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Archive : February 2017

Home /  February 2017
 
Uncategorised

Let The Learning Begin!

  • admin
  • 19/02/2017

This is the fourth article in my series written for the teacher stepping into a new role.  This series is designed to help you smoothly transition into your new role and start kicking goals quickly. If you are not a teacher, the process of transitioning to a new role is the same, so read on.

Last week I wrote about stepping outside your comfort zone. I walked you through a process to examine what aspects of your role and environment are outside your comfort zone so you can make a plan to actively push yourself forward in those areas.

This week I want to focus on the culture that surrounds your role. Regardless of whether you are still in the same organization or you have moved into a new one, there is a cultural difference and you need to have your eyes and ears open to it.  What do I mean by culture? Culture can be simply put as ‘the way things are done around here’. It’s a set of consistent patterns people follow for communicating, thinking and behaving. These are all grounded in the shared assumptions and values. The culture is also made up of the symbols, the shared language for example, the acronyms that are used, the way the school is organized, the approach to punctuality, how people dress and how the school recognizes and celebrates special events. These are just a few.

The culture you have come from is what you are accustomed to. The ways things are done, the processes, expectations, protocols and procedures you have been following and working within are not going to be the same in your new role and new organization and you need to find out what they are. You are effectively studying a new civilization and you need to become a ‘local’ in the new civilization. This involves learning; learning about the culture of your new environment. Some of this learning will come from watching how people work together, how things happen, the information flow that occurs amongst your colleagues, who does what and how things are done and so on. I strongly suggest you get yourself a note book to record these as the shifts in culture are often slight but impacting. If you get it wrong people will notice. An example of a cultural difference I noticed when I moved between roles was how people were recognized for their contribution. In one school, when staff submitted an article for the newsletter, the writer’s name was not to be included. In other schools, including the author’s name with their newsletter entry was common place. In another school, the annual school magazine never included mention about staff. You would never guess that staff even worked there.  In another school, staff were thanked with a thank you card, sometimes also with a small gift or trinket delivered to their desk or pigeon hole. These were always paid for by the person or group showing their appreciation with the cost never coming out of the department budget. In another school the names of staff who had helped in an activity or achieved some accolade were written up on a noticeboard in the staff room but this information was never shared with the students. The reasons for differences in culture such as this may be due to how the staff are regarded and valued by the school leaders, the collegiality across the staff, the financial situation of the school, it could be a number of things. Whatever is the case, how it is done in you school is something you need to find out and before you actually need to thank someone.

Learning about the culture of your new organization involves a ‘letting go’ of the old way to allow the new way to move in. It is important for you to look for the differences with your eyes and ears wide open. Some of this learning will also come from asking questions. It is important to ask questions. It is also vitally important that you NEVER ASSUME. Assuming is keeping you in your old space. Questioning is good when it is phrased in such a way to show your colleagues that you are keen to learn about your new organization and to assimilate into the new culture. We have all come across people who transition into a new school and constantly compare it with their old school, professing statements like …’oh at my old school(naming the school)…… we did it this way’ with an attitude that this is the only way it should be done. This is annoying because they have not given any thought or energy to the current school’s way of doing things and in making statements like this, it makes their new colleagues feel inferior. I’m sure, that was not their intention but that is so often how it is perceived and we know; ‘perception is reality’. To get around this, especially when the previous school did have the better way of operating in this case, would be to say something like, ‘I’ve seen it done like this and it worked fairly well’.

It is good to be prepared so cultural differences don’t appear out of the blue and hit you unawares. Plan two weeks ahead. Sit down with a colleague and walk through the calendar to find out how the upcoming events operate in your school. Find out what is expected of you, are there are special dress codes, for example, some schools require academic gowns to be worn on special occasions, in some they are hired, in others you need to have your own. There are schools who have carnival days where groups of staff get together and dress up in a theme. Are there any requirements for you to bring things from home to share, birthday groups, for example? Is there an anniversary approaching whereby students or staff may be emotionally unsettled that you should know about so you can prepare yourself? Much of the culture of an organization you cannot read about in a staff handbook or in policy and procedures. You need to watch and ask.

There will also be cultural aspects about your new role that you need to be aware of and learn about. These are aspects that are deeper set and far less visible. Such things are meeting protocols; how are meetings conducted and what is expected prior to each? What is expected of you within your various teams and what role do you play within each of these teams? How are decisions made? Who are the power brokers in each team who have a hot-line to leadership? What level of autonomy do you have in your role and is this the same for your colleagues at the same level as you? What unofficial meetings are happening between meetings and who do you need to be influencing? Some of this is also about politics but remember politics is part of the culture, it is also ‘how we do things around here’.

So your task is to learn about the culture of your new organization and new role. Keep a notebook to write things down. It is so easy to forget the nuances you will see and learn about, some may be slight, others pivotal. Remember to remove assumptions and forget about your old school, don’t even mention its name. Enjoy learning about your new civilization and becoming a local. Let the learning begin!

About the author: Janine Stratford is an Executive Coach working with school leaders. She provides leadership coaching developing greater clarity, consistency and confidence in leadership, direction and workplace relationships. Janine’s company is Coaching Focus. www.coachingfocus.com.au

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Uncategorised

Playing it Safe Won’t Get You Ahead.

  • admin
  • 07/02/2017

This is the third article in my series written for the teacher stepping into a new role.  My hope is that this series of articles will help you smoothly transition into your new role and start kicking goals quickly. Leadership is still leadership, so if you are not a teacher, what I have written here will equally apply to you.

