Teamwork: Know your role, play your role

Teamwork: Know your role, play your role

Head of Senior School Mr Peter Burt

The Year 11 Leadership programme is well established in the Senior School.

I want to take the opportunity to thank Mark Gale for the incredible manner in which he has led in this area of the school, before deciding to step aside at the end of the academic year to focus on his passions of teaching and coaching at Scotch.

One of the last major events that Mr Gale oversaw in this role was the Year 11 Leadership Day in Winter Term. This has been a more recent addition to our programme and is designed to continue the development of the variety of leadership skills the students have developed and refined throughout the year. The day was based around a series of theoretical and practical sessions with the focus being ‘Teamwork: Knowing Your Role and Playing Your Role’ and the students were privileged to have Justin Langer, Australian Cricket Hall of Fame Member, address them as the keynote speaker.

Justin shared some of the experiences from his life, as a young boy, as a teenager chasing his dream to play for Australia, as a young man who lived that dream and then later became coach of the Australian Cricket team. You may be aware that when Justin took over, Australian cricket was not in a great spot having just come through the ball tampering incident in South Africa and the fallout that followed. The team needed strong leadership and there was a focus on regaining respect.

It is all well and good to talk about leadership and the importance of the different aspects, but the real learning comes from trying to put these skills into practice.

The passion and drive that Justin possesses is evident and he shared his knowledge around the importance of goal setting, camaraderie, being truthful with yourself and others, facing fears, embracing each team member as an individual and having their back, and having the courage to lead. Being a WA boy and an old Aquinian, many of the experiences Justin shared from his youth resonated with our Year 11 students and the feedback around his presentation was fantastic. Equally impressive was Justin’s willingness to stay after his presentation and speak to a group of our cricketers and staff. It was a wonderful learning experience for us all and he shared many personal anecdotes and pearls of wisdom. There was something for everyone, even us older members of the audience.

The students also completed a session on Character Based Leadership with Jon Haines, an expert in this area. Over the past two decades Jon has been helping build leadership capability and driving the execution of high-performance behaviours within teams and groups. He was recently awarded a Churchill Fellowship, with the scholarship supporting an international study tour to better understand global best practice in adolescent and young adult character development and the subsequent relationship with leadership impact and cultural dynamics.

Our students were incredibly fortunate to hear from these highly experienced and dedicated individuals who are leaders on the global stage within their areas of expertise. The sessions were complemented by Scotch staff presenting on an array of leadership topics.

The students worked through a range of practical experiences, with this component proving paramount in providing an opportunity to put into place many of the ideas that had been shared and explored in the presentations. It is all well and good to talk about leadership and the importance of the different aspects, but the real learning comes from trying to put these skills into practice. The attitude of our Year 11 students towards this was exceptional and they embraced the challenges of the practical sessions with varying degrees of success. With all these tasks, it is about the manner in which the students approach them, how they work as a team, their understanding of their own role and the role of others, and how they respond when things don’t go to plan, that is important.

From the feedback we received, the students thoroughly enjoyed the day and the opportunities that were presented. It is now important that the learning that took place on the day also translates into action within the cohort as they move into Year 12 and become the leaders of the school.