Leadership and Management

Unit 2:

Managing and developing self

Managing and developing self

Introduction .................................................................................................... 1

Learning outcomes ......................................................................................... 1

1 Prioritising your work and managing your time effectively ........................... 2

Discussion............................................................................................... 2

2 Delegation ................................................................................................... 4

Discussion............................................................................................... 6

3 Planning your development ......................................................................... 8

Continuing professional development ................................................... 10

4 Setting SMART objectives ........................................................................ 11

Specific ................................................................................................. 12

Measurable ........................................................................................... 12

Achievable ............................................................................................ 13

Realistic ................................................................................................ 13

Timely (or time-bound) .......................................................................... 13

Discussion............................................................................................. 14

5 Summary ................................................................................................... 15

6 Resources ................................................................................................. 15

7 Related units ............................................................................................. 15

References ................................................................................................... 16

Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... 16

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, the content of this unit is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

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Introduction

Many employers take professional development seriously. They consistently invest in their employees, putting in place systems and procedures to ensure that people are given opportunities to develop new skills, improve on their current practice and explore new outlets in their personal and professional lives.

Nonetheless, leaders and managers also need to take personal responsibility for renewing and updating their skills and knowledge throughout their working lives. Personal development is a lifelong process of nurturing, shaping and improving your skills and knowledge in order to ensure maximum effectiveness and ongoing employability. Personal development does not necessarily imply upward movement (that is, promotion). Instead, it is about enabling you to improve your performance and reach your full potential at each stage of your career. The extent to which you carry this out regularly will very much depend on where you are in your career (i.e. whether you are a newly appointed headteacher or principal, a mid-career leader, an experienced leader or nearing retirement). Even for leaders nearing retirement it is important to plan your future carefully, and this process can contribute to your personal development.

During your work on this unit you will be asked to make notes in your Learning Diary, a book or folder where you collect together your thoughts and plans in one place. Perhaps you have already started one.

You may be working through this unit alone, but you will learn much more if you are able to discuss your learning with another school leader. This could be a colleague with whom you already collaborate, or someone with whom you can build new relationship. It could be done in an organised way, or on a more informal basis. The notes you make in your Learning Diary will be useful for these kinds of meetings, while also mapping your longer-term learning and development.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this unit, you should be able to:

prioritise your work, delegate to others and make effective use of your time

plan for personal and professional development

set SMART objectives and outline how you will achieve them

evaluate your performance at appropriate intervals.

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1 Prioritising your work and managing your time effectively

Every headteacher or principal has competing demands for their time during any school day. They work with teachers, parents, students and education supervisors who visit their school. As a headteacher, one potential source of pressure is your teachers’ dependence on you to solve all problems, which often leaves little or no time for you to do other equally important things. It is therefore important that you are able to multitask but most importantly prioritise your work. Otherwise it will impact on your effectiveness, which you will explore in Activity 1.

Activity 1: The headteacher’s role

What does it mean to be a headteacher or principal in your school and more widely your state? Are you able to meet all the expectations from your superiors, parents, students, colleagues and the wider community?

Discussion

This is a very broad statement that requires a lot of thought as you reflect on the levels of accountability (including to yourself as a professional) and the various stakeholders involved.

You should note that being a headteacher or principal comes with a lot of responsibility. However, the tasks and activities that underpin your job description cannot be physically carried out by you alone. A large part of a school leader’s job is to get things done through others. This includes providing direction, modelling good practice, managing performance and supporting the work of others. It also means delegating effectively and making sure that your staff are motivated and keep to tasks and professional standards. As their leader, you are expected to be an ‘enabler’ who helps people enhance the quality of their work and supports them to achieve their goals and targets.

Think about your typical day and list all the activities that you lead on.

Discussion

Your typical day could include leadership actions such as welcoming students and staff to school, leading the morning assembly, ensuring all lessons start on time, etc.

Now reflect on the activities you have listed and rank them in order of importance (i.e., activities that have the most impact on your students’ daily

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experience at school). For each of the activities, think about a member of your staff who can easily lead in your absence. Prioritising these tasks may be difficult because you deem all tasks to be equally important. Nonetheless, you will need to identify those activities where you as a headteacher or principal will have the most impact (i.e. separate the tasks that can only be done by you from those that could be done by others but have the same impact).

Make a copy of the table below and fill it in, adding as many rows as you need.

Activity Staff to lead in my absence

Discussion

Being able to assign – or delegate – some of your activities to others will allow you to start to prioritise your work, manage your time and develop trustworthy relationships. But clearly you’ll be able to do this better if you have a way of thinking about what are the most pressing and important tasks you have.

