Vulnerability as a leadership trait . . . Helen Kinsey-Wightman My Principal has been on sabbatical this term . . . Obviously when she opted for Term two she wasn’t to know that the PPTA/ NZEI would take strike action, her PA would retire and we would be advertising 2 science teaching positions. Fair to say, that by the end of term I felt as though I had done 10 rounds with Joseph Parker and my partner was fairly sure I had been abducted by aliens and replaced by Miss Trunchbull. A week into the holidays I am feeling human again and am beginning to contemplate the move back to my own office – taking the (pretty much untouched) ‘to do’ list I wrote when I moved out a term ago! As always though, stepping into a different leadership role brings new learning and the opportunity to try out different approaches. On the ‘not yet achieved list’ was the goal to get out into classrooms more – to be fair to myself this may have been more realistic if I had not continued to teach my own Y9 class. On the ‘achieved list’ was my goal to grow a positive, supported leadership environment in the midst of all the busy-ness. As we started Term 2 our senior leadership team was composed of: an Acting Principal (yours truly); an Acting DP a term away from beginning a 2 term study leave to complete her thesis; an AP studying part time for her Masters; a new AP one term into her role which she also combines with an Across School Teaching role in the CoL; an HoD stepping into an Acting AP role and a brand new Principal’s PA. We were definitely a team characterised by a drive for life long learning – that said, for all of us the learning curve was fairly steep! As the term started, I watched Brené Brown’s hour-long Netflix presentation on vulnerability – if you haven’t seen it you should. In the past I had always joked about my leadership philosophy being, ‘Fake it till you make it . . . ’ which is one way to tackle new learning. However, bravery is also one of my core values and role modelling bravery to the staff and students around me demands baring my vulnerability rather than creating the pretence that I am the fount of all knowledge. So in my approach to leading a team where we were all engaged in new learning, I decided to address the learning we all had ahead of us, to embrace the vulnerability, and to share my goal for the term with the team and ask them to help. A few years ago, as my remote country school pupil population began to dwindle, I became a sole charge principal. In order to upskill myself, I participated in the Incredible Years programme. One of the strategies that the programme teaches is the power of attention, coaching and praise. Put simply, what you pay attention to will grow, therefore if you only notice and highlight the negatives they will increase, so praising the positives works better. I believe that this applies to teenage and adult behaviour too – although there is a requirement for a more sophisticated approach to delivering the praise. In general I have found that announcements in staff briefing along the lines of, ‘Can we all say well done to Mary for showing lovely manners to other
teachers this week?’ may not be sufficiently sophisticated. My goal was around promoting distributed leadership. I put an agenda item on to our SLT meeting agenda and asked the team to actively look for staff and student leadership around the school. I then invented my own private ‘Feel Good Friday’ when I spent time every Friday sending emails, ringing parents or tracking staff and students down to say well done specifically for showing leadership. Where other team members had seen the leadership in action, I made sure I credited them with noticing, rather than making it all about me. It helped me to end the week on a positive and the team felt that deliberately looking for leadership made our team feel like a positive place to be and helped us to be more appreciative of
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the things others do around the school. My final act of vulnerability has been to survey the staff, parent community and students to give me feedback on my leadership. Whilst – as I would hope – there is much feedback to reflect on, I also got much encouragement to show that the things I focussed on have been noticed. From a student, in answer to ‘What does Ms. Kinsey-Wightman think is important?’ ‘That we value the school values and that we think about positive things that have happened during the week. What we can do to keep a positive attitude while at school, and to think about the good things that someone has done for us or we have done for somebody.’ From a teacher in answer to, ‘What do you see as my greatest leadership strengths?’ ‘Listening, approachability, positive attitude, the fact that you know you do not know everything and recognise that other people are sources of information and support . . . ’ To end in Brené’s words, ‘Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.’ So who amongst us doesn’t need to embrace it?
MAGAZINE
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