Developing leadership in others

Introduction
Throughout the whole of this module we have described the function and characteristics of leadership. In theory this is easy to do but the practice of leadership can be a challenge for some people. Respect and trust in a leader is important for others to follow them. However, there is also a whole range of other personal qualities such as integrity, honesty, humility, courage, commitment, sincerity, passion, confidence, wisdom, determination, compassion, sensitivity, and a degree of personal charisma which can characterise leaders and separate them from mere managers

We might ask ourselves to what extent some people are born to be leaders or simply learn the necessary skills, developing them as they gain experience in their leadership role. We have already seen that an autocratic style of leadership has many problems associated with it and that a variety of styles is necessary to function well in the array of situations in which one can find oneself. We do not encourage this dominant behaviour in leaders, especially new ones, as it gives staff a lot to push against and resist. It also prevents a sense of ownership and self-control among the people being led. It inhibits the positive rewards and incentives (thanks, recognition, encouragement, etc) vital for teams and individuals to cope with change. Leaders of course need to be able to make tough decisions when required but, most importantly, they should concentrate on enabling the team to thrive and be a cohesive group, which is actually a 'serving' role, not the dominant 'leading' role commonly associated with leadership.

In this unit, therefore, we see the head not just as the “lead professional” but the “lead learner”. It is through his / her example of taking full responsibility for his / her professional development that others will follow, using the head as a model for their own leadership development.

Professional development through in-service training is essential for the sustained growth of a school and, in particular, those who lead at whatever level and those who will be the future leaders. All, therefore, must be involved at every stage, from the children to the headteacher. We might describe this approach as one of a “learning community” of which the head takes the lead.

Individual study time: 3 hours

Learning outcomes
After working through this unit, you should be able to:

§ appreciate what is meant by leadership professional development
§ understand why it is important to develop people in leadership.
§ understand the process of professional development
§ describe the various forms that leadership training may take both for individuals and groups of people.
§ articulate the challenges in providing quality leadership professional development in Guyana and how to meet them.
§ outline specific strategies for developing leadership in teachers, SLTs and students.
§ understand the concept of succession planning
§ evaluate leadership skills in others.

Professional development in leadership
As stated above, professional development is essential for the sustained growth of a school but, in this unit, we are focusing on leadership training in particular.

Consider for a moment what you understand by the professional development of leaders.

Comments
One of the essential characteristics of true professionals is that they will continue to learn throughout their careers. This will not only be throughout the early stages when establishing a career but continuously so that they will be able to meet the demands of their post. The key post of a leader, at whatever level, is so important to the success of a school that the development of skills cannot be left to chance and must be planned for.

As professionals, teachers and aspiring leaders must be encouraged to show a commitment towards self-improvement. However, the system must encourage them and provide an incentive to do so. If teachers are promoted purely on their length of service and not on their competence and commitment to learning, there will be no incentive to make improvements in their performance. It is essential, therefore, when making recommendations for a leadership role, particularly through the appraisal system, that commitment to training is taken account of.

The responsibility for such training, therefore, must be a shared one between the Ministry of Education (which provides programmes such as the one you are studying), the headteacher who must recognise leadership potential within the school and the individual who must show a willingness to develop his / her own skills.

Why is leadership training important?

Activity 5.1
As the “lead professional” or “lead learner” in the school, it is your responsibility to develop others.

1) Give your reasons why it is important to train others in leadership skills.
2) Imagine that you have a member of the SLT in your school who avoids any leadership activity. What do you feel will the consequences of this and what would you do about it?

Comments
We hardly feel that we need to comment on this as it has been a central theme throughout this module. Nevertheless, in simple terms, good leadership skills make a difference to teacher and pupil performance and ultimately to school effectiveness. We need to plan, also, for a time when we will not be around and others must take over.

How you would tackle the SLT member would depend entirely on their reasons for failure to participate. If it is simply through lack of skill and confidence, then appropriate training is essential and must be encouraged. If it is through lack of motivation or interest in the work, a more assertive approach may be needed to show the effects of the actions on pupil performance.

Ultimately, the teacher must cooperate in leadership activities or face disciplinary procedures.

