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10 Things We Learned At The Challenge Partners Annual Conference

Neuroplasticity, business-minded thinking, wok-assisted networking and verbal smackdowns – it's all in a day's leadership learning…

Callum Fauser
by Callum Fauser
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Last week saw a roomful of school leaders gather together to share ideas and take inspiration from a series of speakers at the 2017 Challenge Partners Annual Conference. With the theme of this year’s event ‘Leadership at all Levels’, here were our main takeaways…

1. Career progression in education is faster than it used to be, thanks to MATs

The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools, Lord Nash, kicked off proceedings with an address themed around the ways in which business is relevant to education. Having had personal experience sponsoring a school in Pimlico, it came as little surprise to hear him hail the academy model, and MATs in particular, as having played a positive role in moving schools away from operating as ‘small islands’, to becoming part of a more rigorous, autonomous and unified system in which the skills of top leaders can be more effectively leveraged.

More than that, Lord Nash noted, MATs have transformed the career horizons of young teachers – to the extent that some can now look forward to being subject head in their mid 20s, head of subject across a MAT not long after, and a principal or MAT CEO soon after that, which he concluded could greatly help with teacher retention.

2. Always bring your wok

The next speaker up was Pinky Lilani – motivational speaker, campaigner for women’s causes and consummate networker. Her talk took the form of an entertaining and at times surprising reflection on her journey from stay-at-home mother to food consultant, after her home-made cooking came to the attention of a Sharwoods representative. She went on to self-publish a cookery book, and finally persuaded a retailer to stock it after suggesting a launch event that would see her give an in-store cookery demonstration with the aid of her trusty wok.

She described how that day inspired her to found a business producing spice boxes, and begin running team-building days based on Indian cookery at her home. Through it all, she kept coming back to the power of the network, which she experienced for herself after successfully persuading Cherie Blair to attend her inaugural Asian Women Awards, and parleying that early connection into a campaigning career that’s since brought her into the orbit of Shami Chakraborti, Kelly Hoppen, Theresa May and Kate Middleton, not to mention numerous others.

3. You can never be too kind

Lilani’s other through-line was the importance of kindness. She told the assembled audience of heads that her mantra was ‘Do something every day for someone who can never repay you’, and proceeded to explain how she always carries five chocolates everywhere, for giving to random people in the street or on the train.

If there were members of the audience unconvinced by that, it would surely have been hard for them to not be at least partially on board with the sentiment contained in the beautiful closing lines of her address – “People are shy about being kind, but you can never be too kind. If I were to give one piece of advice, I would say ‘Be kinder than you have to be.”

4. It pays to be a magpie

Watching Teresa Tunnadine, executive head at The Compton School, explore the building of leadership in schools, we learnt a fund new word – ‘magpie-ing’. That was Tunnadine’s term for the practice of setting a school culture in which colleagues are ready to embrace change, then going out and finding the best sources and peers to borrow ideas and thinking from with regards to different areas – from lesson observations to MAT governance and everything in between.

Once you’ve settled on the new approach, Tunnadine explained, the leader’s role is to make incorporating it as simple as possible, refining things repeatedly until everyone’s got it, in a similar way to maths mastery.

5. Headteachers are lily-livered, supine…

…and need to grow some cojones, according to TES editor Ann Mroz, during a fiery provocation that opened a panel debate on whether we have the right leadership for the future of education. Mroz went on to criticise headteachers for using Ofsted as an excuse for poor performance and accused them of hiding behind a cloak of collegiality, rather than organise opposition and propose workable alternatives to stress-inducing government policy.

Above all, she called them out for tolerating Ministers’ interference in the minutiae of running schools, and finally chastised them for keeping their heads down and letting others shape the education agenda.

Graphic Facilitation by Pen Mendonça @MendoncaPen – reused with kind permission

6. There are reasons to be cheerful

First among the panel to respond was Dr Jill Berry of the National College for School Leadership, who maintained that over 30 years of working in six different schools she had met more capable leaders than weak ones and proceeded to put several further reasons to be cheerful.

These included the emergence of the #WomenEd and #BAMEd professional networks, the launch of the Chartered College of Teaching under the leadership of Alison Peacock, the increasing use of educational research among heads keen to constantly improve and the recent appointment of Geoff Barton as general secretary of the ASCL.

7. Real diversity means working alongside people who think differently

Addressing the question directly, LKMCo associate Iesha Small made the point that leaders have collectively created a system that perpetuates the status quo, when the key to the future is evolution. Moreover, she suggested that while it’s fashionable to talk about diversity – be it targeting BAME applicants or employing disabled staff – school leaders ought to work alongside people who think differently to them.

Small stated that we need schools where everyone feels challenged, and for leaders to overcome fear of accountability. As to whether we have correct leaders for the future, her conclusion was ‘Sometimes – not always.’

8. A roomful of headteachers can collectively fail a simple addition task

The afternoon began with a series of fun audience participation exercises courtesy of Leadership Matters founder Andy Buck, there to talk about ‘Learning for Impact’. The highlight of what was the most engaging PowerPoint presentation Teachwire had seen for a while was a short maths game in which Buck led the room in adding together a series of numbers and keeping a running tally by chanting in rhythmic unison. All well and good, until the audience were asked to add 10 to 4,090 and together (albeit with a few exceptions) uttered ‘5000’. Groupthink in action!

9. Practice makes permanent

Cheeky ‘gotchas’ aside, the meat of Buck’s address concerned neuroplasticity, and the brain’s ability to forge new connections and carve out new ways of thinking alongside – and eventually in place of – established thought patterns and habits. He explained how it was an approach that could be used to grow and develop leaders, so long as said development takes place in the ‘stretch’ zone between the comfort and panic zones.

The upshot of that, of course, is that practice doesn’t make perfect – if your approach is wrong, then all you’re doing is carving out an incorrect neural pathway. Practice makes permanent – thus the aim is to make the correct approach the automatic one.

10. AI’s time has come

Not artificial intelligence and robot teachers, but as closing speaker Sir Tim Brighouse explained, ‘Appreciative Inquiry’. Simply put, AI is about identifying something that a person is doing well, then doing whatever’s required to improve it.

What’s important, he stressed, is that it’s an approach pitched against problem solving – the latter of which, while often necessary and satisfying to accomplish, uses up energy. AI, on the other hand, creates energy. So long is AI isn’t overemphasised, and any problems that need to be solved are, he concluded, its potential utility was something that people ought to take away with them.

Graphic Facilitation by Pen Mendonça @MendoncaPen – reused with kind permission

For more information about Challenge Partners, visit challengepartners.org or follow @ChallengePartnr

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