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If time is short today then I recommend you listen to just the first and last minute of this video.
Richard Branson says on success:
“The most important thing about running a school is that you need to know what a school is.
It is a collection of people.
As a leader of people you need to be a great listener and great motivator.
You have to be very good at praising and looking for the best in people.
People are no different from flowers, if you water flowers they flourish,
if you praise people they florish, and that is a critical attribute of a leader”
Okay, so Richard said ‘business’ not ‘school’, but his words are extremely relevant to schools and school leadership.
At 3m02 Richard answers the question “Can Virgin be successful without you?” by saying ”Yes…I learnt the art of delegation. I give the freedom to make mistakes.”
Your school is just a collection of people.
Your people are like flowers, water them (with praise) and they will grow.
Learn the Art of Delegation and give your people the freedom to make mistakes.
If you want to know more about the Art of Delegation then there are some first rate podcasts on manager-tools.com.
If you want to devote 43 minutes to your CPD then this podcast is a great place to start.
We need to change in order to stand still, but not everyone in our school believes or appreciates this.
From our work with Early Heads the topic of change is particularly challenging as we know that even the small changes you try to make can be faced with resistance and cause you immense frustrations.
We have scoured the internet to bring you a set of inspiring videos here.
Click on the images below to experience the following:
School leaders talking about how they have overcome resistance to change from the National College
A poem that could have been written for a school leader starting at a new school by Amena Brown
Sage advice on leadership from Seth Goldin (Leadership Guru)
A video without words that you can use to reflect on your own challenges with colleagues who are resisting change
We hope you are able to pick out one or two nuggets of learning for your situation.
Here are 5 top tips from the National College ‘Resisting Change’ video:
Invest time in listening to opinions and views
Invest time in encouraging your team to accept, enable and run with change.
If others feel an action is imposed, pause and work together toward a feeling of collective ownership.
Some people whatever you do will bury their heads in the sand and resist. Do not bury your energy here.
Only work on colleagues that are going to grasp change and be positive about it to achieve good things quickly and encourage others to feel the same.
I am going to the National College’s Annual Conference in June and I want my company to be memorable again for all the right reasons. Last year I went dressed as an RAF World War II pilot, you might remember me – olive green flight suit, leather flying helmet and goggles! On my back was [...]
How often have you been asked to think about something in a different way or find new ways of doing a task and your first reaction is ‘I can’t do that’ or ‘thats impossible’? People make limiting assumptions all the time and they can hold people back from doing what they want to do or [...]
In honour of this being my 100th blog post I thought I would make it something a little special, so I am sharing with you my Manifesto for 2012: This poster is now stuck on my window above my computer monitor. If you are interested in creating a manifesto for yourself then you will be [...]
I am looking forward to working again with an inspiring group of leaders from the Henley Schools Partnership on the 31st January here. Between January and July 2011 I had the pleasure to work with eight of Henley’s very best leaders. Here is what they said about their experience: “Time to think about the bigger picture and to [...]
I hate meetings where we are sent documents to read beforehand and then the documents are read out during the meeting. What is worse, when this is done and then no one has much to comment on them, what was the point? What would you do if you had made time to read it beforehand, [...]
At the Swindon Women’s Business Premier Club this month we made donations to the MS Therapy Centre instead of sending each other Christmas Cards. Did you know that the Swindon Therapy Centre for MS treat children and adults from as far a field as Hertfordshire and Barry in South Wales? Did you know that the Swindon Therapy Centre [...]
I know that YouTube is blocked on many school’s networks so this is a test page to find out which of the following videos you can view. Please use the voting buttons below to let me know which of the videos below you can view on your network. Video A – Vimeo Grow Your Own [...]
We were proud to be top of the bill in the Womens Business Clubs Newsletter this month with our new Eat That Frog Learning PlayTime on Prioritisation. This Learning PlayTime is part our brand new learning series designed to Grow Your Own Leaders launching in the Spring Term. Grow Your Own Leaders from BlueKiteCoach is a unique, [...]
