Kaizen Question/Focus

What am I wanting to focus on?

• Grow the capabilities of others through a clear coaching process
• Be an integral part of other mentor's teaching as inquiries (Roanna - environment, Tetli -engagement) through creating clear goals every 4-5 weeks

What is my Desired Reality?

• To grow the capabilities of team members in leadership, teaming and practice
• My coaching process becomes clear and effective
What am I wanting to develop my own capacity on through this inquiry?

• Build knowledge around coaching techniques
• Develop skills/questioning around having difficult conversations
• To articulate my/our values and beliefs through coaching to inspire the team to bring them to life

Battling the 'Always On' Culture

I have had a terrible start to the term regarding disconnecting and looking after my well-being. I am particularly frustrated as I felt I had begun to create a decent balance of work and family. 

The article has really reminded me that I need to be more conscious of disconnecting on the weekend. I need to create a definitive time of disconnection, whether it be an entire day or separate my leadership reading to a Saturday - which, interestingly,  I particularly enjoy and not see that is a necessary disconnect? Is that wrong in regards of disconnecting? Is all of it purposeful?

As Shotover, thankfully, does not have an Email culture - my 'addiction' is SLACK, Twitter, Facebook regarding education. I have myself wasting time wandering in and out of articles without any real purpose when there is a lot more things I should be getting on with.  I have been pleased with how I have cut out Twitter, I feel a lot better and more focused and productive - but I can do better. 

Cognitive Overload can lead to becoming distracted and be drawn to things that we prefer for a short fix, rather than putting our time into more productive areas. I have definitely find myself avoiding deeper thinking work and justifying work with simpler tasks. I have found myself doing a lot more housework? :) It is a distraction as an avoidance of a deeper thinking work.

"But people prefer reading an email to thinking about a problem more deeply. We don’t have the reflex anymore to spend three of four hours on one project. It is a constant distraction.”

In most cases, we are in the position to be able to manage our work schedule, but can teachers manage this successfully without any support? Teaching in a flexible learning environment is incredibly complex and there is a lot more to contend with than teaching in a single cell. Scheduling 'technical' tasks requires management skills which can be taught and develop quickly, 'adaptive' tasks are the opposite. Every adaptive problem requires a new solution and an approach, as much as we try to find one, we can not deal with it in an efficient systematic way. You can have a framework with questions etc, but they are totally dependent on knowing people and background etc. Ultimately, they always take time and it will have unknown variable (s) and can be incredibly frustrating. This adds another variable of frustration which leads people to not want to deal with the problem in an efficient way ie give it the time to be fully dealt with. In our environment we have to deal with both issues of dealing with management work as well as relationship work. Tony Burkin described it as 'relentless' and he is spot on, particularly in relation to the daily 'adaptive' problems we have.

As a team leader, it is essential the management side of our habitat is totally sorted and under control for all mentors. It is something we can manage and ensure its one thing less to worry due to the daily 'adaptive' problems. If you add to problems that are already there it can lead to cognitive overload and mentors becoming stuck. 

Action: Spend more meeting time on the management problems ie Communicating Learning and gathering data for OTJ's.

Action: Teaming skills will be dealt with during mentor meetings and a short time in our team meeting too.

Current and Desired Reality

My desired reality is to be an effective coach through having a clear and purposeful process. My current reality is that I do not know the team's goals, HBDI, beliefs and values. The process needs to be understood and made clear to my team. Coaching requires the support of reading and where do I find it. My steps are to get to know the team by meeting regularly and finding out/creating purposeful goals.  My second step is to create and execute a process which ensures our meetings are effective with clear steps and measurable goals. My third step is to build my own knowledge around reading to support my meetings, where relevant, when I can. I can also encourage others to use reading and share with the team too.

Coaching Phase 1

Now the mentors have a clear idea of what their inquiry is I will begin to meet with them using the visual aid of coaching process ie Aim, Reality and Action.

I am currently reading 'Extraordinary Leadership in Australia & New Zealand' from cover to cover as I have delved into it many times without reading it in its entirety.

Great Leaders are Great Learners

Leadership is an observable pattern of practices and behaviours and a definable set of skills and abilities. And any skill can be learned, strengthened, honed and enhanced. What's required - is the willingness to get better. Great leaders are great learners. Open to new information and new ideas, not afraid to experiment and to make mistakes.

Sustained effort, practice, a tolerance for discomfort and good coaching required. You have to deliberately and consciously practice, practice and practice. What do you practice?

After working through Aim, Reality and Action, I also want the mentor to have something they are working in Leadership Pipeline 2 in regards to teaming, with the idea they consciously practice it.

I am not convinced that some members of the team will naturally team and it will require some discomfort with other members practicing elements of teaming. As well as their own teaching as inquiry, we will identify an aspect of teaming to work on, from a leadership perspective, and ask them to 'practice it.'

