LIVE | October Reflections

Well, hello, welcome everyone. Welcome to Education Leaders Live. It is so, so good to see you here. We started eight minutes late, but that's okay.

We go with it. Whether you are in Shanghai, where I am, it's 6pm here. It's 10am in London, or maybe you're squeezing this in from somewhere else entirely. It is such a delight to have you here.

So October, it's been a bit of a month. We've been talking about a lot on the podcast from the fundamentals that exhausted leaders skip, we've been talking about assessment data, like why that might not be helping anyone in the way you're using it, why being needed everywhere is killing your impact as a leader and how to stop drowning in problems. And I am here with my brilliant co-host of Education Leaders Live, Chris Skora. And we are going to be digging into the four episodes from Education Leaders, but this isn't about us talking out you.

We've got the podcast for that. We want to hear what's landed. What are you struggling with? What's, what have you tried this week that's actually worked?

So please get involved. You can comment below if you are on LinkedIn or maybe you're on YouTube, or if you are here with us at educationleaders.live, you can call in, you can join in properly. You can send us messages.

Let's just see how this goes. We do this conversation monthly, last Thursday of every month, same time. And it is for you. Chris, it is so good to have you here, mate.

How are you doing? I'm all good. Great to be here. Um, it's, it's great to be on the podcast with you again, Shane.

And you know, uh, I, well, you know, well, that I'm an avid listener of the podcast and, uh, it's kind of my company working in the shed at the bottom of my garden, you know, listening to all these ideas. There's a, there's a risk that you get a little, there's a risk that you get a little sort of insular sat that sat at the bottom of the garden and you shared working alone on a regular basis. So this is kind of a chance to, to spark some ideas, listen to different perspectives and maybe pretend I've got some friends. I'm glad to help with your gallon shed office syndrome.

Now, a quick mention before we start today's conversation connects to some of the work I'm doing with the education leaders intensive. That is a leadership intensive program for school leaders. You want to master the fundamentals. If you're curious about that, then you can find more information at my website.

You can go to educationleaders.co forward slash intensive. More on that in a little bit October. Let me give a quick overview.

The idea of this education leaders live is a chance for you to engage live with the theme on the podcast. And we have had an incredible month of themes. So if I was to go back to the start of October, we had an incredible conversation that I was looking up to have with Vicki Essabag and Tara Greten, where we were looking at a solution focused approach to leadership, where we stop asking what's wrong and start asking what's wanted and how that can change the way we have conversations, meetings, parent conversations, behavior discussions. It was brilliant.

We then had Brett Griffin, the brilliant Brett Griffin on the podcast, a great one. Actually, it's gone a lot, been very popular online with the comments. This one, he talked about leading without being needed. And he's gone from assistant principal to a CEO.

And he talked in that episode. One, one of these things was about hiding in a secret office to get work done. Not a gal is shed, but a secret office. And, and that actually worked for him.

Um, and it hit hard with a lot of people. So I want to hear about that. We had the episode last week on formative assessment into formative action with the brilliant Valentina Devitt, who I was just speaking to just an hour ago, because we're planning some work together. Well, we'll, both of us, Chris, we'll see her in Thailand.

Like in Bangkok, Valentina is going to be there. Excellent. And yes, and she's was teaching me a little bit on the podcast about a five step process for formative action and how schools couldn't get that right. And then the most recent episode, I did a little solo episode on beating cognitive overload and on why brilliant teachers often become exhausted leaders, not because they can't do the job, but because they are cognitively fried by the basics.

And we went through 10 leadership levers to help you. If something I just said made you think, Oh God, that's me. Then you need to tell us you need to comment. Now we will try pick up the questions as we go.

Chris, I wonder, like what's been on your mind as you've been listening to the show this month? Yeah. Um, I think if we, if we come to the solution focused leadership idea and I listened to this and I thought, how refreshing, what a, what a lovely perspective to have like this one. And then I thought, was that me when I was, when I was working in school leadership, and I, I've got a confession, I started to reflect and wonder about the things I'd done wrong, um, and the things that I'd missed and the differences that I could have made if I'd got it right and heard this stuff beforehand.

Um, and as I went through this episode, I think that the distinction for me is that we often confuse administration with leadership. You know, the leadership roles in schools are generally administrative head of department, head of faculty, that kind of thing, head of year, those kinds of things that come with a massive administrative burden. And we often get drawn into the administration because that's kind of what the job's entitled. And we start to, we start to prioritize processes and paperwork over and above relationships.