End of activity.

There is never enough time in a headteacher or principal’s day to complete every task, so it is essential to use what there is wisely. This may mean avoiding unplanned disruption wherever possible, and standing back from the day-to-day rush so that you get a clear picture of what you should prioritise. This means that you need to use scheduling activities and careful planning to make effective use of the time you have available.

Effective time management is simply making the best use of your time. You should streamline what you are doing every day by setting yourself simple

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goals and targets, and ensuring that you achieve them. Effective time management can help you to gain more control over your activities and increase your efficiency.

2 Delegation

Delegation means giving someone the authority to carry out a task or make a decision on your behalf. However, you will still be accountable and ultimately responsible. Although you can delegate leadership responsibilities, as a school head you are ultimately responsible. Therefore, you will be the person that the School Management Committee (SMC) or the government education supervisor will hold to account. There are tasks that are very local to your school where you as the head will be the gatekeeper and therefore can completely delegate all authority and responsibilities to others.

Delegation is recognised as a management technique that improves efficiency, offers the manager some space to tackle other duties and can provide opportunities for others to develop themselves.

The ‘grid of urgency’ is a simple way to prioritise your work by clustering all tasks into categories, such as those that need your urgent attention and should be carried out by you, and those that you can easily delegate to someone else. Figure 1 is a representation of how you could cluster your tasks.

Figure 1 The grid of urgency.

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Description

The grid of urgency is a two-by-two set of squares. The top left square is green and is labelled ‘P1: Urgent and important’. The top right square is orange and is labelled ‘P2: Important but not urgent’. The bottom left square is orange and is labelled ‘P3: Urgent but not important’. The bottom right square is red and is labelled ‘P4: Neither urgent nor important’.

The priorities in the grid are as follows:

Priority 1: Urgent and important (U and I): These tasks have to be prioritised over everything. Although you may involve others, you are ultimately responsible and therefore have to ensure that the tasks are carried out effectively and on time.

Priority 2: Important but not urgent (I not U): These tasks are not priorities, but you would usually want to do them yourself because they are important. Because they are important it is a good idea not to leave them too late, otherwise they will become a priority 1 task. If you decide to delegate such a task, it is important that you supervise and/or provide the appropriate support to that person to ensure the level of quality is what you require.

Priority 3: Urgent but not important (U not I): Whatever the reason, these tasks require an urgent response but they are not important to your role. Because these are not important, you should avoid putting too much time into these tasks. These are the tasks you can often be bullied into doing because they are presented as urgent, but after a few minutes of working on them you realise they aren’t. To avoid a delayed response, it is better to delegate them to someone else.

Priority 4: Neither urgent nor important (neither U nor I): You should ask yourself whether you need to do these tasks at all. Such tasks are distractions and are not a good use of your time, so delegate where appropriate.

It is worth noting that your supervisor may present some tasks to you as urgent or important, although you may think otherwise. As a leader determined to manage your time effectively, you have to stand your ground and be firm. The grid of urgency is mainly for guidance and should help you prioritise your tasks and activities.

Activity 2: Using the urgency grid for delegation

Create your own version of the urgency grid, labelling the boxes ‘P1’, ‘P2’, ‘P3’ and ‘P4’. Now consider the tasks that have come to you in the past two weeks and write them down in the various categories on the grid. They do not have to be tasks that have now been completed, but they should have come across your desk ready to be done.

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When you have done this, think about what, if anything, has been done so far about each task. Finally, look at whether any section of the grid has more completed tasks than the other sections, and the extent to which you have delegated completed tasks.

You should consider the following:

The urgency of the task: Urgent tasks have to be prioritised at all times. This does not mean they have to be completed by you. You can easily delegate them or involve others.

The importance of the task: These are tasks that you will want to do yourself, although they may be time-consuming. You have to prioritise these, but if for any reason you feel the need to delegate them, you will have to monitor them to ensure they are delivered in a timely and efficient way.

The ability of the individual who will be taking up the task: This matters because you will expect the quality of the solution to be the same as though you took on the task yourself. Therefore, it is advisable to delegate to those you are confident can deliver. Experience sometimes counts!

Most importantly, how much time you both have: If it will take the person you are delegating to much longer to complete the task compared to the time it will take if you had taken on the task yourself, think again. If the person will require a lot of supervision to be able to tackle the task satisfactorily, think again.

Discussion

Prioritising your work and choosing what to delegate is never an easy task, because you have to make sure the job gets done. Issues relating to trust and the appropriate support from the person on the task are further reasons why care should be taking when delegating. But reluctance to delegate can leave you jaded and overwhelmed, which can ultimately affect your performance.

