Are Leadership Qualifications Worth It?

What if those leadership qualifications that you're spending your time and your money on and actually making you a better leader? Well today we're going to explore why those traditional leadership programs often fall short and what works instead Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning Welcome to education leaders the chat topping podcast for school leaders just like you as an organizational coach I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence Make better decisions and create winning teams And on this show we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership Now before we jump in I'm really delighted today's episode is supported by the International curriculum association So stay tuned to learn a bit more. I've been thinking a lot about leadership qualifications recently I know many of you listening have done them or are doing them or even considering them And you know, you know the ones they're like the masters in Educational leadership or the mpq's which are the national professional qualifications for those in the UK And I've been recently speaking to a lot of leaders who've taken part in these programs In fact, I've been doing it very systematically and honestly I've heard real mixed reviews about their impact So I want to dig a little bit deeper today and be a bit more systematic on what's happening here A one leader I spoke to put it really well. They said The bridge between theory and practice which the course should have been really sort of wasn't You know this sentiment it came up again and again in my conversations Now what I found particularly interesting is when I asked what's the most valuable thing about these programs?

85% of leaders identified wanting Collaboration or community peer learning not the content not the theory but the learning from peers So let's break down what I'm calling the five failures of leadership programs So the first is theory without practice One leader said to me it was very much like you need to know a bit about finance Here's some information about finance go but nothing really to help you apply it in your context at all You know, it's a little bit like flat-pack furniture, isn't it those? Programs give you a really good picture of what a good leader should be what it looks like what that leader is This is what a leader should be doing But they don't give you the instructions of how to get there You've got the vision and you haven't got the practical steps The second failure is the wrong context and the wrong content So many programs are developed in a very specific context, you know, like UK schools, for example And then they're delivered globally without adaptation One leader in China who I was speaking to told me that UK centric content like the Department of Education Legislation and compliance it doesn't actually translate globally China has such different compliance issues and so many different school types Now I'm not saying that everything needs to be bespoke for your specific context. That's pretty unreasonable But there should be opportunities to apply the concepts in your own setting and ideally be connecting with others in similar context That's where value comes now. The third failure is unrealized community Remember that 85% finding about the value of community. Well, many programs claim community is important

But then they implement it really poorly they'll say things like community is really important on this course and we've set up a forum and Every week you're supposed to go to the forum and make a post or comment on someone else's post But it's not real community That's just a task and the leaders who got most from their programs were the ones who developed genuine connections Maybe they set up a whatsapp group with some of their peers or they met in person These connections often outlasted the program itself and provided that ongoing support that really important support that they really valued I loved that one of the leaders brought up to me that Japanese out of kintsuki. Have you heard of it? You know, we're broken ceramics. They're glued back together and the way they glue them back together is with gold it's the idea that we're celebrating the cracks we're celebrating the imperfections and In a great community of practice leaders can be vulnerable about their challenges and they can see all these challenges form them into the leaders They want to become This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association now I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years But they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality Unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world I really really love that at their core is a model for improving learning and this model is focused on the learning experience And they have tons of great Curriculum materials PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours So if you're interested and I really do recommend you check them out head over to internationalcurriculum.com

Now the fourth failure is simple models for complex realities Leadership is complex and yet many programs they present kind of these simplified models that don't match That real-world complexity your one leader put it they said very rarely is one problem Solved by one action. It's one problem Which is never entirely solved but where perhaps you're moving the dial slightly by taking four or five different actions I think about it a little bit like this. Have you heard of the emergent flock phenomenon? You know when you see those geese flying in a V formation you've seen them all fish Swimming in the sea in these beautiful patterns each individual in those flocks is actually Following very simple rules. They're maintaining distance. They're matching the speed to their closest neighbor. They're steering again

next to a neighbor What's not happening is they're not all consciously aware of that overall pattern. That's not what's happening And school leadership is very similar You've got all these local interactions happening all the time and they create system-wide patterns and they can't always be understood or controlled from one central position Yeah, traditional models. They often try to put that one bird in Charge of designing the whole flock. It just doesn't work that way and the fifth failure is ignoring Identity leadership development isn't just about skills. It isn't just about knowledge

It's about who you are as a person and many programs don't account for the fact that leaders need to develop their own leadership identity over time Instead they create what I call the cuttlefish dilemma, you know cuttlefish They can change their skin colors to match their environment. In fact, they can make over 200 different patterns But when they change their appearance, they're not changing what's inside them. They're just kind of Creating an illusion of change and leaders can end up doing the same Constantly changing their external approach their style to match what they think leadership should look like without developing an authentic voice This is both exhausting and unsustainable and these failures costly they're significantly costly for schools they can lead to high staff turnover misaligned teams and Even initiative fatigue, especially when every leader on a program is trying to implement a different change project They also lead to leadership burnout wasted resources or just stagnant school development I see it time and time again in schools. I work with So what would work instead? Well five things came out in the research that I've done one is that programs ideally should be blending theory and

Practice and here's the crooks. They should be utilizing a media application of what you've learned It's not enough to learn the concept you need to apply them right away Just in the same way, we know we should be doing with students actually how we know Teachers learn best when we're teaching the new techniques Secondly, we need to create real communities of practice Not just those forums not just mandatory discussion posts These communities need to feel like they belong together and they want to grow together third, we need to contextualize learning for the specific situation of The leaders on the cohort give ample opportunity to apply ideas into real context Fourth we need to embrace complexity rather than oversimplify leadership is complex work pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone and Fifth we need to really integrate identities of element. I think this is probably one of the most important We need to help leaders understand what makes them unique and how can they lead authentically for them? For me like the most critical issue is this implementation gap or we call it the knowing doing gap it's the space between knowing something and Actually doing it and that's where most development dies many programs Leave leaders just saying things like I get it, but I'm not actually doing anything different That's a big problem. You can't become the leader you want to be in a program alone

It will stop no program out there. Not my program not a masters Not an MPQ will make you the leader you want to be every leader I spoke to every single one has said that they developed most through time and Experience not through programs Now that doesn't mean that programs are useless. They can do lots of things. They can help you build Practical skills through deliberate practice. They can give you feedback on your

Implementation they can connect you with like-minded leaders for growth They can teach you strategies that are going to reduce your cognitive load and allow you to really Be able to thrive as a leader and they can help you design and create a leadership approach that works for you this is Why I've been actually developing a new approach to leadership development. I'd love to share it with you It's called the education leaders Intensive program and it is designed to specifically address these five failures and focus on what actually works It's a 12-week program. It starts in September this year Actually with weekly live sessions and immediate implementation activities peer learning Coaching and a super small cohort and what makes this different? Well, it's entirely practice-based. We're not just doing theory here

We're really implementation focus you learn today you apply it tomorrow its community driven its Contextualized for your reality and it's going to integrate your identity development throughout. So they have it just a quick episode So leadership qualification trap what we can do about it If you want to really dive deeper and there's a link in the show notes where I did a full webinar You can access that for free. Go check that out. And if you're interested in that intensive program I'd love to hear from you. Just pop me in an email. You can find my email in the show notes

I'll check out education leaders dot-co Intensive for more information And I would absolutely love to hear your experiences with your leadership qualifications If they help you grow as a leader what worked what didn't drop me a message on that email my social media blue sky Linked in I would love to hear from you Education leaders is hosted by me Shane Leaning and so much to the show editor The girl and for the original music by yummy silver and thank you so much for tuning in today If we don't speak before I'll see you here next week If you want to learn more about the brilliant work from the International curriculum Association head to international curriculum calm