And as I, as I listened to this episode, I started to think these, this is the focus on the relationships that really is where it all happens. Um, and I, I guess coming out of that is the idea that if we focus on the administration as leaders, we tend to take the burden of coming up with the answers ourselves. Whereas if we focus on the relationships, we're developing those solutions and those answers in others. And that was quite an important distinction for me.

And that, that idea of the, the sort of corridor conversations being the, I think it was suggested they were the small wins. I disagree. I, I think they're the big wins. And it doesn't even have to be about anything technical, anything school related.

It's just that idea that you have those conversations that builds warmth, it builds trust, it builds confidence in each other. And that then is a foundation that you can, you can build upon and move mountains with. I like how you put that. That's making me wonder, Chris.

Like, do you think sometimes like we just see, there's a risk with this kind of stuff, solution focused leadership. I reckon the title might have been an instant turn off to some leaders because I think they would go, ah, soft stuff, not real leadership. I don't want to talk about this kind of stuff. And yeah, I liked the way you just reframed it as these like things like corridor conversation.

It's not the small wins. These are actually big wins. And come on, come on, lean into it. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's interesting. There was the idea of that sort of juxtaposition between what's wanted and what's wrong. Um, and I, there's even a third way actually that I was guilty of perhaps. And it's just that this is how it is.

That kind of fait accompli position, mentioned it before in some of the other stuff that I've done. I would occasionally buy pizza for my, my pastoral meetings when I was working in China. And then what that did was it meant that people were eating and there was less scope for dissent and argument and discussion because I just had so much to do. It wasn't that I didn't want to engage with them with my team.

I just didn't have time. It was like, this is how it is, guys. There you go. Have the pizza, eat up and, um, and live with it.

And I sort of look at that and what that meant was that it started to put pressure, just put pressure back on me. It wasn't a sustainable position because I wasn't looking for the support and the engagement and the opportunity and the human capital in the room. I was taking it all on board because that was what leadership was. You come up with the answers, actually put it back out there to your team and let the team pick up some of that, that weight, some of that process.

So, and it's that, I quite like that idea of looking at what's wanted and using the talent in the room rather than perhaps taking it all on board. Yeah. I, I, I mean, I just absolutely adore the work that Tyra and Vicki are doing and, and the idea of being solution focused, which is, is to say, let's not get too obsessed with dwelling in the problems. And let's think about what, what we've got and what we can build upon.

I think that's, um, I think that's really, really excited. I don't know why we get leadership teams. We love dwelling on problems, don't we? And I think we sometimes get a bit really dwelling.

It's interesting as well, because optimism is one of those things that's kind of core to the human spirit, you know, optimism and hope and, and, and, and, and being positive about the things that you've got going on that are good, embracing those and so on. And I think that's probably a message that we should be giving kids as well in our schools, but as you say, there, there are probably people listening to this, rolling their eyes, thinking soft, hippy teacher that doesn't actually have to teach day to day and he shared sort of idea. And yeah, okay, I'll, I'll take that criticism for the debate. Yeah.

Well, you, you can't, you are sat in a shed, Chris, like that's, that's undeniable. Um, I was wondering, like, I, I, I was thinking, you know, one of the ideas that they're talking about is having a fresh start each day and kind of resetting yourself and I wonder if it's just, sometimes that feels just a bit too triggering for us as leaders. Like, what I know, like this thing, I don't want to, you know, we, we get angry about things, we go and grumble about things and we really don't want to go start the day with a fresh start. We start the day off and expecting, expecting the worst sometimes.

Now, especially, you know, the teachers who were sat in a corner of the staff rooms doing the, I think I was probably one of them. Um, you know, you know, oh, what now? Well, there's a, there's a tricky thing here, because if, if you care about your job, which you should do, if you, if you're in education at all, then those things are going to carry forward. You're going to think about them maybe a little too much.

It's going to be hard to come in without that baggage and make a fresh start. So I guess the question is, how do we facilitate that? And where do we find the strength to, to be that person, to, to give a fresh start every day? And I think the other challenge that you've got is that we can't expect perfection every day.

People come in in various states of good or not so good on a daily basis. That's kids, that's, that's teachers, that's you. And I kind of wonder if this ties into that idea of what's wanted, dwelling on the good stuff is a, is a starting point for this. I guess as school leaders, you haven't a pretty big responsibility, a pretty awesome responsibility, and part of that is to come in with that fresh start each day, if you can.

