consideration was how can I lead and maintain a relational approach in an online space to build capability. My own vision and priority is to enact my responsibilities as a Tiriti partner. To be my authentic self, this situation could be no different. My cultural competence is always evolving and in recent years I have set myself a challenge:

when I know more, I do more

I no longer have excuses; I equip myself, challenge myself, and embrace the feelings of being a learner who is open to feedback and who may get it wrong, but tries. I feel the nerves and do it anyway. My professional responsibly as an educational leader is to role model respectful tikanga, use te reo Māori, and create opportunities and encounters for others that validate Māori as Māori. The idea of acting with purpose is a great way to ‘be’ culturally responsive. Promoting whanaungatanga and demonstrating tikanga-a-rua became a deliberate decision. With strong views and importance placed on kanohi kitea/the seen face, we had a big job to do — the kaupapa was Te Whāriki.

After 200 years of educational history Māori was, for the first time, being given the opportunity to influence a new curriculum that would touch the minds of future New Zealanders
(Reedy, 2014).

curriculum champions and CORE Education team

Ngā Kaiaki Marautanga/Curriculum Champions and CORE Education Early Years team at a hui with special guests Sir Tamati and Lady Tilly Reedy. Photo used with permission from CORE Education | Tātai Aho Rau.

Relational pedagogy — Leading a team in a mainly online environment

Working alongside the curriculum champions in an online community of practice was a highlight. At the beginning, there were mixed views about the online component as it was a new experience. I came to appreciate the way digital technology could afford us different and equitable opportunities to meet anywhere, anytime, across Aotearoa. I needed to overcome my own reservations, have an open mind, and inquire into the possibilities of online tools and platforms. We created a supportive and predictable routine of meeting online weekly, and I developed a regular post ‘from Kathryn’ to keep the group engaged and connected on CORE’s online platform Edspace. Building relational trust is what made the difference. Kaiako felt comfortable enough to be honest and ask for help. We were patient with each other. We struggled at times and celebrated in each other’s success.

Below is a breakdown of some of the ideas and strategies that we used to support online engagement and promote cultural responsiveness through a relational approach that was based on CORE’s Tātai Aho Rau values.

Whanaungatanga: relationships, identity, and whakapapa — What we focus on grows. At the forefront of our minds was people and place. Who do you bring with you? was suggested by one kaiako as a way to introduce ourselves for the first time. The success of our mahi was in the strength of our relationships.
Manaakitanga: an ethos of care and agency as a stimulating kaupapa — Establishing our tikanga and way of being through regular connection inclusive of all. Taking the role of hosting seriously and checking in with each other to share, console, and celebrate our achievements was important.
Co-constructing the agenda by being vulnerable ourselves as learners and engaging in dialogue we could hear what was on top and be responsive to new ideas, and experience just-in-time learning.
Wairuatanga: acting with moral purpose and connecting with heart — ensuring the uniqueness and wellness of each person is nurtured spiritually, physically, emotionally, and intellectually.
Kaitiakitanga: maintaining the integrity of the kaupapa. Harnessing the collective wisdom of the group to learn and share our ideas and culture about past, present and future. We needed to preserve and protect the kaupapa and its foundations, and be genuine in our engagement, so our time together was efficient, beneficial for all, and added value for future citizens of Aotearoa

My focus was building pedagogical leadership capability for effective curriculum implementation. My approach and intention was to be relational and role model cultural responsiveness as a starting place for having conversations about practice.

My experience taught me to keep getting to know myself, trust in my own abilities, value immensely the contributions and mentoring of others, and seek different viewpoints and perspectives.

● How do you intend to lead?
● How do you think you are going?
● What do others think?
● How do you really know?

Intentionally entering into an uncertain space required me to think differently and be well equipped. It is complex and comes from within, but it is also about understanding your context, being clear about the purpose, and taking action.

I want to finish with the following by Jan Robertson that aligns with my own views about effective leadership as a way of being.

Effective educational leaders:

are self-aware. They know their values, beliefs and assumptions about life, leadership and learning, and are critical, deep thinkers about how these perspectives impact on their leadership. They seek feedback;

know how to learn deeply from their everyday work of leadership, and they know how to enter relationships as a learner to create new knowledge and inspire vision for what might be;

know they are system leaders, not kura, kindergarten, or school leaders … they collaborate together with other leaders, within and across contexts, to think, and to transform the system of education;

understand the importance of partnership in relationship, and know how to partner in leadership, in learning and as Treaty partners …

are emotionally, socially, culturally and cognitively intelligent and responsive in their practice. They are ego-less in leadership and can build capacity in leadership by developing themselves and others around them. They see this as important leadership work;

are creative, informed thinkers who cross boundaries to seek and explore new places and spaces of learning and knowledge and inspire others to do the same as they continuously focus on the quality of teaching and learning;

are confident and intentional in leading transformative change, underpinned by a strong moral purpose for equity and future-focused learning opportunities;

are digitally confident and competent in e-learning communities and understand the potential of technology, networks and connectedness for enhancing learning;

are comfortable with ambiguity, complexity and not-knowing as they learn and adapt within their leadership practice.

