A Team Leadership Journey: Developing Leadership Capacity at Bolton School

Authors:
Helen Woodward - Helen MG Consulting
Helen Brandon - Deputy Head, Bolton School

Leadership development programmes are in good supply with government funding to support colleagues in the state sector. For independent schools, the options are to pay for places on NPQs, support colleagues opting to develop their leadership learning through individual courses or develop bespoke in-house leadership programmes to meet identified needs and aspirations.

Middle leaders can add great leadership value in school, providing the right development, direction, support and challenge is in place. Bolton School opted for an in-house leadership programme with Helen MG Consulting to address both the challenges and opportunities of middle leadership development. They wanted to support their middle leaders with a programme that built on their established learning culture, encouraged continuous learning and improvement throughout the school and developed leadership team relationships through collaborative learning. 

A leader is someone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”
— Brené Brown

There’s no shortage of leadership roles, positions, and opportunities in a large school. Departments, projects, events, and teams all need someone to lead them. But leading well, adding leadership value, and building capacity are more challenging, and can lead us to more questions:

• What does it mean to be a leader in this school?
• What is our leadership philosophy?
• What does adding leadership value look like?
• What impact does our leadership have on those around us?
• How do we develop a leadership culture of continuous learning for continuous improvement?

Where We Began

With Bolton School’s strong track record of academic success and extracurricular experiences, there is much to celebrate. One of our priorities for the Senior Leadership Team is ensuring a sustainable future through developing leadership confidence, capability, and capacity across the school. We knew that individual professional development would not be sufficient (Fullan, 2001) and wanted to ensure a culture where leadership learning could thrive.

After consideration, we opted for a bespoke programme in collaboration with Helen MG Consulting and began with an exploratory conversation. The purpose was to develop a shared understanding of the issues at stake and, importantly, the preferred future we were seeking. Together we worked through a reflective exercise:

• Why were we looking for a leadership development programme?
• What issues were we seeking to solve?
• What opportunities did we want to create?
• How did leadership challenges manifest in school?
• How might unresolved issues impact our future?
• What would middle leadership look like if it was going really well?

The focus here was on surfacing our concerns:

In a learning culture, the acquisition of new knowledge and skills is supported by aspects of the organization’s environment that encourage surfacing, noticing, gathering, sharing, and applying new knowledge.”
— Stephen J Gill

And noticing our responses:

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
— RD Lang

Following our initial meeting, Helen returned with feedback. We agreed on a professional development programme for middle and aspiring leaders, enabling participants to:

• Build confidence and resilience to lead teams committed to their roles and responsibilities
• Understand narratives, behaviours, and traits, and how these impact colleagues
• Understand transition and change processes (rational, emotional, and political) and how to plan responses

We were clear that the programme had to be informed by evidence-based research and leadership theory to ground ideas and practice.

Key areas of concern to address included:

• Within-school variation (some departments very successful, others less so)
• Issue avoidance

The Leadership Programme Overview

The proposed programme consisted of:

• Three core sessions at the beginning, middle, and end of the programme
• Optional workshop sessions (with a suggestion that each participant attend at least 3, preferably 5)
• A self-directed school visit exploring how an area of interest is led in a different context
• Real World Group 360 leadership diagnostic including briefing and feedback (90-minute 1:1 session)
• Leadership of a school-based project, contributing to wider school development and building on learning from the programme
• An end-of-programme review where participants presented the impact of their leadership project and learning to the SLT

The programme embraces leadership theory and practices from various sources. Participants are encouraged to read widely and share their reading and reviews in a Slack channel. Recommended books for colleagues are reviewed here.

We began the programme in March 2019 with 10 participants from across the school. Workshops included:

• Coaching Skills Theory and Practice
• Leading through Transitions and Change
• Courageous Conversations
• Creating Effective Organisational Cultures and Collaborations

By early March 2020, Covid-19 interrupted our flow. We decided not to move the programme online due to uncertainty, interruptions, and online fatigue. We resumed the programme in summer 2021 with a leadership project feedback session in September 2021 — 12 months later than planned. Some projects were impacted, some adapted, but all made great progress.

Facilitation style is key to building a learning culture. Theoretical influences for Helen include Glaser, Schwarz, and Egan. According to Schwarz, the facilitator’s role is to help groups perform well, build strong relationships, and improve wellbeing. A caring and empathic space enables deep reflection — sometimes, silence does the heavy lifting.