Um, maybe where you can't just park the stuff that's a little too hard until the day that you can, you know, being pragmatic about where you, where you put your efforts and stuff on any given day. Yeah. And it's being kind, being kind to yourself, isn't it? Chris, we, we are going out live.

I'd like to confirm that we actually are going out live because we've had our first, first comment come in. That's good to hear online. And this comment is from someone called Emma, and I'm going to just try to pretend that the only person isn't listening is my wife, Emma. And I'm sure this is some totally different Emma out there who is, who is listening and is an avid fan.

Emma says, this is point about corridor talk. I used to have no time for small talk until I heard someone discuss how it was really important for us. It's the common ground that brings us together, important for connection and the human experience. I might've gotten the wrong end of the stick.

Yeah, it's funny. I think we can, we can see small talk as kind of nothingness really, and actually. We had a, we had a thing at my school in Italy where the teachers and SLT were out and about in like, it was all sort of holding area, the playground and parents would come in with their kids in the morning, drop the kids off, and then the kids would go through into the sort of safe area of school, but the parents would kind of hang around and chat to the teachers. They didn't need to make an appointment.

There was nothing formal about it. And we had the same thing in the afternoon. And what that did was even where nothing, nothing school-wise was being discussed, it created a warmth and a trust and a familiarity. So that when something did need to be talked about, it could be dealt with at a fairly low key level.

Um, it could be dealt with informally. You didn't have to make an appointment. You didn't have to be sat in an office. All of those kinds of psychological triggers that up the ante with some of the more challenging aspects of your work and leadership.

And actually that kind of, we used to, we used to meet at the coffee machine. That was where a lot of the big business of the school was done in Italy. A coffee machine, a coffee machine. Yeah, the Brit had, the Brit had a coffee machine.

The Italian staff took a little longer over there. They, they coffee break to be fair. I like that though. I like that is, is, is so important.

Well, we went from that, um, Chris and please, people who are joining in, feel free, keep the comments flowing. We're live on YouTube. We're live at educationleaders.live and we're also should be live in on LinkedIn.

I've literally got the phone in my hand at the minute and, um, seeing, seeing if there's anything coming through and it doesn't look like it. It doesn't look like it at the minute. Does it, Chris? No, I'm still getting the, yeah, the event will start soon.

Well, we need to work that out. We need that work to work out next time, but hopefully people have found you can join us at educationleaders.live. That'll bring you straight through.

You can also join on YouTube. It'll be there. We'll get that LinkedIn fixed. Did you manage to listen to the episode with Brett Griffin?

Chris, which was really, really interesting. I don't know if you know, Brett surprises me on you've not met each other on the circuit somewhere. We may have met in, in one of the sort of conference bars or something without the exchange of business cards at some point, informal small talk. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but sure. What were you, what were you thinking?

So Brett was, Brett was talking about a lot in that. And I remember setting up the conversation with Brett and we had a long discussion before and I always have pre-discussions with my guests. I think it's really important to kind of set it up and to get to know each other and to find something really unique and valuable. And he has, um, a great company of people progress in the UK.

But like what we talked about is that transition he made from being educator, school leader, and then into being a CEO. And I was really fascinated by that. I picked up on that as well. And I think that that idea that, that no one cares and no one's listening to you unless you sort of take it out there.

Yeah, it was, it was quite a big thing for me as well. And there's, there's been that sort of psychological shift over the last few years for me to, um, I, I liked the fact that he had a secret office as well to, to get cracking with stuff. And, you know, if I want to read a book, even if it's just a novel, I tend to find my way to the office at the bottom of the garden rather than anything else. I don't want you to think that I'm sat in like an old wooden shed.

By the way, it's a well-appointed summer house, just to be clear. Andrew, you, and just for listeners, just so they understand, I think Chris has got two sheds at the bottom of his garden and it depends on which day is which shed he decides to call me from. So like, uh, I haven't quite worked out the different shed personalities yet. But no, I was, I was, I was listening to Brett and, um, there was quite a lot in there that sort of had a resonance for me.

We're catching up at the festival of ed in just over a week now. One of the things that I'm doing is about whether schools are fit for purpose. The idea of sort of looking at our model of education and what we actually do, putting kids in classroom, teaching them content, et cetera. And then Brett was talking about that 80% of a teacher's day being predetermined and where we're sort of designing our sort of system around something administratively, I guess, convenient for schools, but not necessarily focused on a great deal more.