(Robertson, 2017, p. 16).

Bibliography

CORE Ministry Video. (2018, July). Dr. Kate Thornton [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/277217640/7cad45e26f

Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand Matatū Aotearoa. (2017). Five Think Pieces. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Five%20Think%20pieces.pdf

Goleman, D. (2018, March 1). Do You Make This One Big Mistake About Emotional Intelligence? [Linked in]. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-you-make-one-big-mistake-emotional-intelligence-daniel-goleman/

Ministry of Education Te Tāhuhu o Te Mātauranga (2017). Te Whāriki He whāriki mātauranga mō nga mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, NZ: Author.

NZEI Te Riu Roa. (2016, November 9). Te Whāriki turns 20 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_3870276665&feature=iv&src_vid=xJOv5U3J7VQ&v=tyAQdhP69XY

Robertson, J. (2015). Think-piece on Leadership education in New Zealand In Leadership for Communities of Learning. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Five%20Think%20pieces.pdf

Sinclair, A. (2016). Leading Mindfully: How to focus on what matters, influence for good, and enjoy leadership more. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Te Whāriki Online. (2018). Spotlight: Leadership for learning. Retrieved from https://tewhariki.tki.org.nz/en/leadership/

 

Image credits:

Waka: Shared with permission from Ngāi Tahu artist Morgan Hale-Matthews

Dr Kate Thornton online:  Shared with permission from Dr Kate Thornton guest webinar.
Spotlight: Leadership for Learning: Ministry of Education Te Tāhuhu o Te Mātauranga: Spotlight:Leadership for Learning

Curriculum Champion team and CORE’s Early Years team photo: CORE Education

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grow your team

Grow your team

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grow your team
What’s going on in the place where you’re a leader? Leadership, teamwork, goal setting and planning are probably all areas that are no doubt part of your role and, in some cases, maybe where you may seek more support. The sharpest organisations are seeking out the right support, just when they need it, and that’s what I’m going to focus on in this post — where you currently ‘are’ as a leader, and the right support for you.

You’re a leader! Are you leading?

When you moved into a leadership role, it might have been because you showed some key leadership qualities. It also might have been because you were one of the best at what your organisation does (e.g., one of the most effective teachers, the best engineer, the most successful detective, or the most talented, client-focused hairdresser).

Either way, if you’re a leader, it might be worth reflecting on the following questions to see if you’re really leading:

Leadership style
  • What type of leader are you?
  • What were the qualities of your past, respected and admired, leaders?
  • What are the agreed qualities of leaders in your organisation? What is expected of you as a leader?
  • What type of leader does your team need and want? How do you know?
Developing others
  • In what ways are you empowering others around you who have the potential to become leaders?
  • How many of your staff have leadership aspirations?
  • Are you doing the work of your team, and as a result, holding them back from growing?
  • What qualities are you looking for in your staff? Do they know what you’re looking for?
Leadership accountability
  • What does your leadership role require of you?
  • Should you be on the ground sometimes doing the work? Or should you remain in strategic spaces overseeing others to do the work? Why?
  • Do others agree with you?
  • Are you clear about your organisation’s strategic plan and goals, and can you help others to understand how their work contributes to these?

You lead a team! Is it a team?

Leading teams is complex. Time, workload, personalities, and change impact on your priorities as a leader. Regardless, you are likely part of a team of leaders, and you are also leading a team — whether they are leaders or people on the ground doing the work. You may want to consider the following questions to uncover any assumptions you might have about your team(s):

  • Which team is your priority and why?
  • What expectations do you have of teams and how they work together?
  • Are some teams outperforming others? Do you know why?
  • How do you support teams to manage their time and workload?
  • Are team meetings boring with only one or two people talking most of the time? If yes, how can you change this?
  • What levels of trust exist in the team? How are you fostering trust on an ongoing basis? Are people able to disagree, and do team members enjoy a good debate?
  • How do you approach “difficult” personalities or step into “challenging” conversations?

Your team has goals! Are they ready for change?

