Stepping up to Executive Headship - Inspiring...

Stepping up to Executive Headship

Inspiring Leadership 2017

Birmingham

James Toop

Chief Executive

About us

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• Merger of Teaching Leaders and The Future Leaders Trust• Mission is to transform the lives of children in

disadvantaged areas by growing exceptional school leaders at all levels

• Develop leaders through our three flagship programmes:o Teaching Leaders (for middle leaders)o Future Leaders (for aspiring heads)o Executive Educators (for exec heads and CEOs)

• Research project with NFER and NGA• Relatively new and evolving role

o with no ‘legal’ definition, multiple sector-led interpretations

o a range of accountability arrangements, role and responsibilities

Background

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• Role requiring ‘a new and different mix of skills and experience’ (White Paper)o as yet no comprehensive guidance on the skill-set

they needo limited and largely outdated research

School leadership journey 2017

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Senior leader

Headteacher

Executive head

CEO

Starter

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1. Who are you?2. What is your role?3. Why are you here?

• Role and identity• Skills and behaviours • Preparation and transition

Agenda

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Start with why

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How

What

Simon Sinek, ‘Start With Why’

Why

• Why do you want to step up to executive headship?

• How will you do it?

• What will you do differently in the new role?

What is an Executive Headteacher?

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• Improvement: HT asked to support another school to rapidly improve. HT becomes EHT with formal accountability across more than one school

• Expansion: EHT provides additional management capacity for growth – for example, EHT / regional director below MAT CEO –to manage school performance or provide extra oversight across different sites or phases

• Partnership growth: More outward-facing, build new collaborations or partnerships to create strategic responsibility beyond a single school, such as Teaching School Alliance, but without formal accountability for the other schools in their collaboration

Core EHT roles

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Leadership identity

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• What is my professional identity?

• Who do I belong to?

• What am I accountable for?

Core EHT skills

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Vertical development

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• Conceptual – manage complexity and ability to create new models of thinking

• Personal – ability to respond to and cope with pressure, developed sense of self

• Interpersonal – capacity to hold different, and contradictory, perspectives and navigate them

Vertical leadership mindsets

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Spotting talent: a common language

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• Role and identity

• Skills and behaviours

• Preparation and transition

Agenda

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1. Intense stretch experiences (the what)

2. New ways of thinking (the how)

3. Strong development networks (the who)

Breaking linearity

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Types of development activity

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“The fact is that giving people bigger jobs with fancier titles and larger salaries won’t make them better. More complex assignments will.”

Claudio Fernandez-Araoz (Egon Zehnder), HBR, 2016

Stretch development

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1. What are your development challenges stepping up from headship to executive headship?

2. What would a stretch assignment need to entail to learn those new skills?

Example stretch assignments

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Why do nearly half of all new appointments fail in the first year?

• Politics• Culture• Complexities• Lack of clarity on performance objectives

Solution = transition management vs. induction

Transition management

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Case study: Mark Thompson

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• Transition: BBC to New York Times Company, 2012

• Context: Three-month gap, two-weeks agenda meetings

• Key lessons:o Successful transition starts

during the interviewso Demeanour during on-boarding

is criticalo Good EA is cultural translatoro Participate in early decisionso Get out of the officeo Eat, meet and greeto Find the balance between impulsive and slow-moving

1. Overlapping roles – new leader in place during last three months of outgoing leader

2. Shadowing/co-working – six month joint working period

3. Phased transition – gradual handover of responsibilities over 12-18 month period

Approach to new role is critical – listen, observe, question

How can you increase the chances of success?

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New Executive Headship cohort starts September 2017

Two x three-day residentials with new programme design

Benefits:

• Bespoke, evidence-informed training delivered by experts from across the sector and beyond

• Identifying strengths and areas for development through a review at the beginning of the programme

• Sharing insight and learning within a close-knit cohort of current or aspiring executive headteachers

• Access to our network (4,000 leaders,1,500 schools)

Executive Educators

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James ToopJames.Toop@ambitionschoolleadership.org.uk07500 795829

www.ambitionschoolleadership.org.uk

Contact details

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