Middle Leadership: Leading Large Teams JAWS

Garden International School, Kuala Lumpur

24 November 2023

When Natalie Clark suggested running a JAWS on leading large teams she had no idea how popular it would be. The idea was to have some middle leaders come and discuss some of the challenges associated with large teams, such as: how to communicate with everybody, how to hear all views, how to ensure consistency in teaching across the team, and how to build relationships with everybody. Very quickly more than 50 external attendees were registered and we closed the sign up due to lack of space!

All of the leaders who joined us were keen to share and the day was full of discussions around middle leadership. Many book recommendations and articles were shared, with many scenario based conversations around middle leadership. As several people noted, being a middle leader can mean being everything to everyone and taking on board roles varying from being a counsellor to your staff members, to finding missing children, or analysing data and writing a strategic plan.

Workshops centred on trust and team culture by Luke McRae and Moustapha Bechir included tools to build an effective team with an open, positive culture. Helen Waterhouse shared lessons learnt from transition and a new role, with a lot of great resources to support others.

Joe O’Connor, Kristine Beacroft and Victoria Wright delved into the importance of knowing your team and shared ways to better understand individuals and how to best work with them. Natalie Clark outlined strategies to develop leaders within a team and contingency planning and Amy Marsh spoke about evaluating and improving the quality of teaching and learning across a team.

One of the highlights of the day was the amount of discussion across phase and subject, allowing leaders to look at issues from different perspectives. Delegates left with new contacts and links from schools across SE Asia, as well as numerous resources, ideas, and planned actions to take back to their teams and schools. It was a fantastic event.

Many thanks to all of the presenters and particularly Natalie Clark for organising the whole day.

Amy Marsh Director of Professional Learning | Deputy Head (Whole School) Garden International School