Team Leadership and Management

1
Team Leadership and Management

• Session 1 - January 12th
• Introduction
• Teams/Groups

2
Aims

• Overview of module and brief explanation of
  assignment
• Significance of leadership in our current system.
• Brief overview of key practices and beliefs about
  leadership.

3
Overview

• GTC state that You cant improve schools without
  leaders.
• Leadership at all levels is the main strand of
  the School Effectiveness Framework.
• School leaders need to develop school cultures to
  facilitate the growth of their leaders good
  schools nurture good leaders and schools work
  better where there is a culture of shared
  leadership (Day et al, 2009).
• Its importance is underlined by its inclusion as
  a main theme of the current WAG review of CDP
• Better leadership offers the potential for
  improved learning and wellbeing for our children.

4
Leadership Capacity

• All teachers (and arguably other support staff)
  require and demonstrate leadership skills
  throughout their careers.
• Leadership in the classroom requires
  practitioners to lead the implementation of
  pedagogy, curriculum innovation and knowledge
  about learning.. (SEF, p13).
• Teachers are required to be leaders of learning,
  to inspire, build trust and motivate.

5

• Evidence shows that effective middle leadership
  is essential to drive improvement and supply the
  system with future headteachers an effective
  middle tier is essential if all schools (not
  just some schools) are to be great schools
  (McKinsey, 2010, p 13).

6
Key Beliefs

• there is not a single documented case of a
  school successfully turning around its pupil
  achievement trajectory in the absence of talented
  leadership. (McKinsey Company, 2010)
• Evidence from Estyns inspection reports shows
  that schools with good and outstanding leaders
  are nearly all good and outstanding schools.
  Schools needing significant improvement or
  special measures to improve are nearly all those
  that have short comings in leadership. (Estyn,
  2010)

7
What makes a good leader?

• Discussion
• Use your own experience of leading and/or being
  lead to answer this.

8
Leadership

• The School Effectiveness Framework summarises the
  main characteristics of leadership as being
  visionary and strategic, collaborative and
  deploying resources to improve childrens
  learning and wellbeing.
• However, there is more to it. The recent
  McKinsey report (2010) summarises key elements of
  good leadership which are consistently identified
  in research.

9
Building a shared vision and sense of purpose
Setting high expectations for performance
Role modeling behaviours and practices
Establishing effective teams and distributing
leadership
Designing and managing a LT program
Understanding and developing people
Key Practices
Protecting teachers from issues that distract
Monitoring performance
Establishing school routines and norms of
behaviour
Connecting the school to parents and the community
Recognizing and rewarding achievement
10
Resilient and persistent in goals but adaptable
to context and people
Focused on student achievement puts child ahead
of personal and political interests
Willing to develop a deep understanding of people
and context
Beliefs Attitudes and personal attributes
Willing to take risks and challenge accepted
beliefs and behaviours
Optimistic and enthusiastic
Self-aware and able to learn
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Key Roles that School Leaders Play

• All leaders and high performers are motivated
  mainly by their ability to make a difference
• They focus more on instructional leadership and
  developing teachers.
• Distinguished less by who they are and more by
  what they do
• They find supporting the improvement of other
  schools and leaders attractive

12
The Importance of Teams

• For schools to work and for leaders to be
  effective, it is vital that all staff see
  themselves as teams of practitioners.
• As such it is worth looking at what constructs
  and effective team and how a team works at an
  optimum level

13
Team

• More than simply a group of people. Groups tend
  to have some characteristics that differentiate
  themselves form others e.g. smokers, Man Utd
  supporters, doctors
• Groups rare in education.
• Teams are formed of specific reasons, usually
  connected to the responsibilities that people
  have or functions they fulfil

14
Teams in Schools

• Senior Management Team
• Middle management teams - subject heads, pastoral
  leaders
• Staff teams - within departments, phase groups,
  administrative units, maintenance, food
• Interdisciplinary teams - those implementing
  policy at operational level
• Project teams - established to achieve short-term
  goals. (These are the ones used to push
  organisational improvement)

15
How do teams work?

• Your own experience. Focus on two examples.
• What did the/do the teams do?
• What was/is your role?
• What are your feelings about them? Why?
• What do you/ did you learn from being a member?
• What did you bring to either that was unique?

16
Why use Teams?

• They bring to organisational development a
  quality that is essential in the effective
  management of change.
• Combining skills of individuals makes greater use
  of individual personal skills - forms an entity
  that is capable of achieving far more than
  individuals operating in isolation.

17
Teams

• Team approaches increasingly used in education
• People working in isolation in organisations are
  more likely to suffer stress
• Change more effectively managed in a collegial
  culture
• Policy implementation is best achieved when
  groups of people work together to achieve
  consistency of practice.
• Research indicates that schools benefit from
  developing teams that serve a variety of
  functions and purposes.

18
Five Stages of a Team (Tuckman, 1965)

• Stage 1 - Forming - dependence on leader
• Stage 2 - Storming - counterdependence.
• Stage 3 - Norming - norms established.
• Stage 4 - Performing - interdependence
• Stage 5 - Ending (mourning)
• At all times, team leaders must remain aware of
  context team is performing in and how this may
  impact on the life of the team.

19
Dr. Meredith Belbin - Group Behaviour

• British Psychologist best known for work on
  Team-role theory.
• A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate
  with others in a particular way
• He defined 9 particular roles in a team. (More
  than one role can be filled by any individual but
  team can have all)

20
Belbins Team Roles

• Plant - creative, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves
  difficult problems
• Resource Investigator - Extrovert, enthusiastic,
  communicative. Explores opportunities. Develops
  contacts.
• Co-ordinator - mature, confident, a good
  chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision
  making, delegates well.
• Shaper - challenging, dynamic, thrives on
  pressure. The rive and courage to overcome
  obstacles.

21
Team Roles contd..

• Monitor evaluator - sober, strategic. Sees all
  options, judges accurately
• Teamworker - co-operative, mild, perceptive and
  diplomatic. Listens, builds, averts friction
• Implementer - disciplined, reliable and
  efficient.
• Completer/finisher - painstaking, conscientious,
  anxious. Searches out errors. Delivers on time
• Specialist - single-minded, self-starting,
  dedicated. Provides knowledge and skills in rare
  supply

22
Strengths

1. Develop collective responsibility
2. Reduce isolation and parochialism within the
   organisation
3. Greater variety of complex problems can be dealt
   with by the pooling of expertise
4. Problems seen from a number of different
   perspectives
5. Job satisfaction - part of the solution
6. Issues that cross departmental boundaries can be
   dealt with more easily and with more awareness
7. Teams are flexible and adaptive
8. Teams more likely to have higher quality decision
   making than individuals

23
Weaknesses

• Must be properly managed - if not can have
  negative effect on morale
• Poorly managed teams tend to have issues of
  competition, withdrawal, lack of trust,
  secretiveness, fighting for resources and power
  games

24
Conclusion

• An effective, performing team needs a number of
  different skills
• Team members have to be prepared to compromise
  their individuality in favour of corporate
  responsibility and success
• Effective leaders recognise how far each
  individual member of the team can compromise and
  accommodate them within the team as a whole.
• Must achieve balance between intended outcome,
  maintaining team dynamic and making each
  individual feel valued.