As part of the leadership charter work we are having positive conversations with people around MacIntyre to learn more about all of our experiences of great leadership. It’s not too difficult to talk about other people’s great leadership, but one of the questions people can chose to answer is about our own great leadership. It’s a real challenge to be positive about ourselves and overcome the modesty that holds us back from sharing our own stories, so I thought I’d have a go here.
This experience happened during my short time as Principal at Womaston School. Tom had been observed running a session which had been judged unsatisfactory by myself and an external moderator. I discovered this was his second unsatisfactory observation in a row and nothing seemed to have changed between the two, so knew I was going to have to have a very courageous conversation with him. Tom was close to retirement age with a wealth of experience and was much liked by colleagues and myself. I kept thinking ‘Who am I to tell him his work is not good enough and he has to change?’ During the meeting I focused on my facilitation skills. He is a quietly spoken man so I lowered the volume and tone of my voice and spoke slowly and with warmth, I sat at the same level as him, made eye contact, took time to observe his responses and to listen carefully. It was a hard conversation to start with – I don’t think conversations like this will ever feel easy to me – but by talking and listening we were able to explore the poor performance and agree actions.
We met again a week later once he’d had time to reflect. Tom told me that he thought he had been going through the motions for a while and had lost his feeling of purpose; he had lots of ideas to make the sessions more engaging and purposeful for the young people. He was also feeling lonely and isolated in his work and not confident in his own Great Interactions. We explored his skills and talents and made changes to his working pattern so he worked more alongside other staff. I also created time for an excellent practitioner to work alongside him for a number of sessions to help him develop his Great Interactions and the educational value of his sessions. He reduced his verbal language and started using symbols and photos to help young people sequence their work, understand what they were doing and become more independent. He started moving around the space more – ensuring his positioning and eye contact was right for each person he supported.
By enabling Tom to reconnect to his skills and talents and work alongside others he started to become a lot more creative again. This even resulted in him, the young people and other colleagues building a pizza oven entirely from recycled materials which was used to cook pizzas made by the young people on the day of the Womaston leaving party!
Needless to say Tom’s next session observation jumped up several grades. What makes this experience most powerful for me though is not only the impact on his performance, but also the impact on his well-being, even during a really tough time at Womaston, and the impact on our relationship. By having the courage to start that difficult conversation and then positively supporting him to move forwards I know I really gained his respect. Tom let me know this on his last day at Womaston when he initiated a Great Interaction with me. He had made me a very beautiful hand made gift which I will always treasure because it reminds me of the longest, warmest, most heartfelt hug I think I have ever experienced from a work colleague!
This is not the first time I have experienced the power of Great Interactions as part of a courageous conversation about performance followed by a positive conversation focused on building on what is working. I would encourage all leaders to take the plunge and start those conversations.
The person’s name in this blog has been changed
Belinda Manning