Many school leaders have been asked, in The Outstanding School test:
Is anyone in your team not performing their job as well as they need to?
84% say yes.
84%!
And given that people are the key to your school’s success and happiness that’s a big number!
But with challenging recruitment it would be very easy to accept it.
I get it.
Surely it’s better to have someone doing a job than not to have someone at all and have to put yourself or other leaders in your school into that role, reducing the time they can spend driving the school forward.
We’re between a rock and a hard place.
But it doesn’t have to be as extreme as that.
Talking about the issue, and moving it forward means you can have someone doing their job better and you don’t need to recruit.
In over 10 years of helping school leaders have these tricky conversations successfully, it’s clear that in the majority of instances the situation improves. It rarely gets worse, and only very occasionally do they leave – and when they do the school always recruit someone better suited to the school.
So who in your team isn’t doing their job as well as you need them to? Just pick one person, it could be the hardest situation or the easiest. It doesn’t matter, just pick one and see if you can improve it.
Because I think we can agree that 84% of school leaders having someone who isn’t doing their job well is a much higher number than any of us would like (even the people who aren’t doing their job well).
If you’d like to learn how to have difficult conversations successfully, you can learn about our training day here: https://ukheadsup.com/events/successful-difficult-conversations-training-day/.
Spotlight Resource
Do any of these questions seem familiar?
- What do you do if they cry?
- So. Many. Parent. Issues. What can you do?
- A staff member is struggling, but they can’t admit or see it.
- Third call from the same parent this week? How to stop them calling.
- What to do when someone doesn’t admit a mistake?
- How do you have a difficult conversation about someone lying?
These are all questions I’ve answered in my 2-minute top tip videos, which will help you with all of these issues and more.
Sign up here and I’ll send you a tip every week during term time: https://ukheadsup.com/top-tips-for-successful-difficult-conversations/