For Professional Learning Team Leaders
Northern Metropolitan Region
DEECD
Joe Corbett
The context for your work
 Effective Schools Model, DEECD
 Pre-conditions for school improvement; Zbar, Kimber
and Marshall
 From ‘Powerful Learning’ by Hopkins, Munro and
Craig, 2011
Two handouts;
Core beliefs and a theory of action( Fraser & Petch)
Features of a highly effective education system
(Hopkins, Munro and Craig)
Reflection
 Activity
Spend some time reflecting on your role and make some
notes on the form provided
Share at your table the challenges you each experience
Are there any common themes?
Discuss these as a whole group
Leadership and leading
 To lead is to live dangerously because when leadership
counts, when you lead people through difficult
change, you challenge what people hold dear; their
daily habits , tools, loyalties, and ways of
thinking....with nothing more to offer perhaps than a
possibility
From; Leadership on the Line, Heifetz and
Linsky,2002.
Leading is about
 Challenging the status quo
 Influencing people to do things in new ways, to modify
how they are doing some things, to get them to stop
doing some things
 Supporting people to cope with ongoing change with a
focus on continuous improvement in student
outcomes
 Assisting people to understand the reasons for change
and helping them to move forward
What makes a good leader?
 Brainstorm your thoughts at your table
 See if you can prioritise them
 Some sharing
Different models of leadership
capabilities
 DEECDs framework based on the work of Sergiovanni;
handout and discussion
 Duigan,s framework of leadership capabilities
Personal capabilities
Relational capabilities
Professional capabilities
Organisational capabilities
handout/comments
The 5 demands of management
 Clarity of role, contributions, systems and processes
 Adequate resourcing, information and equipment
 Commitment to quality and excellence
 Feedback on performance
 Accountability
Roger Collins, 2012
The 5 demands of leadership
 Setting and communicating direction
 Aligning key groups of people
 Developing an effective temperament
 Living and communicating the agreed values
 Self development and growing others
Roger Collins, 2012
Ethical Leadership
 To improve the outcomes for every student
 If we know something works better than current
practice then we are obligated to do it
 If we know something is not working then we are
obligated to change it
 We must be determined to make powerful learning a
reality for every student
 Change needs to be evidence based
Leaders are agents of change
Coping with change;
People and organisations can experience a wide range of
difficulties when faced with the prospect of change
 Fear, frustration, anxiety or discomfort as the status
quo is threatened
 Feelings of embarrassment or intimidation during the
learning stage
 Uncertainty regarding the impact of change
continued
 Varying levels of tolerance to stress
 Lack of information about why things are changing
 Feelings of a loss of control
 Poor communication
Why people resist change?
 They have a different set of values
 Their education and training has given them a
different understanding of the issues involved
 The organisational hierarchy may prevent them from
saying or doing anything that indicates resistance to
change, so they become ‘silent saboteurs’
 They may have experienced failure or problems in the
past, therefore they may adopt a negative attitude,
anticipating further problems
continued
 They may have become ‘change weary’
 They have already seen new ideas come and go, with
limited success, and they have lost their belief in the
power of change
 Implementation has been sub-standard, leaving
people unsure of what is happening, or feeling
excluded
 They aren’t given the opportunity to learn the skills
needed to adapt, nor is there adequate mentoring and
support
continued
 Some people find it had to change old habits
 The change is too big of a leap for them
 They may fear they do not have the capabilities to
execute the change
 They have not grasped/understood what is expected
 Some people are scared to ‘take a risk’ and fear doing
things in new ways
A Harvard University study of 2005
found that;
 25% of people were against change
 25% of people were in favour of change
 50% of people were in favour of change provided two
conditions were met;
1. They received timely and accurate information.
2. The process was, and was perceived to be, fair and
transparent.
From; How to make good people great leaders,
Nowak,2007
Change savvy ideas from Michael
Fullan in Motion Leadership; 2011
 Relationships first
 Honour the implementation dip
 Beware of fat plans
 Behaviours before beliefs
 Communication during implementation is paramount
continued
 Learn about implementation during implementation
 Excitement prior to implementation is fragile
 Take risks and learn
 It is okay to be assertive
Working with the team
 As Professional Learning Team Leader you want to
build the most effective professional learning team you
can so that team members learn to do things in new
ways that result in better outcomes for all students
Activity
Discuss at your table
 What are the characteristics of a high performing
team?
 List them
 Try to rank them in order of importance
 Share the top 2 with the whole group
Characteristics of
high performing teams
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Shared vision, common purpose
Agreed values which influence behaviours
Effective communication and collaboration
Clear decision making processes
Leadership capacity is evident
Responsibilities and duties are shared
Solution focus to problem solving
Members are valued and their strengths utilised
Achievements and milestones are recognised and
celebrated
 Reflection and review processes are in place
A team protocol
Activity
 Do you have existing team protocols?
 What are the most important features of them?
 Discuss the pro-forma provided and consider its
usefulness
Handouts; ‘Guidelines for productive meetings’
‘Reflection and review questions’
Effective communication
 Ability to engage and interact with different
people/audiences in various contexts for a range of
purposes resulting in positive outcomes
 Various contexts; one to one, small group, large group,
presentations, formal and informal settings
 A range of purposes; professional learning, providing
feedback, problem solving, providing information,
mediation, ......
