BUILDING THE TEAM

Easier said than done but …essential!

JACK DURKAN IPPN LEADERSHIP SUPPORT MANAGER

Teaching is hard! Managing is hard! Leading is even harder still! Many teachers, educators and school leaders are working solo.

Alone in their classrooms or office – if they have one – teachers and school leaders are creating lesson plans, designing classroom management strategies and finding the next great ‘hook’ for engaging with their students. Although this is great, one of the best kept secrets in the field of education is the power of collaborative teamwork.

at this year’s conference was a wonderful example of what the future of school leadership could look like. Sure, there’s a principal and a deputy with separate and distinct roles but, call it what you wish – co-leadership, distributed leadership, collaborative leadership – it’s always teamwork. Everyone in the boat is rowing, and in the same direction.

In the LAOS quadrant, Teaching and Learning is What we do. Leadership and Management is How we do it. This means that everyone in the school is involved in leadership and management, whether they hold a formal post or not. Every teacher therefore is a leader!

placing this level of responsibility on one person is sustainable’ - Dr. Siobhán Kavanagh (2020) cited in IPPN’s report, Primary School Leadership: The Case for Urgent Action - A Roadmap to Sustainability (2022).

If this is true for teachers, how much more is it true for school leaders? The lone ranger teacher in charge of ‘my class’ evolved into the lone ranger principal in charge of ‘my school’! There are historical and legacy reasons why this has been the case but things have changed and if they haven’t, they need to.

According to Ann Lynskey and Aoife O’Connor, principal and deputy principal of Tierneevin NS, Gort, at the IPPN Deputy Principals’ Conference in Croke Park, ‘The days of the lone leader archetype are gone‘ . Ann and Aoife’s presentation of co-leadership

A couple of thoughts: What are you, as a school leader/manager doing right now that could be done by someone else? What are you doing right now that should be done by someone else? What are you doing right now that someone else is getting paid to do? And finally, what are you doing, consciously or unconsciously, that is preventing, or is an obstacle to developing this leadership capacity?

‘Principals as the senior leaders in schools, strive to ensure that their complex organisations continuously improve. A leadership style that can navigate change and embed that change in a sustainable way is a prerequisite of this role. Schools require a leader who can motivate both teachers and students to learn and the education system requires a leader who can meet the requirements and needs of all stakeholders. This is a significant undertaking for one individual. We must question whether

‘There is much to be done in this space at system level. There is much also that school leaders can do for themselves. It is not an easy task but if there is one mindset shift that needs to happen, alongside system level supports to facilitate it, it’s the mindset change from ‘lone ranger’ to ‘Team’.

It’ll take time, effort and willingness to change existing attitudes and practices, but it will be worth it, and might just go some way to making this job more sustainable and doable into the future.

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team’ – Phil Jackson, American basketball coach.