The Myriad of Leadership Conversations Part Five: Stakeholder Conversational Positions

Welcome to part five of a six-part series of blogs on ‘The Myriad of Leadership Conversations’. Part one was on the in-school colleague conversational position of coaching, part two explored its close colleague mentoring, part three was the final in-school colleague conversational position of ‘Leading’, and part four was whole school or group or team conversational positions that leaders adopt that I called ‘Whole-School Leadership Conversations’. For part five I will be exploring the range of Stakeholder Conversations leaders are likely to be having.

Stakeholder Conversations

Some of these will sit under the ‘Leading Conversations’ banner but there are others that are worth a separate ‘position’ within the myriad. These are:

· Students

· Parents and Community

· System

Students

Leaders will (hopefully) have many conversations with students in their daily work. It is suggested that the continuum for these interactions is similar in structure to that of the conversations with staff; Leader — Mentor — Coach. In addition, there is highly likely to be the additional ‘conversational position’ of teacher which probably sits between Mentor and Leader. Whilst there are many similarities with the conversational positions with staff, there is however likely to be a different interactional dynamic at play as the conversation is between adult and child.

Coaching and Mentoring

As students become more independent in their learning, more of the conversational interactions between leaders and students are likely to be in the coaching and mentoring conversational position. As a leader, it’s good to be mindful and deliberate about the position you are adopting in the conversation with students as there is a different interactional dynamic at play give the age and positional power difference held by teacher and student. As a general rule, the older and more independent the student is in their learning the more the leader should be to the right-hand side of the continuum, but opportunities to coach and mentor even very young students should be taken whenever possible as they are potentially significant learning opportunities.

Teaching

Throughout the student’s time in school it is highly appropriate that leaders, on occasions, adopt the conversational position of teacher. There is knowledge and skills that students will need to be taught. Leaders need to be mindful of not defaulting to this position, which given they are teachers, is not an easy task but an important one.

Leading

This conversational position includes the range of conversations leaders have with students that range from; the leading of assemblies’ type conversations; to the reminding to follow school rules; to the, hopefully infrequent, formal disciplinary conversations.

Parents and Community

Many of the conversational positions with the parent and community body will sit on the same continuum as the ‘Whole School Leadership Conversations’: Inspiring — Collaboration/Co-Creative — Informing, explored in Part Four. However, there is likely to be an additional aspect to this continuum, that of the ‘difficult’ conversation. At times, leaders will have to interact in more emotionally charged conversations with parents and/or the community.

Inspiring

As with the Whole School Leadership conversational positions, a key role of a leader is to inspire the parent and community body in relation to what the schools stands for and their role in helping this come about. When done well this is also a powerful marketing tool, a term which may not sit comfortably with everyone, which I also see as part of the role of the leader.

Collaborative/Co-Creative

I see this as being virtually the same as with school colleagues where the leader is looking to involve parents and the community in discussion to agree the best way forward.

As per the previous post, I have deliberately used both collaborative and co-creative as whilst the former is a more common term, from recent reading and professional learning, I would encourage people to start using co-creative more, as the word ‘co-create’ suggests a more inclusive ‘power-with’ approach as opposed to a ‘power-over’ approach to involving parents and the community in discussion.

What is important in this position, is that the leader clarifies the decision-making process. Is it a vote or to assist the leader (or leadership team) in gathering information before they collectively or individually make the decision?

Informing

At times, there are decisions that have been made or information that needs to be shared, and the parents and community need to know what these are and, if appropriate, why.

A key factor here for the leader to consider is what is the best approach to sharing this information. Is it through the school newsletter or is it important enough to invite parents to a meeting?

Difficult

I do not know of any leader who enjoys these conversations whether they are with colleagues, students, parents or members of the community, but they are important to include as I am unaware of any setting where, on occasions, these are not needed. The context may be in relation to complaints the parent or community member has and generally are about individual students but could also include wider issues.

System

The final conversational position with stakeholders is the conversations Leaders will also have with the ‘system’. This may be through conversations with their ‘supervisors’, Leadership organisations, Unions, and Peer Leaders in other schools.

These are more likely to operate in the formal conversational position, where the focus is on performance or sharing of best practice but it is hoped that there are opportunities to also be in the informal conversational position as well, where the focus is more on wellbeing. There may also be the ‘compliance’ element to conversations with the systems supervisors of school leaders.

There does seem to have been a broad shift in how the State Education Department (or equivalent system commission or board) have positioned the roles of supervisors of school leaders to adopt more of a ‘coaching approach’ to the implementation of their roles. However, the positional ‘power’ of people within these positions cannot be ignored. Those in such roles who do this well adopt are more ‘power with’ as opposed to ‘power over’ approach to their interactions with school leaders.

Final Thoughts

As always, I would really appreciate all types of feedback as my thinking is continuing to develop in this space and it is only through reflection on the feedback we receive can we hopefully end up at a better space.

Next week I’ll be completing the series of blogs by exploring some key principles, tools and frameworks that enable leaders to have ‘better conversations’ wherever they are on the myriad.