And I think that kind of tied in with that idea of leadership and, and what he's actually trying to do. And it, again, it comes back to, there was a lot in his, his idea. And he was, I think he talked about that core question of when the department thriving, when he left and was, did that mean that he was redundant or did that mean that he'd empowered his team and that sort of idea? It's a scary thing.

It is, but you know what, I sort of go back to, I know you're a fan of Amy Edmondson, um, and her work. And I think the thing that came out as I looked at this was that idea that if, if you don't engage and don't empower your team to pick that up and, and make yourself redundant effectively, then what you're doing is you're missing out on the opportunities that come with that. There's so much sort of talent in the room, if you like. And she talks about those opportunities sort of slipping by, if you like, being missed if you don't engage with people.

And I think that that's one of the real risks of the sort of classical model of leadership that that's quite, that prevails quite a lot in schools where it's quite top down. Teachers are quite often told that this is how it is, or this is what we're doing or what have you. And the empowerment maybe isn't quite as it needs to be. And, you know, if you're predetermining a teacher's workload and day by, well, that's one of those things in and of itself, I guess.

I tend to think we, I mean, we still hold on to this old school masculine version of leadership, of what leadership, um, should be. And so it puts us in that directive mode, thinking that that's what I should be, you know, be doing. And also, do you know how I've been listening to recently? And, you know, I have been a bit of a fan of his and that actually he's really driving me nuts at the minute.

It's a guy called Alex Homosy. Do you know him? Have you heard of him? Yes.

Yeah, yeah. He's like a bit of a business guru who owned a gym and then now a multi-billionaire, whatever he is. And he gives people business advice and a lot of it's, you know, great. But one of his things is like, you know, his latest video is like, okay, if you're doing a business, you need to do every day, four hours on this, four hours on that, four hours on that, four hours on that.

And then it's like, how much does that add up on 16 hours? Well, you know, if you're not doing less, you're not going to be successful. And it's another kind of like, these kind of like, I don't know, these old fashioned stereotypes of what good leadership in an organization is. And yet we know when people like Amy Edmondson show us and other, other brilliant people that that we don't have to lead in that way.

No, no, not at all. And I think there was a bit in this episode where there was the discussion about visibility as a leader. I think it was sort of feeling, Brett was maybe feeling guilty about hiding down the corridor in his secret room. Oh, and some people, by the way, online, like that caused quite a stir.

Some people were like, some people were like, yeah, go you, go find your little space. Some people were like, I disagree. Like a leader should, should always be available, open door. It really caused a stir.

It was a great conversation. Well, well, here's the thing for me. If you're just visible, then what that does is it suggests a level of supervision, which isn't really what you, that's not leadership to me. That's, that's something else and, and more malevolent in its nature.

I think if you can be present and engage with what's going on in the school, then, then that has real value. And I would distinguish the two visibility from presence. Oh, I love this. Yeah, that's mine.

No, I've just made that up this morning. I love this so much. If you, if you use that, do quote me. Yeah.

Presence, visibility, it's not visibility, it's presence. People want to know you are present, you are there. Not that you're just visible. Like visible is so two dimensional.

Yeah. And it's supervisory, it's, it's top down and it, it therefore becomes part of accountability and it puts people's heckles up a little bit. It makes them feel defensive, less open, less willing to sort of share their expertise, whereas if you engage with that somehow and you, you're in the room, you're present, you're talking to people, then that changes that dynamic entirely because you're listening. And the, the listening to people is probably the least well-used aspect of leadership that, that I was, I had when I was in school, I didn't listen enough, I fed people pizza and I didn't listen.

Yeah. I thought that was important. I think that you went on to talk about Lionel Messi and I think one of the questions that was asked was about what world class looked like in schools. And yeah, I didn't like the Lionel Messi analogy.

I didn't, I didn't necessarily agree with it that closely. I didn't get it Chris. Cause I have no idea about as if, what is he, what's he football? He's, he's a pretty good footballer.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but he was a striker, top goal scorer. I think it was an Argentinian international, never played for Newcastle, which was a mistake on his part, frankly.

But Messi was the spearhead of a team of people that held him up. Now, Messi had the talent to do what he needed to do and do it very well. But he was just the spearhead of that. And there were people in that team that had a whole range of different skills and that held Messi up to able to do what he needed to do.

And I kind of, I've kind of got a more pluralistic approach to this that really in schools, we need our whole team to be engaging in doing what they do really, really well. And I think the messy analogy could have worked if you talked about the teams that were holding him up. Um, because I think that if you want your kids to prosper in a school, you need each and every teacher to have relationships with those kids. There needs to be trust.