Tables 1 and 2 show examples of urgency grids made by headteachers in an elementary and secondary school.

Table 1 An elementary school headteacher’s urgency grid.

P1

Speak to Adnan’s parents about his absenteeism

Share my observations of Mr Anil’s class and suggest he observes Mr Sharma’s

P2

Send a reminder for furniture order for the new section

Send the students monthly attendance to the Department

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class

P3

Ask more Class V students to bring their projects for the visitor coming to school tomorrow

P4

Meet the SMDC members sometime during the week for a routine catch-up

Table 2 A secondary school headteacher’s urgency grid.

P1

Speak to the staff about filling in for the Physics teacher Mehul, who is going on leave

Send Manish to the health check-up for disabled students by 11 a.m.

P2

Organise the cultural performances for the event and check if extra practice will be needed

Get the permission to travel for the children who will be representing the school at the inter-school competition

P3

Arrange for a microphone for the Assembly to be addressed by the DEO on Children’s Day

P4

Check with the SMDC if they would like to increase the watchman’s maintenance after two months

To be able to do this task effectively, both of the headteachers in Tables 1 and 2 had to consider the following issues that impact on their daily and weekly duties:

establish how their time is spent on each task

determine the problem areas

try to plan ahead

delegating ‘urgent but not important’ tasks, as well as tasks that are ‘neither urgent nor important’.

End of activity.

Activity 3: Delegation scenario

Ms Nisha has been the headteacher of a secondary school for ten years. Her staff find her very supportive and will go to her for all the answers they need. She spends every school day helping others, which leaves her very little time to do any tasks that she sets for herself.

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In the last year she has been unwell and unable to provide the same level of support to staff as she used to. Although her staff are sympathetic, they feel that her standards have fallen and are beginning to question whether she should be replaced. In a recent meeting with the School Management Committee (SMC), a representative of the staff voiced his concerns about the drop in staff morale, although teaching and learning standards remained good.

In the coming month, the Mathematics department has to prepare its students for the annual state competition. Ms Nisha has always led the preparation and accompanied the students to the competition, but this year she feels she cannot do this. She is now troubled and not sure how to go about it.

As a school headteacher yourself, what recommendations would you put to Ms Nisha? What will you do differently to ensure you don’t encounter a similar situation in your school?

End of activity.

Now that you know the importance of prioritising your work, you should apply some of the ideas to your practice.

In the next section you will at look personal development planning. You will begin to think about what you are good at in your role as a headteacher or principal, and will be self-critical in identifying what you need to improve on.

Although most of your development as a public school headteacher may come through the State system (i.e. DIET programmes), there are other ways you can develop your skills and interests. It is always useful to be proactive, so think about your own development opportunities as you work through the next section.

3 Planning your development

A personal/professional development plan (PDP) is a carefully planned document that highlights the key areas that you have identified for development in any planning cycle.

The PDP process can be described as:

assessing your current skills, competencies and ambition

identifying your need for skills, knowledge or competencies

establishing aims and objectives – what you want to achieve in the short, medium or long term in your career

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selecting appropriate training and development activities to meet those perceived needs in order to help you reach your career and personal goals.

In many schools and other organisations, this process is tied into an appraisal system where you have the opportunity to discuss your development needs with your supervisor. Your supervisor may have an important role in the process because they control access to the resources that may support your plan. When you prepare for an appraisal, you should:

reflect on your skills and practice

review your performance and capabilities

draw up a plan of action (with specific goals or objectives) to ensure you are successful.

Having a good PDP and acting on it helps to ensure that you are developing and maintaining your professional competency. It can also demonstrate a commitment to improving your knowledge and skills, which is good for your career progression.

Activity 4: The PDP process

The following points outline the PDP process. Read through them, making notes on the first four. If you are not doing PDP at the moment, these will only be rough jottings. However, they should get you started to think about how this might go forward. If you are already involved with PDP, you can use the entire list as a checklist to remind yourself of your current progress.

1. Establish where you are in your career and clearly define your aspirations: The purpose of any development activity needs to be identified. You may do this either by yourself or with the help of your manager, mentor, colleagues or friends. This involves:

o gaining a measure of what you are good at and interested in o taking into account the organisational realities, as well as any

potential challenges o linking your plans to the organisational needs as much as

possible. 2. Identify development needs: Identifying your development needs may

emerge from intended or actual new tasks or responsibilities, discussions with your supervisor or others, or through some formal appraisal process. Various instruments, such as self-assessment tests, benchmarking exercises and personal diagnostics, are available to help you assess your skills in a structured way. Although very often your development needs are associated with your current duties, it is always worth considering any development you may require to prepare you for a promotion or a new career.

