Havering Newsletter

Leadership – The engaging leader, leading for delivery

At this point in the academic year, the implementation of school development and area plans are well underway. How successfully plans are being implemented will depend on how effectively leaders have been in engaging with colleagues to secure their commitment to delivery. The level of engagement depends on the quality of relationships. Steve Radcliffe in his book Leadership Plain and Simple says “You have to have relationships big enough to get the job done.”

Successful leaders have big enough relationships. They listen, seek others’ opinions and their active involvement in projects and planning, acknowledge contributions and a job well done. In short they value and engage people. Gallup identified three levels of employee engagement: actively engaged, not engaged, and actively disengaged. Within in each level employees will exhibit some of the following attitudes and behaviours.

Gallup Level of Engagement

Attitude

Behaviour

Actively contribute Give of their best & go the extra mile Make suggestions to support improvement Take the initiative/volunteer Promote the organization’s vision and values Speak positively about the organization Enjoy excellent professional team relationships

Enthusiastic Motivated Committed Optimistic Positive

Actively engaged

Do just enough of what is expected Ignore problems Complain Work independently of others

Indifferent Negative

Not engaged

Voice negative opinions, undermining team morale and plans Speak negatively about the organisation Resist change and professional growth Look to create division within the team

Negative Cynica l

Actively disengaged

In his video Employee Engagement - Who’s Sinking Your Boat? 2021 - YouTube Bob Kelleher talks about employees being one of three groups on your crew team: paddlers (actively engaged), passengers (not engaged) and those sinking your boat (actively disengaged). He provides some thoughts about how you can increase the number of paddlers, whilst decreasing the passengers and those sinking your boat, including investing in the development of people who manage others. If as a leader you feel the implementation of your development plan isn’t going as you had hoped, it may be related to colleague engagement. How involved were they in developing the plan? Was it presented to them? You will have review periods built into your plan. This will be a good opportunity to seek feedback and increase the levels of engagement as necessary. The following questions may help to support you in this: “Have the right actions been

chosen to achieve the goal? “Do we need to do things differently to reach our goal?” “Do we need additional resources…?” Michael Fullen rightly said that “change is technically simple but socially complex”. As a manager you will have been successful in delivery, this has enabled you to move forward into leadership. As a leader the challenge is to engage hearts and minds to help you deliver on the vision. You want people to be engaged and preferably actively engaged!

Jacqueline Treacy Senior Inspector - Quality Assurance jacqueline.treacy@havering.gov.uk 01708 431 287

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