Due: 9th June
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero.
What is the food of the leader? It is knowledge. It is communication.
Module Objectives:
Upon completion of this module, participants will be able to:
- Understand the key elements of high-performing teams.
- Develop strategies for building trust and fostering collaboration within teams.
- Understand and apply the principles of shared accountability within a team context.
- Identify and address potential barriers to team effectiveness.
- Develop and implement strategies for creating a positive and supportive team culture.
High Performing Leaders are ‘Networked Leaders’ who build leadership capacity in individuals, and in institutions, through enhancing professional relationships. Partnerships are based on the importance of maximising potential, and harnessing the ongoing commitment and energy needed to meet personal and professional goals.
High Performing Leaders follow a process of reflection, introspection and then connection. Through coaching and guidance, they decipher their strengths, areas for development and focused improvement.
As school leaders reflecting on your own leadership, and ways in which you can more effectively facilitate learning, the goal of this korero is to work with each other as coaches and mentors, creating deep learning relationships within professional practice.
One of the essential ingredients of high performing individuals, teams and organisations is creativity (Basadur, 2004). Being creative means releasing talent and imagination. It also means taking risks and, in some cases, standing outside the usual or accepted way of doing things. High performing leaders push boundaries; they seek new ways of seeing, interpreting, understanding and questioning.
Relational Trust
“High trust relationships exist when leaders are respected for their deep educational knowledge, their actions and values, and the way they engage respectfully with others with empathy and humility, fostering openness in discussions. Leaders have good emotional intelligence and self-awareness.”
– Educational leadership capability framework, Education Council, 2018.
Trust provides a strong foundation for effective working relationships which, ultimately, has a positive impact on student achievement. Trust has been shown time and time again to have a huge benefit in leading change and in creating great teams. Teams and schools with trusting relationships have staff who are open to sharing practice, taking risks and sharing what is and isn’t going well in their teaching. However, it does not happen by accident and it is not built in the same way for every person, depending on their personal narrative. As a middle leader, it is important to intentionally work to build trust with colleagues, whānau and community.
- Reading 1: Trust in educational leadership settings – https://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Professional-information/Leadership-capability-framework/High-trust-relationships#:~:text=High%20trust%20relationships%20exist%20when,emotional%20intelligence%20and%20self%2Dawareness.
- Reading 2: “Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for School Reform” B. Schneider. – https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/trust-in-schools-a-core-resource-for-school-reform
- Reading 3: “How the Best Leaders Build Trust” S. Covey. – https://www.leadershipnow.com/CoveyOnTrust.html
Collaborative Teams
Reading 4: https://www.arts.on.ca/oac/media/aire/Documents/IdeasIntoActionBulletin3.pdf
Reading 5: Collective teacher efficacy – https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/
Additional Resources:
– Working effectively with iwi and hapū, Melanie Taite-Pitama: https://vimeo.com/242861287
– Legacy – 15 Lessons in Leadership, by James Kerr (2013). Chapter 6 pp 74-83
– Open-to-Learning Conversations- Relationships and Trust, Viviane Robinson, 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_l5-HKIR1s
Optional Resources:
– Connecting with Māori Communities; Whānau, Hapū and Iwi, Mere Berryman and Therese Ford, 2014:
https://kep.org.nz/assets/resources/site/module8-v20a-up-16Apr15-w-image_5Jan16.pdf
– Robertson, J. (2015). Think-piece on leadership education in New Zealand. Leadership for communities of learning: Five think pieces. https://teachingcouncil.nz/assets/Files/Leadership-Strategy/Leadership-for-Communities-of-Learning-Five-Think-Pieces.pdf
- “Five Faces of Trust: An Empirical Confirmation in Urban Elementary Schools.” – W. Hoy and M. Tschannen-Moran. – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NBTBXVSjokVr_RPx3Qlze-Ao3E1m6XWI/view?usp=sharing
Task:
Reflect on the readings and identify one thing that you could do in your role to improve the function of your team. What would you do and what impact would you expect that to have?
Assessment:
- Completion of all readings.
- Participation in the online forum discussion.
- Submission of reflection on the forum.