3. Identify learning opportunities: As a result of one, or several, of the assessment processes above, draw up a list of the skills or knowledge

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you need to acquire, update or improve. Compare this list with your current skills and knowledge base, and identify the gaps.

4. Formulate an action plan: For each of the skills and knowledge gaps you identify, set yourself development objectives. There must be an element of challenge in them so that they stretch you as an individual and carry you on to new ground. But they must also be attainable and viable within a realistic time frame.

5. Undertake the development: Put your plan into action. What you do and how you do it should be your choice. In addition to training courses, options include work shadowing, a secondment, job rotation, project work, networking and community involvement.

6. Record the outcomes: Keeping records serves to remind you – and others, such as potential employers – what you have done. Most importantly, your records will help you to focus on what you have got out of your development activity. Record the date, the development need identified, the chosen method of meeting those needs, the date(s) when PDP was undertaken, the outcomes, and any further action needed.

7. Evaluate and review: Evaluation is a key stage in the self-development cycle. There are two issues that you should reflect upon: whether the development activity you have undertaken was appropriate; and whether and how your skills or working behaviour have improved as a result.

End of activity.

Continuing professional development

Continuing professional development (CPD) refers to the means by which people maintain their professional knowledge, practice and skills. In some professions, it is compulsory to declare a number of hours of CPD annually in order to renew your licence to practise. These have been put in place to ensure that people remain competent post-qualification. The requirement (or the need) to continuously develop yourself could form part of your PDP discussed earlier. Therefore, the skills and learning required to do your job could be the basis of your PDP. Having a good PDP and acting on the plan helps to ensure you that are developing and maintaining your professional competency. It can also demonstrate a commitment to upskilling where appropriate.

In many states in India, the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) will work with District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET) to provide this sort of support for headteachers and principals.

According to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (2009), the broad aims for a CPD programme for teachers are to:

explore, reflect and develop one’s own practice

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deepen one’s knowledge of and update oneself about one’s academic discipline or other areas of school curriculum

research and reflect on learners and their education

understand and update oneself on educational and social issues

prepare for other roles professionally linked to education and teaching such as teacher education, curriculum development or counselling

break out of intellectual isolation and share experiences and insights with others in the field, both teachers and academics working in the area of specific disciplines as well as intellectuals in the immediate wider society.

These broad aims inform the in-service training and development strategies implemented by the DIET. As a headteacher or principal, these aims may not necessarily meet your needs. It is therefore important that you are self-conscious and critical about your practice and take proactive action to develop yourself. This will require having a professional conversation with your supervisor so you can prepare a clear plan of action.

Activity 6: Your development

Now identify the areas that you wish to develop in the next year and state clearly what you are going to do to make sure it happens. You can download and use this template.

End of activity.

4 Setting SMART objectives

There are ways in which you can construct the statements in your PDP to ensure that your development objectives are carefully planned, concise and achievable. Although a carefully constructed objective does not necessarily guarantee that it will be achieved, it is a good start because it has key aspects that stimulate you to make sure it happens. A very popular acronym used to describe the key aspects is ‘SMART’, meaning:

specific

measurable

achievable

realistic

timely (or time-bound).

This acronym has been credited to both Peter Drucker (1955) and G.T. Doran (1991), although it is difficult to identify whether either of these two were really the first people to use the term with reference to objectives.

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Objectives set out what you as a school leader are trying to achieve. This does not necessarily mean that you will have to undertake all the tasks associated with the objectives. It is important that they are clear and understood by everyone associated with the processes; if they are, this will lead to their successful implementation.

It is important that you are specific and have clear and measurable indicators, because they provide a definition of the success of the initiative at hand. Achievable and realistic objectives engage and motivate individuals. When your objectives look unrealistic, you put yourself and others under immense pressure. This can have a knock-on effect on people’s level of commitment or ability to meet these unrealistic and unattainable objective(s). It is important to have clear time indicators so that all the stakeholders know when the objective has to be achieved by – or, if it is not likely to be achieved, whether to put in place measures to address any mitigating issues.

Now look at some key action verbs that can help in constructing SMART objectives.

Specific

To be specific, an objective should have a description of a precise or specific behaviour, achievement or outcome. It is also helpful if it can be related to a percentage, frequency, rate or number. To increase specificity, use verbs that are action-orientated to describe those actions that need to be taken to fulfil the objectives.

Action verbs include ‘create’, ‘develop’, ‘design’, ‘analyse’, ‘execute’, ‘change’, ‘modify’, ‘identify’ and ‘prepare’.

