stepping up to executive headship - inspiring...
TRANSCRIPT
Stepping up to Executive Headship
Inspiring Leadership 2017
Birmingham
James Toop
Chief Executive
About us
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• Merger of Teaching Leaders and The Future Leaders Trust• Mission is to transform the lives of children in
disadvantaged areas by growing exceptional school leaders at all levels
• Develop leaders through our three flagship programmes:o Teaching Leaders (for middle leaders)o Future Leaders (for aspiring heads)o Executive Educators (for exec heads and CEOs)
• Research project with NFER and NGA• Relatively new and evolving role
o with no ‘legal’ definition, multiple sector-led interpretations
o a range of accountability arrangements, role and responsibilities
Background
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• Role requiring ‘a new and different mix of skills and experience’ (White Paper)o as yet no comprehensive guidance on the skill-set
they needo limited and largely outdated research
School leadership journey 2017
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Senior leader
Headteacher
Executive head
CEO
• Role and identity• Skills and behaviours • Preparation and transition
Agenda
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Start with why
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How
What
Simon Sinek, ‘Start With Why’
Why
• Why do you want to step up to executive headship?
• How will you do it?
• What will you do differently in the new role?
What is an Executive Headteacher?
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• Improvement: HT asked to support another school to rapidly improve. HT becomes EHT with formal accountability across more than one school
• Expansion: EHT provides additional management capacity for growth – for example, EHT / regional director below MAT CEO –to manage school performance or provide extra oversight across different sites or phases
• Partnership growth: More outward-facing, build new collaborations or partnerships to create strategic responsibility beyond a single school, such as Teaching School Alliance, but without formal accountability for the other schools in their collaboration
Core EHT roles
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Leadership identity
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• What is my professional identity?
• Who do I belong to?
• What am I accountable for?
Core EHT skills
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Vertical development
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• Conceptual – manage complexity and ability to create new models of thinking
• Personal – ability to respond to and cope with pressure, developed sense of self
• Interpersonal – capacity to hold different, and contradictory, perspectives and navigate them
Vertical leadership mindsets
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Spotting talent: a common language
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• Role and identity
• Skills and behaviours
• Preparation and transition
Agenda
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1. Intense stretch experiences (the what)
2. New ways of thinking (the how)
3. Strong development networks (the who)
Breaking linearity
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Types of development activity
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“The fact is that giving people bigger jobs with fancier titles and larger salaries won’t make them better. More complex assignments will.”
Claudio Fernandez-Araoz (Egon Zehnder), HBR, 2016
Stretch development
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1. What are your development challenges stepping up from headship to executive headship?
2. What would a stretch assignment need to entail to learn those new skills?
Example stretch assignments
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Why do nearly half of all new appointments fail in the first year?
• Politics• Culture• Complexities• Lack of clarity on performance objectives
Solution = transition management vs. induction
Transition management
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Case study: Mark Thompson
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• Transition: BBC to New York Times Company, 2012
• Context: Three-month gap, two-weeks agenda meetings
• Key lessons:o Successful transition starts
during the interviewso Demeanour during on-boarding
is criticalo Good EA is cultural translatoro Participate in early decisionso Get out of the officeo Eat, meet and greeto Find the balance between impulsive and slow-moving
1. Overlapping roles – new leader in place during last three months of outgoing leader
2. Shadowing/co-working – six month joint working period
3. Phased transition – gradual handover of responsibilities over 12-18 month period
Approach to new role is critical – listen, observe, question
How can you increase the chances of success?
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New Executive Headship cohort starts September 2017
Two x three-day residentials with new programme design
Benefits:
• Bespoke, evidence-informed training delivered by experts from across the sector and beyond
• Identifying strengths and areas for development through a review at the beginning of the programme
• Sharing insight and learning within a close-knit cohort of current or aspiring executive headteachers
• Access to our network (4,000 leaders,1,500 schools)
Executive Educators
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