Middle Leaders Development Program
with Mentoring by Senior Leaders
Senior leaders will mentor their colleagues to empower them to achieve the goals set in this program.
Essential
Question
What do middle leaders need to know and be able to do to ensure team members are working interdependently to achieve a shared purpose?
Over-Aching
Goal
Middle leaders will understand and have confidence to facilitate faculty meetings, establish a clear and transformative department goal that is aligned with the school’s strategic objectives and give performance related feedback.
Senior leaders participating in the program will have learned and honed their mentoring skills to empower middle leaders to achieve team goals aligned with the strategic needs of the school.
Target
Audience
Middle Leadership Development Stream – Heads of Faculty / Heads of Department / Subject, Grade Level Leaders and Coordinators.
Senior Leadership Mentoring Stream – Principals and Deputy / Vice Principals, or any other Administrator tasked with supervising Heads of Faculty and Coordinators.
Program Introduction
70-20-10, this is the golden rule for successfully developing leaders,
but how can we take this one step further?
We know from research that senior leaders are the most proven and powerful tool for empowering middle leaders to be accountable for 70% of their own development. Thus, to successfully develop leaders in our schools, senior leaders need to accept 20% of the responsibility by regularly mentoring middle leaders to clarify their role, responsibilities and goals that their team is expected to achieve. This program, as the 10% training component, is intended to launch all participants on the most professionally transformative journey of their life.
To ensure Middle Leadership Development Stream participants are able to successfully apply knowledge, tools, and strategies introduced in this program it is required that every participant identify a senior leader that will mentor them during the program.
*This workshop is available for facilitation in English. All written materials will be in English to support the schools working language environment.
Senior leaders will be asked to participate in the first workshop as well as attend a separate workshop where they will be instructed on Mentoring Skills. Senior leaders can be defined as anyone that either supervises the participant directly or has a role more senior than the participant and will be able to support the participant by providing additional perspective and be able to direct them to additional resources the participant may not be able to directly access.
Middle leaders, when empowered, will be the most effective tool in ensuring transformative and sustained change. This program will instruct middle leaders how to foster greater interdependency among team members and develop a sustainable collaborative team culture. Senior leaders will serve as the catalyst to keep middle leaders motivated throughout the school to keep them on track to achieving goals that will improve teaching and learning in the school. Teacher lead teams that have a clear purpose and work interdependently improve student learning.
Middle Leadership Development (MLD) Stream Outline
The Middle Leadership Development Stream supports aspiring and existing middle leaders to adapt their leadership skills and strengths to the unique obstacles they’ll face throughout the school year. The program is divided into 5 workshops that are timed to occur when the content will be most relevant to the challenges the participants are facing.
Participants in the Middle Leadership Development stream will:
Gain an understanding and appreciation of different leadership expectations
Practice effective communication skills
Gain awareness of self and others and how to manage the disparity
Learn how to manage effective meetings, ensure equity and foster interdependence
Understand their role during different stages of team development
Ensure their department works interdependently to achieve its goal
Learn to give feedback relative to their team goal
Survey plays an important role in this program to ensure program content and engagement can be differentiated to meet the needs of each participant.
The survey and assessment process includes:
Participants will be surveyed to understand their experience, ambitions and anticipated challenges
Senior Leadership are invited to provide feedback on their expectations and goals (This also serves to build awareness of the program and ensure support)
Participants take the DiSC Everything Workplace Profile to develop a greater awareness of self and others, especially when tasked with delegating work and navigating difficult conversations
Participants will provide feedback throughout the program to ensure content and assignments are context specific and appropriate to their level of mastery
Participants will receive regular feedback from the facilitator and peers
Senior Leadership Mentoring (SLM) Stream Outline
As a leader, one of your most important roles is to mentor your people to do their best. By doing this, you'll help them make better decisions, solve problems that are holding them back, as well as learn and apply new skills.
Some people are fortunate enough to get formal training in mentoring. However, many people have to develop this important skill themselves. This may sound daunting but, if you arm yourself with some proven techniques, practice, and trust your instincts, you can become a great mentor.
The STRIDE Model is a simple yet powerful framework for structuring your mentoring engagement. In this program we will look at how you can introduce this model to staff members that are seeking guidance to develop their professional capacity and/or overcome obstacles impeding their performance.
This program includes three full-day workshops (6-7 hours per day).