All organisations have aspirations and goals. We are always seeking to improve what we do in any context. Aspirational goals mean ongoing change. Every leader needs to have a focus on leading change to some degree, and these questions will help you to uncover how you and others perceive change in your organisation:

  • Do people believe that change is needed?
  • Do all teams have clear goals that they had input into?
  • Do all team members know that their team goals will often require them to be in a constant state of change in order to reach those goals?
  • Which teams, or team members, appear to be stagnant and unchanging? Why?
  • How do you support people who are finding change difficult? Do you support them differently to those finding change straightforward?
  • What approaches are most effective when people are finding change difficult?
  • Are you struggling with change while also being expected to lead change? How do you manage this?

Help! What might help you as a leader?

It’s important to choose the support that is going to work best for you and the people in your organisation. Do this by involving your other leaders and teams who will be receiving the support. These people are most able to say what issues they currently face. They are also the best people to critique the range of support available. In seeking support, consider the following questions:

  • What are our issues and challenges?
  • What have we tried?
  • What worked?
  • What didn’t work?
  • What bothers us the most?
  • What hasn’t been tried yet?
  • What support can be tailored for our context? To what extent?
  • How often will we review this support to check that it is working?

 

You might not have all the answers to the questions in this post. With great leadership support you can find a range of solutions that best suit you and your organisation. That support can come in many forms, such as:

  • Individual leadership mentoring/coaching
  • Leadership Team mentoring/coaching
  • Change leadership support and facilitation
  • Teamwork and collaboration facilitation or mentoring (from building trust to communication to goal setting and conflict/debate strategies)
  • Online courses combined with face-to-face, or virtual, support
  • Support for coherent planning and action
  • Online support such as Educational Leaders and NZC Online

 
Image Credit
Fern by Michael Gaida from Pixabay under CC 0

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Middle Leadership Matters

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middle leadership meeting

At the heart of an educational organisation are its middle leaders. Middle leaders often describe their position as rewarding, yet challenging. On one hand, they believe that they can directly influence teaching, leading and learning, and on the other, they feel a real tension between their dual role as teacher and leader. As influential leaders within schools, they are expected to drive curriculum, change, and innovation (Ministry of Education, 2012). However, many middle leaders perceive that they are not adequately prepared for their leadership role, nor effectively appraised as middle leaders (Bassett, 2016, Cardno & Robson, 2016). Whilst the onus is on senior leadership to develop and appraise their middle leaders, evidence suggests otherwise. In the absence of government initiatives, we’d like to offer an online course that specifically supports middle leaders to meet this need.

According to the latest Education Review Office report (2017) on Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako, the priority for our education system is to achieve equity and excellence in learner outcomes. This requires effective leadership, which “builds collective capacity to do and use evaluation and inquiry for sustained improvement” (p.11). The advantage of an online course designed for middle leaders is that it provides ubiquity, connectedness, and flexibility, regardless of geographical location, or size of organisation. One of the key outcomes of this course is to build a community of leaders, and utilise a specific model of middle leader inquiry to enable critical reflection which has the power to improve outcomes for all, collectively. Enabling leaders to connect across communities offers them opportunities to curiously inquire into their own leadership practice, with a view to challenging their existing skillset, assumptions, and capabilities. In the online course, facilitators offer the external expertise required to ensure that middle leaders matter.

Organisations are complex, and as such, extremely challenging to lead and manage. Bassett (2016) asserts that middle leadership demands a set of leadership and management skills that require specialised knowledge and training. Drawing on the work of Bolman & Deal (2013), a set of principles are outlined to navigate the complex nature of leading from the middle. Using a multi-frame approach, middle leaders are supported to improve their leadership practice by exploring multiple perspectives “to understand and influence what’s really going on” (p. 40). These principles are: shared vision, developing culture, building relationships, and implementing systems/structures, each of which is unpacked within the middle leaders’ context, during the online course.

Ultimately, middle leaders matter. For our middle leaders to feel valued and developed as leaders, meaningful appraisal experiences and middle leadership development opportunities need to be a priority.

References:
Bassett, M. (2016). The role of middle leaders in New Zealand secondary schools: Expectations and challenges. Waikato Journal of Education, 21(1), 97-108
Bolman, L. G. & Deal. T. E. (2013). Reframing organisations: Artistry, choice and leadership (5thed.). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Cardno, C. & Robson, J. (2016). Realising the value of performance appraisal for middle leaders in New Zealand secondary schools. Research in Educational Administration & Leadership, 1(2), 229-254.
Education Review Office (2017) Communities of learning/Kāhui Ako: Collaboration to improve learner outcomes (Wellington: Education Review Office).
Ministry of Education. (2012). Leading from the Middle: Educational Leadership for middle and senior leaders. Wellington: Ministry of Education.

