I’ve been pretty absent from this blog for quite a while now, so really needed an event to encourage me to start blogging again. This evening I attended my first twilight session to begin the 9 month journey on the NCSL leading from the Middle program. My aim now will be to reflect using my blog as I progress through the program and maybe this will support my thinking of how my leadership changes over the coming months.
A strong element of the session this evening focused upon how ‘we’ will change as leaders as what we do inspires other members of our team. Essentially to lead this change, the leader will need to take risks, enable team members to take control and promote ownership and responsibility amongst the team. I feel that this is something that I struggle with at the moment. I often work longs days and complete tasks on an individual basis in order to maintain control. Clearly this doesn’t have such great benefits for myself or my team. A clear learning path for me will be to learn how to share responsibility amongst the team and then allow people to take ownership over the opportunities that are available to them. A ‘Eureka’ moment occurred to me this evening as this is essentially what my previous Head of Faculty led on a day-to-day basis and as a team member I felt valued, but also felt that my own skills were developing all of the time.
The evening also offered the opportunity to talk with two other Heads of Faculty (Maths and English) from my school which I rarely have the opportunity to talk with. Alongside discussion with our leadership coach, we soon began to realise that although we have different faculties, we are faced with similar challenges and that with a support network we can then begin to discuss ideas of how to lead our teams and how to approach the challenges that we face.
On a personal note, I hope to develop my leadership skills over the next 9 months in a sustainable manner that will lead to the faculty that I lead becoming a more effective team. I suppose today is just a snapshot in time, in the progress of leading a team and becoming a more effective leader in order to leave a legacy within the Humanities Faculty in my school, should I decide to move on at some point?
I hope to reflect further I a move through the program. The next task is to request five people who I work alongside or lead to fill in a development diagnostic about me as a leader. I will be interested to read the results.
