Ulearn 15 - A brief reflection

Today is the final day of Ulearn15 and it has been an exciting and thought provoking few days. I think choosing from one strand and focusing on leadership meant I got to see leadership through a variety of lenses. 

A brief reflection on 2 workshops

I already had a good understanding of Leadership v Management and one is not better than the other. This was reiterated today in Mark Osborne's workshop on 'Leading Change Effectively'  when he said " It is important to look across your team, you need excellent managers and excellent leaders." 

A brief definition:

MANAGEMENT  = PROCESSES 

What are we doing that we don’t want to lose, what worked well -do again, capturing and using institutional knowledge. Planning, budgeting, organising, procedures… Management is about today

LEADERSHIP  = CHANGE. Leadership produces change: establishing direction, aligning people, people, vision development - Leadership is about tomorrow

It was helpful to understand the difference between first order and second order change. As it is often the negative reaction that comes from the discomfort of second order change.  "Second order change - adaptive change, is difficult because it is about the distribution of loss - "what people resist is not change per se, but loss". Once Mark explained this idea of loss in second order change it was logical to  next  look at how to support people through change. It is the "daily job of leadership is building relational trust" this will assist and support people through change.

This aligned very nicely to a workshop yesterday that Westley Field ran on 'Leading change and contemporary learning'. Westley, in his introduction discussed the need to put student well-being at the centre of student learning. If their well-being is out then they cannot focus on learning. This is the same for teachers - look after the well-being of teachers and then they can concentrate on teaching. 

He spent time discussing the importance of having a clear vision: Vision = the lens through which everything is measured - it is not about a brilliant leader it is about the whole school on board and leading together.

There were 2 key things for me that came out of Westley's workshop. This was being able to identify needs through the Stakeholders Analysis Chart and then being able to identify the needs of staff to have targeted PD and support when going through change.

The combination of both these workshops has given me a deeper understanding of how to support others going through change and how to be supportive when implementing change.

This is just a brief reflection on 2 workshops and I plan to write a more detailed post on all workshops soon.