Measurable

Ensuring that your objective is measurable is hugely important because it tells you whether you have achieved your objective or not. You will gather evidence through a data collection instrument (observing, tracking and recording behaviours, asking questions, etc.) or using a predefined system or procedure in your school as required by the state authority. The instrument you use to measure your objective should help you to generate the required evidence to support your claims of success. You should consider the following questions:

How will I know that the change has occurred?

How can these measurements be obtained?

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Achievable

An objective is achievable if:

you know it is measurable and you can gather evidence to ascertain the impact or change

others have already done it, meaning that, in principle, it possible to achieve

any limitations and constraints have been carefully considered.

It is not worth setting an objective that relies heavily on resources that are not readily available or may be difficult to obtain in the future. It is a risk that has to be carefully managed if the target is to be achieved.

Realistic

The realistic aspect of your objective is closely linked to whether it is achievable or not. While objectives should be realistic, this does not mean that they need to be easy. Objectives can be set that are demanding, but not to the extent that the chance of success is small. Realistic objectives take into account the available resources, such as skills required, financial resources, equipment and so on. You should consider whether:

it is possible to achieve this objective

the resources to achieve this objective are available.

Timely (or time-bound)

Allocating a deadline to an objective is closely linked to ensuring that it is measurable. Because you will be collecting evidence at a specified time to ascertain whether you have met the objective, it is imperative that you specify when you expect the objective to be achieved. A deadline also helps to create the necessary urgency, prompts action and focuses the minds of those who are accountable.

Activity 7: Setting your own SMART objectives

The objective-setting process can seem daunting, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. It can be as simple as sitting down with your broad development goals and using SMART to reconstruct the statement. At school level, you can do this by going through a departmental or school year plan and considering how it can be met. Doing so is the foundation for setting the objectives. Everyone within the school should have a clear understanding of the objectives, as well as an awareness of their own roles and responsibilities in achieving them.

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Now go back to Activity 6 and rewrite your objectives so that they are SMART. Consider when you hope to complete these objectives, how you will undertake them and the resources you will require. When you have finished, identify two organisational goals and use a template to rewrite them so that they are SMART. (An example has been added to the template to help you fill it in – feel free to delete this.) You can refer to the action words discussed earlier.

Discussion

The example shown on the template is one that meets the SMART criteria. The goal of working out a homework policy for the school has been broken down into an objective that is SMART. You can have more than one objective for a goal that is expressed in broad terms like the one have used in this example.

End of activity.

Activity 8: Planning your PDP

Now think about your strengths and weaknesses, and any problems that have become apparent in your practice. Are there any areas where you need to develop or adjust your skills in order to better support your teachers, students and the wider community?

Consider what you need to work on and decide how you will go about this. These needs could be the same as those you identified earlier or completely different following further reflection. Will the training provided by your DIET (such as time management, communication or team building) be appropriate? Or do you have to be proactive and locate alternative resources such as TESS-India materials, books, conferences and networks?

These are very important reflection points to consider as you continuously develop and improve your skills.

Download this template and use it as a tool for planning your PDP for the forthcoming year.

End of activity.

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5 Summary

In this unit you have looked how to make productive and effective use of your time as a headteacher or principal. You have considered some action points and hopefully performed some activities that have helped to make these actions tangible. Personal and professional development is very important for everyone and should be carefully planned and put into action. As a school leader, you should continuously seek to improve your practice and should work with your supervisors to ensure that you have adequate support. You should also endeavour to provide appropriate support for your staff and help them improve their practice.

6 Resources

You may be interested in looking at these online resources:

Managing and managing people: ‘Time saving and time planning’ – this is a page from an online educational resource (OER) written by The Open University.

Leadership and context – this is an OER written by The Open University.

7 Related units

LDU 1,Being a school leader

LDU 4,Leading learning and teaching

LDU 7,Supporting teachers to raise performance

LDU 8, Leading teacher professional development

LDU 20, Building and sustaining collaborative relationships

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References

Leadership and context, Open University OpenLearn unit. Available from: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-management/management/leadership-and-management/leadership-and-context/content-section-0 (accessed 20 November 2013).

Managing and managing people, Open University OpenLearn unit. Available from: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-management/management/leadership-and-management/managing-and-managing-people/content-section-0 (accessed 20 November 2013).

National Council of Educational Research and Training (2009) National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE). New Delhi: NCERT.

Acknowledgements

The content of this leader development unit was developed collaboratively and incrementally by the following educators and academics from India and The Open University (UK) who discussed various drafts, including the feedback from Indian and UK critical readers: Eric Addae-Kyeremeh and Christine Wise.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, the content of this unit is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.