There needs to be integrity. There needs to be warmth. There needs to be that willingness to progress, that openness to question, all of those really fundamental things that we see within education. It's this old, this old fashioned notion of mine, I suppose, romantic notion, if you like, that I kind of see education happening in that magic space between teacher and student.

And there's, there's nothing better than when that's really firing. And I think that, I think that you need that and you need your team, you need everyone in the room to be able to have that. So that idea of focusing on, on the spear, the sort of line of messy thing didn't really work for me. And I know there's probably one or two people talking about Chris with a hippie perspective on education.

And that's fine. Um, maybe I have the, the indulgence of being an idealist these days. Well, that's what, yeah, that's what we're living out of a shed does to you over, over time. You just, uh, you start to forget what the real world is like.

Yeah, I like that. I get that. I think that that makes sense. Listen, this is absolutely brilliant.

Um, for listeners, if you're feeling, you know, that you're feeling like you're needed everywhere all the time, then this might be a really good conversation for you tune into, to Brett's episode. And, and also, I hope you all wrote down like I did. Be present, not visible. Like Chris, I can see Emma's in the comments also geeking out about the difference between visibility and presence.

You've created something there. I think there's a book in it. Excellent stuff. Yeah.

Well, um, more on that to follow. Yeah. What's his space? Well, speaking of books, one of the most recent books I read was about formative action, and that actually led to me contact in Valentina David in the Netherlands.

And, um, we have been chatting a lot recently because we're co-delivering a masterclass in Thailand next Friday in Bangkok, day before the festival, Chris and Valentina came on the podcast. We recorded it back when I was in the UK, actually. So if you've seen the clips, that's my mom and dad's living room in the background. That's, that's, that's where I was at the time.

And we were talking about formative action as this new way that they have, they started talking about formative session. I love the work that they have done over formative action school in the Netherlands. And I thank goodness it got found. And I know they worked with Tom Sherrington, Oliver Kaviglioli, and got the book translated into English.

And now they are really making waves because of this idea that we've gotten so tight, there are so many lethal mutations of formative assessment that we've kind of gotten a bit lost. I know you're probably going to have huge opinions on this because you have huge experience with assessment and data, Chris. Yeah. Um, I mean, I've worked for two of the major sort of assessments organizations, both in the UK and globally, I suppose.

And that's one of the things that I speak out, speak about at length, probably at too much length for some people on occasions, I guess. Um, and I think that I love this, this episode, there was loads in there and I think we could do hours and hours on this. So I'm going to be careful not to overdo it as it were. Yeah, it was a big one.

One of the things that started off, Valentina talked about the fact that we all sort of thought we understood formative assessment as it were, and the data that goes with that. And I'm, I'm not entirely sure that we've even gone that far. I think one of the downsides of sort of teacher workload, particularly in the very heavy exacting nature of the accountability models that many of us have worked under, or that we just do stuff because we've got to get it done. I'm not even sure that we get to the point of thinking that deeply about the value of it at all.

So for me, I would sort of take a step back a little bit further. And I think there's a lot of people out there that are kind of banging on doing the stuff that they need to get done because they've got to get it done and nothing more sophisticated than that. Sometimes when you're in a, I mean, autumn term, particularly you're busy. You've got loads of deadlines.

You've got, you've got the school player to produce for Christmas or you've got your sports fixtures or whatever, and you're just kind of rocking through your stuff, getting it all done. So I do kind of want to do, do we really even think that we understand it? Yeah, that's true. But let's just put on record just how important assessment and data is.

There's a Jackal Fry and they, they talk, he talked about, he did a longitudinal study about data and interventions and it was about baseline data rather than necessarily sort of formative stuff through the, through the school. Yeah. But it was about the impact that it had not just within school, but like life chances, you know, sort of echoing into eternity to quote gladiator. I think it was that idea that these things are hugely important.

So I, I kind of really liked this, this episode, the fact that we do need to get to grips with what we're doing, why we're doing it and how we're doing it. Yeah. It's one, I think this episode is one I've listened to again. And also, you know, I think it's one to listen to a few times if you're, if you're new to this, because it really challenges so many of those misconceptions that we might have, like what formative action have done, they've done nothing too revolutionary except for really bring formative assessment into the pedagogical world and say, let's just hold on a second.

Have we gotten too obsessed by the artifacts of assessment? And actually, have we forgotten why we even embarked on this journey in the first place? Well, I mean, at the top of my note here, I've got the philosophical question. It kind of asks, what are our objectives with our schools, with our education system?