The process
Firstly, you must identify those whose attitude towards their work and training as well as their performance, show potential for leadership. This is not to say that you are promising them promotion but you are training them for when the opportunity arises. You may find that some of those whose commitment is lacking may wish to be included. It is best to set them targets of improved performance before including them on the training. Here we are outlining a simple process for training and developing management and leadership skills.

§ Obtain commitment from trainees for the development process. Commitment is essential for development. If possible, link this with the process of appraisals.
§ Involve trainees in identifying leadership qualities and identify the skills and behaviour that you are seeking to develop. Training workshops are ideal for this activity.
§ Assess, prioritise and agree trainee capabilities, gaps in skills and knowledge and needs against the skills and behaviour you are developing; individually and as a group, so as to be able to plan group training and individual training according to needs and make your provision more efficient.
§ Design and agree with trainees the activities, exercises and learning experiences to achieve the desired results.
§ Break down the activities into digestible parts delivered over a period of time
§ Use a training planner to plan the training activities and programmes.
§ Record the training objectives and link to appraisals.
§ Establish and agree measures, outputs, tasks, standards etc. to monitor and evaluate the training

All of this presupposes that you are willing to deliver the training yourself, as head, or perhaps you would collaborate with other heads and the regional education office. The latter would provide a more comprehensive approach which capitalised on the wide-ranging experience of a number of contributors.

In the first instance, you could use the materials from this course as a means of developing your staff. Ideally they would complete the whole programme as it was designed and be assessed through the programme. However, such a commitment can be too onerous for some and a more condensed version may be needed for more immediate results. Whatever your approach, it is important that you participate in and facilitate teachers’ learning rather than simply directing it.

Reflect for a few minutes on whether you would, as head, be prepared to develop such a programme, whether it would work in your school and how you might adapt it to meet your local needs.

Comments
As head, you would have a responsibility towards your staff in this area and, whether you feel you would be able to facilitate such a programme or not, it is your duty to encourage others’ participation and to share your skills with them. The success of a programme would be dependant on the enthusiasm, energy and commitment of the person leading it. There would be immediate benefits for the school as long as the trainees remained in post. However, if leadership training became widespread, others would take up post having been trained elsewhere.

Methods of leadership training
Here are examples of types of leadership training other than this programme. Training need not be too expensive, although some obviously is. The only requirements are imagination, commitment and a solid process to manage and acknowledge the development. We are sure that you will have lots more ideas.

On the job coaching: A skilled person, line manager or perhaps DEO works with individuals to meet certain skill objectives.
Mentoring: A mentor supports and provides opportunities for discussion about progress in agreed areas.
Delegated tasks and projects: Persons learn by experience and trial and error and we must give them the opportunity to do so.
Reading assignments: We can provide reading material or perhaps access to the internet to do individual research.
Presentation assignments: Trainees are asked to research an area of leadership and prepare a paper or presentation to a group of staff to share their skills and knowledge.
Job deputisation: Although there may not be any pay involved, persons can deputise willingly for others in order to “learn the ropes” of a job they may wish to do in the future.
Secondment or exchange: A teacher could be seconded or do an exchange with another school for a period of time to learn how things might be done differently.
External training courses and seminars: These courses on specific topics may be provided by the training college, the University of Guyana, the MOE or a private facilitator.
Distance learning: The Education Management Certificate is an example of a course which, under the guidance of Master Trainers, is a self-instructional programme.
Hobbies - e.g. voluntary club / committee positions, sports, outdoor activities, and virtually anything outside work that provides a useful personal development leadership challenge.
Internal training courses: These are developed by the school to meet local needs.
Internal briefings and presentations: staff take turns in presenting to others what they have learnt
Special responsibilities: Allocating a role to a teacher which require obtaining new skills and knowledge or exposure to new ways of working
Video: These are usually commercially produced training materials for individual and group use.
Internet and e-learning: The role of the internet in learning is becoming a vast opportunity. The use of search engines and wikis to access information is becoming much more prevalent and useful in the school context.
Attachment to project or other teams: The setting up of teams allows persons to learn from each other and share skills.
Job-swap: This gives teachers the opportunity for peers to experience a different role within their own school.
Accredited outside courses: These are usually based on new qualifications, e.g. First degrees, EMC, Masters Degree, University of Guyana or other diplomas.