Achievement vs Success

vs

Achievement vs Success

(from Start with Why - Simon Sinek)

Many people who achieve great success don't always feel it. Success and achievement are not the same thing. Achievement is something you reach or attain, like a goal. It is something tangible, clearly defined and measurable - ie National Standards. Success, in contrast, is a feeling or a state of being - ie seeing the students applying/using their new knowledge in a way that fits our 'Powerful Learning' model? Achievement comes when you are pursue and attain WHAT you want. Success comes when you are clear in pursuit of WHY you want it. The former is motivated by tangible factors while the latter by something deeper in the brain. Achievements, WHAT we do, serve as the milestones to indicate we are on the right path. We need both. Our BPP for powerful learning - ensure our WHY and WHAT are aligned. Hold ourselves accountable to HOW we do it and WHAT serves as the tangible proof of what we believe. Personally, what does it look like when we achieve 'success'? When do you believe, you will feel success? The achievement is tangible and clear. Action: Create a statement for our belief/why...

This was a successful discussion where we ended up creating a belief for Powerful Learning based around one word - Purpose. We wanted to be able to articulate with others our belief and felt having one word would help us begin a conversation and use examples around the habitat. Here is our current BPP on Powerful Learning...

The Point of Difference

During my state of play with Ben he asked me the question of why Coronet reached a 9/10 for teaming. I subsequently listed lots of hows and whats ie high trust, leadership opportunities, clarity and purpose of what we do. I left the meeting with that question ringing in my ears as I felt I haven't answered the question very well - I struggled to answer something that was so important it bothered me greatly.

As I am reading Start with the 'Why - How great leaders inspire everyone to take action' by Simon Sinek this question continuously bounces around my head and I now have more clarity.

The reason we were successful was because the majority of the team bought into the why ie our vision was to create an environment where 'We set students up for success.' Both Rachel and I were driven by that vision and every decision we made was put through the 'celery test' ie will this decision/change help the students to succeed. Will this change set students up for success?

Our early decisions to focus on students reading skills as many were below what we expected had to be addressed but at the same time we identified that to succeed we had to focus on our teaming. We all had a wide range of skills and knowledge to offer which meant were not afraid to admit that we didn't have the skills and knowledge to meet those needs, but Rachel did. We followed her lead, high trust, and we made a difference. It was a team effort based on using the teams strengths and working together. Through that experience we built trust by working towards a clear vision.

There were many other factors too such as the modelling of sweep the sheds - hugely important. However, I want to put out something challenging and essential to the success of future teaming. Team leaders need mentors who believe in their vision and bring it to life. Mentors should have the choice to join a team leader's vision ie at the end of the year they meet the team leader and put a case forward of how they believe in this vision and what their understanding looks like.

This year has not been as successful due to a mentor having different beliefs and if they were in a different habitat with the right vision that aligns with their values and beliefs it would bring the best of the mentors and students.

I believe we need to challenge the process of leadership creating the teams and, at least, include the mentors and team leaders in the creation of teams based around the vision of the leaders. You could argue that those visions would/should be similar - walk around each habitat and you will clearly see and feel a very different team. The point of difference? Vision.

Understanding My HBDI Profile

Awhile back Tetli shared a fantastic HBDI app during a Smackdown and it provides tips on what to do when under pressure. As I have been under a lot of pressure lately, I thought this would be a valuable time to look at the tips.

The biggest shift in my profile whilst under pressure is the relational goes out and experimental goes in.

My profile says that 'more pressure for me is when others emotions shut others down.'  It says to take time-out to compose yourself before coming back to the situation.  Interestingly, I did take a break from the situation and spoke to others for support, which definitely helped me approach the problem in a positive and carefully constructed way with great results.  

'I can create more pressure for myself with the need to talk it out which wastes time and distracts.' I found the conversations very helpful and essential to overcome the problem, but they were problem longer than needed and I may have had more than needed. Their tip is to try writing down your thoughts before communicating with others to allow clearer thinking. Fortunately, I always write notes for meetings via the agenda and the discussions helped bring clarity to my thinking. However, I could do this more often - its definitely a weakness of mine ie articulating my thinking.

After reading the notes for experimental, I was incredibly surprised. I believed the relational was the problem but the notes here could be more the reason for my stress.

The pressure makes you feel mentally stuck, with a few obviously unsatisfactory ideas. This was so true, I wasn't only stuck - I was completely concreted in!  During one of more frustrated meetings I definitely articulated that I couldn't think of anything else, it was blockage to everything else I needed to do.  The recommendation is to take a break, a walk  or seek out a friend to shift your mindset away from the details at hand. I certainly 'seeked' out professional support, but maybe I should have 'seeked' out more personal support. Maybe this could be a strategy I use more often, talking with fellow professionals actually, in many cases, compounds the stress. Talking with someone not connected with the school will help me gain a more rounded perspective and shift my thinking away. Doesn't help living with teacher!