The first workshop will be Module 1 of the Middle Leadership Development Stream program where senior leader input is key in clarifying the role and responsibilities for Middle Leaders. The second and third day will be a one-day Mentoring workshop. There will additionally be 1 observation of a mentoring session, which includes a debrief with the mentor, and a closing debrief meeting with the mentor and mentee.
At the beginning of the program, participants will:
Complete an Everything DiSC Management behavioral assessment
Be surveyed to understand their relationship to middle leader they will mentor and identify desired outcomes
Asked to meet with their mentee after Module 1 of the Middle Leaders program and complete a Mentoring Inquiry form.
Throughout the course of the school year, participants will:
Schedule a time to have the program facilitator observe them facilitate a mentoring session
Be surveyed, along with their team member that they are mentoring, to evaluate their mentoring skills
Schedule a final feedback session, which will include the team member that was mentored
Introduction to DiSC
(Behavioral assessment tool used in both streams)
In order to motivate and influence our teams, we need to understand ourselves and how our priorities affect others. Influence is not about being pushy. Influence is about looking at the problem from the other person’s perspective and then explaining your own views in order to influence their decisions.
If you want to be influential you need to be able to understand yourself and your reactions as well as understand other people’s perceptions. The DiSC model groups four common behavioral patterns found universally in all people on earth. This simple four-quadrant model is used to articulate the common ways that all human beings tend to act and communicate.
DiSC Outcomes
DiSC provides a common language to help teams understand one another and work better together
Develop awareness of self and others to improve communication
Identify and hone key presentation skills
Improve confidence and influencing skills
Develop and hone Co-presentation skills
Reduce conflict and avoid misunderstandings
Demonstrate the capacity to devise and deliver a compelling value proposition
Middle Leadership Development Program Modules
The first workshop is a full day and will introduce Middle Leaders to everything they must achieve within the first 30-days of the school year.
The learning objectives for this first workshop are:
Developing awareness of individual values and beliefs about Student Learning and synthesizing them into the work of the team
Defining and communicating the role of the leader to all stakeholders
Understanding how teams evolve in stages and stage appropriate activities
Establishing group norms
Managing effective meetings
Establishing a purpose for the team that will be at the center of all the work the team does
The next four half-day workshops focus on Collaborative Communication, Goal Setting, Delegation, and Communicating Team Performance.
The learning objectives for these four workshops are:
Develop an awareness of self and others and understand how the disparity impacts team communication
Set goals that align with the individual, team, and school
Delegate effectively with clear instructions and ensure follow-through
Learn to use Performance Feedback to address team complacency and reduce conflict
In between each workshop participants will be given assignments that they must discuss with their mentor and report on in the next workshop. For example, at the conclusion of the first workshop participants must present in the next class the Group Norms their department has agreed to and the measures they have taken to demonstrate and enforce those norms.
MLD Program Agenda
Module 1
Team Formation
Group norms are formed in the first meeting, whether you intend them to be or not, and once formed can be incredibly difficult to address in later stages of team development. This workshop will help you define your role as a leader, facilitate effective team meetings and provide you the tools necessary to ensure your team is clear about its purpose and buys into the processes that will govern the team.
Essential Question: What do I need to know and be able to do to lead a collaborative team?
Learning Objectives:
Participants will explore the why, what, and how of collaboration
Participants will learn how teams develop in stages and activities appropriate for each stage
Participants will learn how to manage effective meetings, ensure equity, and foster interdependence
Participants will use tools and strategies to establish group norms
Participants will learn how to build consensus on the team purpose
Module 2
Collaborative Communication (DiSC) and Meeting Management
To be influential and capable of motivating disparate team members, team leaders must understand how to adapt their leadership style to accommodate the beliefs and behavioral patterns of team members. Participants will use their DiSC results to learn to adapt communication for different team members and use communication strategies to mitigate barriers to communication.
2-3 months into the school year group norms begin to get tested and members will begin to question their role on the team. The team leaders role at this stage should be more focused on reinforcing the purpose of the team, the role that each member plays and how to foster greater interdependency between each team member. Effective meeting management at this stage of the team’s development is crucial.
Essential Question: How can I adapt my communication and leadership style to improve my influence and effectiveness as a team leader? How can I mitigate conflict in meetings to ensure we are focused on our team purpose?