Activity 5.2
1) Evaluate each of the above training methods and indicate whether they would be a possible course of action in your own school.
2) What would be the strengths and weaknesses of each?

Comments
Given the willingness and enthusiasm of both the training facilitator (the head) and the trainees (the teachers) there is no reason why most of the above should not be possibilities in most schools. It should be noted, however, that the size of school might sometimes cause a limitation. Time is, of course, an issue and there is often no time for meetings inside of school hours and little opportunity for substitute teachers.

Meeting the training challenges in Guyana
Having looked at the possibilities for training our leaders, you will no doubt have some reservations in your mind about the constraints we face in Guyana in terms of offering them quality training.

Activity 5.3
Try to state some of the restrictions we face in this country in developing our leaders both from the point of view of the training providers and also those to be trained.

Comments
We would like to tackle this from another angle in order to complement your answer. Rather than the negative, we will focus on the positive and try to provide some solutions. Issues such as finance, the availability of resource persons, the willingness and motivation of teachers, the lack of substitute teachers all have an impact on our ability to develop our teachers to take on a leadership role effectively. We have provided below, therefore, some examples of strategies to overcome some of these issues.

It almost feels like a no-win situation sometimes because these issues can, at times, be overwhelming and the lack of quality training will have an impact on the schools and this in turn will produce de-motivated managers who will fail to motivate their teachers. It is essential to break this cycle by having an organised training programme for headteachers, senior leaders and middle leaders which is rolled out right across the country in a systematic way. We go back to our assertion that leadership must be proactive and not simply reacting and trying to find solutions to current problems.

Whereas some teachers will be enthusiastic enough to seek their own training opportunities such as a further degree, diplomas, the EMC or the courses on Educational Administration at the University of Guyana, many may not have the energy, time or inclination to do so. All of these cost the student in time, money and promotional opportunities in the short term. It is, therefore, essential that these become part of their entitlement as a teacher for the better good of the service as a whole. The programme described above would be cost effective in that preparation would be geared to the generic needs of all heads and school leaders and delivered in a systematic way to all by an individual resource person or a small team. It would be essential that all sectors of the establishment participate including the departments of education staff, hence creating a sustainable approach for the passing on at a later date of knowledge and skills. Suitable persons in each region would be identified to carry on this work on a continuous basis with materials provided by the central ministry. Such an investment would pay off a hundred-fold.

Much research has shown that teachers are not simply motivated by salary considerations (although it helps). The fragile and declining motivation of teachers and their low self-esteem in their professional role will be significantly enhanced if their role is developed and their skill levels improved by focused training in their area of expertise. All lines of work survive as professions by the fact that they hold a body of knowledge and skills which others do not possess. The teacher, in this respect is no different from the doctor, the lawyer and the actor. Take away this skill and you take away their professional ‘raison d’être”.

Finally, the head as the “lead learner” needs to find ways of providing time within the school day for training to take place as well as the statutory professional development sessions. This is perhaps the biggest challenge as it requires financial resources.

Use your imagination for a moment and think of one or two ways in which you might provide time for training in school without having a negative impact on teacher-pupil contact time. Remember the process you learnt earlier about problem solving.

Specific strategies for different types of leaders
Here we will look at the different focus that we might have for developing the leadership skills of the various groups within our schools.

Senior Leaders:
Firstly, we will start with those who hold the greatest responsibilities. When developing our senior leaders, we will concentrate on the following:

§ Performance: their ability to achieve specific success in a range of educational activities relating to school effectiveness.
§ Value-added: their ability to identify the baseline of children’s performance, maximise educational input by the teachers in their charge and measure their success after a period of time has elapsed.
§ Strategy: their ability to realise long-term strategic goals and successfully navigate the challenges on the way.
§ Competency: the ability to develop specific competencies in the staff they supervise and evaluate their proficiency in them.
§ Stakeholders: the ability to foster and sustain support in the key stakeholders of the school.

Middle Leaders:
Secondly, we will refer to the often forgotten group who are leaders in training. All of the above to a greater or lesser extent also applies to the middle leaders.