What are we actually trying to achieve? Because I'm not sure that we're necessarily always entirely clear on that. The exams framework gives us a convenient thing to look towards. But I think if you ask any teacher, if that was the be-all and end-all of their role, they'd probably say, no, absolutely not.

It's a far, far bigger thing that we do. At least I'd hope that's what they would say. I really like the idea that this kind of links to what one of the previous episodes, I wonder how often schools of leadership have sat down and asked their teachers what data they need, rather than necessarily saying, this is the data framework that we have within our school. This is what you put here.

This is what you do with it once you've compiled it, et cetera, et cetera. And I wonder if they get a slightly different data landscape in their school, if they, if they embrace that kind of input from teachers as to what would work. Whether teachers would have the time and in some cases, the expertise or motivation to address that, I don't know, depend very much on where you were. But I think that idea of what's useful to you as a teacher to deliver what you need to do is quite a powerful question to be asked.

Yeah, yeah. Making it, making it teacher led is really key and making it useful for teachers. I mean, that's one of the things that we talked about back in our episode when we recorded, was it last summer now, summer before last? I think it was the summer before in the pub.

In the pub, when in that lovely pub in York. Yeah, in York, in York. There's a group of builders behind us that were having their breakfast and were being terribly courteous. That's right. Yes, that's right.

We had lovely clatter in the background. It's one of the nicest, it's one of the nicest, like, ambience settings of the episode. Anyway, when we were talking in that way, you were, I think you alluded to some of these points, actually. So I could kind of imagine you nodding along as you were listening to some of the ideas that Valentina was sharing.

Well, some of the work that we're doing on our sort of world tour that's coming up, which is Hanoi Bangkok, New Zealand. We're actually looking at, yeah, it makes me feel very rockstar when I say that. And I'm anything but. Is that idea of data landscape and what it's actually doing in your schools?

Because I think that a large number of schools, if you ask them, what's what's the sort of structure? What's the purpose? What's the focus of your data landscape? They'd come back with a very fragmented response.

And I think that you tie that into the sort of framework idea that Valentina put forward. Some of the caveats that you flagged up data overload being drowned in work, how we actually deal with that. All important stuff. And you can shape that with your data landscape.

I have to question the idea of the sort of I think it was the five step process. And I. I like this and I was a little bit torn. I quite like the process, but I kind of wondered whether we need to be careful of being overly prescriptive because different schools have different personalities and we need to be ready to interpret that and sort of have soft edges around that.

And I think very often if you give people a framework or a process, they enjoy the security of it and they kind of take comfort in the rigidity of it. I just wonder if maybe you could soften that somehow and just step back from that process as a leader and interpret it in your own setting. Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think what I liked about what Valentina was saying is that the important thing more than anything, more than the five steps in the framework, is that the teachers have to understand their pedagogical decisions that they're making and understand that why.

And that, yeah, if they don't have that, the five steps, yeah, run the risk of becoming another. Everyone show me a mini whiteboard. And I don't actually know what I'm doing here. Everyone showing me whiteboards.

I quite don't know what to do with it or everyone do this or let's do exit tickets or let's do all these great things. Well, that without knowledge of why you're doing it. Really kind of just mutate into these tasks, aren't they? And it ties into the episode that you did about cognitive overload.

That idea that I think that if teachers have time and space to think about this stuff, then that can work for them. They can start to employ that. But you need that time and space to kind of to build those decisions around that knowledge. And I think that when you when you've maybe got four classes a day, so 20, 20 children and you've got marking and all of the other stuff that goes with the teaching job, it's kind of quite hard to find that space to, you know, focus on the process because that's what you've got to do because you're in front of the kids.

But the thinking bit is maybe quite tough. You might you might just park that and never actually get around to doing it. Totally. Well, let's let's come on to cognitive overload.

Before we do, I'd just love to give just a little brain break and give a quick word about the education leaders intensive that I mentioned at the beginning. So this is not a traditional leadership program. This is 80 percent practice. It's 20 percent theory.

And you're going to look at 10 leadership levers that you can use every day. Think things like how to actually run an effective meeting, how to deliver a difficult conversation, how to give feedback to colleagues, how to delegate or how to make a decision when you're in a rush. That stuff that drains you or frees you up to do real work to that real strategic work. So these these are fundamentals that a lot of exhausted leaders skip over and they're not skipping over them because they're not important, but because most leadership development programs you go on and I've done a lot of research into this.

