Upgrading your in-house leadership development

Offer the right programs, and your leaders will grow with you.

Gen Y talent expect to be trained and developed. Education leaders must stop seeing training as merely a tool for development, and start seeing it as a valuable tool for attraction and retention. Schools must upgrade their leadership development experiences to ensure that talented staff feel they are developing personal mastery, and building an impressive resume for future career moves. In previous days, the “psychological contract” of employment was that workers would trade their loyalty for job security. But now, as opportunity abounds for the most talented communicators and emerging leaders, the new “psychological contract” is, “I will work for you, and in return you will develop me and make me more employable.”

The simple reality is that you now retain your talented staff through investing in their development. Young talented people know that continual professional learning is the price of entry for anyone serious about setting an impressive career trajectory. Many high-quality university graduates now choose low-paid internships at challenging organisations to develop their skill-set. Furthermore, top-level law and consulting firms compete for talent not only on salary, but also by the quality of their graduate development programs. It is time for schools to become places where young talent come to build their career and develop transferable skills in communication, emotional intelligence and leadership. the argument, but than quickly become concerned that if they make their staff too

employable or invest too much in their training they will either be headhunted or leave seeking further opportunity. Logical as that may appear, leaders that will grow talent magnet schools understand that they have far more chance of keeping staff if they invest in constantly training and developing them than if they deny them those opportunities. The absence of training and development opportunities drives staff away far more quickly than a headhunter.

As a sector, it is time to life our game in leadership development. Here are fi ve ideas to help stimulate your thinking:

1. Do a leadership development audit

First, it is critical that leaders take the time to gain a clear picture of the current leadership development situation in their schools or department. Personally refl ect, and seek out some broad opinions from your staff as you explore questions such as:

• What opportunities do you currently make available?

• To what extent are the different elements connected into a coherent development program? • How engaging and effective would you rate the current opportunities?

Once you know what you currently have in operation, begin to lay out a way forward and make it explicit. Every Gen Y leader should know clearly what opportunities are available and how they can access them.

2. Adopt a common framework

Adopt a leadership framework for your school. Much in-school leadership development can seem disconnected. If you are going to be serious about staff leadership development, it is helpful to have a common framework to improve coherence and ensure common language. The ACEL Leadership Capability Framework is a great example of a structure that is effectively being used across the country.

A framework will provide a blueprint to guide your leadership development. Furthermore, staff will then have a common framework that can guide their own informal discussions and peer-to-peer mentoring.

3. Mix up the modes of delivery

Educators often seem stuck in one mode of professional learning: large group lectures and keynotes. These sessions can be incredible (see below), but are not suffi cient for a holistic program. Your leadership development program can (and should)

utilise multiple modes of learning. These could include the following:

Coaching and mentoring. These methods are fi nally making a long awaited appearance in educational settings. Yet, often these opportunities are limited to middle management and executive staff. Coaching provides a wonderful opportunity to invest in the leadership potential of your emerging talent and open their minds to their own strengths and passions.

Shadowing. This is one of the most effective ways to develop leadership insight. Emerging talent should be given the possibility of shadowing experienced leaders both in your school and in outside schools and businesses.

Training media. A range of on-demand resources should also be made available. These can include books, online resources, podcasts, videos and access to webinars.

4. Make Full Staff Sessions Incredible

Gathering people together for training and development is a huge cost on the most precious resource in schools – time. If you are going to bring the staff together for a full day or afternoon development session, it better be worth their time. So what should you do?

Use written formats (emails, briefs) to keep everyone up to date on the regular changes to reporting, child protection and curriculum. Do not waste the precious opportunity of interpersonal connection on simply reading something aloud that they could digest at another time in another format.

Kill death by Powerpoint. No more 100 slide, 15 points per slide boring information sessions. Never. There is no excuse. Ban

them in your school. Powerpoint slides are for headings, pictures and graphs. That’s it.

Teaching involves extreme emotional labour. Teachers are looking to be inspired, not just informed. So, ensure that the session is designed to refi ll their emotional and inspirational batteries. Look to design cross-industry, outside-the-box sessions that will make teachers feel like they are being exposed to new ideas, new practices and new ways of thinking

Bring in outside energy and expertise. Sometimes it is a wonderful idea to have an internal “Thought Leader” in your school share their expertise with the rest of the staff. It is diffi cult for internal staff to muster up enough emotional energy to present to staff for an hour at 3:30 p.m. A growing number of high, quality-low cost (even free) professional development programs are available for educators. One of my favourites, Beyond Chalk (www. beyondchalk.com.au), runs incredible computer training in schools for free.

5. Go Deep

Effective leadership requires the development of technical competencies. But leadership that is sustainable, resilient and empowering is based on a deep sense of moral purpose, a core set of values and a strong and compelling personal character.

With the hectic demands on educators it is easy to fall into the trap of keeping leadership development at the superfi cial level of technical skills. But we do a disservice to emerging leaders to keep the dialogue and training at this level.

We must provide opportunities to go deep. Help them probe questions such as:

• What are the values that form the foundation of your educational leadership?

• What would your peers identify as your leadership strengths?

• To what extent do we have responsibility for the learning of struggling students beyond our school fence?

• How will you ensure a sustainable balance between school work and your private life?

Such refl ection is a challenging and renewing experience for all leaders. It must become a regular part of our development diet.

“ As opportunity abounds for the most talented communicators and emerging leaders, the new “psychological contract” is, “I will work for you, and in return you will develop me and make me more employable.”

The challenge

It is time to stop trying to outsource leadership development to external conferences. To retain talented staff, and ensure they reach their potential, educational leaders need to take active steps to create an explicit and challenging programs for developing their leaders.