Leading Teaching and Learning

Objectives today were to gain an understanding of effective leadership strategies and learn how to recognise outstanding teaching and learning. Leadership Styles Goleman identifies 4 styles which encourage team harmony and inclusion, and 2 other styles which can potentially create dissonance and discord. The 4 styles encouraging team harmony are called visionary, coaching, affiliative and democratic, and they are described as follows: Visionary - moves people towards shared dreams, creates a sense of direction, encourages change Coaching - helps individuals improve their performance and align employee goals with those of the organisation Affiliative - builds relationships and teams, and helps to deal with problem situations between teams Democratic - helps to create buy-in or consensus by involving people and valuing their input The other two leadership styles, pacesetting and commanding, are more directional, and focus more on the setting down of expectations, and they are described as follows: Pacesetting - sets challenges that high performers can achieve and this can leave less competent people falling behind and obviously potentially uncomfortable and dissatisfied Commanding - gives direction when problems arise or calms things down in a crisis Thoughts. Which is best? or should effective leadership be a combination of all six? Adapting to change? People are different and will respond as an individual to different leadership styles. A good leader will lead by example. Leadership Style assessment. Before completing the assessment, I put myself as Affiliative Leader. My Scores Visionary -4 Affiliative - 17 Coaching - 14 Pacesetter - 9 Democratic - 13 Coercive - 3 Clearly to be more rounded I need to focus on fitting into the visionary and coercive style more often. Visionary leaders generate self confidence and empathy and have a strong positive impact. Do I not show empathy? I hope not! This is one of the most effective leadership styles. From the questionnaire, I need to do the following: Tell people what they need to do and expect them to do it. Give clear direction based on my experience. Discuss my vision with my team. Make my expectations clear and also where I would like the team to be heading. On a good note, my score for coercive was the lowest. This leadership style can have a negative impact if overused. It is the style that can be seen as bullying and causes low morale. Its more important to be balanced in all areas, however we can adapt to different styles of leadership when the time arises. In School Variation Biggest variation = Quality of teaching What to do to eliminate variation - Consistency for expected standards. Good presentation of students work. Awareness of your students - PP, SEN, G&T, learning styles. Accountability of staff. Closing the gap with staff to be a better team. Marking consistency. Development of staff. Sharing good practice.