"Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter" by Liz Wiseman is a book that explores the concept of leadership and how effective leaders can multiply the intelligence and capabilities of their teams. Wiseman argues that there are two types of leaders: Multipliers and Diminishers. Multipliers are leaders who amplify the intelligence and abilities of those around them, while Diminishers are leaders who stifle and limit the potential of their…

“If oxygen is required, a mask like this, will fall from above you. Apply your own mask first, before helping others.” I fly fairly often and can recite word for word almost all of the pre-flight safety message. The key message above, applies to leaders and staff in schools. We need to take responsibility for our own care, if we are going to be in a position to help others…

Whilst we often think of negotiations in terms of sales and agreeing the final price, school leaders are often negotiating shared agreements and establishing common ground. In my work with over 100 school leadership teams on understanding and utilising their strengths, the weakest link or blind side in almost all of those teams, has been the ability to influence. The ability to negotiate is a powerful and important skill as…

I love the title of this book by Swedish psychologist, Thomas Erikson. In a school leadership position it can be very frustrating as we deal with people, all day, every day and at times, I’ve felt frustrated with the views and behaviour of some of those people. Understanding human behaviour is a never-ending pursuit. At times I have struggled to understand why people have made certain choices that have led…

The Gallup group studied the responses of 10000 people to the question, what do great leaders bring to their lives? Four clear themes emerged. People look to their leaders to provide… Trust Compassion Stability and Hope These four themes really resonated with me and are a great framework to reflect against. We have all worked with leaders who frustrated us. Using these four themes we can easily see where some…

“Busy!” is the most common response I hear from people when I ask them how they are. I’ve noticed that in recent years the most common response when asked about our well-being has changed. The most common responses used to be “Not bad!” or “I’ve been worse!” Today the most common response is “Busy!” Everyone working in schools these days is busy. Even under performing staff are busy. They are just busy doing the wrong…

Meetings can seem a necessary evil in schools. Often our days can feel like they are filled with back-to-back meetings. However, many staff complain that meetings aren’t a good use of their time. Imagine if you walked away from every meeting feeling like it was a valuable use of everyone’s time. Macquarie University advocates for using the PODS acronym to ensure that meetings are purposeful and a good use of…

School leaders make hundreds, if not thousands of decisions every day. Obviously, some decisions are more important than others. When it comes to making very significant strategic decisions that are likely to have a big impact on a school, I find Jeff Butler’s 6 Step process very beneficial. STEP #1 Define the Problem Without Considering the Solution Many times when scoping the solution to a problem, the problem is not defined accurately…

Being absolutely clear about your role is essential, especially for school leaders. Middle leader roles in many schools have changed considerably in recent years. It’s really important that each leader is crystal clear on what the key aspects of their role are and what outcomes they are responsible for. Position descriptions are often so generic and all-encompassing they don’t necessarily help. They often fail to provide CLARITY about what each…

Whilst I know you are busy, it is more important than ever to connect with your staff. Schools are people places and people are crying out for connection and leaders who listen and care. I highly recommend that you allocate time this week to getting out and about, talking with people on duty, visiting the staffroom and just checking in. Here are three questions to get you started. What was…

There has been much discussion in schools about the impact of ChatGPT (and other Artificial Intelligence bots) on student assessment. Schools are discussing how they can prevent students using ChatGPT to cheat on assessment tasks. The use of AI bots to cheat on assessment tasks highlights an even more important issue in education – what is the purpose of schooling? Is it to educate or to grade, sort and classify? On a trip to…

If you haven’t watched all three series of Ted Lasso on Apple TV, you are missing out on some great leadership insights. Here are my Top 10 Ted Lasso Leadership insights. Happiness is a choice. Doing the right thing is never wrong. Tell the truth. Believe in yourself. Courage is about being willing to try. Optimists do more. Vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness Stay teachable. All people are…

In my opinion, sadly, respect for the teaching profession has significantly declined in the past two decades. Times have certainly changed. I am sure you will have seen the cartoon that depicts a student from 20 years ago who got in trouble at school also getting reprimanded by their parents when they got home. The subsequent cartoon depicting students of today getting in trouble and the parents responding by challenging…

Trust and Inspire are the two crucial roles of leaders in schools today, according to guru Stephen MR Covey. It was great to hear his insights at Toddle’s School Leadership Bootcamp last week (and not just because I had a fanboy moment and got goosebumps when he gave me a shout out during his keynote). Covey teaches trust all around the world. He explained that you can have two trustworthy leaders who are…

In implementing any change or school improvement initiative I find the 20 / 60 / 20 rule applies. 20% of people will be keen, enthusiastic and work hard to implement the strategy. 60% of people are sitting on the fence and could adopt it if they can see the benefits of the initiative and are supported to implement it OR could reject the initiative and keep doing what they have…

According to Michael Fullan (2002), “A principal’s chief responsibility is doing everything possible to support and optimize the growth of teaching and learning, just like a teacher’s job is to do everything possible to maximize student learning and development.” This is aligned with leadership guru, Ken Blanchard’s concept of Servant Leadership. Blanchard argues that the work of the Principal (and all leaders in the school) is to provide the support…

At this time of year many schools are embarking on, or planning to embark on, a strategic planning process to identify their way forward for the next one to five years. Put simply, strategy describes what we want to achieve over time and how we will do it. That is certainly an important but difficult thing to do in such unpredictable times. I recently came across the work of Strategy…

I was intrigued to read a post that positioned men as naturally more confident than women. I particularly liked the observation from ski instructors that when they routinely ask learners at their first lesson to rate their skiing ability between 1 and 5 they automatically discounted the response of men by 1.5 as they “always over rated themselves”. I was intrigued that gender may be reflected in confidence. I checked…