They focus on strategy and vision, and they're not building the basics that make you effective every day. So I guess my call to you if you're listening and if you're tired of leadership development, that is not translating into your Monday mornings. Come and have a look. The details are at educationleaders.co forward slash intensive.

Applications are open. We've got a cohort coming up in January. I would love to have you on. Yeah, check it out.

Educationleaders.co forward slash intensive. Right. Back to it.

So last episode this week came out just this Tuesday. You mentioned beating cognitive overload. This was a solo episode from me. I've got a bit of an admission to make actually.

So on the podcast, the format should be interview solo, interview solo. I think that's kind of a nice, nice format. Problem is I got overly ambitious and booked in so many interviews and had so many interviews in a short space of time that I was like running six months in advance. Like I'd record and they'd say, when is this out?

And I'd be like next year and they'd be like a podcast. Like, what, what's going on? So I've just had to kind of sacrifice my own voice and give it, give it to everyone else so we can get through this. But I was excited to do this little reflection on cognitive overload.

Yeah. What were you thinking, Chris? I like this. And I, and I sort of came back to that idea of what, what is the role of leadership within a school?

What are we trying to do as leaders in a school? And I think that, you know, historically we promote people through administrative routes and we expect them to lead almost by default. But the measurables, the tangibles that people can see are the, are the administration. And I, I'm not great at administration.

Never have been, probably don't ever really want to be. I'd probably look for support with that. It's, it's not something that I find exciting or interesting. But I think that that's not really what leadership should be in a school.

And I think we often get dragged down into that, you know, it's getting your, your tracker's completed, it's getting your assessments uploaded to the various platforms, all of those kinds of things. And I think it goes back to that idea of what leadership actually is and what the fundamentals of it are. And we train people for administration, but we don't train them for, for leadership. There's very little in the way of progression.

And I think you alluded to that. Well, you're a great teacher, so you'll be a great leader. It's a different dynamic between adult and adult versus adult and child and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah.

So yeah, I think we get bogged down in the administration with it, within our schools, and I wonder how much of it's actually valuable. Yeah, I think you're right. I actually, I would say there's probably like even a sliding scale of what we get bogged down with, because I definitely work with a lot of leaders who get bogged down with admins, so they have no time to think. Well, no time to think strategically or just on how they're conducting themselves at all, like with those fundamentals, but then you've also got like other leaders who sometimes maybe sit too much in the strategic space and are constantly kind of in the planning space.

And maybe like these, these are kind of the kind of people who are obsessed by the education endowment foundations kind of implementation cycle. And like one to go through it with so much fidelity that they struggled to see what's happening right in front of their eyes in the school. And they're not able to be responsive. I mean, the reality is that you can, in my mind, you cannot become a great leader on any program, not my program, not any program.

No program alone is going to just make you a great leader. I think that's, that's one of the core issues that the so many programs that almost in their nature, like doing masters in this and MBA or whatever it is, and then by the end, you think you're just all of a sudden going to be this like great leader. It doesn't happen. You what do all great leaders have in common?

They put a lot of time in. They learn a lot on the job. They made a lot of mistakes. It's like, it's always the same.

So I wonder if we've got the aim slightly wrong. I wonder if we're trying to aim in these programs a bit too big, trying to kind of create rounded leaders. And actually we're just overwhelming leaders in that moment. And what we should be doing is saying, how can we, how can we reduce that cognitive load slightly?

How do we systemize some, some fundamentals to give you the space to become the leader that you know, you can be. I think, I think as well as it, there's an important thing here. And it's kind of part of, I suppose it's analogous to the TikTok generation that you see other leaders, you see all the stuff in the, the sort of courses that you do, et cetera. And you think, wow, everyone's doing brilliantly and I'm struggling.

And you sort of get into that, that leadership, leadership is a particularly lonely place to work because you don't want to admit weakness and challenges to anyone, but you're very nearest and dearest and so on. And I, I kind of see that and I think you've actually talked about this in previous episodes about where people have come together and had sort of leadership cohorts and so on. Um, and suddenly crikey other people feel like that too. Yes.

And relax, you know, that's normal. And I kind of like that idea that, you know, we can't be, we can't be perfect in everything that we do. And I wonder whether the priorities then need to lie. For me, and in the way that I would approach things now, very much in the relationship side of things, building trust, warmth, integrity, open dialogue, having presence rather than visibility, that kind of idea.

