Middle Leadership Blog Series Practice Post 2
Putting your 'toolbox' into practice
Who is this blog post for: Current or emerging middle leaders and for senior leaders or Headteachers who are developing middle leaders.
Author: Lisa Ramshaw
Posted on: 14th November 2023
Keywords: Application; toolbox; situational; reflection; conscious; self-awareness.
In this blog post, we explore some of the scenarios that you may face in your middle leadership role and consider what Goleman leadership styles could be appropriate to deal with the scenario when selecting them from your leadership ‘toolbox’.
Scenario 1
Isha has been at the school for 16 years and is a member of the team that you lead. She is respected by parents and feared by many staff due to her abrupt manner and ‘to the point’ talking. She is extremely set in her ways and gets good results from the pupils. The school is trying to implement a more creative curriculum, but Isha doesn’t want to change her traditional style of teaching. Recently she has become very negative about all the changes and often expresses her views loudly in the staff room and has also been known to talk to the parents about her views of the new style curriculum. You have your team meeting coming up soon, where this is an agenda item, and you fear that Isha may create some discord within the team.
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Prompt questions
Before clicking the response below to reveal a suggested solution, reflect on what you would do to handle this situation and make some notes to capture your thinking. |
Once you are ready, click the button below.
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Within this scenario, you seem to have the advantage of being aware of this situation before your team meeting. It could be useful to meet with Isha before this meeting to allow her to share her views. Approaching this from an affiliative point of view initially could be beneficial, so that Isha feels heard and her views shared. You may then switch to a more visionary (authoritative) style, as you share the reasons why this creative curriculum is being developed and implemented. Since Isha is an effective teacher of 16 years, you could then move to a more pacesetting style whereby you hone in on her experience and success and consider aspects of her practice that are of a high standard and would be needed to make sure such a new creative curriculum can be implemented effectively. Hopefully, this approach could make her feel valued, and she could then be a supportive advocate of the change to help coach other members of the team. Once in your meeting with all other team members, using the visionary (authoritative) style again to position the reasons for the creative curriculum could be useful to set the scene. Once the ‘why’ has been shared, adopting a democratic approach to draw out the opportunities and challenges as a collective team could be useful, so that you can democratically problem-solve any challenges that may exist to help move the project forward. |
Reflection
- How does this suggested solution compare to your own thoughts and suggestions?
- Would you do anything differently? If so, what would that be and why?
Scenario 2
You have a teacher on your team who is very keen and motivated; however, they consume a lot of your time by ‘running things by you’ and regularly catch you in the corridor to share what has happened in their day. The ‘two minutes’ they ask you for, always turns into twenty-two. This often puts a strain on your time, and you then have to stay later at work to finish off the things you needed to.
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Prompt questions
Before clicking the response below to reveal a suggested solution, reflect on what you would do to handle this situation and make some notes to capture your thinking. |
Once you are ready, click the button below.
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In this scenario, when someone is so keen, it is very hard as a leader to dismiss them or say that you are too busy. Most leaders always want to be accommodating and give time to others. However, it seems that this teacher has a dependency or a learned helplessness that you may be encouraging. For the benefit of the teacher themselves, you want to be able to develop their independence, so that they have the confidence to use their own initiative and be self-reflective. Therefore, the next time this happens, I would suggest that you as the leader are a little more assertive (with a smile!), using a commanding (coercive) approach – kindly. Share that you are very interested in what they have to say, but you are unable to chat right now. Ask them to email you to arrange a time when you can have a more focused conversation. This way, you have shown that you still have time for them, but it is going to be when it is more convenient to you. Once you arrange this meeting with that teacher, the coaching style could then be adopted. As long as you are the leader who is just verifying any query they have, they will always be dependent on you as they see you as their mentor. However, if you use coaching and develop their skills to be able to think for themselves and empower them to take their own initiative, you will develop their independence. I always find the GROW model is a simple and effective strategy when coaching and the results I have achieved have been very successful. Many teachers have thanked me for opening up their own minds to solutions they didn’t know they had. GROW is an acronym for Goal/s, Reality, Options, Way Forward. G - In the initial stage, start by asking what they want to achieve from the conversation, or what they would like to chat about, i.e., their goal or aim. R – Then move onto asking them what the current reality is, and why it is important to them – i.e., what is happening now. O – Once you have established this, the most substantial part of the conversation is about discussing and debating what the relevant options are to achieving the initial goal. Depending on the teacher, you may need to step in with some possible options, but I would always encourage you to provide a choice to the teacher, so they always feel that it is them who has made the decision and feels empowered. W – Finally, once all possible options are discussed, ask the teacher how they would like to proceed – i.e., what is the way forward from here? Hopefully, a few of those conversations will significantly reduce the amount of long-winded corridor conversations and move your teaching team from dependent to independent. |
Reflection
- How does this suggested solution compare to your own thoughts and suggestions?
