Introducing Pioneering Leadership
A pioneer is someone who takes the initiative, who creates, develops or sets in motion new ways of doing and thinking about things. The word ‘pioneer’ comes from the French ‘pionnier’, a foot soldier, someone who prepares the way for others to follow.
Pioneering Leadership is about helping you become a pioneer in your life and work. It is about bringing all that you are, your experiences, values and beliefs, as well as your situation and context, to help you to lead at a higher level.
Our Pioneering Leadership Programme is a bespoke programme that has been developed to help all colleagues working in schools on their professional journey.
Unlike many other leadership programmes (and there are lots!), it does not claim to contain all the answers. Indeed, this programme aims to ask questions and to prompt your thinking rather than providing readymade answers and solutions. Importantly, to be truly pioneering, you have to work out the answers for yourself. Books that claim to have the answers fail to consider that we are all different and live and work in different contexts. Some leadership programmes are, therefore, either too generic to be meaningful or too prescriptive to be impactful. By contrast, our Pioneering Leadership Programme aims to help you to develop your leadership experiences, to reflect and learn from them and to grow as a leader.
The case for Pioneers
Leadership is not a set of facts or behaviours to be learnt. Yes, you can get better at making presentations or writing an action plan or having a tough conversation. There are many and varied books, models and techniques you can learn about in all of these skills and many others. However, we believe that leadership begins with attitude and mind-set, which have been shaped by all your experiences and learning. To further develop your thinking, leaders need to find new experiences, contrasting contexts and colliding perspectives that will challenge you and help you grow. A leader that seeks out such growth or ‘heat experiences’ is a pioneer.
We live in a VUCA world
The military use the acronym VUCA to describe the world we find ourselves in:
- V = Volatile. The nature and dynamics of regular change, often at pace;
- U = Uncertain. The lack of predictability of what is to come, with a high prospect of surprise;
- C = Complex. The multiplex, interconnected nature of our lives and work, that involve myriad issues, conflicting priorities and an unclear cause-and-effect chain;
- A = Ambiguous. The opacity of reality, characterised by a strong potential for misreads, mixed meanings and cause-and-effect confusion.
These elements present the context in which many individuals and organisations see their current and future state. Leading in a VUCA world requires use to grow and develop ourselves in new ways beyond the horizontal learning of skills and techniques. Rather than fill our metaphorical cups with new content, we need to grow our cup to be able to handle new stages in our personal and professional development. In so doing, we will enhance our resilience, creativity and ability to thrive in a VUCA climate.
Horizontal and Vertical Leadership
To thrive in a VUCA world and to develop your leadership abilities, there are three primary conditions we aim to create and encourage you to create for yourself and others:
- Heat Experiences. The leader faces a complex situation that disrupts and disorients his/her habitual way of thinking. They discover that their current way of making sense of the world is inadequate. The leaders’ mind starts to open and search for new and better ways to make sense of the challenge. This is the ‘what’ that initiates development.
- Colliding Perspectives. The leader is then exposed to people with different worldviews, opinions, backgrounds and training. This both challenges his/her existing mental models and increases the number of perspectives through which he/she can see the world. This is the ‘who’ that enables development.
- Elevated Sense-making. The leader then uses a process or a coach to help him integrate and make sense of these perspectives and experiences from more elevated stages of development. A larger, more advanced worldview emerges and, with time, stabilises. This is the ‘how’ that integrates development.
Supporting this, we have written an article on our Pioneering Leadership Programme for the Chartered College of Teaching’s journal, Impact. It can be found here.
Suitable for:
This programme is suitable for all Pioneer Staff.
Intended Outcome / Impact :
In line with the Trust’s Pioneering Leadership Programme, a range of vertical leadership development opportunities are proffered to all colleagues across the Trust. These include: heat experiences; colliding perspectives; and, elevating sense-making. Years of research completed by the Centre for Creative Leadership suggests that, through these three experiences, everyone can develop their leadership competencies and develop more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking.
The intended impact of engaging in this growth opportunity is to develop the individual from a dependent conformer to an interdependent collaborator.
As a result of undertaking vertical leadership development activities, you will:
- Become an interdependent thinker;
- See systems, patterns and connections that enable you to perform in new and innovate ways;
- Become a longer-term thinker able to impact on others and build sustainability;
- Be able to hold multi-frame perspectives;
- Be able to manage contradictions.
Course Type:
This course is held in-house cross-trust.
Location:
Events held at: Foxborough Primary School, Common Road, Langley, SL3 8TX
Duration:
Two, one day modules held over 12 weeks, with independent learning.
Thereafter, ongoing coaching and self-directed learning
Our Investment:
- Through discussion with your line manager, opportunity to engage in a range of vertical leadership development opportunities
- Ongoing leadership coaching and mentoring
Your Investment:
- Commitment to complete any activity undertaken to fruition