In my first article, I wrote about getting clarity around your new role and setting you up for a meeting with your manager to make sure you are both on the same page. How did that meeting go? Last week I wrote about developing collegiate relationships with those around you, in your team, with your manager and most importantly with the people who are at the same level of the organisation. I am hoping you have started to make connections, had a few coffees and a few comfortable exchanges as you passed through offices. This week, the focus is on stepping up and out of your comfort zone, the safe space of tasks and areas that you know well. These articles are based on ideas expressed by Michael Watkins in his book, The First 90 Days. I encourage you to buy it, in hard copy, and read it from cover to cover and make yourself notes all over it.

In your application for your new role, you will have written about and talked to the projects you have managed, or the initiatives you have taken or how you have met the various interpersonal challenges when dealing with colleagues, parents and students. All of that got you the job. These are your strengths and usually the things that you like to do, because you know them and have practiced the necessary skills. You will know that in all the work that you do there are some aspects you really enjoy and get lost in, sometimes for hours, and then there are those aspects that you know need to be done, and you put them off for as long as you can. In your new role there will more tasks that are new and different, that you haven’t done before and may not know how to do and they push and test your skills and knowledge. Just as well, you have started to build those relationships with others in the same level as you in your organization as these people will be able to help you to get a handle on those tasks where some assistance is needed.

You got the job because of your strengths but relying too much on what made you successful in the past can be fatal, according to Michael Watkins in The First 90 Days. He has a good way of assessing your problem preferences, the kinds of problems toward which you naturally gravitate.  Your preferences have influenced you to move towards jobs where you can do more of what you like. And as result, those skills have been perfected and you feel most competent in those areas.  He uses the analogy that it is like exercising the right arm and ignoring the left. The strong arm gets stronger and the other atrophies. The risk is that an imbalance occurs and then you move into a role where you need to use both arms together.

Look at the table below, which I have modified from Watkins’ book to suit a teacher’s world, and use it to assess your intrinsic interest in solving problems in each of the areas on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means very little interest and 10 means a great deal of interest.

Design of appraisal and reward systemsEmployee moraleEquity/fairness

 

 

Management of financial riskSetting budgetsCost-consciousness

 

 

Positioning and promoting your department/areaRelationships with colleaguesFocussing on high quality service delivery

 

 

Ensuring high quality of learning outcomesRelationships with studentsLooking for continuous improvements

 

Managing projectsRelationships with parents and other stakeholdersWorking together with other departments and school administration

 

 

 

Now transfer your rankings from the table above to the table below into the corresponding cells. Then add the three columns and five rows.

The column totals represent your preferences among technical, political and cultural problems. Technical problems include strategies, marketing and processes. Political problems are about power, influence and alliances in the organization. Cultural problems are about the culture and climate in your organization which is influenced by values, norms, guiding assumptions and ‘the way things are done’ in your workplace.

If one column total is noticeably lower than the others, it represents a potential ‘blind spot’ for you. This means that you will steer clear of this area or worse, won’t see the need to take action. If you score high on technical aspects and low on culture and politics, you might not be seeing the people issues that need to be addressed.

The row totals represent your preferences for the various business functions. A low score in any row suggests that you prefer not to deal with problems in that functional area – more potential ‘blind spots’.

 

TechnicalPoliticalCulturalTotal
Human Resources

 

Finance

 

Marketing

 

Operations

 

Research and Development

 

Total

 

 

This exercise will help you to identify where you most like solving problems and where you are less eager to sit with problems. It will highlight potential weak spots in the way you work and therefore areas where you may not be seeing the issues clearly or acting quick enough.  To overcome or compensate for these vulnerabilities you can do some basic things:

  1. Be stronger with your own self-discipline and push yourself outside your comfort zone to tackle some of the areas that you find less enjoyable,
  2. Work on some of your less favourite activities with others in a team approach,
  3. Get some help from others who have more experience in the areas that are less familiar. Look around your organization for people who you can see are strong in the areas where you would like to develop and set up a mentor arrangement. You can also reach out to people in your network that may be in similar roles to you in other schools and seek their support. I am sure there will be times where you can share your strengths with them in return.
  4. Get yourself a coach and meet with them once a month so they gently push you out of your comfort zone and get you tackling those ‘blind spots’ with greater confidence.

 

So that leads me to tell you about The Leadership Exchange. This is a meeting group for educators in Melbourne, a network by any other name. We like to call it an ‘exchange’ because during the meeting two or three speakers share their knowledge about various topics pertinent to education and leadership and we also hear some good advice from a leadership coach; that would be me. The Exchange occurs once per term with the meeting starting at 6.00pm, ending at 8.30pm, with a break to eat and drink and connect with other educators. Too many educators in schools are not connecting enough. The internet is only one way to connect, but to know people because you have made a connection in person is worth so much more. I encourage you to attend and I also suggest that you pay the registration fee yourself. Don’t ask your school to pay it. This event is designed around building your own professional reputation. This is where you need to invest in yourself. The next Leadership Exchange is on Wednesday 8 March. Here is the link to book and get more information. I hope to see you there. http://coachingfocus.com.au/the-leadership-exchange/

Please let me know how this problem preference exercise was for you. Remember, I am happy to assist you as your coach, meeting once a month, and helping to move you out of your comfort zone. Being a past school leader I know the world of a teacher very well.

About the author: Janine Stratford is an Executive Coach working with school leaders. She provides leadership coaching developing greater clarity, consistency and confidence in leadership, direction and workplace relationships. Janine’s company is Coaching Focus. www.coachingfocus.com.au

 

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