10 Responses
One impactful action I will continue to prioritise and work on in my role is fostering and sustaining trust within my team. While I believe I already demonstrate respect, personal regard, and integrity in my leadership (e.g. through active listening, being transparent, supporting my colleagues) I’ve also seen how easily trust can be undermined when communication is misinterpreted, misconstrued and/or taken personally from a team member.
With said team member now moving on at the end of this term, I’m focused on restoring the strong foundation of trust that existed previously within my department. I want to ensure the members of my department are united again and have a renewed emphasis on collective success.
By reinforcing that we are a team working toward common goals — not individuals working in silos — I believe we can return to a more respectful and productive dynamic.
Wow I am so excited to hear that your working environment is going to improve substantially. It will be really important to rule a line under the past. It would be important to have some sort of tangible event/change to symbolise the new world. A social or fun event is definitely called for to allow you to relaunch your leadership.
I am excited too! I like your suggestions regarding a social/fun event to open this new chapter and would love to pick your brain some more at some stage.
I’m going to flip this response and write this from the perspective of a staff member, not middle leader (as I don’t have experience to speak to this.)
As a leader, within the realm of trust, there is one thing that can diminish that pretty quickly and that’s a defensive response to any question or comment that is made from staff in a meeting (I’m sure we all have experienced people who operate this way and those who feel threatened by others on staff.) This leadership style does not enhance the mana of staff, nor does it encourage a collaborative culture of teaching and learning and therefore the team cannot function at its best. It in fact does the opposite and forces staff inward or to seek support from others not in leadership or leads staff to not say anything in a meeting.
Having experienced this type of leadership at times and after reading the Module 5 readings, trust is crucial. As reading 1 talks about, you’ve got to ensure your staff/team feel safe and valued and model trust daily to ensure a strong school culture.
So moving forward, one thing that I want to do as a leader is to allow questions, ideas, and feedback to be shared so that staff feel heard and valued. As the power of multiple brains, will always be more effective than just one person’s idea/opinion. By modelling this to my team/staff, the impact will be an inclusive culture and a more effective and efficient teaching/learning team who learn with and from each other to improve learning outcomes for tamariki.
What you say about trust is entirely correct Steph. It is tricky as a new leader to demonstrate trust even when you don’t know much about the character of the person. It feels as though the default position is to trust until someone proves themself to be untrustworthy. The attitude then which is more likely to produce the desired change needs to be sad regret rather than anger.
I really like what you have said here and your perspective as a member of staff regarding trust with your school leaders. Creating space for questions and feedback is a powerful way to build trust and show staff that they are valued. In my experience a range of voices often leads to better and stronger ideas/outcomes.
The current educational environment, as envisioned by the government, has seen a shift in the application of shared accountability principles within teams. This approach has moved from a formalised cross-school focus, epitomised by Kahui Ako (Communities of Learning), to an internal school focus. Regardless of one’s agreement with this shift, the concept of Collaborative Learning Cultures should remain, or become, a critical component of schools.
In my view, sharing and trusting across schools via Kahui Ako offers an efficient way to disseminate knowledge and skills more broadly. While acknowledging the need for increased funding to support learners with disabilities, I believe this should not come at the expense of what appears to be an excellent mechanism for knowledge utilisation and dissemination, preventing the duplication that would otherwise occur. Principles must therefore ensure that the shared responsibility of cross-school learning and collaboration can continue in some form.
Moving on, the concept of high-value relationships, embedded with trust and confidence, emerges as a dominant narrative across various readings. Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE), for instance, is argued to be more effective than many other approaches to student success. Notably, in Ontario, CTE has demonstrated the ability to overcome the effects of students coming from low socio-economic communities. In my own school, this is a constant challenge, given the large Māori and Pasifika communities we serve, who unfortunately often originate from these lower socio-economic backgrounds.
Alongside high-trust relationships, both social and relational, these must be embedded and integral to the school culture, largely driven by the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and ultimately the Board of Trustees (BOT). The school’s leadership bears accountability and direct influence in fostering these relationships, both with the wider school community and internally across staff, learning centres, and departments. It must be acknowledged however these high powered relationships come from the basis of trust and accountability. This directly relates to the concept of shared accountability: while leadership sets the directives, we are all responsible and accountable for ensuring these powerful relationships are nurtured and utilised to their fullest potential.