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Memes for change.  Getting out of the CAVE.

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The Internet is a wonderful thing. It has given us everything from dancing babies to cat videos. It is also an astounding place for the creation of communities of practice, the sharing of professional knowledge, and for people who are interested in quite narrow topics to find communities of affinity with others around the world.

One of the quite interesting things to come from the rise of social media in particular is the meme:

‘A meme (/ˈmiːm/ meem) is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.’
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Memes are exemplified by the fast spreading of things, like the dancing baby above, through social networks and social media. The wondering for me is:

“How do we make effective leadership and school change practices into memes?”

How can we make effectiveness and high performance contagious and for them to spread like some sort of disease that has no cure?  How can we develop the super-bug of effective school change?

Some of the key influencers of the effectiveness of change that I see in my work with schools and in the literature are:

  • Relationships — people need to develop trust and agreed ways of working before the ‘hard stuff’ of change can be a focus.  Only surface and ‘safe’ things can be explored.  There is a saying that equally applies to change:Maslow

This challenges us to ensure we have agreed ways of working and high levels of professional and personal trust before we can get to the really meaningful conversations and change efforts.

  • Understanding — I have written before about getting ideas outside the echo chamber and avoiding the Medici Effect.  Are you really getting to the underlying cause, or simply looking at and dealing with the symptoms? I think we often do this with assessment data – perhaps our literacy results are lower than we would like, so we do literacy Professional Learning and Development. But if we dug a little deeper and explored the information available to us a little more, we may find that engagement or home-school partnerships are larger causal factors than teacher pedagogical content knowledge specifically in an area of literacy. Sometimes, we don’t really understand the underlying causes of the data we are seeing, and, therefore, put our intentional change efforts in the areas that will not give us the best ‘bang-for-buck.’
  • A focus on comfort and happiness — change is often difficult and uncomfortable.  If the index of success is the degree to which everyone is comfortable and happy, then change becomes impossible. Comfort and change are, at least to some degree, mutually exclusive.  Understanding this (perhaps through models like Fullans’ Implementation Dip, or Nottingham’s Learning Pit) is a key element of beginning change processes and ensuring change and improvement are continuous and ongoing processes in a school.
  • Planning and Checking — we often make changes without a clear set of measures for what ‘good’ or ‘effective’ looks like, or what we are expecting to see as outcomes of the initiative. We know we want things to be better than they are now, but without agreed measures how will we know if we are on track or have achieved them?

So we do know what some of the key influencers of change are. We know what works!  We also do know what some of the highly effective processes are. We do know what highly effective practices and outcomes look like.  So this begs the question — ‘Why are we not able to pull things together to achieve the package that makes the gains for students which we are all hoping for’?

Most of the things I see answering this provocation come down to people. How we work together; our mindframes around achievement; and more particularly our mindframes around change.

To simplify things a lot, people tend to sit somewhere on a continuum with respect to change:  From the CAVE mentality to those with a high BIO quotient.

CAVE BIO diagramme

cavemen

So my pondering becomes how to make the BIO mentality sticky and contagious.  How to get people onboard with change.  And conversely, how to get those who live in the CAVE out into the daylight and revelling in the excitement and challenge that highly effective school-change brings.

I would love to hear what people have found works well in your context!  A big part of spreading a meme is enabling the contact and having the conversations.  Let’s share our effectiveness ideas in the comments below.

Image sources:
Maslow quote: Future Classrooms (slide) Dean Shareski CC
Diorama of cavemen — Wikimedia – Public Domain

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Who navigates change? — A learner’s view of change leadership…

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change

What is changing?

I have been thinking a lot lately about how people are supported when facing significant change in their lives, especially in the complex and ever-changing world of education. Research tells us that we can no longer prepare learners for the 21st century and beyond through industrial and content-driven models. We should be creating learning opportunities that harness and spark innovation, creativity, collaboration, digital literacy, and curiosity for the world around us. We should be encouraging educators to continually inquire into practice through a future-focused lens.

Lichtman (2014) states that, when a school is facing organisational or cultural changes, it can be very uncomfortable, cause displacement and even grief, but that all of this is OK, and that we should welcome the uncomfortable. He also unpacks the difference between ‘hard’ and ‘uncomfortable’. Hard is where you are fighting against every odd and the chance of success is highly unlikely. But, uncomfortable is where we get to challenge and make some really tough decisions. I guess, that means that it is not impossible and can be achieved with the right support? At times of significant change, though, it can be very challenging to move out of the “this-is-just-too-hard” and into the “I-am-just-uncomfortable-but-will-get-through-it” frame of mind. Isn’t it?

 

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