- Would you do anything differently? If so, what would that be and why?
Scenario 3
In the first reflection post of this series, it was prefaced that the two layers of the hierarchical structure can pull a middle leader in many directions, framed as ‘sandwich leadership’. Usually, middle leaders are sandwiched between senior leaders and their teams, therefore, there are also times when you need to ‘lead up’ and times when you need to follow their lead. The following scenario asks you to consider just that and reflect on what Goleman Leadership styles may be appropriate in this situation.
After a recent meeting with your senior leader, you have been instructed to provide judgements for each one of teachers in your team. You have perceived your senior leader’s style to be quite commanding (coercive) in their request. However, you need to do this within two weeks, and you feel that you don’t have enough time to organise thorough learning walks or lesson observations to be able to make fair judgements of teachers. Since you are new to your middle leader role, you have not made judgements on teachers like this before, and although you have the teacher observation data from last year, you want to be able to make judgements based on teacher performance within this academic year.
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Prompt questions
Before clicking the response below to reveal a suggested solution, reflect on what you would do to handle this situation and make some notes to capture your thinking. |
Once you are ready, click the button below.
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With this scenario, it seems that you have two options or two directions you can go in.
I’m sure that you are already thinking of a specific senior leader, and you will know whether they are approachable for negotiation and whether they would be open to a further discussion. Equally, you will probably know whether their request is flexible, or whether it is due to an external request and is, therefore, not flexible. This is the relational aspect of being a middle leader within a school and working with people you are familiar with. There will be certain norms that have been established in the hierarchical leadership context, and you will be aware of how flexible these are, or not. However, the bottom line is, that in this scenario you don’t know why this data is needed within two weeks as the senior leader did not share that information with you. Therefore, let’s consider what leadership styles are most appropriate for option 2 – ‘Leading up’. Although the leader is perceived to be using a commanding style, you may wish to approach your leader in a more affiliative way. Perhaps share your own feelings about the request and ask if it would be possible to speak with the senior leader again. Sharing a degree of vulnerability should evoke a response from your senior leader, so they agree to meet with you again. It will be important to establish what the vision is with respect to the request (i.e., the why), encouraging your senior leader to adopt a more visionary style. Once you understand the vision, you could then request a coaching conversation in order to support you in this task and new role. Alternatively, you may request the senior leader to conduct some learning walks or lesson observations with you, so you know you are making the correct judgments. This way you are encouraging the senior leader to adopt a more pacesetting/mentoring role. Either way, you are encouraging a particular leadership style from your senior leader based on what you need, and effectively communicating how you would like to be led. With this approach, it is also important to consider your own integrity within the ‘sandwich leadership’ scenario and whether what you are asking of your senior leader, you would be willing to do for your team. |
Reflection
- How does this suggested solution compare to your own thoughts and suggestions?
- Would you do anything differently? If so, what would that be and why?
As stated at the start if this blog post, we hope these scenarios have helped you reflect on different ways to deal with different scenarios, and how effectively your leadership toolbox can be employed.
Should you have any specific scenarios you would like to speak with us about, or leadership training needs in your school, then please click the ‘Register your interest’ link below.
References:
- Hieker, C. and Pringle, J. (2021) The Future of Leadership Development: Disruption and the Impact of Megatrends. Springer Nature.
- Goleman. D. (2000) Leadership that gets Results. In Harvard business review, 78 (2), pp. 78–90. Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
- Whitmore, J. (2010). Coaching for Performance: The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership FULLY REVISED 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. Hachette UK.