One of the articles suggests a general decline in trust across all areas of humanity, making it more crucial than ever to counter this by fostering positive relationships across and with all elements of the school community. It is argued that Whānau, Kaiako, Akonga, Tumuaki, and Hapu (as opposed to iwi) need to work together, embedding their elements, knowledge, and Tikanga into the school. Mason Durie further suggests that Rūnanga (Māori tribal councils) via their education advisors should also be part of this. In this regard, I recall previous comments I made about the operation of Rumaki unit where their whānau relationships are integral to their functioning, clearly demonstrating the power of high-value relationships.
In the context of my role to impliment and develop an Ai strategy, it is imperative that I too demonstrate integrity, trustworthiness, knowledge and reliability so my relationship within school and across schools is seen as valuable and high powered.
Peter yet again you have come up with a very interesting viewpoint however you seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent here as you were asked to identify one thing that could improve the operation of your team. I appreciate that this is something of a difficult question for you as your team is not as well defined as it might be for some people. I think the answer to the question is contained in your writing as you mention those key attributes of trust and respect.
Thanks Geraldine. Yes, my role as influencer rather than leadership directly impacts on my pov and intepretation of the readings and reaction to them.
As I read, obsorb and process the information in the first 4 articles, my first refection is around community engagement to foster collaboration and ultimately trust in the school to deliver the best outcomes for their tamariki. While BOT’s are all about community input into the school culture and the what, how, when and where’s of what their children learn, I feel there is still a disconnect between that intention and the reality. How schools operate and what/how learning happens is still largely diven by curriculum and increasingly government mandates. Yes, local curriculums and interpretations, as well as teacher ability and personal interests have an impact, the chasm between the Board and the classroom is significant. I say this primarily as I compare how our school’s Rumaki unit operates compared to the mainstream cohort. In Rumaki, whanau engagement is visable, vital and impactfull. Whanua nights are each term, operating not just as a learning conference but to directly give whanau a voice in the akomonga. Staffroom discussions between teachers and overheard, around how altering plans, delivering curriculum and whanau interests are interpretted, abound, and ultimately clearly evident. While this is fantastic, there are downsides. I have 2 examples. As the HPE lead at our school, my role is to ensure the HPE curriculum is delivered as intended, supported by the PLD I have had. A key take-out for me is the difference between sport, and PE. PE teaches attributes such as persistance, fairplay, throwing and catching etc, which are then transfered to the sports court of field. Whanau feedback on this via the Rumaki cohort disagrees and I have had many conversations with the Rumaki team leader on this. She is adament her community should take the lead on this and that organised sports is where these skills are learnt, while mine and the HPE Curriculum position is these skills are learnt within the PE programme, and applied to organised sports. This leads to the question, how is community trust betwen whanau, their tamariki’s teacher v the curiculum impacted?
The other example is around the implimentation of AI within schools, in particular data privacy. While there are large amounts of commentary around this and tools and processes that protect privacy, Tangata Whenua, from a Te Tiriti perspective, have real concerns. Again, via conversations with the Rumaki TL, my best attempts to ensure data privacy is protected, her position is that the words and images of Tupuna are taonga, and should not be uploaded, even to a closed protected data set. Moari academics have also grappled with this, and have issued a range of panui that should guide us. This also does not appeas my colleague. Her conversations in her community, on marae and other forums indicate even Maori academics have no part to play in this, and individual decisions about Whanau’s Tipuna should lay with whanau. Again, this leads to the question of trust and delivery. If the standardised position becomes to exclude the use of this technology as it relates to contextual, individualised learning, then akonga will miss some learning opportunities. While these are my thoughts and opinions only, they are appropriate here as they relate to whanau/community positions v current accepted practice. Do we accomodate their concerns, thereby doing their tamariki a diservice, do we attempt to convince whanau their traditions should evolve with progress, or do we plow ahead? I am being retorical of course but it does go to the question if trust and relationships.