It is not easy to really listen
 Handout; How to listen actively
 What gets in the way of effective listening?
a poor relationship base
a history of conflict
one’s state of well-being
time pressure/competing demands
pre-conceptions/making assumptions
clash of values/beliefs
As a leader you need highly
developed listening and speaking
skills
 Listening skills; active listening, ability to empathise,
ability to focus ,ability to process and integrate, skills
at clarifying
 Speaking skills; clarity of purpose/intention, ability to
be clear and concise, responsiveness to one’s audience,
skills at initiating conversation
Effective communication
 INTENT=========IMPACT
Challenging conversations
 What makes them so challenging?
Is it the person/the people?
Is it the content?
Is it the setting?
Is it the outcomes we expect?
Is it the consequences we fear?
What are your challenging
conversations?
 From the past; why were they challenging and how did
you handle it, outcomes
 For the future; conversations you need to have
So many conversations
 You will have conversations where it is your role to
challenge people about how they are doing things in
order to foster a focus on continuous improvement in
outcomes for students
Using data/handout
 You will have conversations that are difficult to have
because something has happened that is hard to talk
about and some people are hard to talk to
Difficult conversations
 A difficult conversation is anything you find hard to
talk about
 Anytime we feel vulnerable or our self esteem is
implicated, when the issues at stake are important and
the outcome uncertain, when we care deeply about
what is being discussed or about the people with
whom we are discussing it, there is potential for us to
experience the conversation as difficult
 Most of us have conversations we dread and find
unpleasant, that we avoid or face up to
The dilemma
Avoid or confront
 If we avoid; feel taken advantage of, feelings will fester,
miss opportunity to improve things
 If we confront; things could get worse, may be
rejected, attacked, hurt other person, damage
relationship
 Is it important enough to act; try to reframe it as a
learning conversation
 Need to manage fear and anxiety
Each difficult conversation has
three features
 The what happened;
what I/you did and didn’t do
Avoid truth assumption; I’m right, you’re wrong;
difficult conversations are about differing perceptions,
interpretations and values, different stories
Avoid the blame game; how did we each contribute
to the problem
Intentions; we assume we know the other person’s
intentions when we don’t, we use the impact on us to
judge intentions
 The feelings;
often at the core of difficult conversations, you need to
express them and tune into the other person’s feelings
 The identity conversation;
conversation with ourselves about what the situation
means to us and its impact on our self-esteem and self
image, its about who we are and how we see ourselves
Moving to a learning conversation
 Instead of working to persuade and get your way, you
want to understand what has happened from the other
person’s point of view, explain your point of view, share
and understand feelings, and work together to figure
out a way to manage the problem going forward. In
doing so, you make it more likely that the other person
will be open to be persuaded and that you will learn
something that significantly changes the way you
understand the problem and see the solutions
Planning for a learning
conversation
 A model from Viviane Robinson
‘Open to learning conversations’
Handout and review
Planning for a strategic
conversation
 Handout; discussion
A tool I use for preparing for a one to one
conversation that may be difficult or challenging
Feedback
 Acknowledgement and recognition
 Positive feedback
 Negative feedback
 Constructive feedback
Constructive feedback
 Constructive feedback is information that calls
attention to a practice or a problem or a potential
problem
 Constructive feedback opens a door to learning,
problem solving or other follow up action
 The key to giving and receiving constructive feedback
is maintaining a spirit of mutual respect and learning
 It is all about supporting and promoting
change/improvement
Purpose of giving constructive
feedback
 Two key purposes;
To improve teaching practice and build teacher
capacity
To build high performing teams and positive working
relationships
Constructive feedback
 To encourage a person to do something differently
 To modify some behaviours
 To stop some behaviours
 To encourage a person to try new behaviours/strategies
 To support on going learning/risk taking
 To foster teamwork
Activity
 At your tables brainstorm what you think are the
important characteristics of constructive feedback
 Agree on the 3 most important of these
 Share these with the whole group
Effective feedback
 Is done in a way which is respectful and builds positive
relationships
 Is timely and put in context
 Is private and confidential, unless agreed otherwise
 Is solution focussed/ provides a way forward
 Is clear and explicit
 Is balanced with positive feedback
 Is incremental in its expectations
Beliefs
 People have a need to believe that they are okay
 People have the capacity to learn from their
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experiences
Every person wants to contribute and to be
acknowledged
Most people want to get better and better at what they
do
People benefit from a values driven workplace
People thrive in an environment of high but achievable
standards and expectations
Stages of skill development
 Unconsciously unskilled; unaware of lack of skill or
knowledge
 Consciously unskilled; aware of need for learning of
skill
 Consciously skilled; practice, feedback, learning phase
 Unconsciously skilled; mastery, part of skill repertoire
Giving constructive feedback
 Guidelines and pro-forma
A framework for planning a one to one conversation
with the purpose of giving constructive feedback
Classroom observations/peer
observations
 Where are you at your school?
 What are the issues?
 What are the next steps?
‘A sample pro-forma’
Some principles for dealing with
conflict
 Handout and discussion
A model for negotiation
 Handout and discussion
Concluding comments