My Leadership Colloquium study this week has brought me to the study of effective team work and has lead me to the work of Patrick Lencioni. This video is 40 minutes long, but there are some great stories and ideas for improving leadership and teamwork.
What do we do to improve our teams?
Do we listen to all the feedback and seek to improve our skillset?
Prakash Nair presented one of the plenary sessions on the first day at Edutech. His presentation was titled "Space for Learning" and he posed the idea that we need to "educate like a gardener not a carpenter".
Based on Alison Gopnick's book "The Carpenter and the Gardener", Prakash spoke about the mindset of the Gardener (being effective) and Carpenter (being efficient).
The Efficient Carpenter focuses on building their craft so that projects can be done quicker, less cost and less effort. Many of these are what we would call quantitative measures.
The Effective Gardener referring to the planting of the garden according to quality, relevancy and timeliness, in tune with the seasons. Many of these are qualitative measures, harder to measure.
The Carpenter educator is controlling, hierarchical and standardised and the Gardener educator is empowering, distributed, flexible and personalised.
He drew parallels with the 'cell like' structures of the old school environment and the organic flowing flexible environment of the newer learning spaces that you might find in newer school buildings. Building on the theme that as educators we need to be more like a gardener rather than a carpenter.
Listen to Prakash Nair talk about Learning Spaces.
Of course conference goers expressed their delight at this new concept on twitter; even though the idea of free range learners isn't a new one and has been brought out many times by 'progressive' presenters over the years. Back in 1998 Jamie McKenzie was talking about free range students and how connected learning would release students from the learning confines of the traditional industrial classroom.
Relating it back to our School Library
During Prakash's presentation he spoke about a school having a "DaVinci Studios" or "project centres" or even "learning commons" spaces. A place where students can work on their personalised learning plan with resources at their fingertips. I reflected back on a blog post that I did in 2011, asking the question when "Library" became a dirty word. With the reinvention of library spaces in these new future forward school buildings, many schools are also throwing out the concept of teacher librarians.
Our libraries are like a garden, we plant seeds of knowledge and ideas in the minds of students and try and nurture them with an environment conducive to learning. In our learning commons, we have hot drinks and cookies for homework clubs, we rearrange furniture for events and always respond with a "yes". Our goal is to create the best learning environment.
Whilst unpacking this keynote, it reminded me of the Kipling poem "The Glory of the Garden". Kipling talks about a beautiful English garden but then as the poem goes on, it talks about the importance of the gardeners and how gardens don't really grow unless they are properly cultivated.
Is your library being properly cultivated? Is it tended by weekend gardeners (teachers without library qualifications) or landscape gardeners (teacher librarians).
References
Gopnik, A. (2016). The gardener and the carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children.
As I got to my hotel, connected to the network and updated my notes; memories of "conferences past" came flooding back and the realisation of just how much has changed in this space. Before I got to Sydney, I had printed out my name tags, registered for sessions and networked with colleagues via LinkedIn and Twitter. On the Darling Harbour promenade conversations about technology and learning is already occurring as people connect with one another after a day of masterclasses.
If I wasn't going to the conference I would probably be keeping an eye on the "back channel" for any snippets of inspiration. The capacity for involvement on multiple levels increases as the technology becomes more and more ubiquitous.
Once upon a time, at the ACCE conference in 2004 in Adelaide, wireless was quite a new thing. 1:1 computers had been in schools for a few years and newest disruptor in the classroom was 'wireless'. I remember having to buy a NCI Wireless card for my laptop for $50 in order to get wirelessly connected at the conference. It was revolutionary! I could be at a conference and look up materials on what the presenters were talking about. We were starting to feel connected and Don Tapscott's "Growing up Digital" was starting to become a reality in the majority of classrooms.
Of course now, everyone will be sitting at conference presentations with their devices. Taking notes, surfing the net, tweeting, snapchatting .... except me.
I have all the best technology in the world with me, but I will probably sit tomorrow through sessions with my trusty notebook, pen and highlighter. My capacity to find "that article" that was talked about in "that important presentation"is high; but I don't need that instant gratification of looking up the article as the person is talking about it. I need to digest the ideas that they are talking about, then I can process it and then act on it.
As for the "old school" handwriting. I can type as fast as I can talk, my capacity add to the digital discourse is not harmed by taking the time to write, reflect then contribute. I have a system of how I do this that works for me and that allows me to give the presenters 100% of my attention before committing my ideas to the digital landscape.
As part of the Leadership Colloquium course that I am doing, we have been asked to create a "vision" for our leadership. I tried to create a mood board, but I found that "blogging it" was a better
What is your vision for yourself as a leader? What are your aspirations? What do you want to achieve? How do you want to be known?
1. Supporting others, we are all on the same team.
Distributed leadership is a philosophy that my current employer engages in. We are all in it together and we are all on the same team.
2. Nemawashi
Nemawashi (根回し) in Japanese means an informal process of quietly laying the foundation for some proposed change or project, by talking to the people concerned, gathering support and feedback, and so forth. There is also a great saying which is "You can't move the tree unless you dig around the roots". As a change management philosophy, I love this strategy. Yes there are times that you have to bite the bullet on an issue, but for most organisational changes this strategy can be applied. 3. Gratitude
As a leader, I think that we need to go above and beyond in terms of showing gratitude. I have written a blog post on this. 4. Problems vs. Opportunities
For a brief period of my career I was at Methodist Ladies' College in Kew. Sharing an office with David Dimsey and Mark Scott. We made up the ITLC Team, we team taught Information Technology from Year 9-12. Mark had a mantra, "There are no such thing as a problem, only opportunities" and we used this in the way that we approached curriculum development and our vision.
I'm pretty sure it was a "Dilbert" thing, although the internet would make you believe that everyone from Einstein to John Lennon said it.
I guess that the mindset of "opportunity" means that you are open to exploring solutions rather than creating more problems. 5. Genchi Genbutsu and the improvement philosophy of Kaizen.
Both Japanese philosophies are an important aspect of my leadership toolkit. Whenever there is a problem I like to hit the ground and talk to the people being effected by it. If it is students, I talk to students. If it is staff, then I talk to staff. I also believe in the Kaizen Culture of Continuous improvement. That we aim to continually improve what it is that we are doing.