And I think that, um, those things are where you, you, you forge your own way and yourself, and I think that that's an important part of interpreting the courses that you've just mentioned, that you've got to kind of look at yourself and you've got to mold yourself into something that fits for both you and the people around you. You've got to be authentic in who you are. And if you're not, people will sniff that out and you'll, you'll really not get very far at all. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I couldn't agree more, Chris. So Chris, like it's been a month. Um, you've been busy. I've been busy with, we've all been busy.

Like what, what's October? What are you taking from October this year? Well, October has really all been in preparation for November for me. Um, you know, we, we've done an awful lot of work.

You and I have done some work on, on some very exciting projects and I'm delighted to be working with you again in a really collaborative fashion like we do. I'm very excited to be heading off to Hanoi, doing some work with some various school groups there, but also opening keynote at a, for this year event, the teaching community conference in Hanoi, where I'll be talking about the moral imperative of AI, why we must get to grips with it and some of the challenges of actually doing that and what that looks like in a school setting. Um, and then I'm onto the festival where we've got a couple of sessions as well. And I was really sad to see that I'm, I'm actually up against you on one of the time slots, um, yeah, pitched against each other.

So, so we'll, yeah, we'll be looking at audience figures there, I suppose. Um, and then onto New Zealand to, to talk about, um, the, that you've got Hanoi say stop, you've got two sessions. I've only got one, like, like if you take people from my only session, that's seriously, seriously be having words. Yeah, but they're two different sessions.

So you can come to balls if you wish. What's the topic? We've got one on the, we've got one on the, uh, the future of, of schools, really our schools fit for purpose. Should we be reinventing the model in the face of the fact that knowledge is now ubiquitous and the teachers, we don't need to be the guardians of all knowledge anymore.

Even books are a little bit kind of, you know, that's not where youngsters acquire their knowledge from now. And maybe there's a different model that we can do, create more of that magic space with students and so on. So it's the kind of time for change our schools fit for purpose. And then the other one I think is data friend or foe where we're talking about how to, to make sure that you get your data to classroom level and you facilitate your teachers accessing that using it in their day-to-day, not just part of a sort of compliance check or doing stuff for SLT.

They actually look at that data and it informs their, their strategy on a daily basis. That's often quite controversial, believe it or not. And people have had people roll their eyes and hiss. Well, I've suggested some of the ideas within that, but others have quite liked it.

You know, I think it's important to be a little bit provocative with some of this stuff. So my October has been spent setting that up, setting November up. And this is our first sort of big thing for Coru education as well. Really important.

You know, we, I left full-time normal employment to run Coru and get out there and do our own thing and bring this to the wider world. So we no longer have a product paying for my travel around the world. This is just advice, honest, impartial and open. Now, since you said honest, impartial, I trusted you right up until you said honest, impartial and open, that's an insurance salesman speak, Chris.

That sounds brilliant. You've got some good stuff and like, hopefully I'm against the data one. No one, no one wants to go to a data workshop. They'll blatantly choose me, choose me over you.

Brilliant. This has been fantastic. Thanks so much, Chris, for the reflection. We're going to be doing this once a month, end of the month.

And reflecting on themes from the episode, but we really, really, really want to reflect with you, the audience. We've got thousands of listeners. Just blows my mind. Thousands of listeners, you tune into education leaders and they're from across the world, leaders across the world.

If you're one of those listeners and you were listening and were nodding furiously or shaking your head at an idea, then please come along education leaders dot live the last Thursday of every month, we're going to be here listening to you, talking with each other, winding each other up about whose workshops are the best to go to. Chris, this has been absolutely fantastic. Thanks ever so much for joining me for the last hour. Been a, been a real pleasure.

And what I would say is that if you do come on, it's great to have different perspectives and opinions. I would hate this to be like an echo chamber where we all agree with each other, give each other a warm hug and then sort of wander off. This is, this is about sort of hearing new ideas and challenging our own thoughts because that's where reflection comes from. Yeah, let's do 20% hugs and niceness and then 80% debate.

Yeah, that'd be great. Like we want to, we want to, we want to talk about this. We do this monthly last Thursday, 6pm in Shanghai, 10am London time. November is already looking good.

Oh my goodness. We've got some good episodes and you can tune in education leaders dot live or on YouTube or on LinkedIn. Just find Chris or me on there. I'll pop some links below this so you can get this.

Chris, any final thoughts before we, before we leave? No, I've just had a great time chatting Shane. I can't wait to see you in person next week. Yeah.

Looking forward to it. Really looking forward to it. Right. That's us.

Keep doing the work that matters everyone. You're not alone. We're here with you. We'll see you here next month.

Bye everyone.