§ Professionalism: their ability to operate in a professional manner and separate the professional from the personal.
§ Managerial: their ability to exercise managerial control over their team and use the appropriate styles of leadership and management.
§ Supervisory: their ability to advise, coach and be responsible for the work of another person or persons.
§ Organisational: their ability to develop systems and procedures which enhance the effective running of the school.
§ Accountability: their ability to recognise those to whom they are accountable and act appropriately.

Of course, all of the above also apply to the other groups of teachers, as and when appropriate.

Teachers:
Thirdly, as the main body of the workforce, recognition of their need for leadership skills is often overlooked. However, they are generally responsible for the largest number of people, albeit children and their effective skills in this area are essential.

§ Control: their ability to maintain orderly control over those for whom they are responsible.
§ Development: their ability to develop leadership skills in children.
§ Pedagogical: their ability to lead children through an effective learning process.
§ Exemplary: their ability to lead by example in all they do so that others will follow them.
§ Social: their ability to model appropriate social skills so that children will behave in the correct way.

Students:
Finally, it is important that we develop leadership skills in the children we serve. This group, more than others, is probably the one where the natural flair of the individual to lead others is probably most apparent. We not only need to identify these students but also provide opportunities for others to learn the skill and become more confident with their peers. The emphasis here lies on the teachers’ ability to encourage the following:

§ Decision-making: Developing structures for children to participate in decision making.
§ Partnership: Adopting a whole school approach to working in partnership with pupils.
§ Success: Developing strategies to celebrate the successes of pupil achievement
§ Innovation: Encouraging pupils to innovate and introduce new ideas for the school.
§ Involvement: Creating opportunities for collective endeavour and pupil involvement.

Select one of the groups above and reflect on the extent to which your school successfully develops leadership skills in that group. If you feel that this is an area that you may need to develop, consider how you might go about it.

Succession Planning
This is simply the way we might be proactive in ensuring that we will be able to fill the gap when a key leader in the school moves on. In fact, everything we have introduced in this unit is part of the process of succession planning. Ideally, all schools would plan the training for the country’s future leaders. In truth, training is often “on the job” or “ad hoc”. Although it should exist at all levels of leadership, resource issues and the complexities of running a school often make this a luxury rather than a reality.

Evaluating the leadership of others
Throughout the whole of this module we have described leadership in its various forms and in this unit described how it might be developed in others. If we are to select the best leaders for our schools, it should be done based on sound appraisal systems, past record, ability and the evaluation of leadership skills rather than merely long service which is an out-moded method of selection. Guyana is moving rapidly to the appointment of its headteachers based on ability and it should have an impact on quality and skill levels and consequently school effectiveness. To be able to do this, a headteacher needs to be astute in recognising genuine skills and evaluating them in order to make the appropriate recommendations to the Teaching Service Commission about the appointment of staff.

Activity 5.4
Using the section on middle leaders and in your role as headteacher, provide three criteria for each of the training focuses which would act as exemplars of that particular leadership skill.
For example:
Professionalism: does not allow personal friendship to interfere with his / her professional relationship with the departmental staff.

Comments
Your examples will no doubt be very diverse and there will be many possibilities for each one. If you like, these are your expectations for your staff at each level. As we have said previously, it is good practice to articulate clearly your expectations about leadership behaviour and these will serve as the benchmarks against which you will make judgements about the capabilities of your staff. This is a key feature of the self-evaluating school.

Summary
Leadership training is now commonly seen as a key feature in the agenda to raise achievement in schools and to improve their effectiveness. We believe, therefore, that it cannot be left to chance or delivered in an ad hoc way. It is important that you are able to appreciate what is meant by leadership professional development and why it is essential to develop people in leadership. As a result of this, you need to understand the process of providing professional development and be able to describe the various forms that leadership professional development may take both for individuals and groups of people in order that you will be able to put them into practice.

However, we are aware that such training in Guyana has its challenges especially in the light of decreasing resources and resource persons. We have provided for you strategies to try to overcome this in a positive way. Each type of leader deserves a tailor-made programme to meet its needs. In this unit, we have outlined for you the specific leadership training focus of each group and assisted you in evaluating those skills in order that good decisions will be made about future leaders.

Finally, we all need to plan for a time when our leaders will move on to other things. Succession planning is a way of preparing for this and we have linked this concept to all of the other training processes already outlined.