Learning Objectives:
Participants will demonstrate assertive communication skills
Participants will demonstrate effective questioning skills to understand the needs of others, as well as help others to see things from a different perspective
Participants will assess their meeting management practices and identify strategies to improve them
Participants will explore and understand how to accommodate different beliefs about leadership
Participants will gain an understanding and appreciation of different work styles
Participants will learn how to manage 5 difficult team member behaviors
Module 3
Goal Setting
At this time in the school year Heads of Department should have a good understanding of the capacity their team has to engage in transformative interdependent work. Capacity will be determined by their understanding of the needs of their students and capability to attend to the transactional responsibilities of their roles, such as lesson planning and assessment. All departments in a school will have a different capacity. The capacity of a department to work interdependently towards achieving a transformative goal will largely be contingent on their capability of attending to the transactional aspects of their work.
In this module participants will learn to assess their departments capacity for working interdependently. Participants will learn how to establish an effective team goal, in the form of an inquiry, that addresses the needs of each team member, the team and the school. This goal will be framed with a transformative outcome and defined by the key results that will demonstrate attainment of that goal.
Essential Question: How do I align individual, team and school objectives into a transformative team goal, that my department has the capacity to achieve, that will improve student learning?
Learning Objectives:
Participants will assess their team capacity to work interdependently to achieve a transformative goal
Participants will be introduced to Sandboxing to insulate the team from outside influences that can undermine goal attainment
Participants will learn to facilitate effective goal setting processes that are inquiry based
Participants will understand that pursuing goals is an iterative process that requires periodic tuning
Module 4
Delegation
Delegating is one of the most important management skills you can develop, but most middle leaders don’t delegate well, if at all. Learning to delegate effectively saves time, develops the team, motivates the team and keeps the team focused on its primary objectives. Without appropriate delegation, a team will become inefficient and demoralized.
At this time of the year all teacher lead teams have established their goals but struggle with breaking them down into action tasks. In this training participants will learn when it is appropriate to delegate, what to delegate, to whom to delegate, and how to delegate. This training will cover the steps to proper delegation and discuss some of the problems that result in not delegating correctly.
Essential Question: How do I identify and delegate tasks effectively to peers?
Learning Objectives:
Participants will understand the challenges & benefits of delegation
Participants will identify the barriers and how to address them
Participants will complete a delegation inventory
Participants will learn a 5-step delegation process
Participants will role play delegation conversations
Module 5
Performance Feedback
Transformational change is empowering and sets the stage for continuous improvement across the school, but sustaining the systems that enable change requires consolidating successes, understanding setbacks, continuous feedback and continued investments in process and people.
Essential Question: How do I effectively communicate about team performance and ensure a safe environment to communicate with team members?
Learning Objectives:
Participants will demonstrate consultative communication skills;
Participants will experience how to facilitate performance feedback with and between team members; and
Participants will understand how to coach their team through various stages of development
Testimonials
“What I liked best about the program was the group aspect of being able to talk with different middle leaders from different settings and relate experiences.”
“A lot of processes that take place were brought to the forefront. This helped me develop an improved understanding of why certain things happen and why people may react in the ways that they do to different situations. The table conversations and the way Michael facilitated them were incredibly useful.”
“I felt I learned a lot about being a middle leader and supporting middle leaders and how to move towards working together as a team. I also felt I understood how to move towards more successful models for teams and for coming up with goals.”
Senior Leaders Mentoring
Program Modules
Below is the 2-day agenda for the Mentoring Skills workshop that all Senior Leadership Stream participants will participate in:
Mentoring for Development Workshop Agenda – DAY 1
Welcome / Program Overview
Mentoring Challenge Exercise (quick practice mentoring + debrief)
Principles of Effective Mentoring
What is mentoring? (discussion)
When to mentor? What skills are needed?
DISC Styles and Mentoring
Review Mentoring Form 1 and Prepare for your next Mentoring Session
Establishing a purpose for the team that will be at the center of all the work the team does
Mentoring for Development Workshop Agenda – DAY 2
Mentoring Model (STRIDE) and Live Mentoring Demonstration
Career and Development Mentoring Discussions (3 skill practice scenarios, with peer feedback)
Feedback for Development Mentoring
Skill Development Strategies Using 70-20-10
Your Real Development Mentoring situations (skill practice mentoring)
Facilitating Mentoring Form 2
Session Summary and Close