Helen Woodward is a great course leader, with vast knowledge and able to challenge you at every stage, but in a very constructive way. Her style is incredibly affiliative and you really feel she wants you to succeed. She allows lots of time for questions and lets the delegates debate with each other, and this has led to us all bonding well and sharing ideas.”

Leadership Programme Impact

The run-up to the review session created much excitement and some nervousness as participants prepared for After Action Reviews and practised their presentations. The emphasis was on leadership learning through the project and reflections on how new understanding could be applied in future.

The honesty, candour, humility, and self-reflection demonstrated was striking. Some shared how their leadership project had been prompted out of concern for particular groups of children (e.g. the quiet boys in school), some focused on curriculum development, and whole school initiatives were evident (Behaviour for Learning, Reducing the Carbon Footprint of the School).

As an SLT, we noticed the Leadership programme generated a great deal of interest and discussions in the staff room. Colleagues are sharing and recommending books and articles on leadership. Informal peer support networks have also emerged where participants can have open and curious discussions. It is wonderful to see a wider range of colleagues taking pride in leading projects and enjoying the professional satisfaction of that challenge. 

All our teachers who have taken part in the course found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable, thought-provoking, challenging course. They have gained invaluable knowledge and experience to take into any middle manager role.”
— Dave Palmer, CPD Lead, Bolton School Boys’ Division

“This course is allowing those already in middle management to recentre themselves as leaders whilst those aspiring to be leaders can begin to build knowledge. It stresses continuity and peer support — not just on meet-up days, but every day.”
— Helen Bradford-Keegan, Assistant Head, Bolton School Girls’ Division

Evaluation data gathered from sessions

• 100% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that the course had met its core objectives.
• 100% of respondents said their knowledge, understanding and skills had progressed.
• 100% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed sessions were well facilitated, and that they had been challenged by the content.
• All respondents said that they would recommend the course to a colleague.
  

Requesting and giving direct feedback for improvement is a recurring theme and modelled during the programme. Qualitative feedback for improvement from participants included:

• An opportunity to participate in all the workshops (rather than select 3)
• In school support for their school-based project
• Opportunities to ask leaders questions about their experience

In response Cohort 2 participants:

• Participate in all 5 workshops
• Have a mentor for their school-based project
• Will join in a leadership witness session with experienced leaders where they can ask questions

Participant feedback:

I thoroughly enjoyed the course as there were a number of different techniques and styles that I had no idea about. It allowed me to think of what applied to me in terms of how I might go about things and what sort of a professional I am. I feel more confident going forward.’’

I valued the chance to think deeply about my work and to begin a course of personal study which has led to something which I hope will be useful to school and wider afield. Many thanks!’’

Next Steps?

We began Cohort 2 in autumn 2021 with twenty participants from across the Foundation. Commitment is high and school-based leadership projects have been signed off.

The learning for all of us has been significant. Workshops have been reviewed and developed in the light of new research and feedback. This year everyone will have a school-based mentor to support with their leadership project. 

Final Thoughts

We always wanted more than a programme which developed individuals. We wanted to build on our learning culture and ensure leadership learning and capacity was built across the school embracing all that comes with it; honest feedback, projects that don’t go as planned, reflection, continuous learning and improvement. Importantly, the After Action Review process at the end of the programme values learning above project outcomes. As a team we understand:

To create a culture in which learning is the rule, not the exception, nonprofits must remove the barriers to learning and reward behaviors that facilitate learning: risk taking, action learning, feedback, and reflection."
— Stephen J Gill

We look forward to continuing this collaborative leadership learning journey!

References

• Egan, G. & Reece, R. (2018, 11th Ed). The Skilled Helper. ISE
• Fullan, M. (2011). Leading in a Culture of Change. Jossey-Bass
• Gill, S. J. (2010). Developing a Learning Culture in Nonprofit Organizations. Sage
• Schwarz, R. (2017). The Skilled Facilitator. Jossey-Bass

Notes

Bolton School is an independent day school in Bolton, Greater Manchester. It comprises a co-educational nursery, co-educational infant school, single sex junior schools and single sex senior schools including sixth forms. With almost 2,400 pupils, it is one of the largest independent day schools in the country.
Twitter: @BoltonSch

Helen MG Consulting provides consultancy, coaching and leadership development services for education and children’s services.

Website: www.helenmgconsulting.com
LinkedIn: Helen Woodward