Sometimes a conversation is difficult because the other person doesn’t understand there is a problem – you might have told them several times but feel that they don’t appreciate how serious this is or that they don’t acknowledge that there is a problem. One of the school leadership team’s I support had exactly this issue; […]
(But a lot of people don’t know the difference) We’ve all heard strappy, catchy mottos of a ‘vision’: Love learning throughout life Be the best Reach for the stars Every child matters Achieve your potential (this one always makes me giggle, because I wonder what do you do when you have achieved it? I like […]
It took me a year to figure this out. Seriously! Ok, so not a year only doing this, but a year of coming back, researching more, looking at visions and missions and generally scratching my head until I could understand and explain what the difference was. So here it is, for you, because you don’t […]
Generally speaking, vanilla is a flavour everyone likes – some people like it a lot – but you know what I mean when I say ‘vanilla’: having no special or extra features; ordinary or standard. Everyone might like it a bit but it doesn’t excite people; fuchsia pink, pistachio ice cream, these get a reaction […]
Often when I see a school vision, what stands out is that it doesn’t tell anyone why it is wanted, a bit like that picture it’s unclear. I think we sometimes think people will just know, or that it’s not important, but it’s crucial! If you don’t tell people why, they will struggle to buy […]
We want everyone in our team to be on board with our vision so that we can spend a lot of time and energy trying to get people on our bus to join us on our journey. However, vision is a choice; if you want me to get on your bus, I need to know […]
A difficult conversation case study I trained a school leadership team of 7 on how to have more successful difficult conversations. When I do this, I teach them the skills in the morning and, in the afternoon, I support them approaching a difficult conversation they have ahead of them. In this school, there was a […]
A difficult conversation case study I first met head teacher Lisa at one of the Successful Difficult Conversations training days I run and she later booked me for the next stage of the course ‘Flexing your Leadership Style’ which I ran with her leadership team. During the course of the day, we talked about issues […]
Three tips for talking to teachers when their pay is higher than performance Pay is always a hot, emotive topic, and in teaching it’s about to get a lot hotter; performance-related pay is going to mean some difficult conversations around pay every year. But in the first two years, 2013/14 and 2014/15, these conversations will […]
So often I see visions which are a sentence and, whilst in many instances less is more, in this case I believe less really is less. You see a vision is exactly that; a vision, a picture, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words (not a sentence). I’m not saying your […]
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