Leader 2 Leader

Introduction

Welcome to the Leader2Leader page. What is this section of the website about? How might it work for you? Why do this?

The idea is that regularly, leaders from different communities are asked to share a piece about thier leadership learning. It might be a personal or an organisational piece. The leader has prodced this piece for comment and reflection from other leaders, leaders with a similar interest. The leader sharing the story, hopes the reader will interact (in the spirit of discourse) and will share their learning and begin a conversation through our SELT forum (which is password protected to help ensure an open/honest conversation).

We hope the page will help build leadership learning communities and partnerships and stop leaders feeling that they are maybe facing issues alone.

Our latest contribution is from a Primary Headteacher - so please read on and start a conversation. You are also invited to consider sharing your stroy for others to read- if you are able to do this, please contact Martyn Poole at martyn.poole@selt.org.uk

Latest Article - January 2010......

  To what extent is it advisable to use all of your 'spare' energy on refining teaching and learning to improve standards? One school in South Wales has decided to concentrate on engaging with children's families as a more productive approach. This is their story so far...

Previous Articles

Developing networks for self evaluation, school improvement and the validation of school judgements-  Making SENSE..... Click here for full thinkpiece

Changing the discourse

A note about feedback

An important part of the work of SELT is to develop a deeper understanding of what it means to work as a learning community. As part of that we are trying to develop a ‘change of discourse’ in the way colleagues work together.

Colleagues and members of the network are invited and encouraged to give feedback on the following paper. However we are seeking to develop an approach to the giving of feedback, orally or written, that is designed to nurture trust between professionals, and to give colleagues confidence to be willing to share their thinking and practice for debate with others.

We are beginning to develop our thinking about feedback in this context and therefore offer the following protocol as ‘work in progress’.

To contribute to the development of a professional climate of trust, it is helpful if the tone of the feedback is encouraging, considered, tentative and non-judgemental, and designed to take make a contribution to taking forward the thinking and practice.

Some examples are offered here:

Tentative not judgemental
Try wherever possible to use the conditional tense, almost nothing is‘certain’ in the leadership process:
Would it be helpful if….
          Could the issue be conceptualised as xx rather than xxx

Reflection rather than assertion
Offer feedback that shows how the piece took forward your own thinking and therefore enabled you to reflect, even if the reflection meant that you reached a different conclusion – it is the process that is important for the building of a learning community
It made me wonder if….
The point about xxx stimulated my thinking about xx and made me consider 

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